Public Opinion, the Media, and Social Issues

This chapter studies the characteristics that social issues have in common, as well as their implications for public opinion, and then takes a look at empirical efforts, in order to define the set of political debates that should be called social issues. The next section discusses the broad trends in opinion on social issues and considers how much media coverage of these issues has changed along with public opinion. It also discusses the three explanations for the sources of attitudes on social issues, their strengths, and the extent to which they suggest the etiology of public opinion on social issues is unusual.