Sex, Lies, and War: How Soft News Brings Foreign Policy to the Inattentive Public

TLDR

The study argues that soft‑news media’s selective political coverage exposes politically inattentive individuals to foreign‑policy crises as incidental entertainment. The author employs statistical analyses of media consumption and attentiveness to recent foreign‑policy crises, comparing them with non‑crisis issues that either appeal to or lack appeal for soft news programs. Soft‑news presentation of foreign crises attracts politically uninvolved Americans, narrowing attentional disparities across different public segments.

Abstract

This study argues that, due to selective political coverage by the entertainment-oriented, soft news media, many otherwise politically inattentive individuals are exposed to information about high-profile political issues, most prominently foreign policy crises, as an incidental by-product of seeking entertainment. I conduct a series of statistical investigations examining the relationship between individual media consumption and attentiveness to several recent high-profile foreign policy crisis issues. For purposes of comparison, I also investigate several non-foreign crisis issues, some of which possess characteristics appealing to soft news programs and others of which lack such characteristics. I find that information about foreign crises, and other issues possessing similar characteristics, presented in a soft news context, has indeed attracted the attention of politically uninvolved Americans. The net effect is a reduced disparity in attentiveness to select high-profile political issues across different segments of the public.