Books by Tawnya J. Adkins Covert

This book assembles what political scientists, sociologists, and communication analysts have learned in almost six decades of research on political socialization (the lifelong process by which we acquire political beliefs). It also explores how people develop political values, attitudes, identities, and behavioral dispositions.

Focusing on the interrelationships among political, economic, and social forces in the construction of prevailing cultural images and gender roles for women in society, the book examines both the process of creating and the resulting content of wartime mobilization messages found in magazine advertising aimed at American women.

Media Bias? addresses the question: To what extent can mainstream news media be characterized as 'conservative' or 'liberal'? The study involves a systematic comparative analysis of the coverage given to major domestic social issues from 1975 to 2000 by two mainstream newsmagazines, Newsweek and Time, and two explicitly partisan publications, the conservative National Review and the liberal Progressive. Working from the idea that some biased accounts of social issues can perform several positive functions for the maintenance and vitality of political democracy, Adkins Covert and Wasburn offer a new methodology for analyzing bias empirically, one that is capable of producing valid and reliable findings. They begin by defining the meaning of 'bias' and discuss possible methods of measuring media bias empirically and systematically. By comparing each publication's coverage on poverty, crime, the environment, and gender-issues in which the line between the conservative and liberal positions are clearly delineated-the authors consider both the positive and negative consequences of media bias and how the bias plays out within a media-conscious democratic society.