Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes

Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collectives Affect Political Attitudes
ISBN-10
0521637260
ISBN-13
9780521637268
Category
Political Science
Pages
358
Language
English
Published
1998-11-28
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Author
Diana C. Mutz

Description

People's perceptions of the attitudes and experiences of mass collectives are an increasingly important force in contemporary political life. In Impersonal Influence, Mutz goes beyond simply providing examples of how impersonal influence matters in the political process to provide a micro-level understanding of why information about distant and impersonal others often influence people's political attitudes and behaviors. Impersonal Influence is worthy of attention both from the standpoint of its impact on contemporary politics, and because of its potential to expand the boundaries of our understanding of social influence processes, and media's relation to them. The book's conclusions do not exonerate media from the effects of inaccurate portrayals of collective experience or opinion, but they suggest that the ways in which people are influenced by these perceptions are in themselves, not so much deleterious to democracy as absolutely necessary to promoting accountability in a large scale society.

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