The relationship between political interest and out-group attitudes

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2578920_(Table of contents)

This thesis investigates the effect of political interest on out-group attitudes as conditioned by media. Another topic this thesis examines is whether political interest can be taken as a proxy for political sophistication. The literature on the issue argues that more educated individuals from higher socio-economic backgrounds are more positive toward an out-group and biased media is detrimental to healthy inter-group relations. The analyses provide support for the main hypothesis that politically interested individuals are more positive towards immigrants and minority members. Political knowledge and political sophistication, taken as a combination of political interest, knowledge, and education, show similar effects. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the media environment mediates this relationship. When there is high media freedom, political sophistication has a positive effect, and when there is low media freedom this effect becomes negative. Furthermore, this thesis also aims to examine how individuals form their attitudes towards out-group members in restricted media environments and Turkey is an example of such a case due to commercialization, tabloidization, and press-party parallelism in its media environment. The empirical analyses suggest that political interest or knowledge alone does not affect Turkish citizens’ attitudes towards out-group members. However, when media consumption is taken as a moderator, the analyses show that individuals who are sophisticated and who consume high levels of media have more positive attitudes towards out-group members. Another finding of this thesis is that retrospective economic evaluations and satisfaction with democracy are also important determinants of out-group attitudes.