ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes research on the determinants of a politically informed citizenry, some of which relate to the characteristics of an individual and some of which relate to contextual factors. The conventional understanding of political knowledge is that it consists of facts about politics stored in memory. The media environment has a powerful influence on whether people become informed about politics. The motivation–opportunity–ability framework is useful for understanding how people navigate the information landscape, and it also sheds light on the problem of misinformation. In addition to the opportunity pathway, individual-level motivation is a crucial factor in understanding the prevalence of misinformation. One important environmental–level factor is the degree of political competition in a state or district. The presence of the confirmation and disconfirmation biases can help account for a puzzling feature of public opinion—namely, that opposing partisans often interpret the same, ostensibly neutral, information in different ways.
