David Jackson observes that politics and entertainment media are becoming increasingly intertwined. Therefore, he asks, should we not anticipate that young Americans' political beliefs are increasingly shaped by what they see and hear through the entertainment media? From this seemingly straightforward reasoning, Jackson proceeds to argue that pop culture has been inappropriately omitted from studies of young-adult political socialization. According to the author (p. 2), theories of political socialization need to include the entertainment media “if for no other reason than the fact that young people are targeted by the entertainment media and spend astronomical amounts of their time engaged with it.” He concludes that the rather modest statistical results of his study nevertheless point to an important role for the entertainment media. According to Jackson (p. 121), “the information presented in the preceding chapters clearly demonstrates that the entertainment media do influence young people in some circumstances. The entertainment media may not be the most important agents, but they do matter.”

This study is more imaginative than most research on political socialization. Relying on original survey data, it uniquely measures young adults' exposure to specific kinds of entertainment media, including music, television, and movies, and analyzes the relationship between exposure and their political beliefs, opinions, and values. After a few introductory chapters, the remaining ones examine the political influence of each particular kind of media, followed by three types of music: rap, rock, and country. Most interesting is Jackson's data about the persuasiveness of pop musicians. Although these data were not intended to directly advance the literature on questions about which elites can persuade, the author finds that young adults are persuaded to take positions that match those of opinions attributed to certain pop musicians.

Nevertheless, Jackson's conclusion that the entertainment media have some secondary socializing role is less than remarkable and also problematic. To start, insufficient theorizing prevents the book from reaching its promise; Jackson does not develop a comprehensive model of the kinds of political attitudes the entertainment media are likely to influence. Nor does he satisfactorily explain why we should suddenly suspect that the entertainment media influences not just young adults' social preferences but also their political beliefs. He briefly notes that politicians are more likely to appear on late-night television, but oddly, the more obvious political repercussions on viewers' political values are not sufficiently measured. Disinterest in politics, for example, which is supposedly rampant among American youth, is not even included in the survey. As a result, the beliefs measured in this study are not unmistakably political or necessarily of great consequence. Even the magnitudes of the discovered entertainment media effects are quite limited. Explicitly measuring political participation and efficacy and then examining their relationship to entertainment media habits would have made a more significant contribution. In general, outwardly obvious factors or relationships were ignored. For example, it was surprising to read a book about how entertainment media shape political views when obvious examples of entertainment media that spoof politics are overlooked, such as The Daily Show on Comedy Central and “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live.

To be sure, Jackson argues that he examines political values because he promotes an expansive view of politics. His definition of political values is based on the relevance of the “culture wars” to political ideology. In fact, he contributes to a lively debate about what political ideology means to younger Americans by arguing that young adults' understanding of political ideology is nearly synonymous with their awareness of cultural lifestyle-value conflicts. Young adults do not appreciate traditional distinctions between liberals and conservatives about the roles of government. Instead, they consider political ideology to reflect how one lines up on the growing number of lifestyle issues, such as religion, abortion, promiscuity, marriage, violence, and others. Jackson, for example, reports that Madonna is perceived to be more liberal than Eddie Vedder, the lead singer for the band Pearl Jam, even though Vedder is more active in traditional politics. The explanation is that Madonna's public sexual hedonism is more widely known to young adults and is considered to be a valid barometer of her political liberalism.

In the end, however, the research is significantly limited by its data and analysis. All but a few empirical tests are restricted to examining the correlations between political and cultural values and specific entertainment mediums, such as Hollywood movies in general or particular television shows, like Seinfeld. More troubling, evidence that the entertainment media affect young adults' political attitudes is quite literal; any statistically significant effect will suffice because Jackson does not anticipate too many specific types of relationships. Empirical investigations subsequently degenerate into fish-finding expeditions. Likewise, he does not consistently examine the same variables within each entertainment medium and does not provide a theoretical justification. To make matters worse, findings often defy intuition, leaving the impression that statistical significance transcends the value of explaining the origins of these relationships. Readers will further be disappointed to find that the author's speculations are examined solely with data acquired from two cross sections of college students in one region of the country. If additional data for the research could not be acquired, at least Jackson should have explained this to be the case. Thus, the specific evidence that he marshals is unlikely to persuade readers of the validity or importance of his thesis.

Perhaps Entertainment and Politics should be viewed as laying a foundation for future scholars to build upon. In particular, future research would hopefully answer the following questions that Jackson's book raises but does not answer: Have the entertainment media always influenced political values or is this truly a more recent phenomenon? If the influence is more recent, is this because politicians are more likely to embrace alternative media outlets and make personal appearances on late-night television shows, or is it because of the media's increasing promotion of political values?