Soft news and political cynicism: how exposure to political information genres affects public cynicism about politics

The media are often blamed for electorates’ low levels of political knowledge and involvement, due to the tendency to cover political news in an increasingly entertaining manner. This study investigated whether and how watching particular news genres (soft or hard) relate to political cynicism. Using a novel and sophisticated measure for media exposure, analyses of three recent surveys found a strong relationship between watching certain news programs and political cynicism. People who watched serious news more often were less cynical about politics than people who watched popular kinds of news more often. This relation seems not to be conditional on differences of education levels, political awareness or newspaper readership. In short, this paper confirms what was already expected by many. Controlling for many potential confounding variables, there still exists a strong relation between the television programs people watch and their level of political cynicism.