[2] Alongside his wife, sociologist Yasemin Besen–Cassino, they co-authored Consuming Politics: Jon Stewart, Branding, and the Youth Vote in America in 2009 through the Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
The book, which is based during the 2008 United States presidential election, studied how modern youth viewed politics differently than their ancestors.
Through hundreds of in-depth interviews and telephone surveys, they concluded that voting-aged youth in 2008 saw politics "in the same way that they see consumer goods and brands.
[4] The following year, Cassino and his research team randomly assessed 1,185 American citizens about what news sources they had watched in the past week and then asked them questions about current events.
They found that those who watched Fox News and MSNBC were less likely to state the correct answer compared to listeners of NPR and Sunday morning political talk shows.