Content area
Abstract
At its core, democratic politics involves the transmission of information. Indeed, the electorate communicates its preferences to elites through public expressions of opinion. While much is known about public opinion, much is left to understand. My point of departure is the observation, with a few noted exceptions, that much extant research in political science ignores, downplays, or sets aside two key dynamics: information acquisition and patterns of opinion over time. This dissertation examines both of these dynamics to understand how opinions change in response to political information. Politics is dynamic. How the public acquires and reacts to (potentially different) political information therefore plays a critical role in the over-time dynamics of individual and collective opinion and thus in the democratic political process. The dissertation reveals that information choices are shaped by peoples' prior opinions and, to a lesser extent, by the political environment. Those choices shape downstream opinion dynamics and influence peoples' evaluations of political arguments. The results of the dissertation are characterized in the context of broader normative issues.
