Asst Prof at @IllinoisComm studying media, politics, & identity, not necessarily in that order. @UM_CommStudies-@SDSU_JMS-@drexelwestphal alumnus, #USMC veteran
Thanks also to the following, whose feedback was instrumental in honing this piece: Brian Weeks, Travis Dixon, the PolComm Working Group & MAPiEL Lab at UM Comm & Media, Danna Young, Lance Holbert, Stephanie Edgerly, Annemarie Navar-Gill, Ian Hawkins, & Dan Lane. 10/10
The article is available online now at Communication Theory. I hope you'll give it a read! Many thanks to the editors and anonymous reviewers whose feedback strengthened this piece. 9/10
https://academic.oup.com/ct/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/ct/qtae004/7616632
Particularly at a time when conservatives are saying "Go woke, go broke" because of LGBTQ+, women, or nonwhite characters in media, it is important to understand how users make sense of the media environment and of specific texts, including the consequences thereof. 8/10
In short, it is up to the media user, not researchers, whether a text is politically relevant, and that evaluation itself is meaningful. It also opens the door to studying the implications of evaluating all types of media, including entertainment, as politically relevant. 7/10
The PRMM models a discrete media encounter (one text evaluated by one user), acknowledging that texts are both polysemic and interpreted intertextually, with the outcomes of the model influencing the user and texts as inputs for future iterations of the model. 6/10
These dimensions may lead to outcomes such as cognitive elaboration, psychological reactance, threat perceptions, and selective exposure. This has implications for agenda setting, message processing, narrative persuasion, political polarization, and other phenomena. 5/10
The Politically Relevant Media Model centers on an evaluation with 3 dimensions:
-Depiction of collective concerns, for which collective decisions could be made, that may have collective, binding consequences;
-Perception of controversy; &
-Perception of persuasive intent.
4/10
We must also contend with the fact that media texts 1) are created by people, which means users might consider the persuasive intent behind the text, and 2) may differentially portray controversy.
Coincidentally, persuasion and conflict rest at the heart of the political. 3/10
In hybrid media environments, how users make sense of media texts, including whether texts are politically relevant, is crucial. But scant work explores this, asking if texts are "political" or about "politics." Those words carry many meanings, some of them contradictory. 2/10
