The Psychology of Politics: Measuring Political Knowledge and its Relationship with Media Exposure

Since the dawn of the Digital Age, a variety of media have emerged to give people access to a wealth of knowledge. The field of political science has often struggled to measure how these new media influence political knowledge, the study of public opinion and political behavior, and it is essential that the field can generate valid measures in this area. Many in the field have pointed to a knowledge gap in political information in the 21st century, where some people have become more politically informed with the advent of new media while others have become even less informed. The survey experiment I've worked on with my mentor aims to tackle why this knowledge gap persists and examines how a variety of media affect respondents knowledge on civics, current events, and differentiation between facts and opinions. With information on respondents media habits, well be able analyze which types of media affect political knowledge and the weight that these measures carry. While this experiment is currently in progress, I've drawn on material from past publications as well as data from sources such as the American National Election Studies (ANES) to provide convincing measures of political knowledge and how it ties into different types of media usage. Additionally, I will review how our survey was constructed, including how questions were written, the types of media that were used as treatments, and the results we might expect based on past data.Ope