Message or Medium? Campaign Learning During the 2001 British General Election

Abstract

A central claim for the value of democratic elections is their potential for civic education. This study is designed to understand how and under what conditions people learn about public affairs from different sources of campaign information. There has long been debate in the literature about whether the medium matters, in particular whether print media are more effective than audiovisual channels for informing the public about policy issues. Questions also surround which information sources are most effective in closing the "knowledge gap" by reaching the "know-nothings." Does the medium matter and, if so, for whom? To examine these issues, Part 1 of this article briefly reviews the previous literature and outlines the theory framing our expectations. Part 2 explains the experimental research design. Part 3 summarizes the results. We conclude that what matters are not the structural features of textual versus audiovisual modes of transmission, but rather the type of journalism and the contents of the campaign news typically carried by different information sources in each society. The message, not the medium, matters.

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