Myiah J. Hutchens

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Washington State University

This study examined the correlations between alternative media use and extremist attitudes, populist attitudes and extremist attitudes, and whether populist attitudes moderated the correlation between alternative media use and extremist attitudes. Our results revealed that every alternative media category on both the political left and right was as...

Presidential elections typically follow a consistent pattern of news coverage. After the 2016 election, the news media faced intense criticism, a process called metajournalistic discourse. This research seeks to understand how election coverage may have shifted in 2020 considering this public scrutiny. By conducting a quantitative content analysis...

Two studies examined hyper-partisan and alternative media audiences in the United States and their relationship with misperceptions—or false beliefs—despite available evidence to disprove them. Study 1, which used secondary data (ANES), yielded limited findings and suggested that hyper-partisan conservative content was associated with holding mispe...

Contemporary research on social media looks different than it did in the late 2010s, with users facing a high-choice social media environment as new platforms emerge. Subsequently, alt-right sites have experienced a rise in users—sometimes those who have experienced content moderation by traditional social media sites. As such, scholars have invest...

In this paper, we examine media use in the aftermath of the 2004, 2012, and 2020 presidential elections in the United States. Specifically, we test whether members of the party who won the election bask in reflected glory (BIRG; i.e., seek out pro-attitudinal media after preferred candidate wins) or whether members of the losing party cut off refle...

Emotions are inseparable from political decision-making. This idea has been especially strongly supported for negative emotions. The current study examines the role of anxiety in forming political attitudes using data from a nationally representative American National Election Studies survey ( N = 5900). Our path analysis highlights a significant i...

In this article, we test a dynamic intracommunication process looking at the relationships between interpersonal discussion, perceived credibility of partisan media, and partisan media use. Using the theoretical foundation of hostile media perceptions, with a specific focus on relative hostile media, we examine whether interpersonal communication a...

This study examines both the antecedents and consequences of partisan misperceptions during the 2016 US Presidential election using a three-wave panel study collected by YouGov. Both cross-sectionally and over time, this study examines the relationships between both partisan media use and media trust on misperceptions. In addition, it examines the...

In this study, we use an information utility framework to examine people’s communication behaviors during presidential elections. Data from the National Annenberg Election Study (2004, 2008) and Google Trends (2012, 2016) reveal increases in several communication behaviors (e.g., attention to campaign information, discussing politics, internet sear...

There is growing evidence that partisan media could be contributing to the increasing polarization among the public in the United States. Scholars have recently debated whether both liberal and conservative media are contributing to polarization symmetrically or if conservative media is the primary source of polarization. We offer tests of reinforc...

Understanding the effects of comments in online discussion spaces is gaining traction in the communication literature. Although there is ample research addressing potential negative effects of being exposed to uncivil comments, there is little research examining the effects of civil comments. In addition, more research is needed to address which va...

Most existing evidence suggests that accuracy in perceptions of political preferences within communication networks is reasonably high, but closer examination suggests this may not be true. Perceptions may be accurate, inaccurate, or respondents may offer no perceptions to evaluate for accuracy due to uncertainty. We re-analyze data from several pu...

Using the theoretical framework of the Reinforcing Spirals Model, we examine over-time relationships between partisan political discussion and affective political polarization using two three-wave datasets collected during the 2016 and 2012 US Presidential Elections. Our results during both election cycles indicated that higher levels of polarizati...

News media set an agenda of salient topics for the public, especially during a presidential election. The importance of the media has not decreased with the increase in media choice and growth of social network sites like Facebook. Instead, social media provide additional opportunities for scholars to observe how individuals are following news cont...

network heterogeneity measures are frequently used and often-cited in work on interpersonal political disagreement, but their properties are not well documented and they produce anomalous results relative to other measures of socially supplied disagreement. This study deconstructs the familiar summary network heterogeneity measure to examine why it...

In the preceding chapters, we have presented the need for a science of public engagement, the reasons we focused on feature-process-outcome connections relating to deliberative engagement, and the basis for our targeting nanotechnology/synthetic biology as the policy area concentration of our research. In this chapter, we briefly summarize what we...

The purpose of this book is to share some results and the data from four studies in which we used experimental procedures to manipulate key features of deliberative public engagement to study the impacts in the context of deliberations about nanotechnology. In this chapter, we discuss the purpose of this book, which is to advance science of public...

In this chapter we provide an overview of the experimental methods used in our four research studies. We describe the context for our studies and describe our rationale for examining our research questions in the context of the college student classroom. Then we compare and contrast the major features of our studies, including the participants, tim...

This chapter examines what is associated with increases in both objective and subjective knowledge about nanotechnology as the result of participating in a public engagement. The results are replicated and compared across three different public engagements, all using undergraduate students as participants. Knowledge is examined at four different ti...

This chapter focuses on the predictors of policy acceptance and upon elucidating the pathways through which different features of public engagement might impact such acceptance—especially when a policy is not preferred. Examination of the relationships between experimentally varied features of engagement and policy acceptance suggests few, if any,...

A key reason for conducting public engagements around science and innovation policies is to find out what the public thinks and feels about those policies and the innovations themselves. However, some scholars have suggested deliberation can create attitude polarization, which could be a barrier to effective group decision-making and social progres...

This study examines the role of skepticism as a source of news media use and online opinion expression. Data from a national online panel of participants show that skepticism is related to increases in news media use, which in turn positively predicts online opinion expression. Data further indicate that this indirect link between skepticism and on...

Internet access provides a number of ways to read, share, and discuss politics. However, the political benefits from technology are most likely afforded to those with greater Internet skill, political interest, and education. This study used nationally representative cross-sectional survey data collected during the 2016 U.S. general election to inv...

The rise of social media, and specifically Facebook, as a dominant force in the flow of news in the United States has led to concern that people incur greater isolation from diverse perspectives through filter bubbles (from algorithmic filtering) and echo chambers (from an information environment populated by social recommendations coming from over...

This study uses uncertainty theories to examine the relationship between presidential electoral ambivalence and three political belief variables: internal efficacy, skepticism, and apathy. We propose that the relationship between ambivalence, which is an indicator of uncertainty, and information-seeking intentions should be mediated by our politica...

The purpose of this book is to share some results and the data from four studies in which we used experimental procedures to manipulate key features of deliberative public engagement to study the impacts in the context of deliberations about nanotechnology. In this chapter, we discuss the purpose of this book, which is to advance science of public...

Deliberative (and educational) theories typically predict knowledge gains will be enhanced by information structure and discussion. In two studies, we experimentally manipulated key features of deliberative public engagement (information, instructions, and discussion) and measured impacts on cognitive-affective engagement and knowledge about nanote...

Structural equation modeling is a class of statistical models that includes confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, and hybrid models, among others. It is a flexible framework that can be used to test causal and correlational data, and can be used for both exploratory and confirmatory processes. This entry describes the basic model-building pr...

Nested model comparisons are used in structural equation modeling to test the addition or removal of parameters within otherwise identical models. Nested models are tested via chi-square difference tests comparing changes in model fit associated with the addition or removal of the parameters.

Social media users are able to read, share, and discuss news online with other people coming from diverse contexts in their lives, including family members, co-workers, and friends. Past research has indicated that “context collapse” occurs when people must imagine and negotiate interacting with a large and diverse online audience. Using survey dat...

Research has shown that holding conflicted attitudes (ambivalence) about political decisions may lead people to act as ideal citizens. One example of this normatively ideal behavior is seen in research linking ambivalence to information seeking. To expand on this line of inquiry, this study examines the over-time relationship between ambivalence an...

Scholars have emphasized the importance of an informed citizenry for a healthy democracy. As a result, research has examined whether campaign information fosters positive or negative democratic outcomes. This article examines the relationship between information seeking and skepticism. We also examine whether skepticism leads to democratically bene...

Recent studies have shown evidence of increasing levels of attitude polarization in the United States. This study adds to this line of inquiry by examining whether important structural changes to the media system in 1996, which included the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the introduction of Fox News, affected TV news’ contributio...

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the relationship between verbal aggression and uncivil media attention on political flaming. More specifically, this paper examines whether the use of uncivil media programming is associated with the perceived acceptability and intention to engage in aggressive online discussions (i.e., online political...

Communication scholars have examined the potential pitfalls and rewards associated with the ability to communicate in online spaces. We continue in that line of research by proposing a mediated moderated communication process model focused on what conditions lead people to engage in aggressive online communication behaviors, otherwise known as flam...

Examining the impact of various media sources on knowledge has a long tradition in political communication. Although much of the extant research focuses on the impact of traditional media on factual knowledge, research is expanding to include a variety of media sources and multiple dimensions of knowledge, in addition to understanding processes tha...

Communication scholars have both lauded and questioned the Internet’s role in facilitating democracy. However, few studies have examined aggressive communication behavior in online political discussion spaces. Two studies were conducted to examine use of aggressive discussion behaviors online, otherwise known as flaming. Study one utilized a survey...

The field of public engagement, participation and deliberation is fraught with conflicting results that are difficult to interpret due to the very different methods and measures used. Theory advancement and consistent operationalization and assessment of key public deliberation and engagement variables will benefit considerably from standardized me...

We employed social network data from 25 randomly sampled voluntary associations to understand the factors associated with accurate perceptions of candidate preferences of group members. We analyzed relationships at the dyadic level, but also considered the overall accuracy of perceptions by each ego of all alters ("perceptiveness") and the overall...

Recent evidence supports the important political role that political network size and distribution plays at both the individual and system levels. However, we argue that the evidence is likely stronger than the current literature suggests due to network size measurement limitations in the extant literature. The most common approach to measuring pol...

Research consistently finds that we discuss politics most often with our strong ties (i.e., our close, intimate others). As our strong ties tend to be more politically similar to us than not, the conclusion is that everyday political discussions are overwhelmingly characterized by real or perceived political agreement. However, this scenario may pa...

Social networks and political knowledge Beginning in the mid- to late-1990s, disciplines such as communication and political science witnessed an increase in studies examining social or political networks far beyond the rate of such research in prior decades. Huckfeldt and Sprague's (1995) Citizens, Politics and Social Communication, Putnam's (2000...

The past 2 decades have witnessed important contributions to our understanding of political conversation and its effects. However, in many ways we have yet to scratch the surface of what we need to learn. We argue that the emphasis of the literature on political conversation as a weak form of deliberation or as an afterthought from the media effect...

One of the foundational assumptions of democratic theory is that the public must be sufficiently informed about public matters in order to be capable of fulfilling their roles in making collective decisions. The centrality of an informed public in democratic theory has made the study of political knowledge integral to the study of political communi...

The concept of news media use1 has been at the center of political communication research during the past several decades. Historically, scholars have employed measures of exposure to news (Atkin, Galloway, & Nayman, 1976), attention to news (Chaffee & Schleuder, 1986; McLeod & McDonald, 1985), and reliance on news (Culbertson & Stempel, 1986) to t...

In this study, we examine the influence of discussion frequency, network size, and 3 variables that together entangle the often misunderstood concept of network heterogeneity: discussion frequency with like-minded individuals (“safe” discussion), discussion frequency with nonlike-minded individuals (“dangerous” discussion), and diversity of discuss...

Understanding how adolescents come to be informed participants in a democracy is a key concern in political socialization scholarship. However, our understanding of this process is hampered by limited research on the antecedents of a sufficiently wide array of communication behaviors and cognitions, in addition to a limited repertoire of knowledge...

This report examines the effects of exposure to various elements of a civics curriculum on civic participation, two forms of political knowledge, internal political efficacy, political cynicism, news elaboration, discussion elaboration and various forms of interpersonal and mediated political communication behaviors. The data are based on a longitu...

One of the foundational assumptions of democratic theory is that the public must be sufficiently informed about public matters in order to be capable of fulfilling their roles in making collective decisions. The centrality of an informed public in democratic theory has made the study of political knowledge integral to the study of political communi...

Thesis (M.A. in communication)--Washington State University, May 2006. PDF file. System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-37).