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 Oxford Handbook of American Public Opinion and the Media 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 is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, and 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. Shapiro specializes in American politics with research and teaching interests in public opinion, policymaking, political leadership, the mass media, and applications of statistical methods.

Lawrence R. Jacobs 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. He 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 (OUP 2010) and Politicians Don't Pander (with Robert Y. Shapiro).

Part One: Introduction
1. Informational Interdependence: Public Opinion and the Media in the New Communications Era, Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro
2. The Internet and Four Dimensions of Citizenship, W. Russell Neuman, Bruce Bimber, and Matthew Hindman
3. A Possible Next Frontier in Political Communication Research: Merging the Old with the New, Brian J. Gaines and James H. Kuklinski
Part Two: The Media
Foundations
4. Tocqueville's Interesting Error: On Journalism and Democracy, Michael Schudson
5. Partisans, Watchdog, and Entertainers: The Press for Democracy and Its Limits, Katherine Ann Brown and Todd Gitlin
6. The News Industry, Doris A. Graber and Gregory G. Holyk
7. What's Newsworthy: A View from the 21st Century, Marion R. Just
8. Soft News and The Four Oprah Effects, Matthew A. Baum and Angela Jamison
Measurement and Method
9. Exposure Measures and Content Analysis in Media Effects Studies, Jennifer Jerit and Jason Barabas
10. The Future of Political Communication Research: Online Panels and Experimentation, Lynn Vavreck and Shanto Iyengar
Effects
11. Public-Elite Interactions: Puzzles in Search of Researchers, James Druckman and Dennis Chong
12. Issue Framing, Thomas E. Nelson
13. Campaigning, Debating, Advertising, Bradford H. Bishop and D. Sunshine Hillygus
14. Media Influences on Political Trust and Engagement, Patricia Moy and Muzammil M. Hussain
15. The Effect of Media on Public Knowledge, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Bruce W. Hardy
16. News Polls: Constructing an Engaged Public, W. Lance Bennett
Part Three: Public Opinion
Foundations
17. Democracy and the Concept of Public Opinion, John G. Gunnell
18. Constructing Public Opinion: A Brief History of Survey Research, Michael X. Delli Carpini
19. Critical Perspectives on Public Opinion, Susan Herbst
Measurement
20. The Accuracy of Opinion Polling and Its Relation to Its Future, Michael Traugott
21. Representative Sampling and Survey Non-Response, Adam J. Berinsky
22. Instrument Design: Question Form, Wording and Context Effects, George Franklin Bishop
Micro-Level Frameworks
23. Political Cognition and Public Opinion, Charles S. Taber
24. Emotion and Public Opinion, Ted Brader, George E. Marcus, and Kristyn L. Miller
25. Prospect Theory and Risk Assessment, Rose McDermott
26. Connecting the Social and Biological Bases of Public Opinion, Carolyn L. Funk
27. Attitude Organization in the Mass Public: The Impact of Ideology and Partisanship, William G. Jacoby
The Pluralism of Public Opinion
28. Political Socialization: Ongoing Questions and New Directions, Laura Stoker and Jackie Bass
29. On the Complex and Varied Political Effects of Gender, Leonie Huddy and Erin Cassese
30. The Contours of Black Public Opinion, Frederick C. Harris
31. Latino Public Opinion, Rodolfo O. de la Garza and Seung-Jin Jang
32. Asian American Public Opinion, Jane Junn, Taeku Lee, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, and Janelle Wong
33. A Vine with Many Branches: Religion and Public Opinion Research (, Aimee E. Barbeau, Carin Robinson, and Clyde Wilcox
34. Class Differences in Social and Political Attitudes in the United States, Leslie McCall and Jeff Manza
35. Knowledge, Sophistication, and Issue Publics, Vincent Hutchings and Spencer Piston
Part Four: Issues and Politics
36. Public Opinion, the Media, and Economic Well-Being, Jason Barabas
37. Race, Public Opinion, the Media, Taeku Lee and Nicole Willcoxon
38. Public Opinion, the Media, and Social Issues, Patrick J. Egan
39. Big Government and Public Opinion, Costas Panagopoulos and Robert Y. Shapiro
Foreign Policy and Security
40. Public Opinion, Foreign Policy and the Media: Toward an Integrative Theory, Douglas D. Foyle
41. Public Opinion, the Media, and War, John Mueller
42. The Media, Public Opinion, and Terrorism, Brigitte L. Nacos and Yaeli Bloch-Elkon
Part Five: Democracy Under Stress
43. The Democratic Paradox: The Waning of Popular Sovereignty and the Pathologies of American Politics, Robert Y. Shapiro and Lawrence R. Jacobs