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The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics
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Debating the Debate

The Impact of Exposure to Debate News Coverage and Its Interaction with Exposure to the Actual Debate

Yariv Tsfati

Department of Communication, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel ytsfati{at}com.haifa.ac.il

Rather than studying the effects of a programmed debate per se, this article examines the "total information environment" that surrounds the debate. A model explaining how people make judgments about the "winner" of a debate is suggested and tested on survey data (N = 748) collected in the days following the second 1996 presidential debate. Results demonstrate that consumption of debate-related news coverage, interpersonal discussion about the debate, and prior candidate attitudes are associated with perceptions of the winner of the debate. In addition, exposure to news coverage of the debate significantly interacted with exposure to the actual debate, so that the impact of news coverage was stronger for those watching little of the actual debate.

Key Words: media dependency theory • televised political debates

The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 8, No. 3, 70-86 (2003)
DOI: 10.1177/1081180X03008003005
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