Public Lecture: “Political Effects of Forced versus Selective Exposure to News Media”

Thursday: 02-12-2010. Madrid, IE Business School. Room: E-011, Pinar nº 9. Hour: 19.00-20.30

IE School of Communication (IE University) invites you to the 37^th meeting “Scientists and Professionals in Communication”, series 2010-2011, where Magdalena Wojcieszak, Professor in Communication at IE University, will give a talk in English entitled “Political Effects of Forced versus Selective Exposure to News Media”. 

Abstract

Communication scholars have long been concerned with the effects that media have on society. Do violent movies make people aggressive? Do political ads increase voter’s support for a candidate? Many theories address these effects and various laws regulate media content, presuming its influence. Yet, what we know about media effects may be inaccurate. This is because experimental studies, which establish media effects, may not reflect these effects in the “real world.” This is because participants are usually assigned to view certain content, and cannot select it on their own. Would participants choose a given content themselves? Would the detected effects be similar to those generated by a voluntary exposure?

I will discuss a study that will speak to this gap between the “real world” and experimental studies by experimentally examining the influence of forced versus selective exposure to political messages. We will contrast a typical experimental procedure, where people are forced to view content, with an experimental procedure allowing people to select the content. We will test the outcome of both forced and selected exposure on such democratically important outcomes as attitude polarization, political tolerance, and political participation. 

Short Bio

Magdalena Wojcieszak, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Political Communication at the IE School of Communication. She received her PhD at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and MA Summa Cum Laude in Sociology at the Warsaw University in 2003. As a winner of the EU fellowship she also studied in Urbino, Italy.

Her research focuses on political communication, and – in particular – on deliberation, disagreement, attitude polarization, political participation, public opinion perception, and computer-mediated communication. Her work has been supported by grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and from Junta de Castilla y León and published in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including Communication Research, Journal of Communication, Public Opinion Quarterly, New Media & Society, among others. Dr. Wojcieszak has also received several awards for research and teaching and has been included in the 2010 special edition of Who is Who in America. She has served on the Editorial Board of Journal of Communication, International Journal of Public Opinion, and "EastBound" as well as a reviewer for various journals. To step beyond the academic ivory tower Dr. Wojcieszak applies her knowledge to attenuating sociopolitical conflicts and is part of international projects assessing media and public opinion in conflict zones.