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Issue Publics Gone Wild Or The End Of Narrow Interests, Michael Calton Bowen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Issue public theory holds that individuals are more likely to base political judgments, such as the decision of who to vote for on election day, on issues that are particularly important to them. This subset of issues is presumed to be relatively small in quantity for most individuals, allowing them to specialize in information gathering and attention. There is reason to believe the nature of issue publics has significantly changed in recent years as a result of profound shifts in the information environment. Many of the traditional findings within the literature are reassessed using data primarily from the 2008 Presidential …