dalton, beck & huckfeldt 1998
media provides political cues and framing

price & zaller 1993
reception of news is prerequisite for media-induced opinion change; simple exposure to news media (even if recall is low) is enough to produce attitudinal effects

graber 2002
Media helps integrate and homogenize society

media have a direct influence on the public by reinforcing partisan predispositions or persuading voters to support particular candidates:
Bartels 1993
Noelle-Neumann 1984
Zaller 1996

Political environmental factors (media, campaign spending, voter fatigue, etc.) play an important role in voter awareness of political issues; these factors may in fact be more important than individual-level factors.
--NICHOLSON

Exposure to misleading statements about Social Security causes citizens to have misleading assumptions regarding the program's future.
--JERIT & BARABAS 2003

media affect what factors to consider in judging the candidates by the way they present the topics of the campaign:
Iyengar 1991
Iyengar and Kinder 1987
Patterson 1993

Journalists have long been known as producers rather than merely gatekeepers of critical discourse about election campaigns:
Capella & Jamieson, 1997
Fallows, 1996
Patterson, 1993