Studying Politics Across Media

Political communication research that considers multiple media platforms is difficult and expensive to perform, and therefore relatively rare. Yet studying media platforms in isolation ignores the realities of the varied and complicated contemporary media experience, where most individuals consume information from multiple media outlets. Media platforms, from traditional outlets such as newspapers and television to newer online platforms such as social media, have proliferated in recent years. This makes the media environment itself more complex, as classic understandings of how the media function give way to a growing recognition of the hybrid media system, where divisions between content and producers are opaque, and where information is gleaned from increasingly diverse and numerous sources.
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