Publication Type: Paper/Poster Proposal
Abstract: Research on news credibility and its antecedents consistently shows perception or judgment of news credibility is both subjective and relativistic. Even though this subjectivity and relativity element of news credibility judgment are key theoretical components in research on media bias perception, they have not been conceptually developed and empirically tested in the research. For example, some scholar measures media bias perception by asking respondents to evaluate whether a given article was neutral, or biased in favor of one side or the other, while others measure news bias perception as asking respondents to evaluate news slant compared to their own views. In addition, different but similar concepts such bias, slant, trust, and credibility have been used without any clear conceptual distinction. To address these measurement and conceptualization problems in the research on media bias perception, this study distinguished media bias perception into two different components – news discrepancy perception and news credibility judgment and then tested the role of the self as a comparison anchor in audience judgmental process of news credibility. Specifically, we constructed two different news discrepancy perceptions – news discrepancy from neutral point and news discrepancy from one’s own view and examined the relationships of each discrepancy perception to both its antecedents (e.g., issue involvement, political ideology, and strength of political ideology) and news credibility judgment.
A Web-based survey with the issue of revision of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) spurred by U.S military vehicle accident in South Korea are used to test several hypothesized relationships among the main variables. Findings reveal that neither antecedent variables of the model nor news credibility were related to perceived news discrepancy from neutral point. In contrast, perceived news discrepancy from one’s own views had strong relationship to issue involvement, political ideology, strength of political ideology, as well as news credibility.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recent research in our laboratory has suggested that intuitive approaches to deception detection may improve the accuracy of distinguishing between true and false accounts. The current study extends this research by employing a more practical manipulation of processing type in which participants are instructed to enact in deliberative vs. intuitive processing as they attempt to detect deception. The theoretical and practical aspects of the results of this line of research will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper reports on a new effort at Gallup to revive what Daniel Yankelovich characterized as The Volatility Index. It includes a measuring six issues on a modified (and newly termed) "Public Judgment Index" (named in honor of Yankelovich's book, Coming to Public Judgment, where he outlined his concepts more fully). Results here will be compared the results of related work at Gallup, reported last year by Moore and Jones, as "directive vs. permissive" public opinion.

Background

In the late 1970s, Yankelovich and Time were concerned about the volatility of public opinion, especially on foreign policy issues. They felt that such volatility undermined the credibility of public opinion polling, but they also felt that volatility does not always characterize public opinion. "People's views are most volatile when an issue is new or when it is so rife with conflict that they avoid coming to grips with it," wrote Yankelovich.1 So, Yankelovich and Time "agreed that it would be a service to readers to distinguish between public views that were firm and stable and views (on which foreign policy decision could be securely grounded) and views that were unstable and mushy."

After more than two years of research, including an extensive literature search, a series of small-scale laboratory experiments, and a specially designed national survey, Yankelovich produced a Volatility Index, unofficially referred to as a "mushiness index." The elements of the Volatility Index were published in the April/May 1981 edition of Public Opinion.2 Despite the considerable effort put into the project, Yankelovich later ruefully admitted that "sad to say...nothing happened. To my knowledge, the volatility index has never been used, not even by Time magazine, whose support and stated interest in improving the reporting of public opinion was made evident in many ways....3
Yankelovich was concerned to distinguish "mass opinion" (poor quality public opinion, characterized by inconsistency, volatility, and non-responsibility) and "public judgment" (good quality public opinion, characterized by stability, consistency, and responsibility).
Current Research
This paper will discuss how a modified Public Judgment Index (PJI) might be more acceptable than the original version, and it will present the results of a poll that measures six issues on the PJI. The paper will also address the question of whether opinion results should be presented routinely on the basis of a subset of Americans -- those who score high enough on the PJI to be classified as having a "high degree" of judgment. This would distinguish "mass public opinion" from the "public judgment." The rationale for reporting on such a subset can be linked to the "likely voter" models, typically used by polling organizations before elections to report results based only on a "relevant" population.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In his famous essay on “Traditional and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot, as both author and literary critic, examines literary history as a paradoxical relationship between originality and tradition. This paper seeks to do the same for legal history by closely analyzing how judges, as both authors and legal critics, creatively construct order out of a dynamic tradition of precedent. Arguing that Eliot’s insights for literary history as to the “perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence” equally apply to legal history, the paper analyses specific discursive strategies in judgment writing by which this simultaneous sense of timelessness and originality is created. This presentation would focus on three key decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada and the published reflections of Bertha Wilson, Rosalie Abella, and Benjamin Cardozo on law as literature and Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on the common law to describe the particular writing and judging practices that re-create order from the legal canon and create a sense of precedential timelessness out of dynamic shifts in the lineages of judgments, and how these practices have been implemented in Canada’s high court. Through a close reading of these judgments, the presentation will consider how judgments are placed or displaced within a lineage of cases and within or outside the canon and how judges construct authority for specific judgments.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Kant, writing about wine in his Critique of Judgment, preserves as universal the judgment of taste, challenged by Bourdieu in Photography and Distinction. But is taste available for some, but closed off for others? I formulate this study of “Mondo Vino,” the wine world, in terms of rationalization and resistance, drawing from a critical tradition of Marx, Weber, Lukacs, and the Frankfurt School and recent work on globalization.
Studying wine brings us to everyday life, elements that display a particular pleasure and critical discernment beyond the act of consumption.
Lukacs’ notion of ‘reification’ paradoxically allows for the autonomization of sense perception, allowing the growth of the development of specialized senses ,a “sensorium.” The pleasure of sensory appreciation cannot be reduced to the status distinction of Bourdieu.
Among the concepts that are relevant in which mondo vino lets us focus on dimensions of cultural resistance and reenchantment are: the collector (Benjamin); Schiller’s notion of education; the creativity of participants in culture (De Certeau); “moments of presence” or adventure, offset to “everyday life” (Lefebvre). I trace the process of rationalization of wines, and find areas that resist rationalization in growers and middlemen.
The judgment of taste must hold open a future or present that goes beyond the culture of the dominant or dominated. A critical theory can give us a sense of the possibility to experience culture as something new and unique, beyond rationalization. Mondo vino exemplifies this principle and the contradictions which motivate it.