Comparing the Effects of Newspaper, TV News, and the Internet News on the Evaluation of a Major Political Candidate: Latent Growth Modeling with Longitudinal Panel Data from the 2007 Presidential Campaign in South Korea

The present article argues that the reasons of the theoretical predicaments regarding the relationship between news media and public opinions are: (a) news media might not be a single entity-the different types of news media (newspaper, TV news, and the Internet news) might have different effects on political behaviors; and (b) while effects of media on political behaviors should be probed through longitudinal data, most studies so far have exclusively relied on cross-sectional single wave data. Through the latent growth modeling with a set of longitudinal data, the present study revealed that TV news use (the increase rates as well as the amount of use) had positive influences on the evaluation of the candidate's morality. In contrast, the Internet news use (the increase rates as well as the amount of use) showed negative effects.