ABSTRACT
Drawing on the theory of social construction of reality, we conceive political culture as the process and outcomes of interactions among three types of political reality: the objective reality, the subjective reality, and the symbolic reality (Adoni and Mane 1984). The objective reality is the real world out there, manifested by the occurrence of events with political significance (e.g., election, legislation, protest, war, etc.). The subjective reality is what the public learns, interprets, and remembers from the objective political reality. As the modern society becomes increasingly complex and remote from people’s direct experience and observations, the objective reality is most often “out of sight, out of reach, out of touch” (Lippman 1922). Therefore, people become increasingly dependent on the mass media to learn about the world outside (Ball-Rokeach and DeFluer 1976). Mass media and other communication channels form the symbolic reality that mediates between the objective reality in the outside world and the subjective reality in people’s minds (Gamson, Croteau, Hoynes, and Sasson 1992). As scholars of social construction of reality have argued, most, if not all, our knowledge of the objective reality is socially constructed (Berger and Luckmann 1966; Boulding 1969; Searle 1995). That is, rather than a mirror reflection of the objective reality, the subjective reality in people’s minds is primarily formed and altered by the symbolic reality (see Figure 7.1). Political Culture as the Process and Outcomes of Social Construction of Reality https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315500492/68ebfc67-4344-46f9-8949-e077dde661ad/content/fig7_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
