The Norman
Lear Center recently commissioned a Zogby poll regarding the
relative media preferences of liberals, moderates, and conservatives:
href="http://www.learcenter.org/html/projects/?cm=zogby">The
Zogby/Lear Center Survey On Politics And Entertainment.
The typology revealed three significant
clusters of respondents: "conservatives," as we decided to
call them, make up 37% of the national sample, while "liberals"
comprise 39% and "moderates" 24%. The same respondents were asked about
their entertainment preferences, including their consumption of the
most highly-rated TV shows and networks; popular movies, sports, music,
books, art and theater...
Not a big surprise: there is a strong correlation between a person's
political views, and their choice of news outlets and entertainment.
One finding that they chose to highlight:
...liberals were much more likely than
conservatives to listen to commentary and entertainment with which they
disagreed philosophically...
That quote is from
href="http://www.learcenter.org/pdf/PoliticsSurveyRelease.pdf">the
PDF on the Lear Center website. They elaborate:
While 22% of conservatives said they
“never” enjoy entertainment that reflects values
other than their own, just 7% of liberals felt the same way. At the
other end of the scale, just 11% of conservatives said they
“very often” enjoyed programming that ran counter
to their personal philosophies, compared to 20% of liberals and 18% of
moderates who said the same thing.
Other findings:
- Compared to all other respondents, conservatives were
more likely to watch only two channels out of the 24 highest-rated
networks: Fox and Fox News.- Out of 15 TV and film genres, “arts”
emerged as the one with the
highest positive correlation to liberal viewers and the highest
negative correlation to conservative viewers.
It fits the notion that liberals are generally
more open-minded than
conservatives.
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So you think the liberals tuning in to Rush Limbaugh are doing so with an open mind? Hmmm...the data could support a number of possibilities, for example, that liberals like conflict more than conservatives.
Interesting. Anything about people who don't watch teevee?
I'm gonna guess that reds tend to listen to talk radio whereas liberals tend to tune in to more new media - rss feeds, podcasts, etc.
The notion that liberals are more open-minded than conservatives is presented as an hypothesis. I realize that there are going to be many exceptions, so the hypothesis is that, on average, liberals will be more open-minded. Some will watch Fox and try to keep an open mind, while others will not.
People who do not watch TV probably do not exist, as far as these surveys go. I, for example, do not exist.
The survey indicates that liberals are more open to non-TV media in general (books, theater, movies, museums, and galleries) but the summaries do not indicate anything about Youtube, podcasts, or RSS feeds. I am tempted to think one can extrapolate here, but that is just a guess.
Who has time for TV when there's World Of Warcraft to be played?