It's Not Only Rock and Roll

Abstract

In today's multi-media environment, citizens receive more politically- and socially-charged messages than ever before. Yet our understanding of how media messages shape political attitudes is limited to a narrow set of sources, such as campaign ads and news coverage. Drawing on research in public opinion and political communication, this research examines a highly pervasive form of communication that often has overt political content, yet one that has been largely overlooked by scholars: music. Measured through an original survey (N = 888), findings show that music genre preferences are significant predictors of key political attitudes, even when controlling for other known influences such as demographic factors and partisanship. Additionally, findings show that the mechanism of influence is not through direct exposure to the content of the music (i.e., the lyrics), but rather through the listener's association with the genre and group-level norms.