West Virginia state legislators' opinions of local mass media

This survey of members of the West Virginia House of Delegates and Senate regarding their opinions of local mass media found that the majority of lawmakers felt local mass media had little influence on their decision making process. The legislators did not, however, view the media as neutral sources of political information. Self-described "conservative" lawmakers rated media sources described as "liberal" as being less accurate in their coverage of the legislature than did self-described "liberal" or "middle-of-the-road" lawmakers. The thesis used discriminate analysis to develop a statistically significant function able to classify, with high confidence, the political orientation of lawmakers, based on their responses to survey questions regarding the quantity and accuracy of local media coverage of themselves, and other state legislators with similar political views.

Name thesis:degree_name

MS

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Reed College of Media

Year dc:date.available

2000

Author dc:creator

• Penn, Timothy Shaw

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kurt E. Schimmel.

• Journalism
• Political science

Identifier

https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/1095

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:researchrepository.wvu.edu:etd-2098