THE ACCESSIBILITY BIAS IN POLITICS: TELEVISION NEWS AND PUBLIC OPINION

Abstract

The influence of television news over public opinion is traced to the ‘accessibility bias’ in processing information. In general, the argument stipulates that information that can be more easily retrieved from memory tends to dominate judgments, opinions and decisions. In the area of public affairs, more accessible information is information that is more frequently of more recently conveyed by the media. Four different manifestations or the accessibility bias in public opinion are described including the effects of news coverage on issue salience, evaluations of presidential perfomance, attributions of issue responsibility, and voting choices.