CAMPAIGN ADVERTISEMENTS VERSUS TELEVISION-NEWS AS SOURCES OF POLITICAL ISSUE INFORMATION

Relative contributions of television news and campaign advertising to U.S. voters' knowledge about candidate issue differences are compared. Empirical comparisons are based on interview data from six campaign surveys of voters, in various election settings from 1984 to 1992. In hierarchical regression analyses, after controls for demographic and political interest variables, measures of attention to television news consistently account for a significant increment of slightly more than 2 percent of variance in issue knowledge. Parallel measures representing attention to candidates' televised advertisements produce a much more variable pattern in terms of variance explained in knowledge. Usually the effects of advertisements are less than those of news, and sometimes they are nonsignificant; but in one hotly contested ideological race the informative effect attributable to advertisements exceeds that of TV news. These patterns hold up after further controls for other media use variables, including newspaper reading.