McCombs, Holbert, Kiousis and Wanta: The News and Public Opinion

The co-authors of the book are:

• Maxwell McCombs, J.H. Jones Centennial Chair Emeritus on the journalism faculty. This semester he is teaching the seminar on the agenda-setting role of the news media.
• Wayne Wanta, who completed his PhD in the School of Journalism in 1989. He is currently chairman of the Department of Journalism at the University of Florida.
• Spiro Kiousis, who completed his PhD in the School of Journalism in 2000. He is currently chairman of the Department of Public Relations at the University of Florida.
• R. Lance Holbert, who completed his PhD at the University of Wisconsin, is Director of Graduate Studies in the School of Communication at Ohio State University.

Published by Polity Press in Cambridge, England, The News and Public Opinion is organized in terms of the hierarchy of media effects model, tracing the impact of the news on public opinion from the focus of public attention and what people learn from the news to the formation of attitudes and opinions and voting behavior.

DESCRIPTION:
The daily news plays a major role in the continuously changing mix of thoughts, feelings and behavior that defines public opinion. The News & Public Opinion details these effects of the news media on the sequence of outcomes that collectively shape public opinion, beginning with initial attention to the various news media and their contents and extending to the effects of this exposure on the acquisition of information, formation of attitudes and opinions and to the consequences of all these elements for participation in public life. Sometimes called the hierarchy of media effects, this sequence of outcomes describes the communication process involved in the formation of public opinion.

Although the media landscape is undergoing rapid change, key elements remain the same, and The News & Public Opinion emphasizes these basic principles of communication established over decades of empirical social science investigations into the impact of mass communication on public opinion. The primary audience for this book is students, both advanced undergraduates and graduate students, as well as members of the general public who want to understand the role of the news media in our civic life.

McCombs plans to use this book for his political communication seminar next year.