Exposure to Information, Belief Integration, and Individual Responsiveness to Agenda Change

This article examines individual responsiveness to the media's changing political agenda during the years from 1964 to 1980. In the context of a dynamic model, the data indicate that responsiveness is positively associated with education, political interest, and a social motivation to attend to public affairs. A two-component model, in which heightened involvement increases individuals' exposure to information but also decreases their receptivity to the impact of the messages, is considered in a multivariate analysis. Although the results are only suggestive, the exposure function appears to operate for all three variables, whereas the inhibitions owing to the integration of previous information are evident only for political interest. Some speculations are offered about how these results may elaborate models of democratic public choice.