April 18th, 2023 – Texas media habits

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. Sir, I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Looking forward to being joined soon by our unitech, university of Tech, new University of Texas, comrades at sfa. Oh, dunno if you’ve been following that, but that legislation is moving.

[00:00:54] Jim Henson: Oh, I have been following that. Actually. Add Steven F. Austin to the UT system. So welcome guys, guys and gals and everyone else, right? Enjoy the fund. Enjoy the fund. So, as you can tell, happy to be joined today by Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project. Hey, how’s it going? Top of the morning, Josh.

[00:01:13] Jim Henson: Yeah. What’s still morning? It’s,

[00:01:15] Josh Blank: yeah, it’s after morning. I think it’s the, well, yeah, I guess it depends on where the top and the bottom of the morning is, right?

[00:01:20] Jim Henson: Well, I think once you hit noon, you know, so, uh, you know, it, it’s in the, in the way that. Three to five is afternoon, I guess. Afternoon is old afternoon.

[00:01:30] Jim Henson: Well, I guess, right? Yeah. So I’m gonna call this a

[00:01:33] Josh Blank: morning. I kinda like bottom of the morning though. Yeah. Well that’s me anyway.

[00:01:39] Jim Henson: All right. So we’re off to a good start here. No digressions here in this podcast. No. Um, so you, last week we, our theme was sort of abstract in the sense, although I think we did a good job of making it concrete, although we’ll let the listeners decide that as concrete as we could.

[00:01:54] Jim Henson: Um, last week our theme was uncertainty and, and that general mood certainly continues this week as the, the Texas House and Senate both, you know, continue to like work pretty furiously. So a lot of bills moving, uh, a lot of committee hearings, et cetera. Mm-hmm. Um, Uh, but you know, the sense of uncertainty, you know, that we talked about last week, you know, it is still operative.

[00:02:20] Jim Henson: The house on the Senate remain on different pages on, you know, two of the key public issues that the governor and lieutenant Governor have invested in heavily property taxes and vouchers, ESAs, um, You know, the Senate parental rights voucher bill has been referred to the House Education Committee.

[00:02:37] Jim Henson: That’s a fairly recent development. I think that happened yesterday. Uh, we’re recording on Tuesday morning, uh, here. Um, and there’s tons of signaling still going on, on, on property tax relief and on most everything that the House and the Senate are, are disagreeing on, um, as we speak today, O on Tuesday.

[00:02:57] Jim Henson: Again, you know, lots of stuff going on today in the kind of. You know, outside of those big focus issues, hearings today on guns, on water, um, lots of other things. So, you know, the local, local control or not? Yeah, the big, yeah. The, the, the bureau’s preemption bill, I believe is Yeah. Uh, is moving today. So, you know, a lot going on.

[00:03:22] Jim Henson: Um, You know, rather than pick one of those things, we’re gonna let things ripen a little bit more, I think. Although, you know, some of these things will come up, no doubt. Um, but speaking of all the signaling going on, uh, Josh, you took some time over the last week or so to look at some of the data that we collected in our last two polls in December and February.

[00:03:48] Jim Henson: On Texas attitudes towards media. And we did this in a couple of different bites. So in December we looked at, uh, Texas Texan’s sort of media habits and consuming political news, and I’ll let you unpack that in a minute. And then February we asked about use of social media, um, both. What people seem to be reported using and favorable ratings towards the different platforms for, you know, reasons that, we’ll, again, that we can talk about, you know, and I think a lot of ways the, you know, the timing was good for both of those batteries.

[00:04:20] Jim Henson: I mean, on, there’s always a lot of interest in media use. Yeah. I mean we, we’ve, over the years of doing this poll, You know, we’ve relatively intermittently checked in on this, but you know, in the first years of the poll there was another Texas media poll going on at ut that’s since, I guess, kind of gone into Obeyance or Ended or whatever e exactly is going on there.

[00:04:42] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And so we did kind of stay away from it from the first several years cuz somebody else was doing

[00:04:46] Josh Blank: it. Well, I’d also, I’d also add, you know, it’d also, you know, you know, brass tax, media use questions take up a lot of survey space, right. And, and as

[00:04:53] Jim Henson: we’ll kind of illustrate here with the, the, the data you’ll talk about.

[00:04:56] Jim Henson: But nonetheless, I mean, you know, even in the, in the immediate. You know, say last year or two. Mm-hmm. Um, if not more immediate in some ways. You know, we’re continuing to see a lot of interesting developments in what we think of as, you know, the traditional media space. I mean, all you have to do is look at the headlines.

[00:05:14] Jim Henson: Fox News has been, well, you know, in the news. Right. Uh, with the revelations that have come out as part of the defamation lawsuit by, uh, dominion Voting Systems, uh, that trial is supposed to happen this week, though there are obviously negotiations going on. Um, You know, something in a, of a disruption in the, the pattern of cable news that we used to sort of think of as defining the cable news space and kind of, you know, interesting in the early two thousands.

[00:05:43] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. You know, Fox has more competition on the right with multiple outlets that that proliferated, particularly during the Trump and the immediate Trump presidency in the media. Afterwards, uh, immediate aftermath, CNN’s been moved by management away from. The tone it adopted during the, the Trump presidency, which was read by many as being, you know, kind of reflexively, oppositional to Trump and, and frankly to Republicans.

[00:06:09] Jim Henson: And I think. There’s actually some, some truth in that. Uh, if you watch CNN much. Um, and then overall within that space, cable news viewership, I, I think is pretty stagnant. More or less, you know, in the longer term we’ve seen, you know, local television has been changing. I mean, I think for a long time the story was and still remains the posity of local news, and you and I have talked about this maybe even on the podcast before, you know, I, I think two things about that.

[00:06:36] Jim Henson: On one hand, sure. The decline in the reach of local newspapers, Yeah, pretty demonstrable fact. I think local television is more complicated in the sense that. You know, even talking to journalists, it’s often been considered kind of the, you know, the ugly stepchild of the news environment, and yet there have been interesting things going on there with the consolidation of these big local ownership changes that now exist.

[00:07:02] Jim Henson: You know, used to be you had a local network affiliate, right? That’s kind of, you know, what you needed to know. But now there’s this whole other cross, you know, sort of, you know, ownership factor of these big conglomerates that have been consolidating local news markets over the last decade or so. Right.

[00:07:18] Jim Henson: Um, you know, in Austin, the, you know, the recognizable brands or even, you know, Texas writ large, you know, next Stars Sinclair, right? Um, uh, gray television, they’re not as big in Texas. Um, Companies like that. Social media environment also pretty dynamic, right? And this is where there’s a real, you know, we could look at the sh at the longer term, but certainly in the short term, if you think about how, you know Fox.

[00:07:43] Jim Henson: Fox News has been in the news, right? Twitter, Elon, you know, the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter has put Twitter relentlessly. You know, probably only intermittently in the national news, but certainly in

[00:07:56] Josh Blank: sort of our circles. Well, Elon Musk, who did an interview on Fox News last night.

[00:08:00] Jim Henson: Right, right. You know, Musk’s just, you know, there’s so many different things going on with him, but Twitter is certainly the thing that.

[00:08:07] Jim Henson: You know, in this space, his purchase of Twitter has been a real earthquake, I think. Mm-hmm. His seeming reshaping of Twitter according to, you know, what do you want to call it? Dispositions. Impulses, political whims, neurosis. I, you know, I don’t know. Yeah. Um, You know, the massive burst of attention to TikTok first because of its rapid use, you know, and, and, and it’s, you know, the explosion in use, sort of a spoiler alert ear by young people.

[00:08:34] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. But also just the general, I mean the rapid, I mean the, the user base of TikTok is huge. Yeah. International fold into that, the, the issue of Chinese ownership stake. Very much in the news and that all comes, you know, in the wake of, you know, you were saying before the podcast, the kind of, you know, the attention to Facebook, it’s handling of the 2016 election when even before that.

[00:08:57] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean it’s handling generally which algorithm and, you know, whether Facebook was doing harm or good, you know, to the, to the polity, et cetera. So there was a lot going on that kind of drove us. To ask some questions about these things. So let’s unpack some of what you found as you were, you know, once you took time to process these batteries.

[00:09:17] Jim Henson: And it’s, there’s an, there’s an interesting kind of insight in terms of our, you know, we kind of did these, they were interesting. Took us a while to get back to ’em, right?

[00:09:24] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well it’s one of those things where, I mean, we didn’t wanna wait too long, but also, uh, you know, ultimately like. It’s sort of something that just keeps coming up, right?

[00:09:34] Josh Blank: Yeah. And so it’s definitely worth, worth checking in on. I mean, one of the interesting things I’ll just sort of start off with, and then we’re not really gonna talk about again, is in this long list of sort of media sources for news. If you’re listening to this right now, you’re part of the 15% of Texas voters who say that they listen to podcasts as one of their sources of political news.

[00:09:49] Josh Blank: But I think that’s really important here, you know? Right. I think like one of the things that I, I think happens a lot just in politics generally, is that the people who pay attention to politics seem to have some really kind of interest. Sort of uninformed or, or motivated ideas about what the rest of the public is doing.

[00:10:09] Josh Blank: Thinking, right. How they’re approaching things, what they know, what they don’t. Yeah. And so, and so what’s, I think kind of just on its face, I mean, what’s useful about something like this is just to take a step back and say, okay, you know, let’s, let’s update our assumptions a little bit about how the electorate is engaging with political news and media.

[00:10:24] Josh Blank: And then further, there’s this other piece to it, which is, you know, a little bit more complicated. And I didn’t go. Deep into this, but you know, how do like usage patterns and, you know, overall views relate? Cuz ultimately, you know, I think at this point what’s kind of become apparent, I think in, in the recent era more, you know, I mean, I dunno, it’s like more prevalent is this idea of sort of like reluctant usage.

[00:10:46] Josh Blank: I mean, you hear it a lot from a lot of people where they say like, oh yeah, you know, I hate Twitter. And it’s like, are you on Twitter? Yeah, I’m on. Yeah. You know, that’s how I know I hate it. Yeah. And there’s a lot of people talk and I can’t get enough, and you hear a lot of people talking about like, oh, I’m gonna get off this platform or that.

[00:10:58] Josh Blank: And some people do. Yeah. And some people don’t. And so I think this was a really interesting time to kind of ask this, this set of questions. So, so let’s, let’s, you know, let’s start off at 30,000 feet, right? I mean, you were talking about local television consolidation, you know, in some ways then, you know, local television being something of the, you know, the, I, I guess I shouldn’t say, you know, I’ll, I’ll just say I already said it, but did you say redhead stepchild?

[00:11:18] Josh Blank: I think I said ugly stepchild. Oh, ugly stepchild. Okay. Well, let’s just leave it that alone. The stepchild of the media environment. But the thing is, is in, this is something that we found consistently. We’ve been finding this over time. Local VE television stations remained one of the primary sources of news from most Texans.

[00:11:32] Josh Blank: So 43% of Texas voters said that they used local television in the previous week. For, to find, you know, basically news about politics. But interestingly, and this is something that we definitely would not have found five or 10 years ago, it was tied in, in, basically it’s overall saturation was social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, where 42% of tax ons said that social

[00:11:50] Jim Henson: media wri largeri large.

[00:11:52] Jim Henson: That’s how we offered that as an option at that level. That was the

[00:11:54] Josh Blank: December poll. Yeah, that was in the December poll. And that’s where we, you know, if you think about, um, I’ll just tell you, you can look this up later. We’ll put it on the, on the blog post when we put this up. But when you look at. Uh, news sources here.

[00:12:03] Josh Blank: We’re talking really about, you know, like local news broadcast, national news, broadcast, talking about, you know, national newspapers, like the New York Times and their websites, but also local newspapers, you know, the American Statesmen, the Dallas News, and their morning news and, and their websites. And we’re really trying to break this out.

[00:12:18] Josh Blank: Podcasts, conservative news websites, liberal news websites, really trying to get a sense of where people are, are, are getting their news. And again, The main source for most people is still gonna be local news. And that sort of raises again, this sort of issue again about, you know, the importance of local media, honestly, in a lot of cases.

[00:12:33] Josh Blank: Right? Yeah.

[00:12:33] Jim Henson: And, and I, I think one of the interesting things about that is that, hey, we’ve gotten it before. I mean, I can’t remember exactly when the last time we did. A similar battery was, but this is not the first time that this has shown up. And, and we’ve seen it in other sources. Yeah. Yeah. It’s reasonably well-known, I guess, as a, as a fact.

[00:12:50] Jim Henson: But it, you know, it’s interesting to me the degree to which this has, you know, already for a while been incorporated into campaign strategy. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. And certainly, I mean, and I, and I do think that the. You know, republican campaigns in Texas have been, you know, the Abbott campaign in particular has really made a point of saying, you know, if we can go out and hit local newscast, particularly in areas that are kind of outside or on the edge of the, you know, outside of the major media markets, You know, it’s, it’s a form of targeting.

[00:13:26] Jim Henson: I mean, we talk a lot about targeting on social media, but ultimately it’s a, it’s a traditional, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a way of, of targeting your audiences, but using traditional

[00:13:35] Josh Blank: media. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s, it’s so remarkable living in Austin and Travis County, which is not a very competitive political environment in some ways, how few political ads you actually see around campaign season.

[00:13:45] Josh Blank: If you just take a minute and like, drive outside of Austin, go, right. You know, almost anywhere. And the local television station tonight are just right bomb bombarded with these ads. Yeah. Listen or listen

[00:13:55] Jim Henson: to, you know,

[00:13:55] Josh Blank: listen to AM radio. Yeah, right. For sure. So, you know, when we look at the social media item, which we ask, we went into more detail.

[00:14:02] Josh Blank: So again, in the, in the December it poll, we ask just about, you know, broad buckets of different sort of sources of media. In the February poll, we wanna ask specifically about different social media platforms, both whether people have used them, right. And here we extended the timeframe in the last. And then further we said, you know, do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of each of these?

[00:14:17] Josh Blank: And so we’re trying to get a sense, you know, again, given sort of all these undercurrents that you were bringing up at the. You know what people’s reactions are to these different social media companies. And this is something, you know, to me as a public opinion scholar or study or research or whatever you wanna call it.

[00:14:30] Josh Blank: This is super interesting cause I, you know what I say this, I don’t really know like how the numbers are gonna fall. Yeah, the,

[00:14:35] Jim Henson: that was nice about this, I thought int that, you know, it’s

[00:14:38] Josh Blank: just sort of, you know, you say like, I mean going into this, Hey, what are you thinking of? The fa on fave numbers on Twitter are gonna be, it’s like, Don’t know, you know, which is why I was gonna ask.

[00:14:47] Josh Blank: So again, taking a step back only to two social media platform. I think we tested about 11 or so, maybe 10. Attracted a majority of users right from the Texas electorate, so that was YouTube, which will kind of put a pin as to whether that’s a social media platform or not. I say yes. Their CEO says, no, he has different interests than I do.

[00:15:04] Josh Blank: But, but anyway, you think so. 84% of Texans and more than four and five said they use YouTube in the last month and 77% said they used Facebook. And I had a lot of people might say, wait, isn’t Facebook on the way out if you kinda like, you know, file. But the thing is, is not in the elector cuz the electorate is older.

[00:15:18] Josh Blank: Right, right. And so that’s something to consider here and we’ll kind of come back to as we go into some of the groups. But, but you know, Facebook remains, you know, just one of, you know, the most sort of widespread social media applications right across the electorate. Um, you know, I thought was, this was sort of interesting when you think about sort of like different kinds of social media platforms and just some gender differences we’re interested in here in the electorate.

[00:15:39] Josh Blank: You know, men were more likely to say that they’d used Twitter in the last month, which was 51% compared to 39%. It’s a pretty good gap.

[00:15:45] Jim Henson: That’s one of those things where I wonder if that’s changed. You know what I, I, I kind of doubt it. Yeah.

[00:15:51] Josh Blank: But I don’t know. I don’t want to, I mean, you know, this is where we get to sort of engage in some speculation.

[00:15:55] Josh Blank: Yeah. But I mean, I think when you look across the various sort of social media platforms, you know, if you think about like, is this a platform where you yell or is this a platform where you, you know, where you post, you know, I think you could start to kind of use that as a, as a, as a rational

[00:16:10] Jim Henson: generalizing saying men are yellers.

[00:16:12] Josh Blank: Well, it looks like it, uh, at least in terms of Old Yeller, at least in terms of what the, which ones they like to

[00:16:18] Jim Henson: use. There’s an old yeller joke in there somewhere I can’t quite reach.

[00:16:21] Josh Blank: So, you know, and women were about like 10 points more likely to say they used Facebook and Instagram compared to Matt.

[00:16:26] Josh Blank: Right. Okay. So

[00:16:28] Jim Henson: obviously, and we should say, you know, that is consistent also with some of the thing, you know, I mean over, you know, and again, premus that Yeah. You know, the, the, you know, the sort of sexism and bullying and stuff on Twitter.

[00:16:39] Josh Blank: Right. Anyway, there’s lots of hypotheses we could generate lot.

[00:16:44] Josh Blank: Yeah, there’s a lot of things here. Yeah. So I mean I think, you know, obviously here, I mean what we’re really interested in, given where we’re sitting is, is sort of the, the partisan patterns right in, in political information consumption. Right. Because that’s really, I think, you know, what people have been talking about for a long time and kind of what we wanted to see, what one, you know, is that evidence in the data and then if so, like how Right.

[00:17:02] Jim Henson: And where, where. Right. And, and it’s funny cuz you go into this with. You know, I mean, some assumptions, predispositions as much as we’re trying to be objective and it, it’s interesting to hear. What’s confirmatory and what’s not.

[00:17:16] Josh Blank: Yeah, for sure. There’s a lot more nuance here than I think, you know, I would’ve thought when we asked the questions, I mean, and I’ll tell you and I’ll just sort of preview it anyway, cuz there’s no point We know, and this is gonna be true in general.

[00:17:25] Josh Blank: I mean, one age is a big factor here, no surprise, right? Yeah. But you know, having said that, you know, you don’t necessarily think about the impact of age, let’s say on Republican consumption habits when people talk about like Republican consumption of the news. Right? Well, you know, there’s some pretty actual, there’s actually some, some pretty big variability both in terms of age and gender.

[00:17:44] Josh Blank: When we look at g O P attitudes, uh, towards the media, and there’s also, you know, similar but slightly different kind of. Impacts among Democrats. And so, you know, when you start to describe like, you know, the, the Republican media ecosystem, it turns out that I don’t know exactly what that means. Yeah. You know, having looked at this, so let’s, let’s just get into it and then we can kind of come back.

[00:18:04] Josh Blank: Yeah. Okay. So the most prevalent source of news for, for Republican in Texas is still local television, not surprisingly now for them. Almost identi and I almost identical share still says cable television news in their websites. So it’s 44% for local television, 42% for cable television, and then social media comes in third at 37%.

[00:18:23] Josh Blank: So one, it’s important to social media is pretty widespread and it’s, you know, again, as, as a source for news. You know, and in some ways this is somewhat confirmatory. Local television is a news source for everybody, but also among Republican. Cable television news is still a primary source, but then you start to see like, well, what if we dig into that a little bit more?

[00:18:40] Josh Blank: It was interesting, right? I mean, number one, I thought this was very interesting. You know, Republican men appeared to be significantly more likely than Republican women to get their news from what we might think of as traditionally conservative sources of news like cable television. Uh, 50% of men compared to 35% of.

[00:18:56] Josh Blank: Of Republican women, uh, conservative news websites, 36% of men compared to 23% of women and talk radio. 30% of Republican men compared to 23% of Republican women, but yet nearly equal shares say that they get their information from local television and from social media. So it’s these, you know, sort of, again, when we think about the traditional sort of, you know, historically conservative, you know, uh, right.

[00:19:17] Josh Blank: Media ecosystem, especially like talk radio, these, these conservative news websites. This is really much more. You know, again, a source of news for Republican men than women, which I think is, is, is pretty interesting. It’s not leading to very divergent views.

[00:19:31] Jim Henson: Right. I mean, we’re often, you know, looking for, you know, to see if there are differences between Republican men and women.

[00:19:36] Jim Henson: And you know, this is a little too general, but it seems to me more often than not, those gaps are not as big as we expect. Yeah.

[00:19:43] Josh Blank: And the thing that’s interesting about this actually is normally when we see gender gaps that can be explained bipartisanship, so often what we find is that, you know, democratic identification runs higher.

[00:19:52] Josh Blank: Women than it does among men, or vice versa, say, we’re Republican. It doesn’t matter how you put it, but there’s a gap there. Yeah. And so often when we see gender gaps, what we’re really talking about is partisan gaps, not gender gaps. Right. But in this case, we’re just looking at Republicans. So these actually are just gender gaps within the party.

[00:20:06] Josh Blank: And they’re, they’re, they’re pretty wide. Um, so I mean, it’s a serve as an interesting finding about, you know, the media ecosystem, you know, especially among Republicans that already by gender, you know, if you’re trying to reach out to Republican men, you know, there’s some, some big targets out there that aren’t necessarily as big for Republican women.

[00:20:22] Josh Blank: Yeah. Now. Looking on a little further, looking at the social, you know, reactions to social media. Uh, you know, YouTube was the only social media platform as we’ll call it, viewed favorably by a majority of Republicans. And there was only 53% who said they had a favorable opinion of YouTube. No more than 36% of Republicans said that they held a positive view of.

[00:20:40] Josh Blank: Any of the other social media platforms tested this included Facebook, this included Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn. It also included Truth, social parlor. So I mean, we were trying to get a pretty good spread here. Uh, and, and ultimately, you know, what you find is is that in general, it’s not. I mean, one thing you might take away from this, I think, is that it’s not even so much that Republicans have a problem with TikTok.

[00:21:00] Josh Blank: It’s that as a group, Republicans have a problem with all of it.

[00:21:03] Jim Henson: Yeah. Which is, you know, I. You know, I’ve been mulling that and I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. I’m, I’m, I’m wondering if there’s a little bit of a, you know, dynamic here that’s akin to antipathy towards negative ads. Interesting.

[00:21:20] Jim Henson: What do you mean by that? Well, what I mean is, you know, people say they hate it, but they use it. Yeah, yeah. Well, I was thinking kind of thing, and I, you know, and I don’t, and the use data doesn’t necessarily ground that, but. It’s tough, you know? I don’t know. I,

[00:21:35] Josh Blank: yeah, I mean, I think once we go through the Democratic views, it’ll be interested to come back to this question because I’ll just add two things we can come back to.

[00:21:40] Josh Blank: I mean, one, I think of like whatever is the inverse of like a halo effect. I mean, it’s almost like, because there’s this sort of negative attitudes towards some social media, right? And that’s really prevalent. And because use is not that high, especially among older Republicans. Yeah. Then all of a sudden, does that abuse sort of a negative response to everything?

[00:21:55] Josh Blank: And then I’d also say generally regard, Party, you’re, you’re, you’re a part of. There’s also just sort of a central body of evidence and information that’s kind of going out. I think increasingly it says, Hey, you know, this isn’t good for kids. Any of it, like, none of it is good for anybody. Oh, that’s an interesting, yeah, and I think that’s sort of, you know, in this sort of environment we’re in right now where we’re talking about what kids are exposed to a lot as a major sort of political ploy, it is interesting that at the same time there’s a lot of studies that kind of have been coming out saying, you know, really social media of any kind is not really good for like a teenage.

[00:22:22] Josh Blank: Right. And so, I mean, I don’t know, but I’ll just sort of throw that out there. But I’ll tell you what good pit in that. Yeah. Well, but I’ll tell you what, uh, you know, ultimately Republican voters were under 30. And then to a lesser extent, maybe under 45, hold much more favorable views in general than do older Republicans.

[00:22:39] Josh Blank: So, for example, as much as TikTok has been in the news as sort of an object of SCO and especially among Republicans, suspicion, danger, whatever word you want to use, yes. A majority of Republican voters under 30, 52% said that they held a favorable view of TikTok, but no more than a quarter of any of the older cohorts, right.

[00:22:56] Josh Blank: Among Republicans. Right. And so again, that’s sort of one of those, you know, not surprising, but the gap. Interesting. You know, uh, and we’ve seen this before, I think in, in the, in, you know, I think in the Republican electorate where there are, there do tend to be differences when we look at the youngest cohort of Republicans or the older on things like climate change, right.

[00:23:15] Josh Blank: You know, on some of these other pockets of Yeah, yeah. Of just, you know, I mean, honestly, you know, the, the time, right? I mean, everybody comes of age at a different point of time and you know, ultimately, you know, these Republican voters are still young people and they’re young people before they’re republican.

[00:23:31] Josh Blank: And ultimately if they’re engaging with, you know, a platform that their peers are engaging with regularly and this is the way that they, you know, do whatever or engage, express, I mean like, you know, no, it’s gonna

[00:23:39] Jim Henson: be hard for their Republican, this to Yeah.

[00:23:42] Josh Blank: Outweigh that. Be like, why in a lot of cases. Yeah.

[00:23:44] Josh Blank: I mean, you know, I just think, you know, think about when you were 23 and when you, whether you were thinking more about like, you know, your presence in front of, you know, Let’s say, you know, phy probably physical objects of desire on the one hand. Yeah. And, and on the other hand, you know, you’re concerned about a growingly powerful China.

[00:24:00] Josh Blank: Right? I don’t know, I think I, I, you know, most of us probably cared about

[00:24:03] Jim Henson: the formula or the cognitive impact. It may be having, it may have had on you as you were growing up or something. Right. All

[00:24:08] Josh Blank: right. So feels fine to me. Well, that’s, yeah, exactly. So, okay, so Democratic media use views, let’s talk about that and we can kind of come back around.

[00:24:17] Josh Blank: So, you know, across the board, Texas’s democratic voters showed a greater variety in their media consumption habits than did Texas’ Republicans. So social media and local news were a sourced for 50%. Yeah. Uh, of Democrats, but also almost a majority, 44%, uh, said they, they. Broadcast television news and their websites for information.

[00:24:36] Josh Blank: 41% said cable news, uh, you know, in their respective websites. A third still said national newspapers and their websites and even a third said local newspapers and their websites. So, you know, there’s just tends to be a little bit, I wouldn’t even say the Democrats are not necessarily consuming more news, but there seems to be less resistance to a lot of the traditional sources of news that are out there, which makes a lot of sense given.

[00:24:58] Josh Blank: You know, the conversations have gone on, right? You know, a majority of Democratic voters said that they’d used four social media applications as a source for news. In the previous month, in our February poll, Twitter was 50%, Instagram was 56%, Facebook was 78%, and YouTube was 88%. So just in general, you know, if you think about like.

[00:25:15] Josh Blank: The different, I mean, you’re talking about Republicans really leaning on local news and local news broadcast is a good place to reach voters, especially outside of major cities. You can see why, you know, when you hear about democratic investments and campaigns, there’s so much of it is about digital advertising, digital targets because you know, ultimately it’s gonna hit a lot of de democratic voters.

[00:25:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. Okay. Having said all this, Democrats hold only a slightly more positive view of social media platforms than the overall electorate. Uh, you know, three quarters hold a positive view of YouTube, which is really the outlier in a lot of ways, right? For, I think, reasons we could talk about or not, you know, but 45% hold a positive view of Facebook, which sounds about right, you know, 44% of Instagram, but again, like Republicans, fewer than a, you know, about 36%, so fewer than 36%, a little more than a.

[00:25:58] Josh Blank: Hold a positive view of any of the other platforms. Now, some of that is people just not holding a view at all, and that’s important to say. But in general, it’s not like there’s widespread positive feeling out there about much of the social media landscape, I think, as we see it right now. Right, right. And then the last bit from this, before we kind of go into some takeaways, Is, you know, the sort of, is the independents, right?

[00:26:20] Josh Blank: So the not Democrats and the non Republicans here, the people who don’t identify with either party initially or when pushed even. Yeah. And the way that we define this was in the news a little bit this week because Gallup released some new data, as they often do with kind of very, very blithely about it.

[00:26:34] Josh Blank: Yeah. Uh, about

[00:26:36] Jim Henson: I saw that, I saw that, I saw the porn, I saw the data, I saw the thread. Yeah,

[00:26:40] Josh Blank: I reposted on Twitter. I posted a thread on Twitter, so Pew releases, or not Pew, I’m sorry, Gallup releases data this week basically talking about the growing share of political independence. The de the definition of political independence is something that political science talk about a lot scientists talk about a lot.

[00:26:54] Josh Blank: A really noted, uh, pollster. Charles Franklin had basically put up a Twitter thread, sort, responding to this kind about how we might think about this. All very interesting when we’re talking about political independence here, right? We’re talking about the approximately 10 to 15% of voters who don’t identify with either party initially and when push, do not identify with either party, right?

[00:27:14] Josh Blank: These are the people who remain, um, the main thing to know. Political independence and media consumption is that they consume less media than do partisans for the most part. There’s a couple of instances where they may, you know, consume a little bit more of other types of media, but, uh, you know, ultimately no more than 31% said that they consumed any of the 14 sources of media.

[00:27:34] Josh Blank: That we tested for news in the previous week, right? So no more than a third. You know, this is honestly, you know, this is surprising to people, but just say, you know, this is a, a sort of a, a thing, a foundational characteristic of independence, which is often they’re not gonna be as engaged with politics as partisans, right?

[00:27:50] Josh Blank: And some of that you can think about where the causal errors go on that, which directions they’re going. But it should make a fair amount of sense that, you know, if you pay a bunch of attention to politics, it’s odd. Odds are you’ll pick aside at some point. And if you don’t, it’s kind of easier just not to.

[00:28:05] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, I, you know,

[00:28:06] Jim Henson: I’ve always thought that, what’s it wor what’s. I mean, there’s an interesting idealization at work in both. Mm-hmm. The subjective sort of declaration of being, inde of political independence. Mm-hmm. And the outside assumptions. And, you know, I mean, people, you know, I think confuse being politically independent with being, you know, an active, independent thinker.

[00:28:25] Jim Henson: Right.

[00:28:26] Josh Blank: Well, some people, well, and some are, yeah, some are or

[00:28:29] Jim Henson: think they are or, but as this shows, I mean, there’s, you know, there’s, there’s not a lot of engagement, you know, what do you, what do you, I mean, you know, I’ve been kind of thinking. You know, since, you know, you put all this together and, you know, in fits and starts since we looked at this.

[00:28:44] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, I’m trying to figure out, you know, what I think about this difference between, you know, democratic and Republican habits here. Mm-hmm. And, and what they’re, you know, how they express it? Cuz on, you know, on one hand some of it fits our preconceived notions of the parties, right? Yeah. What do you know Democrats are?

[00:29:07] Jim Henson: You know, kind of more eclectic in their media sources, a little, you know, spread out a little bit more, you know Yeah. In some ways that, that, that looks not unlike the most important problem. Batteries. Yeah. That’s an interesting way to, well, you know, in that, mm-hmm. In, in a sense, right? I mean, a little more, act a little, you know, a little less monotonic.

[00:29:25] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, um, in some ways, I’m not sure what the explanation for that is in terms of media habits among Republicans.

[00:29:35] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I

[00:29:36] Jim Henson: mean, you know, there’s a lot more digging there. You know, I, I haven’t looked much at this like by intensity and I think that would be interesting.

[00:29:42] Josh Blank: No, but I mean, I think, you know, part of what is sort, I mean, there’s the part of it, the independent thing makes a lot of sense.

[00:29:47] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s, there’s part of it that’s, you know, I think pretty. Explainable and some of that is just in the different demographics of the parties. Right. Well, I was gonna say, you know, yeah, you were kind of, you know, you’re, you’re waving at that there a little bit. I’ll just say explicitly.

[00:30:01] Josh Blank: I mean, you know, I think that the fact is the fact that democrats, the Democratic party tends to skew younger,

[00:30:06] Jim Henson: say, tends Asian heterogene and

[00:30:08] Josh Blank: Henrys hetero 80 tends, yeah. It tends to skew, you know, with, with, with more, you know, racial. An ethnic diversity, which is gonna impact media and social media use? I think, uh, you know, not to mention the fact that I also think there’s a certain, you know, potential, I would say less threat, you know, in terms of the, i, you know, the values and sort of ideology of Democrats of sort of these technological platforms as they’ve been deployed.

[00:30:34] Josh Blank: Right. I think for the most part, I’m gonna say, you know, we’re kind of at a point as you raised at the beginning where, you know, that’s kind of, yeah. That’s, that’s shifting a little bit. I mean, you know, to the extent that like, And I think it’s notable that there was this idea, whether true or not, that conservatives needed their own social media applications to be able to express themselves.

[00:30:54] Josh Blank: You know, I don’t get the impression that like Democrats or liberals have felt that they, you know, are limited in their ability to express themselves on the existing offerings. Yeah. So I think there’s a lot of reasons. You know, I think you can see that. You know, having said that, you know, there’s also kind of just interesting differences within the parties that were really kind of the most surprising to me.

[00:31:11] Josh Blank: You know, I think having. You know, grown up during the cable news, you know, revolution and this idea of Yeah. You know, cable news being this big behemoth. It’s really interesting to look at this data and realize one, you know, it’s not, it’s not a behemoth, it’s not even that, you know, cable news isn’t a behemoth, it’s just.

[00:31:29] Josh Blank: It’s not even a behemoth within sort of the Republican ecosystem. I think that’s kind of what was one of the more surprising results here is that, you know, yeah, everybody knows that Fox News has competition now. Got it. But like, you know, to really sort of put on paper the fact that okay, but social media and cable news are basically, and, and local news are all kind of at an equal level of saturation within the Republican party.

[00:31:50] Josh Blank: But also once we dig into that, it’s like, is that gonna be the same across the Republican party? The, and just clearly not. Right. And when we look at like use patterns, social media, use patterns, you know, amongst Republicans under 30 and in some cases under 45, compared to older Republicans who really are, you know, the core of the party is usually, you know, an older, you know, white base that is, those are two different media univers.

[00:32:12] Josh Blank: I

[00:32:12] mean

[00:32:13] Jim Henson: to a lot. What’s funny you would say that, cuz I was kind of wondering also though, about what the connective, you know, there’s also connective tissue between those that, well, you know, I mean, I mean the use, you know, calling it a media ecosystem is actually like, helps. Yeah. You know, I mean, in other words, if you watch just random, you know mm-hmm.

[00:32:30] Jim Henson: If you watch Fox, but you’re not on Twitter, right. That doesn’t mean that you know, you’re. Yeah. You know, the people on Twitter aren’t getting, being fed by Fox and the people on Fox aren’t being fed.

[00:32:44] Josh Blank: Twitter. No, absolutely. And it’s not like you’re getting necessary, which we’ve seen in spades. Yeah. You’re not.

[00:32:48] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s a really important point. You know, you’re not getting different messages right, per se. I mean, you may be getting sort of different levels of intensity, right? Yeah. I mean,

[00:32:57] Jim Henson: it would be interesting as we, you know, if, if we were to take the time to parse this out more, we’d have to probably replicate a little bit more, but you know, to see.

[00:33:04] Jim Henson: If, if there are detectable clusters within some of these pockets, well, you know,

[00:33:09] Josh Blank: you’re raising, you know, part of the issue too about like why these media consumption questions actually, like, why we don’t do it too much. I mean, and it’s, and it’s not, it’s not because like, oh, we don’t wanna do the work.

[00:33:17] Josh Blank: It’s because like, this is a really interesting. Actually three different batteries that we ran over, two surveys that each took up a fair amount of space Right. On its own. And we’re not even really asking about like frequency, like how often are you using this? Right. Yeah. Versus something else. So that’s one of the, you got a very rough measure of this last month.

[00:33:33] Josh Blank: This is, yeah. It’s a rough, it’s a, it’s definitely a rough measure, but I mean, I still, I still think, you know, given the way, I mean, you know, my big take away Yeah. For the, for the Republican piece of this is that I think, you know, the republican, you know, sort of media consumption happens, are often talked about in a very sort of fixed.

[00:33:50] Josh Blank: You know, uh, homogenous kind of right way, you know, I mean, you know, the, I mean, look similar to

[00:33:56] Jim Henson: the way we talk about the party, right? I mean, to be, you know, I mean, you know, to be fair to Republicans, I mean, it’s a common democratic trope that this obviously portrays as much more complicated that, you know.

[00:34:05] Jim Henson: You know, Fox gives marching orders and Republicans

[00:34:07] Josh Blank: march, which is, and this, and this data would say, that’s just

[00:34:10] Jim Henson: silly. Right? It’s silly. And, you know, as we’ve seen on, you know, uh, you know, we referenced this, I referenced this briefly earlier as we’ve seen some of the discovery in the Dominion case. Yeah.

[00:34:20] Jim Henson: You know, it’s, again, it’s like that op, you know, we talk about it all the time in terms of political leadership, elites and public opinion. There’s a variation on that is. You know, that’s a dance. Yeah. You know, and sometimes public opinion is kind of leading.

[00:34:34] Josh Blank: Yeah. So, I mean, that’s sort of the takeaway. I think the question that, that raises going forward is, you know, given that there seems to be this clear, uh, dividing line between younger Republicans and older Republicans and kind of the, and their orientation towards media, because again, younger Republicans are just.

[00:34:49] Josh Blank: People living their lives first. Right. And their media consumption habits are gonna be driven by more than just where they get political news. You know, it does make sort of this, you know, very aggressive posture towards, you know, social media and new media formats. It’s gonna be interesting to see how that plays out, kind of over a couple, you know, whether election cycles or legislative cycles or, or what have you.

[00:35:09] Jim Henson: Well, and also I think, you know, I mean, and then attendant to that on this, I mean, how that’s gonna interact with. You know, big unknowns in the social media universe right now. I mean, you know, look, we’re facing this ourselves and for, as we think about our propagation strategies, uhhuh and distribution strategies, I mean, you know, I, I could spin out a couple of hypotheses I might defend, and I know you can and have, but you know, I don’t know what’s gonna happen with Twitter.

[00:35:35] Jim Henson: Oh, no, no way. Right. You know, or, you know, whether any of these other sort of contending platforms or established platforms that are looking to, you know, exploit this. Mm-hmm. I, you know, I don’t think there’s, you know, and, and I don’t, you know, and what I mean, and look, what this underlines in part is that for most voters, At least in terms of their direct habit.

[00:35:56] Jim Henson: Yeah. Doesn’t matter. Yeah, right.

[00:35:59] Josh Blank: Exactly. Right. This is kinda our problem. Well, I’ll say, and you know, and you know, honestly, for the most reliable voters Yeah. It really doesn’t matter. And it

[00:36:04] Jim Henson: doesn’t matter. Yeah. And it doesn’t matter in their, yeah. Now it doesn’t matter in terms of their activities or what they’re doing or you know, their kind of habits.

[00:36:13] Jim Henson: Um, but I think the earlier point I was trying to make is also kind of relevant here, is that, you know, it, it may matter in a more structural way. Yeah. In the sense. You know, look, a lot of reporting and, and, and promotion and campaigning tactics, you know, incorporate Twitter. Yeah. And incorporate social media.

[00:36:36] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, you know, there’s an interest. You know, I mean, I mean, I think there’s the signs of all the tremors and all that, that we’ve seen, you know, are kind of present here. When you look at a lot of the patterns that you’ve talked about here, I mean, Um, you know, one of the surprising things that I think flew in the face of conventional wisdom a little bit was sort of age and Facebook, right?

[00:36:58] Jim Henson: Yeah. Because I think the conventional wisdom is, you know, Facebook is where, you know, my parents or my grandparents go to do social media right now. There’s some, you know, there’s some degree of, of, of support for that in this, but not in some huge way.

[00:37:16] Josh Blank: Right. No, I mean, I mean, well, because the truth is, you know, the younger people are still using Facebook more than the older people because they’re using all social media more than the older people.

[00:37:24] Josh Blank: So there’s an aspect of this that’s like, yes, relative to the other options. Sure. Right. There are more old people here, but the reality is there aren’t as many old people on any of these. You know, platforms as, as our younger people because again, it’s, it, it wasn’t, you know, again, just it wasn’t made for them.

[00:37:39] Josh Blank: It wasn’t

[00:37:40] Jim Henson: by older, you know, we, you know, 65 plus. I mean, cuz those, that middle-aged, older cohort is, you know, yeah. I would

[00:37:47] Josh Blank: say all almost that as well. The dividing line I’m using here and this is made, this is without any ju any judgment at all on actual age. I’m just saying older and younger cuz you’re two categories.

[00:37:55] Josh Blank: You’re 45, 45. You know, when we look at Republicans, you know, I mean just in general, there’s just more use of all social media platforms among the younger, younger cohorts, right? It just so happens that Facebook, you know, early market entrant, you know, all kinds of things is, you know, maintained a certain, you know, pride of place amongst even the older cohorts.

[00:38:12] Josh Blank: But still, that doesn’t mean that a majority of Republicans. Over 45 are using

[00:38:15] Jim Henson: Facebook. Right. And so I think, you know, as we wind it up, I mean one thing for people that probably listen, you know, they’re likely to be hearing this, you know, one of the interesting elements here is, you know, the world that we see, uh, in terms of, and, and we’ve known this, but I think this underlines it.

[00:38:31] Jim Henson: I mean, the world you see is, especially on Twitter right now. Oh yeah. In terms of the text ledge. Look interesting. Tells you some stuff about some people and about, you know, and we have an okay sense of who those people are, but, um, not very indicative of what’s going on out there. Not, not the world that most people are seeing if they’re looking at political

[00:38:53] Josh Blank: news.

[00:38:53] Josh Blank: Do you know, do you know what’s worse than, than the No survey at all would be a survey. It would be like a Twitter. Oh, I’m glad we got a chance to put that. I just wanna throw that out there. I mean, yes, just in terms, I mean,

[00:39:03] Jim Henson: because you’ve wondered why we hate Twitter

[00:39:05] Josh Blank: polls, but it’s a good example. It’s not a representative sample.

[00:39:07] Josh Blank: You know, before we fish up, let’s, I wanna talk about the Democrats a little bit. Yeah, sure. I, sure. I think this is, you know, one other sort of interesting thing, and I, I didn’t really put this in, in the, in the blog post that, that, you know, where we kind of put all this data together in, uh, on the website.

[00:39:19] Josh Blank: But then it was interesting, you can kinda look at this data yourself. You know, democratic millennials were an interesting group in this. Now I want to put a caveat on this, which is to say, You know, we’re talking about a subset of less than half the sample, right? Cause we’re talking about, you know, basically 30 to 44 year old democratic identifiers out of a poll.

[00:39:37] Josh Blank: 1200, right? So, one, I wanna say there’s gonna be an error bar around this. These, these results a pretty substantial one. Yeah. And two, we’ve done this once. So I, I wanna say, you know, I’d wanna do this again before I’d go too deep into this, but one of the other sort of interesting pieces of this was how consistently.

[00:39:53] Josh Blank: Less positive or if you wanna say negative, whatever, you know, kind. And those are different things, but yeah, I’m just saying either one. Democratic millennials were towards a lot of media and social media. Yeah. I thought that was kind of interesting at being a millennial myself and just sort of thinking about, you know, the, because I mean, this is the group that sort of was, I mean, the definition of this group is, is based around social media.

[00:40:12] Josh Blank: Yeah, essentially in the, in the, in the, in the start of social media, and this is the group that actually, you know, again, among, interestingly, again, among Democrats was more likely to sense, sense, have a negative or less positive view of most social media platforms. Where even the older groups were like, no, these, these platforms are fine.

[00:40:26] Josh Blank: Or I have a favorable view. And again, these group, the group in particular, millennials were just showing a little bit of reticence. Now, whether that goes back to. Sort of the 2016 election, how Facebook had sort of, you know, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and his sort of transformation of, right. And again, to the whole point, you know, is this about something specific?

[00:40:46] Josh Blank: Is it more general? But that’s also something that’s kind of interesting to keep an eye on in the sense that, you know, is that sort of an ascendant group in democratic politics? The idea that this group has sort of different communication preferences relative to the rest of the party is kind of an interesting sort of donut hole in the data that, you

[00:41:01] Jim Henson: know, you know, and it, and it, you know, and it.

[00:41:05] Jim Henson: You know, it’s an interesting spin again, with all the caveats you’ve mentioned. It’s an interesting spin on what we think of as. The perpetual difficulty mobilizing young democratic voters.

[00:41:16] Josh Blank: Yeah, that’s a really good way to, yeah, no, for sure. I hadn’t thought about that, but that is, that’s,

[00:41:19] Jim Henson: I mean, it’s like, yeah, you know, may maybe, because you know, you, you, you know, you’re in a hole to begin with when you’re using all these channels you think are great for reaching

[00:41:28] Josh Blank: millennials.

[00:41:29] Josh Blank: Well, and that’s, and that’s, and that’s, I think, you know, if anyone is gonna take anything away from this podcast, this piece, whatever, it’s that, you know, anyone who says like, well, if you wanna reach, fill in the blank X, you gotta be on what? You got, it’s like, you know, take a look at the data. Yeah. It’s one snapshot, but I think, you know, it’s a lot more complicated than that, uh, in most cases.

[00:41:49] Josh Blank: And you know, again, I think like what’s interesting, on the one hand you’ve got, you know, republicans who are actually sort of, You know, kind of trying to kneecap, you know, what is a major communication platform to reaching lots of their voters or, or a series of them generally, depending on how, how the things played out.

[00:42:04] Josh Blank: And then on the Democratic side, you know, you have another one of these issues where it’s kind of like, well, which social media platform? You know? Yeah,

[00:42:11] Jim Henson: yeah. And again, and, and, and clearly I think you’re right about that. So that’s a smart thing to pull out of this, you know, there’s no silver bullet there.

[00:42:17] Jim Henson: No, not at all. Right. And you know, which again, You know, re is, you know, re reminds me of the traditional democratic dilemmas. Right? One more aspect of that. Right. Well, thanks for all the work you did putting that together and, and explaining this to people. Um, we will link to that post in, uh, the post for this, for this, uh, podcast on our website.

[00:42:41] Jim Henson: If you’re getting this at another outlet or you know, you’re going to direct to another social media slash podcast outlet. You’ll find us@texaspolitics.uex.edu. Uh, there’s a section on the front page for polling. Follow it through the blog and you will find the post that Josh did and, you know, lots of links to all the data we’ve talked about.

[00:43:04] Jim Henson: So, With that. Thanks again to Josh for being here. Thank and doing all that work. Thanks again to our excellent production team in the Deb Studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Keep an eye on the legislature. It’s getting, you know, very wild over there. Yeah. Thank you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:43:33] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.