ABSTRACT

Past communication mediation studies have shown positive relationships between news uses and citizens’ political attitudes, but understanding the mechanisms underlying the relationship is limited because they often do not take into account the diverse affordances of the media uses and the environment it triggers effects. Using a national Afrobarometer survey (N = 2,400) in Ghana, the present study examined the relationship between news uses and a variety of citizens’ political attitudes and how such relationships are affected by partisanship. Based on a series of regression analysis, findings showed that online news uses consistently predicted all levels of citizens’ political attitudes while traditional news uses were only associated with citizens’ levels of presidential trust and confidence. When partisan differences were further examined, results showed that only online media uses by ruling party members exhibited direct effects on trust in president and democratic satisfaction. However, in all, traditional media news uses based on ruling party support and no party members exhibited indirect effects on political attitudes. Oppositional party members showed no effect.

摘要

过去的传播中介研究表明，新闻使用与公民的政治态度之间存在正相关关系，但对这种关系背后的机制的理解是有限的，因为他们通常没有考虑到媒体使用的不同可供性及其引发影响的环境。使用全国性的非洲晴雨表调查 ( N = 2,400) 在加纳，本研究考察了新闻使用与各种公民政治态度之间的关系，以及这种关系如何受到党派偏见的影响。基于一系列回归分析，研究结果表明，在线新闻使用一致地预测了公民政治态度的各个层面，而传统新闻使用仅与公民对总统的信任和信心水平相关。当进一步考察党派差异时，结果表明，只有执政党成员使用网络媒体才能对总统信任和民主满意度产生直接影响。然而，总的来说，基于执政党支持的传统媒体新闻使用和没有党员对政治态度表现出间接影响。反对党成员没有表现出任何影响。