Citizens' Local Political Knowledge and the Role of Media Access

Abstract

Locally based media institutions that have been at the core of citizens' media environments for generations are facing an onslaught of new competition from new media. The twin goals of this article are to expand our understanding of the distribution of local political knowledge in general and to specifically examine the relevance of media access. The article suggests that media access does bear upon levels of local political knowledge and confirms that citizens who are knowledgeable about local politics do not mirror the profile of those who are knowledgeable about national politics.