{"title":"Public opinion as nowcast: consistency and the role of news uncertainty","authors":"J. Easaw, S. Heravi","doi":"10.1080/0022250X.2020.1732371","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The purpose of this note is to consider the effect of perception noise when voters form public opinions. We provide a simple theoretical framework that will form the basis to investigate empirically the effect of news uncertainty on voters’ attentiveness when forming public opinion, or nowcasts. An attentive voter will consistently update their information set. Therefore, if voters’ nowcasts are consistent, any revision of the nowcasts must only reflect new information. We specifically consider how news uncertainty may affect voter attentiveness. The paper focuses on US presidential competence and popularity indices. We find that the nowcasts are consistent during periods of low news uncertainty but highly persistent when news uncertainty is high.","PeriodicalId":50139,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Mathematical Sociology","volume":"45 1","pages":"100 - 110"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2020-03-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/0022250X.2020.1732371","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Mathematical Sociology","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/0022250X.2020.1732371","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"MATHEMATICS, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT The purpose of this note is to consider the effect of perception noise when voters form public opinions. We provide a simple theoretical framework that will form the basis to investigate empirically the effect of news uncertainty on voters’ attentiveness when forming public opinion, or nowcasts. An attentive voter will consistently update their information set. Therefore, if voters’ nowcasts are consistent, any revision of the nowcasts must only reflect new information. We specifically consider how news uncertainty may affect voter attentiveness. The paper focuses on US presidential competence and popularity indices. We find that the nowcasts are consistent during periods of low news uncertainty but highly persistent when news uncertainty is high.
期刊介绍：
The goal of the Journal of Mathematical Sociology is to publish models and mathematical techniques that would likely be useful to professional sociologists. The Journal also welcomes papers of mutual interest to social scientists and other social and behavioral scientists, as well as papers by non-social scientists that may encourage fruitful connections between sociology and other disciplines. Reviews of new or developing areas of mathematics and mathematical modeling that may have significant applications in sociology will also be considered.
The Journal of Mathematical Sociology is published in association with the International Network for Social Network Analysis, the Japanese Association for Mathematical Sociology, the Mathematical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, and the Methodology Section of the American Sociological Association.
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