Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes
- 1 Toward a Dynamic Perspective on Racial Attitudes
- 2 Eras of Media Coverage of Race
- 3 Eras of Racial Liberalism and Conservatism
- 4 Media Framing and the Dynamics of Racial Policy Preferences
- 5 The Fusion of Race and the Welfare State in the Public Mind
- 6 A New American Dilemma for a New Millennium?
- Appendix
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Preface
- The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes
- 1 Toward a Dynamic Perspective on Racial Attitudes
- 2 Eras of Media Coverage of Race
- 3 Eras of Racial Liberalism and Conservatism
- 4 Media Framing and the Dynamics of Racial Policy Preferences
- 5 The Fusion of Race and the Welfare State in the Public Mind
- 6 A New American Dilemma for a New Millennium?
- Appendix
- References
- Index
Summary
The kernel of insight that eventually led to my doctoral dissertation – and, finally, to this book – occurred in my apartment in Minneapolis on a cold winter day in 1994. As a young graduate student, I was fortunate to be taking seminars at the time when two pathbreaking works in the study of public opinion were first being published: John Zaller's The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion and James Stimson's Public Opinion in America. Although these books were both immediately hailed as important new works, and both spoke in a fresh voice about the nature of public opinion, they were actually quite disconnected from one another, and remain so today. This, in my view, is unfortunate. The reason for this disconnection is that they approached the subject from very different perspectives – Zaller from the more traditional individual level, and Stimson from the quite different macro, time-series level. But why, I wondered, weren't these two insights connected? Didn't Zaller's theory of the survey response have aggregate, over-time implications? Weren't these implications testable? Couldn't the tools and methodologies that Stimson pioneered be used in the analysis? In the strictest intellectual sense of the word, I am indebted to Zaller and Stimson for showing the rest of us new ways to study public opinion. Without both of their works, mine would not be possible.
My debt to Stimson goes beyond this, however.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes , pp. xiii - xviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003