TUNING IN, TUNING OUT REVISITED: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE CAUSAL LINKS BETWEEN TELEVISION AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

DAVID E. CAMPBELL Department of Government, Harvard University E-mail: dcampbel@latte.harvard.edu STEVEN YONISH Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison E-mail: styonish@hbs.edu ROBERT D. PUTNAM Isabel and Peter Malkin Professor of Government and Public Policy John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University E-mail: robert_putnam@harvard.edu

Abstract Past research has demonstrated the negative relationship between television viewing and civic activity. While bedeviled by the spectre of endogeneity, the strength and consistency of this relationship compels further investigation of television's impact on American society, and thus its potential complicity in America's deteriorating social capital. While this paper does not claim to have solved the endogeneity problem, it does offer detailed evidence in support of the causal role for television in the decline of civic engagement. Using two datasets, each spanning over twenty years, with a broad array of measures of Americans' television-viewing habits, we closely examine why it is that television has a negative association with social capital-building activities. Is it merely a matter of how much television Americans watch? Or does how they watch matter as well? Our results show that the negative relationship between television and social capital is partly--but by no means solely--because of time displacement. When controlling for time spent watching TV, other important factors include the types of programs viewed and the motivations for watching them.

It is difficult to overstate the ubiquity of television in America. Not only can a television be found in virtually every home, and often in many rooms within a single home, but television screens pervade our social environment. Restaurants, airports, laundromats, even gas pumps at service stations all broadcast a continuous stream of entertainment and information, blurring whatever line once separated them. The best estimates indicate that Americans watch, on average, four hours of television per day, and that a television is on in the background for another four (Comstock 1989).1 Simply given the volume of television viewing in the United States, we might conjecture--even expect--that television has had a tremendous impact on American society and, therefore, its stock of social capital. For the purposes of this discussion, social capital will be defined as the networks and norms of reciprocity facilitated by interpersonal connections. People associate with one another, come to trust one another, and thus are able to overcome the illogic of collective action. There are many ways to operationalize social capital, some closer to its theoretical meaning than others. For this study, we are concerned with participation in civic activities such as voluntary associations, and so for our purposes, the terms social capital and civic engagement are synonymous. Over the same period of time that television viewing has increased, activities constituting different forms of civic engagement have decreased. In an earlier publication, Putnam (1995) has suggested that television is a likely culprit for a substantial portion of the decline in America s civic engagement. The evidence was perhaps not enough to convict, but certainly enough to indict television as a co-conspirator in the puzzle of what has caused America s civic tailspin. The alleged contribution of television to America s civic decline has generated some controversy, as the evidence is far from ideal to prove the case. Circumstantially, television fits the profile of the culprit. It spread across the country rapidly in the 1950s, shortly before the time various indicators show Americansrates of civic engagement as beginning their descent. Data from the General Social Survey show that those generational cohorts which watched television the most as children participate in collective activities the least as adults. In the GSS data we also find a strong negative correlation between viewing television and civic engagement, rivaling the positive relationship between education and the same activity. In a thorough analysis of social capital as measured at the individual level, Brehm and Rahn (1997) found that the rise in civic engagement from roughly five years of formal education is offset by each hour of daily television viewing. Given the formidable obstacles to causal claims about the role of television, the smoking gun has yet to be found. Without controlled experiments, we are still with left with the question of whether the relationship between television viewing and civic engagement is purely endogenous. That is, it could be the case that people who are least likely to be involved in civic affairs are those who watch a lot of television, not that watching television makes people less likely to be involved in civic affairs. In other words, television viewing may displace a certain amount of civic engagement but it is also logically possible to conceive of television viewing as a default activity for those who have made a prior decision to opt out of civic life. We must also keep in mind that not all television viewing corresponds to a decline in any civic activity. Viewing news and public affairs programs corresponds with greater interest and activity in civic matters. This paper does not claim to have found the smoking gun. It does, however, offer more detailed evidence in support of the causal role for television in the decline of civic engagement. Using two datasets

introduction of television has dampened the degree to which people engage in social activities outside of the home (1991, 72). This finding holds across a wide range of studies, conducted in different places under different circumstances using different methodologies. For example, in 1958 Himmelweit, Oppenheim, and Vince published a study of television s effects on children in Britain, comparing households with television to those without. They found that television significantly affected the leisuretime habits of pre-adolescents, although it did not have much effect on adolescents (cited in Comstock and Paik 1991). Schramm, Lyle, and Parker conducted a similar analysis in the United States from 1958 to 1960, and likewise concluded that what was then the new medium of television reorganizes leisure time . . . in a spectacular manner (1961, 169). Yet more evidence for this conclusion can be found in the work of Brown, Cramond, and Wilde (1974) in Scotland, Murray and Kippax (1978) in Australia, and Mutz, Roberts, and Van Vuuren (1993) in South Africa. The research of Mutz et al is particularly compelling, given that theirs is a longitudinal study spanning eight years with a total sample of 6,000 children. In each case, the introduction of television meant that children spent less time interacting with their peers. In one of the few examples of research into how the introduction of television affects adults, Belson (1959) found that London residents with television also demonstrated less interest in civic affairs than those who had not yet acquired a television. This research is valuable, as it chronicles the effects of television as it was becoming ubiquitous, an historical moment that will never be repeated.2 However, causal interpretation of television s effect remains ambiguous in these studies. By contrast, a fascinating natural experiment suggests that these observed effects are not merely spurious. The Impact of Television: A Natural Experiment in Three Communities (Williams et al 1986) tells the story of three Northern Canadian towns, one of which had no television reception until 1973. The absence of television was a fluke of geography. In the authors words, The town just happened to be located in a valley in such a way that the transmitter meant to serve the area did not provide television reception for most residents (2). In other words, the absence of television was exogenous to the level of social capital in the community (which makes this study unlike the case of South Africa, where the government kept television out of the country for reasons of social control). Because this study was conducted at a time when the residents of this TV-less town could not turn to cable, VCRs, or satellite dishes for alternative means of providing televised entertainment, there will likely never again be an example like this of a community in the industrialized world without television. The results in Notel as the town is identified in the study are consistent with the others already cited. After the introduction of television, residents of Notel participated less in community activities when compared to residents in two other, similar towns. More recent scholarship, drawing upon cross-sectional survey data, confirms that television and civic engagement are inversely related, and that this is by no means a phenomenon limited to the United States (Norris 1998, McClerking and Miller 1997, Shah 1997). There are at least two competing explanations for the observed effect of television on social capital-building activity. One is simple time displacement: time spent watching television is time not spent attending a club meeting or working on a political campaign. We might call this a question of how much time people spend watching television. A second explanation, or group of explanations, deals with how people watch TV. Do the motivations for watching television matter? This paper will examine both how much and how as reasons for television s negative impact on civic engagement. More specifically, we wish to make two points.

Data Our analysis draws upon two data sources that are not in the usual bailiwick of social science. The first is an extraordinary archive of surveys administered by the Roper organization. Approximately ten times a year from 1974 to 1994, Roper surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,000 or so respondents. The resulting collection of data thus has roughly 400,000 cases spanning twenty years. The surveys themselves were extensive, inquiring about a wide array of activities and attitudes. For our purposes, we will draw upon a battery of questions regarding respondentscivic activities, as well as a host of items which inquired about their television viewing, including both how, and how much, they watch TV. The array of civic activities included in the Roper questionnaire is extensive, including twelve different acts: contacting a member of Congress, attending a political rally or speech, attending a public meeting on town or school affairs, signing a petition, working for a political party, making a speech, writing an article for a magazine or newspaper, writing a letter to the newspaper, holding membership in a civic group, holding or running for political office, serving on a committee for a local organization, and serving as an officer of a club or organization (See Appendix Two for full question wording). The second dataset covers a comparable time period, 1975 to the present. It has been collected by Market Facts for the DDB Needham advertising agency for the purposes of market research. But along with a litany of questions about consumer items, a core set of questions has been asked every year about what market researchers call life style issues such as media use, social attitudes, and leisure activities (we will thus refer to these as the Life Style data as short hand). The total N for these data is roughly 80,000. For the analysis at hand, the Life Style data include a set of questions that are quite similar to the Roper index of civic activity, although not as extensive, as well as a measure of television-asentertainment. Unlike the Roper surveys, and most surveys that social scientists are accustomed to analyzing like the National Election Studies and the General Social Surveys, the Life Style data are not collected with a random sample of the American population. Instead, the surveys are based on quota sampling, drawn from mail panels. Essentially, respondents are invited to participate in a mail survey based on their demographic characteristics . Response rates to this initial inquiry are low, and vary across segments of the population. From this pool of invitees, a sample is drawn. The result of this process is a sample which can be balanced demographically, although it is nevertheless somewhat skewed. NonEnglish speakers, the poor, racial minorities, and people under twenty-five are all under-represented.3 However, even with the bias that is unavoidably a function of this method of sampling, the Life Style data parallel other sources of data drawn from scientific samples remarkably well.4 Our analysis draws upon both the Roper and Life Style data, cross-validating wherever possible. Television s ubiquity Even casual observation reveals that television dominates Americanslives. More rigorous examination only confirms this observation, while providing a sense of just how thoroughly television pervades the nation s homes. Consider, for example, a question on the Roper surveys which asks how often respondents engage in a variety of activities: watching television, listening to the radio, reading a magazine, and reading a book. Television tops the list of activities engaged in at least two or three times a week. Ninety-five percent of respondents report that they watch television this frequently. This compares to 84 percent who report reading a newspaper this often, 81 percent who listen to the radio, 62 percent who read magazines, and 46 percent who read books.

as a family is even more frequent than sitting and talking. Nonetheless, those who lament television s deleterious effects on sustaining interpersonal relationships should hold out at least some hope that all is not lost. When asked what gives them the most personal satisfaction, more respondents chose family than any other option. But TV s critics should not have too much hope. Second to family is television, which even tops friends. Given these figures, it will come as no surprise that television is also the single recorded leisuretime activity which occupies the most time. Table 2 compares the amount of time spent on TV when compared to newspapers, magazines, radio, and books. Eighty-three percent of Americans spend at least one hour watching TV on an average weekday (and, in results not shown, fewer than 2 percent watch less than fifteen minutes per day). Eight percent watch for five or more hours. As Table 2 displays, none of the other activities soaks up anything close to the same amount of time. A further illustration of television s role in Americanslifestyles can be made with a question which asks why people watch television. While most watch to be entertained, a sizable proportion of the population also watch it to become informed. When asked what they "are looking for" when they watch television, 72 percent of Americans answer "to be entertained, 45 percent do so to learn something and 59 percent to keep up with what's going on (obviously, respondents could choose more than one response.) The dual purposes of television are unique, as for no other leisure activity do so many people respond that they engage in it to be both entertained and informed, as reported in Table 3. When respondents were asked in a separate question the primary reason why they watch TV, listen to the radio, and read books, magazines, and newspapers a paltry 7.5 percent indicated that they watch TV solely to be informed. Fifty-one percent indicated that they watch TV to learn and be entertained. None of the other activities has such a large proportion of respondents choosing both entertainment and information as a motivation for choosing to participate. Television, more than any of these other media, blurs the lines between amusing and informing. By any measure, Americans are saturated in television coverage. And, at least descriptively, more television watching corresponds with less civic activity. Figure 1(a) displays how the proportion of respondents who participate in at least one civic activity in the Roper index decreases monotonically as time spent watching television increases, a drop of 23 percentage points.5 Figure 1(b) displays a similar decline in the Life Style data. Here, the horizontal axis is not a measure of how much time is spent watching television, but rather responses to the statement Television is my primary form of entertainment. Respondents could choose one of six responses arrayed in a Likert scale from definitely disagree to definitely agree. Along the vertical axis, we have used a measure of whether the respondent has engaged in at least one of three activities within the previous year: attending a club meeting, volunteering, and working on a community project. The more respondents agree that television is their primary form of entertainment, the less likely they are to engage in any civic activity--a drop of 22 percentage points across the full range of responses. Note that the Life Style percentages are higher than those in the Roper data. This is for two reasons. First, as mentioned above, the Life Style surveys oversample those groups in the population who are most likely to participate in civic activities. Second, the three items contained in the index are stated more broadly than those in the Roper index. Thus, Roper s index inquires about attending a civic meeting, while the Life Style questionnaire asks about a club meeting. Even though these surveys are asking about slightly different activities--the Roper more explicitly political, the DDB less so--we maintain that they are

measure of how often someone participates in the activities included in the index, but we have chosen to maximize comparability between the two datasets by coding them the same way.6 More descriptive evidence on the decline of civic activity associated with television is provided in Figure 2. Here, we display how those people who report that they are watching more television now than in the past year are less engaged when compared to those who are watching less television. This is in contrast to other activities, such as visiting with friends, for which doing more now corresponds with greater engagement. Television s impact can not merely be explained by the fact that it keeps people home, as both of the other activities are also centered in the home. In other words, when compared against themselves, people who have increased their television viewing have a lower rate of civic activity than those who report that they have decreased the amount of time they spend watching TV. In sum, the weight of the descriptive evidence suggests that TV and civic engagement do not mix.

Television and civic engagement, ceteris paribus These descriptive data are compelling, but perhaps not convincing. Abundant research has shown that there are many sociodemographic correlates of political participation, many of which also correlate with television-viewing. Only by accounting for these other factors can we have confidence that television has an effect on social capital independent of such predictors as education and income. The fact that this analysis employs two independent sources of data, with slightly different measures on both sides of the equation, promises to fortify substantive claims based on common inferences. Figures 3(a) and 3(b) display the graphical results from the estimation of logistic regression models predicting whether one engages in any civic activity or not, accounting for a host of other factors. Figure3 (a) presents an illustration of predicted probabilities resulting from a logistic regression model using the Roper surveys.7 These are generated holding control variables constant at reasonable values while changing the value of the variable of interest, thus measuring its effect. An intuitive way to think of this procedure is to imagine a hypothetical respondent with characteristics matching the values of the settings for our independent variables. Our hypothetical respondent has a high school education and the mean household income. She is of average age, married, white, and employed full time. When it is necessary to choose a value for the year of the survey, we also use the mid point in the time series. Figure 3(a) shows how our hypothetical respondent is less likely to engage in any civic activity as the time she spends watching television increases, ceteris paribus. We also created two mutually exclusive subsets of the civic activity index, one for collective activities (those we do with others) and one for individualized activities (those we do alone). This is an important distinction, as the activities have different implications for social capital. Individualized activities signing petitions, personally contacting politicians, writing letters to a member of Congress, and writing articles might be the result of social capital but do nothing to create it. Social capital requires interaction in a social network, which is not a by-product of these acts. Collective activities, however, do necessitate such interaction, and thus are not only an effect of existing social capital but also a contributor to its increase. These are the remaining activities in the full Roper index: attending rallies and public meetings, serving as an officer or committee member of local organizations or clubs, working for a political party, belonging to a better government group, and running for public office.8 Empirically, the last twenty years show a decline in activities we do together and those we do alone, but the decrease is greatest for those we do together.

been set to its mean. Two more dummy variables have also been included, being a homeowner, and having children at home; both of these have been set to 1. The two lines again represent the different types of activities. The three activities volunteering, club meetings, and community projects included in the index used above are all collective in nature. In addition, since 1987 the Life Style data have included a measure of how often the respondent has written a letter to the editor of a newspaper or magazine, an individualized activity. Note that the horizontal axis again displays the categories of the Life Style item which asks whether television is the respondent s primary form of entertainment. The vertical axis has two scales, the left for collective activities and the right for letter-writing. This method of presentation may disguise the fact that letter-writing is a much more infrequent activity than engagement in any collective activity. But presenting the graph in this fashion allows us to clearly demonstrate that the two lines have different slopes, the line for collective activity being steeper than for writing a letter. The difference in the impact of television on the two different types of activities is an important piece of the somewhat fragmentary evidence regarding the links between television and civic engagement. Television, Putnam has argued, privatizes our leisure time. These results suggest that a consequence is that our civic activity is also privatized TV keeps us from meeting with each other more than it keeps us from engaging in the political process. Figures 4(a) and 4(b) again display the impact of television on civic engagement, this time by differentiating between our hypothetical respondent at three different education levels. These graphs allow the reader to compare the relative effects of television and education (generally considered to be the single most powerful predictor of civic participation, see Nie, Junn, and Stehlik-Barry 1996), as well as confirm that television has a roughly similar effect on people of different education levels. In both cases, moving across the entire range of the variable measuring television use leads to a drop in the probability of participating in a civic activity by roughly one quarter of the drop from moving across the range of education levels. This is hardly inconsequential, as it translates into a decrease of roughly ten percentage points. For comparison s sake, using the Roper data television s impact is roughly a third that of income, and greater than the effect of being unemployed. Because this analysis has been restricted to civic engagement as a dependent variable, our figures understate the breadth of social activities negatively associated with television. In other analyses not shown here, the measure of television as one s primary form of entertainment correlates negatively with a whole host of activities: attending dinner parties, visiting friends, entertaining at home, going on picnics, giving blood, sending greeting cards, sending e-mail. It also correlates positively with road rage (operationalized as giving others the finger). No other predictor not even education nor income has such a broad reach into Americanssociality. Habitual viewing Having established that use of television, measured in two related but different ways, corresponds to a decrease in civic engagement, we are led to ask what is it about television that drives this effect? The strength of the Life Style measure of television exposure that television is one s primary form of entertainment hints that it is not simply the displacement of time that explains the negative relationship between television and civic activity. The Roper data allow for a test of the hypothesis that how people watch television is as important as how much they watch. In a series of Roper surveys from

model, the variable is highly significant statistically as well as substantively. Moving across the entire range of the habitual scale corresponds to a drop of 9 percentage points in the probability of any civic activity, comparable to the effect of time spent watching television.9 Unfortunately, this question was never included on the same questionnaire as the measure of time spent watching television, so we are unable to include them in the same model. To do so would answer the question of which has the greater effect on civic activity. Not being able to compare them means that we do not know whether one is merely a function of the other or if they have independent effects. What we do know about this measure of habitual viewing, however, suggests that it can take us a long way toward understanding how television deflates civic engagement. Our data show that habitual viewing varies dramatically across different generations in the population. This might be expected, given the quasi-experimental literature cited above. Those studies generally found that television had a measurable impact on the social activities of young people. Those findings, in turn, are consistent with other research that has demonstrated that television-viewing facilitates lethargy (Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi 1990). If civic activity is habitual, and that habit forms early in life, then anything which disrupts the formation of that habit among youth would have consequences for civic activity later in life. Multiple data sources have consistently found that there is a generational decline in civic engagement. If we divide the population into four birth cohorts--those born before 1929, between 1930 and 1945, between 1946 and 1960, and after 1960--we find a monotonic decline in any civic activity. As has been detailed elsewhere by others, this is not simply a matter of the natural life cycle (see, for example, Miller and Shanks 1996). Thus, we find that generational cohort is a consistent predictor of civic activity. And, as argued previously, dividing the population into these cohorts also means dividing it into groupings based on how much exposure they would have had to television while in their most formative years. People born before 1929 would not have been exposed to TV until they were in their early twenties, while Generation X has grown up in a world where TV is omnipresent. Notwithstanding the inter-generational difference in how long people have lived in a TV-filled world, it is not the case that time spent watching television varies systematically across these four cohorts. Figure 5 displays the average amount of time spent watching television by birth cohort over the span of the Roper data. The only noticeable change is that people born before 1929 have increased their television watching, undoubtedly an effect of the life cycle. And with the exception of the widening gap between the oldest cohort and the other three, there is little intergenerational difference in the amount of time spent watching TV. Where do we find a difference across the birth cohorts is for our measure of habitual TV viewing. Figure 6 displays the same type of cohort analysis for habitual viewing. The most noticeable trend is how the birth cohorts differ the younger the group, the more of a habit TV appears to be. Note also the general upward trend in habitual viewing for all cohorts. With (a) habitual viewing increasing and (b) civic activity decreasing, the relationship between them cross-sectionally suggests that (a) might be a cause of (b). Preliminary results support this inference, as an interaction term between the variable for habitual viewing and time is a statistically significant negative predictor of civic activity when included in our basic model (and controlling for the general temporal decline in any civic activity by including the main effect of the passage of time). Owing to the fact that the measures of habitual viewing can not be compared with the effect of time spent watching television, we are unable to take our analysis any further. Instead, we will note that this measure of habitual TV-viewing seems to hold promise as a factor over and above time spent

News programming We begin by briefly acknowledging the long-standing finding that all television is not created equal. Watching news programs correlates positively with civic engagement (Norris 1996) which is not surprising given that people who are interested in civic affairs are likely to watch the news and participate in civic activities. Indeed, there is a vein of political science research stemming at least back to The American Voter, which has considered watching news programs to be a form of civic participation. Consider these words of Campbell, Converse, Stokes, and Miller: [F]ollowing the campaign through the mass communications media might also be described as a type of informal participation. For some individuals, gleaning the political content of newspapers and magazines and of radio and television is a principal means of relating to politics. For others presumably for a great majority of Americans following the campaign in the mass media is a much more passive activity. Yet since the audience of the media screen out vast amounts of their content, the individual plays at least a minimal role in deciding what he will and will not attend, and in this sense following an election campaign in the media may be called a form of participation. (1964, 51)

What has not been clear until now is whether the positive correlation of watching news programs and civic activity holds when time spent watching television is accounted for. As displayed in Figure 7, the more frequently our hypothetical respondent watches news programming, the more likely she is to engage in any civic activity, holding time constant. For comparison s sake, we have also included the results for another form of television which drives down civic engagement, what we have called daytime TV. This is a composite category of three types of programs, soap operas, talk shows, and game shows. Two other types of programs were included in the model, prime-time (movies, situation comedies, and dramas), and sports. Neither of these reaches, or even approaches, statistical significance. The reader should be alerted to the fact that this model only uses data from 1994, as that was the only year this particular combination of variables was included on the Roper questionnaire. Given the decades of consensus among political scientists that news consumption and civic participation are correlated, we have no reason to suspect that these results would be any different if the data extended to other years. Time spent using other media The upshot of Figure 7 is that it reinforces again the fact that the negative relationship between TV and social capital-building activity is not only a matter of Peter s time being robbed to pay Paul. Another way to see this point is with Figure 8, which reports a model with controls for time spent using other media, specifically radio, newspapers, books, and magazines. We constructed a variable which is an additive index of time spent on these other activities, and then restricted the model only to those respondents who report using them for eight hours or less on an average weekday (77 percent of the sample). We did this to ascertain that results were not unduly affected by excessive or perhaps questionable reports of media consumption.10 Of all the figures presented thus far, perhaps Figure 8 most clearly establishes that TV does more than just soak up time that would otherwise be spent on civic activities. If that were the case, we would expect that using these other media would also take from civic activity. But it does not, as the difference

TV as entertaining or relaxing are those more likely to use it habitually. We coded a battery of responses into these two categories. The relaxing category not only includes relaxing as a description, but lots of fun and generally good. The informative category includes educational and serious as well as informative (See Appendix Two for full question wording). Figure 9 displays the changing predicted probabilities as our hypothetical respondent moves from describing television as instructional only, to a combination of instructional and relaxing, to relaxing only. We have also set her time spent watching television at three different levels, to make the point that this decline affects the probability of engaging in any civic activity regardless of how much time is consumed by television. Figure 10 displays results from a similar analysis, but with a question that more closely taps into the motivation for watching television. This one straightforwardly asks respondents why they watch TV: to be informed, to be entertained, or both. The findings parallel those in Figure 9: watching TV to be informed results in a higher probability of engaging in any civic activity than watching TV to be entertained. Both Figures 9 and 10 are approximations for the Life Style measure of television exposure, which asked respondents if television is their primary form of entertainment. These results have the added advantage of including a control for the amount of time spent watching television, which is not possible with the Life Style data. We should recall from Table 3 that only 7.5 percent of respondents report watching TV to be informed only. So while the motivation to learn from television has a positive association with civic engagement, the proportion of the population who have this motivation is tiny. And it is shrinking. The Roper data show a decline in watching TV for information only over the last twenty years. This is not surprising, given the steep decline in news viewership over roughly the same period (Pew Research Center 1998). This means that whatever capacity television has for increasing civic engagement seems to be diminishing. As much as we would like to accentuate the positive, it would appear that television s relationship to civic engagement is overwhelmingly negative. Conclusion The capsule summary of our findings might be that the relationship between television and civic engagement is a function of time plus. Time spent viewing television is unequivocally a negative predictor of civic activity, but in addition to time, other TV-related variables matter. The plus includes the types of programs viewed and the motivation for doing so. The most intriguing variable we have found is a measure of habitual TV-viewing, which is the best way we have found to test the theory that television not only consumes leisure time, it rearranges it. That this measure of habitual viewing differs remarkably across generational cohorts lends credence to the claim that television can contribute to explanations of the ever-declining rates of civic engagement among America s youth. One part of the answer to the puzzle of America s civic disengagement may lie not so much in how much people in younger birth cohorts watch TV, but how they watch it,11 and the inevitable process of generational replacement in the population. Older people watch less habitually, but are becoming an increasingly smaller portion of the population. Furthermore, television is more strongly associated with collective, rather than individualized, civic activities, the sort that have experienced the sharpest decline over the last twenty or so years. In conclusion, we do not claim that we have established beyond a reasonable

remain under suspicion. More importantly, perhaps, we have made some headway in

determining what it is about television which serves to diminish the probability of civic

activity. And this was done with surveys which were not designed to answer the

questions we have posed. With surveys explicitly designed to poke and prod at the

connections between media use and civic engagement, there is much more we could learn. It is our hope that omnibus national surveys like the General Social Survey and the National Election Study will consistently come to incorporate measures of not only how much TV people watch, but how they watch it. Using time diaries, Robinson and Godbey (1997) find that Americans watch TV for an average of three hours per day. Whether the correct figure is three of four hours, there can be no dispute that television occupies a major portion of Americansleisure time.
2 1

While the introduction of television will obviously never be repeated, there are other parallel examples of technological diffusion like the telephone in the past and the Internet in the present. See Fischer (1992) for a discussion of how the telephone affected Americanssocial life. The story of the Internet is, of course, still unfolding.
3

Of course, these are generally the people under-sampled in other surveys as well, for essentially the same reasons.
4

Space limits us from providing details for this claim here. The interested reader can consult Putnam and Yonish (1999) for an extended discussion of the DDB Needham Life Style data.
5

Note that not all of the questions we are interested in were asked in every Roper survey. Thus, while the overall N of the data is around 400,000, the sample sizes for the individual analyses shown here are smaller. Likewise, the years in which these questions were asked varies. Sometimes a question was asked periodically throughout the twenty year period which the data span, other times it was only asked in one or two years. As indicated in the footnote to Figure 1(a), this graph draws on data from 1974-76, 1978, 1984, 1989, 1991, and 1994.
6

Note that none of our results are substantively different when the dependent variable is an additive index of the Roper and Life Style activities, and linear regression is employed as the estimation technique. All subsequent analyses were also estimated using OLS with an additive index as a dependent variable. There are no substantive differences in our results.
7

11

One potential solution to the fact that the measures of habitual viewing were never asked of the same people as the inquiry about time spent on TV is to impute the missing variables in both subsets of the data. We are exploring this as an option.

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Norris, Pippa. 1996. Does television erode social capital? A reply to Putnam. PS: Political Science and Politics 29 (3): 474-79.

________. 1998. Blaming the messenger? Television and civic malaise. Paper presented at the Conference on Public Trust and Democratic Governance in the Trilateral Democracies, Bellagio, Italy, June 29-July 3.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. 1998. Biennial news consumption survey. http://www.people-press.org/med98rpt.htm

Putnam, Robert D. Tuning in, tuning out: The strange disappearance of social capital in America. PS: Political Science and Politics 28 (4): 664-83.

Putnam, Robert D., and Steven Yonish. 1999. How important is response rate? An evaluation of a mail panel survey archive. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Saint Pete Beach, FA, May 13-16.

Robinson, John, and Geoffrey Godbey. 1997. Time for life: The surprising ways Americans use their time. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Schramm, Wilbur, Jack Lyle, and Edwin B. Parker. 1961. Television in the lives of our children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Shah, Dhavan. 1997. Civic participation, interpersonal trust, and television use: A motivational approach to social capital. Paper presented to the International Communication Association Annual Conference, Montreal, May 22-26.

Tomz, Michael, Jason Wittenberg, and Gary King. 1999. CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results. Version 1.2. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. <http://gking.harvard.edu>

APPENDIX ONE

Tables and Figures

Table 1. Americans prefer TV to any other activity How do you prefer to spend a free evening? Entertainment on TV Going out to visit friends Spending time with spouse Having friends over to visit Reading a newspaper Spending time with kids Reading a book Doing things around house Spending time on a hobby Reading a magazine Sports on TV Going out to a movie Playing cards Going out to sports event From Roper surveys 1976 N=2001. 62.1% 58.3 55.9 55.7 51.6 49.1 47.1 43.7 42.9 40.4 39.2 37.6 32.0 29.0

Table 2. Americans Spend More Time Watching TV than Reading or Listening to the Radio Hours per day 1-3 3-5 5 or more Total Television 44% 31 8 83 Newspapers 15 1 .2 16.2 Magazines 17 1 .3 18.3 Books 33 10 5 48 Radio 31 14 16 61

From Roper surveys 1974-76, 1978, 1984, 1989, 1991, 1994 N=14,992.

Table 3. Television Viewed for Both Information and Entertainment

Book

16.3

38.4

32.9

From Roper surveys 1974-76, 1989, 1994 N=9,122.

Figure 1a. Television and civic engagement

60

Figure 1b.Television and civic engagement

50
90

% participating in at least 1 activity

80

40
70

30

% participating in at least 1 activity

60

50

20

40

10 30

20

0
10

< 1 hour

1-3 hours

3-5 hours Time spent viewing TV on average weekday

5-7 hours

> 7 hours

Source: Roper surveys 1974-76, 78, 84, 89, 91, 94 N = 14,992

Definitely disagree Generally disagree Moderately disagree

Moderatelyagree

Generally agree

Definitelyagree

TV is my primary form of entertainment

Figure 2. More TV means less civic engagement

70

60 % participating in at least 1 activity

50

40 Doing more Doing less 30

20

10

0 TV Entertaining friends at home Are you doing more or less? Visiting with friends

Source: Roper surveys 1974-75, 77, and 79 N=7928

Figure 3a. Television and civic engagement

50

45

Figure 3b. Television and civic engagement, controlling for other factors
30

40 85
probability of at least 1 activity (collective) probability of at least 1 activity

35
80 30 25 probability of at least 1 activity (letter)

25 75 20
70 15

20

all activities individualized collective

15

collective activities individualized (writing a letter)

10 65 5
60 0

10

< 1 hour
55

1-3 hours

3-5 hours

5-7 hours

> 7 hours
0

Time spent viewing television on average weekday

Results based on probabilities calculated from logistic regression, generated using Monte Carlo simulation (Tomz, Definitely Generally Moderately Moderatelyagree Generally agree Definitelyagree Wittenberg, 1999). Controls include: education, household income, sex, age, race, marital status, disagree and King disagree disagree employment status, and year Data from Roper surveys: 1974-76, 78, 84, 89, 91, 94. N = 13,337. TVof is study. my primary form of entertainment

Figure 4a. Television and civic engagement, controlling for other factors
80

Figure 4b. Television and civic engagement, controlling for other factors
70 100 60 probability of at least 1 activity probability of at least 1 activity 90

50 80 70 60 50 college graduate high school graduate less than high school post-graduate high school elementary school

40

30

20 40 30 20 0 10 0 < 1 hour 1-3 hours 3-5 hours 5-7 hours > 7 hours Time spent viewing television on average weekday

10

Results based on probabilities calculated from logistic regression, generated using Monte Carlo Definitely Generally Moderately Moderatelyagree Generally agree Definitelyagree simulation (Tomz, Wittenberg, 1999). Controls include: education, household income, sex, age, disagree disagree and King disagree race, marital status, employment status, and year of study. Data from Roper surveys: 1974-76, 78, 84, TV is my primary form of entertainment 89, 91, 94. N = 13,337.

Figure 5. Generations and time spent watching television

4.5

Figure 6. Generations and habitual TV viewing

43

3.5
2.5 Habitual viewing score (higher=more habitual)

mean hours watching TV

3
2

2.5

1.5

before 1930 1930-45 before 1930 1946-60 1930-45 after 1960

1946-60 after 1960

1.5
1

0.5 0.5

0
0

1974
1979

1975

1976
1985

1978

1984
1989

1989

1991
1993

1994

Figure 7. Types of television programs and civic engagement, controlling for time spent watching TV
50

Figure 8. Television and civic engagement, controlling for other media use
40 probability of at least 1 activity

70

60
30

probability of at least 1 activity

50

news programs daytime tv

20

40 maximum media use (8 hours) minimum media use 30

10

20
0 almost never sometimes fairly often frequently

10

Frequency of viewing

Results based on probabilities calculated from logistic regression, generated using Monte Carlo 0 simulation (Tomz, Wittenberg, and King 1999). Controls include: education, household income, 1 hour marital status, 1-3 hours 3-5 hours > 7 hours sex, age, < race, employment status, year 5-7 of hours study, watching primetime TV, watching sports programs, and total time spent watching TV. Data from Roper surveys 1994, Time spent viewing television on average weekday N=1,471.

Figure 9. Perception of television and civic engagement

60

Figure 10. Motivation for watching television and civic engagement

50
60

probability of at least 1 activity probability of at least 1 civic activity

40
50

30
40

<1 hour of TV/day 3-5 hours of TV/day > 7 hours of TV/day

20
30

< 1 hour of TV/day 3-5 hours of TV/day > 7 hours of TV/day

10
20

0
10

instructional

instructional and relaxing Description of television

relaxing only

0Carlo

Results based on probabilities calculated from logistic regression, generated using Monte simulation (Tomz, Wittenberg, and King 1999). Controls include: education, information information entertainment entertainment household income, sex, age, race, maritaland status, employment status, and year of study. Data from Roper surveys: 1984 and 1989 N=3,486 Motivation for watching

APPENDIX TWO Question Wording

ROPER QUESTIONS (Question title is followed by survey(s) in which question appears. For instance 7401 refers to the first survey in 1974)

1. Battery of Political Participation Items (all studies, 7401 9406) Now here is a list of things some people do about government or politics. Have you happened to have done any of those things in the past year? a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. Written your Congressman or Senator Attended a political rally or speech Attended a public meeting on town or school affairs Held or run for political office Served on a committee for some local organization Served as an officer of some club or organization Written a letter to the paper Signed a petition Worked for a political party Made a speech Written an article for a magazine or newspaper Been a member of some group like the League of Women Voters, or some other group which is interested in better government

2. Time Spent Watching Television (7401, 7501, 7601, 7801, 8401, 8901, 9102, 9401) On the average weekday, about how much time do you spend reading newspaper watching TV reading magazines listening to the radio reading books? a. b. c. Less than 15 minutes 15-29 minutes 30-44 minutes

3. Reason for Watching Television Version I (7401, 7501, 7601, 8901, 9401) Do you (for each activity) primarily for information, or primarily for entertainment? a. Information b. Entertainment c. Both (volunteered)

Reason for Watching Television Version II (7905, 8205, 8505) People watch television for many different reasons. Here are some of them. Which 2 or 3 of them are you most often looking for when you decide to watch television? a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. To be entertained To be amused To learn something To keep up with what s going on To have a little excitement To forget about the cares of the day To relax my mind To improve my mind

3.

Activities that People are Doing More or Less than a Year Ago (7410, 7510, 7710, 7910) People have been talking recently about the fact that they are changing some of their living habits. I d like to ask you about this list of things which you are doing more than you were a year ago and which you are doing less than a year ago. First, would you go down that list and call of all the tings you re doing more now than a year ago? Now would you go down that list again, and call off all those things you re doing less now than a year ago? a. b. c. d. e. f. Entertaining friends in your home Shopping in large shopping centers Going to take-out places for ready cooked food Visiting with friends or relatives who live quite nearby Eating out at restaurants Watching TV

4.

m.

less often Phoning a store to see if they have an item in stock before going to buy it

6. Ways People Enjoy Spending a Free Weeknight (7605) We re interested in what people like to do in their spare time the things they find relaxing and enjoyable. Thinking of a week night after your evening meal, would you call off all the ways you would enjoy spending a free evening? a. b. c. d. f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n. o. Going out to movie Going out to watch sports event Going out to visit friends Having friends over to visit Spending time with spouse Spending time with children Watching sports on TV Watching entertainment show on TV Reading book Reading magazine Reading newspaper Playing cards Doing needed things around house Doing something with hobby

7. Words and Phrases used to Describe Commercial Television (7710, 7910, 8110, 8401, 8901, 8910,9103, 9203, 9303, 9403) Here are some words or phrases which have been used to describe cable television, regular television, and public television. I d like to ask you first how you would describe cable television, and then how you would describe the other two. First, cable television, and by that I mean the kinds of programs and channels you can only get if you re hooked into a cable system. Would you read down that list and call off each word or phrase you would use to describe cable television? Now take regular television, and by that I mean channels you can get without being hooked into a cable system, like NBC, CBS, and ABC. Would you read down that list and call off each word or phrase you would use to describe regular television? Now take public television, and again by that I mean the kind of channel that is mostly

f. g. h. i. j. k. l. m. n. o. p. q. r.

Relaxing Getting better Getting worse Informative Uninteresting Important Generally good All the same Too simple minded Lots of fun Serious Imaginative Stimulating

8. Habitual Television Watching - Version I (7905, 8505, 8905, 9305) When you turn the television set on, do you usually turn it on first and then look for something you want to watch, or do you usually turn it on only if you know there sa certain program you want to see? a. b. c. Turn it on first Only if wanted program Both equally (vol.)

9. Habitual Television Watching - Version II (7905, 8505, 8905, 9305) Some people like to have a television set on, sort of in the background, even when they re not actually watching it. Do you find you frequently will just have the set on even though you re not really watching it, or are you the kind that either watches it or turns it off? a. b. On in background Watch or turn off

DDB Needham Life Style Questions (1975-1998)

Television is my primary form of entertainment (Definitely agree, generally agree, moderately agree, moderately disagree, generally disagree, definitely disagree)