News revelations can shift how opinions weight judgments without shifting the opinions themselves

Evidence

In our first reading in this section, Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder take an experimental approach to measuring the effects of television news coverage on audience members’ ratings of issue importance. They find that, whether or not viewers are persuaded by the specific opinions represented on a news program, they are indeed influenced by the degree to which certain issues are covered. Specifically, people weigh issues that have been featured prominently in the news more heavily than issues that have not been prominently featured, and these subjective weights do influence political judgments and evaluations. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1404 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: News coverage affects attitudes with a peak two-week memory window. — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 622; News coverage prominence shapes issue weighting independent of persuasion; Short experimental news exposure measurably shifts perceived problem importance (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• News coverage prominence shifts how heavily people weigh issues in political judgments #expands (0.92) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1404