Chapter 6 Multiple Choice Questions

. Agenda setting is referred to in what three linked ways?

How the media affects the content and tone of communication and hence politics as a whole

How the political agenda has to strictly follow the government's manifesto and the proposal laid out in the Queen's speech. This agenda has a mandate.

The extent to which an actor or set of actors can set the agenda, for example the prime minister

The general process of how policymakers, the public, experts and the media shape the content of debate and thence public policy

. What are 'echo chambers' or 'filter bubbles' (Sunstein 2017)

Both terms refer to how internet users tend to select content that is close to their own opinion and interact with like-minded people.

Both terms refer to how young people attain political knowledge from social media whilst older citizens get their political knowledge from print media such as newspapers, hence causing a chamber-like divide.

Both terms refer to how the less educated voter, typically those without a degree, tend to get their information from unreliable sources of data, hence attaining filtered information which is misleading.

. The destabilising nature of contemporary politics where it is hard to predict issues considering the nature of social media is called…

social media manipulation (Fields, 2012).

turbulence politics (John et al, 2002).

chaotic pluralism (Margetts et al, 2015).

fake news (Tebbet, 2017).

. Which of the following have increased as a result of the rise of social media?

Fake news

Confirmation bias

Post-truth politics

Valence voting.

. What is it called when a surge in the attention to a public policy after a long period of stability occurs?

Policy revival

Policy punctuation

Policy surge

Policy influx

. Campaigning involves spending a lot of money. Who regulates how much money parties spend?

The Campaign Expenditure Commission

The Electoral Commission

The Party Expenditure Commission

The Party Finance Commission

. Academics such as Pattie, Johnston and Fieldhouse, 1995, believe campaigning makes little difference to an electoral outcome. Why might this be?

Voters think all campaigning is built on lies and they typically distrust politicians, especially given the rise of fake news and post-truth politics.

They question whether parties cancel out each other's efforts by pulling the voters in both ways.

The determinants of election results are often set in place before the campaign such as the economy, which affect the performance of the incumbent as conveyed to voter's minds before the election.

Voters self select the campaign material they are interested in and thus this only re-affirms their pre-existing beliefs.

. Newton and Brynin (2001) decided to look at data from the British household panel survey, to find out whether long-term exposure to print newspapers affects political preferences. What did they find?

They find that those who had no political identification but read a politically affiliated newspaper are more likely to vote for that party.

They find that those who have a Conservative party identification but read a Labour newspaper are more likely to vote Labour.
Incorrect

They find no correlation between long-term exposure to print newspapers and political preferences

They find that those who have a Labour party identification but read a Conservative newspaper are more likely to vote Conservative.

. What does causation mean?

Causation is about the correlation between A and B, where the observer can be confident that A influences B, and there is no other variable, say C, that explains the correlation.

Causation is found when running an experiment where people are randomly assigned to a condition group and to a control group. By comparing the treated with the non-treated we can find out causal impact.

Causation is the strength of two variables found most commonly by running a quasi-experiment

Causation is about the attribution of a relationship, between A and B, where the observer can be confident that A influences B, and there is no other variable, say C, that explains the relationship.

. In this experiment, people are assigned randomly, so it is possible to compare treated and non-treated and to attribute causal impact. The assignment is not random, but comparisons can be made. What experiment is this describing?

A non-randomised experiment

A Quasi-experiment

A control-experiment

An inferential-experiment

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