The Citizen as Issue Specialists in a Changing Media Environment

S. Mo Jang and Yong Jin Park
Additional contact information
S. Mo Jang: Department of Communication Studies, University of Michigan, 105 S. State St. RM 5348, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
Yong Jin Park: Department of Strategic, Legal, Management Communications, School of Communications, Howard University, 13306 Burkitts Road, Fairfax, VA 22033, USA

Future Internet, 2013, vol. 5, issue 4, 1-12

Abstract: Although recent research suggests that the selective nature of new media helps foster issue specialists, little empirical evidence has been documented, mostly due to theoretical and methodological limitations. Extending the concept of issue publics, the present study proposes a method to estimate the degree to which an individual is a specialist- or a generalist-type citizen. Applying the method to the 2008 American National Election Studies data, the study reveals various characteristics of specialists and generalists. The results indicate that specialist-type citizens are positively associated with online news use, but negatively associated with conventional news media, such as television, newspaper, and radio. The implications of the growth of specialists as well as the validity of the proposed method are discussed.

Keywords: specialist; generalist; new media; traditional media; issue publics; issue importance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/5/4/568/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/5/4/568/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jftint:v:5:y:2013:i:4:p:568-579:d:30420

Access Statistics for this article

Future Internet is currently edited by Ms. Grace You

More articles in Future Internet from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().