Emphasis Framing and the Role of Perceived Knowledge: A Survey Experiment

The relationship between emphasis framing and public opinion has received considerable attention in political science, psychology, and mass communication studies. However, what moderating role perceived knowledge plays in influencing emphasis framing remains unsettled. We explore this relationship using a survey‐experiment embedded within a large‐N, nationally representative survey that allows us to test two specific hypotheses. First, we empirically test whether an emphasis frame influences policy support. Second, we test the moderating effect of perceived knowledge. We test the emphasis framing effects of the name given to a “hot‐button” political issue, while controlling for other survey treatments. Furthermore, we evaluate the degree to which perceived knowledge of the issue moderates the relationship between the emphasis frame and support for hydraulic fracturing. We find support both for the role emphasis framing plays and for perceived knowledge as a moderator.     

Who Said What? The Effects of Source Cues in Issue Frames

Drawing on previous research concerning the role that source cues play in political information processing, we examine whether an ideological identity match between the source of a framed message and the respondent moderates framing effects. We test our hypotheses in two experiments concerning attitudes toward a proposed rally by the Ku Klux Klan. In Experiment 1 (N = 274), we test our hypothesis in a simple issue framing experiment. We find that framing effects occur for strong identifiers only when there is a match between the ideology of the speaker and respondent. In Experiment 2 (N = 259), we examine whether matched frames resonate equally well when individuals are simultaneously exposed to competing frames. The results from this experiment provide mixed support for our hypotheses. The results from our studies suggest that identity matching is an important factor to consider in future framing research.     

Propaganda,PSYOP, and Political Marketing: The Hamas Campaign as a Case in Point

There is really no significant difference between the various forms of mass persuasion methods, though the terminology used may vary. Analyzing basic elements of political marketing and psychological operations (PSYOP)—beyond the basics of audience/message/channel—shows a similarity of techniques and procedures. An analysis of the PSYOP campaign of the Islamic organization Hamas against Israel in the past decade demonstrates that there is a striking similarity between political marketing and PSYOP (formerly known as “propaganda”). This is not mere theoretical hairsplitting; it is an important understanding that democracies should pay careful attention to when they contemplate their survival strategies.     

Do Online Advertisements Increase Political Candidates’ Name Recognition or Favorability? Evidence from Randomized Field Experiments

Internet advertisements are an increasingly common form of mass communication and present fresh opportunities for understanding enduring questions about political persuasion. However, the effects of online ads on electoral choice have received little scholarly attention. We develop a new field experimental approach for assessing the effects of online advertisements and deploy it in two studies. In each study, candidates for legislative office targeted randomly selected segments of their constituencies for a high volume of Facebook advertising. Recall of the ads, candidate name recognition, and candidate evaluations were measured with ostensibly unrelated telephone surveys after weeklong advertising campaigns. Voters randomly exposed to the ads were in some cases more likely to recall them but no more likely to recognize or positively evaluate the candidates they depicted. From a theoretical standpoint, these findings suggest that even frequent exposure to advertising messages may be insufficient to impart new information or change attitudes.     

Long-term income trajectories and the evolution of political attitudes

Income and political attitudes are powerfully correlated in cross-sectional data, yet research based on panel data finds at most a weak correlation. In this paper, we examine this puzzling pattern by exploring the long-term evolution of attitudes over the life cycle. We evaluate the predictions of five different explanations on the relationship between attitudes and income experiences. These explanations focus on, respectively: socialization, anticipation, myopic self-interest, learning and status maximization. We employ accelerated longitudinal design models using data on core political values that span up to sixteen years from the British Household Panel Survey. Our findings reconcile the mixed evidence in the literature: the correlation between income and political attitudes, strong in cross-sectional studies but weak in short panel studies, emerges because attitudes crystallize – slowly but systematically – as income evolves over the life cycle. This pattern is most consistent with the learning explanation.     

European Union?

This article provides an overview of the study of the European Union since the doldrums of the 1970s. We focus on three debates that have helped to shape the field. Has European integration centralised state control or is European integration part of a process of dispersion of authority? What is the role of identity in framing preferences over European integration? And, finally, is European integration part of a new political cleavage? We observe that the European Union is a moving target. It has a habit of throwing up new and unexpected facts which wrong-foot extant theories. We have no grounds for believing that this will not continue.     

How Predictive Appeals Affect Policy Opinions

When political actors debate the merits of a public policy, they often focus on the consequences of a bill or legislative proposal, with supporters and opponents making stark but contradictory predictions about the future. Building upon the framing literature, I examine how rhetoric about a policy's consequences influences public opinion. I show that predictive appeals work largely by altering people's beliefs about the impact of a policy. Following in the tradition of recent framing research, this article also examines how opinions are influenced when people are exposed to opposing predictions. The analysis focuses on two strategies that are common in real-world debates—the direct rebuttal (in which an initial appeal is challenged by a statement making the opposite prediction) and the alternate frame (which counters an initial appeal by shifting the focus to some other consequence). There are important differences in the effectiveness of these two strategies—a finding that has implications for the study of competitive framing and the policymaking process more generally.     

Fear as a Disposition and an Emotional State: A Genetic and Environmental Approach to Out‐Group Political Preferences

Fear is a pervasive aspect of political life and is often explored as a transient emotional state manipulated by events or exploited by elites for political purposes. The psychological and psychiatric literatures, however, have also established fear as a genetically informed trait, and people differ in their underlying fear dispositions. Here we propose these differences hold important implications for political preferences, particularly toward out‐groups. Using a large sample of related individuals, we find that individuals with a higher degree of social fear have more negative out‐group opinions, which, in this study, manifest as anti‐immigration and prosegregation attitudes. We decompose the covariation between social fear and attitudes and find the principal pathway by which the two are related is through a shared genetic foundation. Our findings present a novel mechanism explicating how fear manifests as out‐group attitudes and accounts for some portion of the genetic influences on political attitudes.     

The relationship between political attitudes and political participation: Evidence from monozygotic twins in the United States,Sweden, Germany,and Denmark

Many studies have shown that political efficacy, interest in politics, and political knowledge are strongly related to political participation. In most analyses, these variables are described as having a causal effect on participation. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the relationship between political attitudes and participation is confounded by familial factors. By using the discordant twin design, which relates within-pair differences in political attitudes to within-pair differences in political participation, we are able to examine the relationship net of confounding factors rooted in genes and the early rearing environment. Using four samples of monozygotic twins from the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, we find that the relationship between political attitudes and political participation is confounded to a large extent. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on political attitudes and political participation given the longstanding idea that attitudes cause political participation. Our findings also have practical implications for those interested in elevating levels of political participation. In addition, they have important implications for how scholars theorize about, model, and examine political participation in the future.     

The Persistent Connection Between Language-of-Interview and Latino Political Opinion

Since the advent of public opinion polling, scholars have extensively documented the relationship between survey response and interviewer characteristics, including race, ethnicity, and gender. This paper extends this literature to the domain of language-of-interview, with a focus on Latino political opinion. We ascertain whether, and to what degree, Latinos’ reported political attitudes vary by the language they interview in. Using several political surveys, including the 1989–1990 Latino National Political Survey and the 2006 Latino National Survey, we unearth two key patterns. First, language-of-interview produces substantively important differences of opinion between English and Spanish interviewees. This pattern is not isolated to attitudes that directly or indirectly involve Latinos (e.g., immigration policy, language policy). Indeed, it emerges even in the reporting of political facts. Second, the association between Latino opinion and language-of-interview persists even after statistically controlling for, among other things, individual differences in education, national origin, citizenship status, and generational status. Together, these results suggest that a fuller understanding of the contours of Latino public opinion can benefit by acknowledging the influence of language-of-interview.     

Source Strategies and Media Audiences

ABSTRACT

This article argues for a particular approach to the relationship between the production and reception of mass media, using as a key the theory of targeting and its application in elements of the political marketing mix: media relations and news management. In particular, two case studies show that in this context very fine-tuned targeting is normal and that the details of conjuncture are crucial. The implications of this form of targeting for the understanding of media audiences are spelt out through a critique of certain approaches to the audience: audience measurement, agenda-setting and framing theory, ‘active audience’ theories, and targeting as practised in media buying and programming. On the basis of these case studies and critiques, it suggests that this category of targeted audiences has characteristics whose relevance to analysis of the production/reception relationship has gone unrecognised, and that to this extent the theory of this relationship needs to be re-cast.     

The consequences of political disagreement in interpersonal communication: New insights from a comparative perspective

Political disagreement in interpersonal communication increases attitudinal ambivalence and can depress voter turnout. These effects seem to be driven by a wish to avoid social controversy rather than informational gains from encountering other opinions. This article shows that political disagreement in interpersonal communication increases the difficulty of deciding for which party to vote. Moreover, this effect is a result of social disapproval of one's party preference, while political expertise in interpersonal communication has no effect. For voter turnout, no direct effect of social disapproval of one's party preference is found. However, disapproval has an indirect influence on turnout via difficulty of vote choice. In sum, both political attitudes and political behaviour are affected by social pressures. Students of political attitudes and behaviour should try to include interpersonal discussion in their models in greater detail than is common practice today.     

The partisan politics of gold: Switzerland and the sale of gold

This paper explores the relative strength of social, economic and political factors in determining public attitudes towards the sale of a portion of Switzerland's gold reserves and how the money realised from these sales should be used. Partisan political allegiance and generational economic interest are the major factors in determining attitudes towards gold sales in Switzerland in the early 2000s. Cantons and individuals that had supported the Swiss People's Party were more inclined to support its Gold Initiative than supporters of the Swiss Social Democratic Party and other parties of the left which actively campaigned against it. This pattern suggests that, contrary to the suggestions of previous studies, Swiss political parties can play a substantial role in framing political options in referendum campaigns.     

Divergent framing: The public debate on migration in the Dutch parliament and media, 1995–2004

In this article we reconstruct how the issues of migration and integration have been framed in the Dutch public debate over the last decade. We examine the patterns in both the parliamentary arena and the media and look at similarities and differences between them. On the basis of two contradictory theories, we formulate hypotheses about overlap and differences between the two arenas and diversity within them. Our results reveal incongruence in framing between them. After 9/11, however, the framing in which Islam is perceived as a threat to Western society becomes dominant in both arenas. Furthermore, we do not find any proof of the idea that the media act as a civic forum, with a high diversity of framing. Framing in parliament, instead, is far more diverse. In contrast to the hegemonic framing in the media, the Islam-as-threat frame is actively contested in the political realm.     

The Influence of Religious–Political Sophistication on U.S. Public Opinion

Scholarly accounts of elite–mass communication often suggest that political sophistication is a necessary condition for adopting the attitudes of partisan elites. Some have also suggested that political knowledge promotes religious–political issue constraint among religious identifiers. This paper contributes to the political sophistication literature by piloting and testing a new measure, religious–political sophistication (RPS), assessing knowledge of church teaching on particular political issues. Using original measures launched on the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I show that for evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics, RPS (in conjunction with frequent church attendance) depresses support for abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Moreover, I argue that assessing RPS this way is not fatally contaminated by unsophisticated respondents interpolating that their clergy must share their political positions. Results suggest religion-and-politics scholars should adopt RPS measures to gain a greater understanding of the unique sources of political communication upon which religious identifiers draw.     

The Relationship between Genes,Psychological Traits,and Political Participation

Recent research demonstrates that a wide range of political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors can be explained in part by genetic variation. However, these studies have not yet identified the mechanisms that generate such a relationship. Some scholars have speculated that psychological traits mediate the relationship between genes and political participation, but so far there have been no empirical tests. Here we focus on the role of three psychological traits that are believed to influence political participation: cognitive ability, personal control, and extraversion. Utilizing a unique sample of more than 2,000 Swedish twin pairs, we show that a common genetic factor can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and acts of political participation, as well as predispositions related to participation. While our analysis is not a definitive test, our results suggest an upper bound for a proposed mediation relationship between genes, psychological traits, and political participation.     

War over framing: base politics in South Korea

When do anti-base movements manage to influence policy, and when do they fail to do so? Base scholars have largely overlooked what I argue is a significant factor that can shape public and government response to anti-base movements: political opportunities associate with framing efforts by key actors involved. Based on two cases of anti-base movements in South Korea, I show how framing battles between activists and media shape political opportunities afforded to anti-base movements and can ultimately influence movement success.     

The Press and Its Influence on British Political Attitudes under New Labour

To explore the impact of the press in Britain during the first New Labour administration, we used aggregate-level analysis to assess the relationship between the economic content of press and changes in the public's political and economic attitudes. We examine the effects on attitudes of economic coverage in the broadsheets, 'black top' and tabloid newspapers. The results suggest that the broadsheets and 'black tops' do exert an influence on voters' views, whereas the tabloids do not. The impact is, however, not global, but confined to particular segments of the population. The modest effects we have charted, nevertheless have important cumulative political significance in the medium- to long-term, and they put press influence into sharper and more realistic perspective than many current accounts. Methodologically our results suggest the need for further work to focus on press effects on specific groups of voters.     

What’s Love Got To Do With It?: Emotion,Rationality, and Framing LGBT Rights

Recent years have a seen a dramatic and rapid shift in attitudes about same-sex marriage—quite possibly one of the largest shifts in public opinion ever recorded. Another shift has occurred regarding the framing of persuasive appeals by gay rights advocacy organizations. Earlier campaigns focused on rationality by highlighting the idea of equal rights for Lesbian Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender individuals; more recent campaigns have focused on love and commitment. Is one type of framing more effective than the other? Are attitudes about marriage equality more likely to shift when arguments are framed rationally or when they are framed emotionally? We conducted a series of randomized experiments to explore these questions. We find that rights are more effective in the abstract but that videos highlighting same-sex couples in loving and committed relationships are more effective than videos focused on rights and equality.