The Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media

Public opinion and the media form the foundation of the United States' representative democracy. They are the subject of enormous scrutiny by scholars, pundits, and ordinary citizens. This Oxford Handbook takes on the 'big questions' about public opinion and the media-both empirical and normative-focusing on current debates and social scientific research. Bringing together the thinking of a team of leading academic experts, its chapters provide a cutting assessment of contemporary research on public opinion, the media, and their interconnections. Emphasizing changes in the mass media and communications technology-the vast number of cable channels, websites and blogs, and the new social media, which are changing how news about political life is collected and conveyed-they describe the evolving information interdependence of the media and public opinion. In addition, the volume reviews the wide range of influences on public opinion, including the processes by which information communicated through the media can affect the public. It describes what has been learned from the latest research in psychology, genetics, and studies of the impact of gender, race and ethnicity, economic status, education and sophistication, religion, and generational change on a wide range of political attitudes and perceptions. The Handbook includes extensive discussion of how public opinion and mass media coverage are studied through survey research and increasingly through experiments using the latest technological advances.

The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are a set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of scholarship on American politics. Each volume focuses on a particular aspect of the field. The project is under the General Editorship of George C. Edwards III, and distinguished specialists in their respective fields edit each volume. The Handbooks aim not just to report on the discipline, but also to shape it as scholars critically assess the scholarship on a topic and propose directions in which it needs to move. The series is an indispensable reference for anyone working in American politics.

Robert Y. Shapiro (Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1982) is a professor and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, and he served as acting director of Columbia's Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy during 2008-2009. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was a 2006-2007 Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He specializes in American politics with research and teaching interests in public opinion, policymaking, political leadership, the mass media, and applications of statistical methods. He has taught at Columbia since 1982 after receiving his degree and serving as a study director at the National Opinion Research Center (University of Chicago).

Lawrence R. Jacobs has published 11 books and dozens of articles on elections, legislative and presidential politics, elections and public opinion, and a range of public policies including Health Care Reform and American Politics (Oxford University Press, 2010) and Politicians Don't Pander: Political Manipulation and the Loss of Democratic Responsiveness (with Robert Y. Shapiro, University of Chicago Press). Dr. Jacobs co-edits the "Chicago Series in American Politics" for the University of Chicago Press and has published dozens of scholarly articles. His research has been recognized by a number of prizes. He is the Walter F. and Joan Mondale Chair for Political Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute and the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota.