Learning to put politics into context: Effects of family communication on adolescents' assessments of political news

A 2-wave panel survey of teenagers (Total N = 579) and a cross-sectional survey of their parents (N = 266), during the last six months of the 1988 United States presidential campaign, explores direct and indirect effects of family communication environment and parent-child communication about news. Nearly all hypotheses receive support from the data. Warm, open, and socially oriented communication in the family contributes to more parent-child communication about media. Communication about politics and the media predicts discussion of specific election events, but general family communication norms do not. Communication about media also positively predicts the child's orientation to the media for news and entertainment. Less skeptical adolescents, and those who orient toward the media for news, perceived campaign news coverage as more accurate and representative early in the campaign. In turn, the more accurate and representative the coverage seemed, the more the adolescent's initial importance rating of an issue matched perceived media emphasis on that issue. More confidence in media accuracy and representativeness led to greater information seeking between the end of the presidential primary season and the middle of the fall campaign. Issue discussion and coviewing with the parent predicted subsequent apparent reality assessments. Information seeking led to greater confidence in the accuracy of portrayals of reality, but to less confidence in the representativeness of those portrayals. A mismatch at Time 2 between the adolescent's perceptions of the importance of an issue and of the media's emphasis on that issue reduced assessments of representativeness and accuracy. Apparent reality assessments interacted with Time 1 opinions to reinforce opinions at Time 2. The results show that parents can influence their children's opinions through direct communication about news content as well as more indirectly, by influencing the adolescent's general orientation to the media, which in turn influences the adolescent's analysis of particular events in the news.