Spiral of Cynicism

Why do some citizens vote while others do not? Why does less than half of the American voting public show routinely show up at the polls? Why is it that the vast majority of political issues that affect our day-to-day lives fail to generate either public interest or understanding? These questions have troubled political scientists for decades. Many have long suspected that the media plays an important role in the growth of public cynicism and the decline of voter participation. In...
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Why do some citizens vote while others do not? Why does less than half of the American voting public show routinely show up at the polls? Why is it that the vast majority of political issues that affect our day-to-day lives fail to generate either public interest or understanding? These questions have troubled political scientists for decades. Many have long suspected that the media plays an important role in the growth of public cynicism and the decline of voter participation. In Spiral of Cynicism, renowned communication scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and Joseph N. Cappella provide the first conclusive evidence to date that it is indeed how the print and broadcast media cover political events and issues that fuels vote non-participation. The media's heavy focus on the game of politics, rather than on its substance, starts the spiral of cynicism that directly causes an erosion of citizen interest, and, ultimately, citizen participation. By observing voters who watched and read different sets of reports--some saturated in strategy talk, others focused on the real issues--the authors show decisive links between the way in which the media covers campaigns' and voters' levels of cynicism and participation. By closely monitoring media coverage among sample audiences for both the recent mayoral race in Philadelphia and the national health care reform debate, the authors address questions about the effects if issue-based and competitive-based political coverage. Finally, they address the question repeatedly asked by news editors, "Will the public read or watch an alternative media coverage that has more substance?" The answer is a clear "yes." A pathbreaking work, Spiral of Cynicism will demand that the media take a close look at how it covers political events and issues, as well as its degree of culpability in current vote dissatisfaction, cynicism, and non-participation. In providing a possible cure to the current spiral of cynicism, Jamieson and Cappella set the terms of the debate about how politics ought to be covered in the future.