Mass Media and the Depoliticization of Personal Experience

This study combines contemporary research on the effects of mass communication with findings on voting to build a general model that explains the origins and effects of economic perceptions. This model is then tested in the context of retrospective personal and social concerns about unemployment. Survey evidence suggests that retrospective assessments of unemployment result primarily from mediated information rather than from direct experiences. Mass media are found to have an impersonal impact, influencing social, but not personal perceptions of the issue, while personal experiences with unemployment influence exclusively personal-level judgments. Mass media also influence the weighting of pocketbook as opposed to concerns by means of a sociotropic priming effect. Rather than priming all considerations that surround economic issues, high levels of media exposure to economic news prime the importance of collective perceptions to political evaluations and decrease the importance of personal concerns.