Politieke kennis en effecten van nieuws

Is the effect of political news on citizens depending on political knowledge? Is the highlyknowledgeable audience immune to the political purport of the news or does the lowly-knowledgeable voter know too little to be affected by the news? On the basis of a multi-wave panel survey and a longitudinal content analysis of newspapers and television news magazines during the 2006 Dutch parliamentary election campaign, this question is answered by comparing news effects on three audiences which mutually differ in level of political knowledge. Results show that political knowledge makes a difference. Citizens with a poor political knowledge are most strongly affected by the news, as mediated cognitively through their perceptions of party performance. Knowledgeable voters with a sporadic exposure to media rely most strongly on predispositions. Every audience is susceptible to the news, especially for attributions of successes and failures.