A model of public support for First Amendment rights

Abstract

A model of public support for First Amendment rights indicates two distinctive paths: One supporting rights involving postmaterial values, reading of newspaper public affairs, knowledge and reasoning; the other rejecting rights through material values of control, watching of television entertainment and expression of negative affect. Perceptions of normative functions of news media as well as media use have important effects on rights decisions but only indirectly through processes of reasoning and expression of affect. Demographics and ideology also have only indirect effects. This well‐fitting structural equation model accounts for 55 percent of the variance in supportive decision‐making about rights.