The (In)stability of Voters’ Perceptions of Competence and Associative Issue Ownership: The Role of Media Campaign Coverage

Recent work has suggested that issue ownership has a competence and an associative dimension and that both dimensions are less stable than originally assumed. This study is the first attempt to directly compare the stability and change of voters’ perceptions on both dimensions. Using data from the 2015 Swiss Election Study, linking data from a combined panel/rolling cross-section survey with an extensive media analysis, this study finds that voters are more likely to maintain their issue ownership perceptions if the party they identify as the issue owner before the campaign receives a higher share of media campaign coverage. This stabilizing effect is conditional on the importance of the issue for the voter, and it is stronger for voters’ competence evaluations than for their party-issue associations, which proved to be more stable. Thus, the results confirm the literature’s previously untested assumption that voters’ associative ownership perceptions are more stable than their competence ownership evaluations.     

Issue Ownership Stability and Change: How Political Parties Claim and Maintain Issues Through Media Appearances

Drawing on a large-scale online experiment embedded in an electoral survey in Belgium, this study tests whether issue ownership is, rather than a stable condition, a dynamic process that can be manipulated by an experimental stimulus. Five thousand subjects were confronted with an embedded fake TV-news item in which the five leaders of the main Belgian parties offered their parties' stance on six issues. We find that issue ownership is a dynamic process and that news exposure leads to significant shifts in issue ownership. Especially on issues that are not owned by any party, a communicative performance by the party leader can make a difference. Regarding preowned issues, the effect is conditional; it depends on the balance of the news item.     

Priming Issues,Party Visibility,and Party Evaluations: The Impact on Vote Switching

Voter volatility has become a hallmark of Western democracies in the past three decades. At the same time short-term factors—such as the media’s coverage of issues, parties, and candidates during an election campaign—have become more important for voters’ decisions. While previous research did look at how campaign news in general affects electoral volatility in general, it has omitted to explicitly test the mechanisms underlying these effects. Building on theories of agenda setting, (affective) priming, and issue ownership, the current study aims to explain why certain news aspects lead voters to switch their vote choice. We theorize it is the visibility of a party, the evaluation of a party, and the attention for issues owned by a party that primes voters to switch to a certain party. We use national panel survey data (N = 765) and link this to an extensive content analysis of campaign news on television and in newspapers in the run up to the 2012 Dutch national elections. The results show that issue news leads to vote change in the direction of the party that owns the issue. Even stronger is the effect of party visibility on vote switching. Our results, however, find the strongest support for the effect of party evaluations on vote change: More favorable news about a party increases switching to that party.     

Issue Ownership,Issue Positions,and Candidate Assessment

I argue that citizens alter their views of candidates’ ideological and issue positions in response to two kinds of information cues: issue ownership and issue position cues. Issue ownership cues associate a candidate with the party that owns the issue discussed by a candidate. Issue position cues associate a candidate with the party that is linked to the position that the candidate discusses. These cues can either lead citizens to view the candidate as more or less extreme—both in terms of ideological and issue position assessments—than that candidate’s party. When both types of cues are present, citizens should ignore the issue ownership cues in favor of the easier-to-process issue position cues. Evidence from a survey experiment embedded in the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study provides strong support for this theory and suggests that issue ownership can convey positional information.     

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence.     

Agenda-Setting and Priming in Prime Time Television: Crime Dramas as Political Cues

The effects of agenda-setting and priming are well established in regard to the news media. Considerably less attention has been paid to these phenomena in entertainment media, in spite of the fact that entertainment media enjoy larger audiences than do news media and often address political topics. This article argues that the psychological mechanism hypothesized to lead to agenda-setting and priming effectsthat is, changes in construct accessibilityapplies as equally to entertainment media as it does to news media. Moreover, we contend that the frequency, consistency, and duration of entertainment media treatments of political issues encourage chronic accessibility of those issues. We test these hypotheses looking at television crime dramas as a source of political information. Using data from two controlled laboratory experiments and the 1995 National Election Study Pilot Study, we demonstrate that viewing crime dramas significantly increases concerns about crime and that these concerns significantly affect viewers' opinions of the president. The NES Pilot Study data suggest that these effects are restricted to frequent viewers of crime dramas, supporting a chronic accessibility model of agenda-setting and priming. These findings extend our growing understanding of how non-news sources of political information contribute to the construction of political attitudes.     

Partisan Bias in Message Selection: Media Gatekeeping of Party Press Releases

Parties try to shape media coverage in ways that are favorable to them, but what determines whether media outlets pick up and report on party messages? Based on content analyses of 1,496 party press releases and 6,512 media reports from the 2013 Austrian parliamentary election campaign, we show that media coverage of individual party messages is influenced not just by news factors, but also by partisan bias. The media are therefore more likely to report on messages from parties their readers favor. Importantly, this effect is greater rather than weaker when these messages have high news value. These findings have important implications for understanding the media’s role in elections and representative democracies in general.     

Electoral competition and democratic decline in Nicaragua: uncovering an electorally viable platform for the right

Between the 1980s and 2006 Nicaragua was a competitive democracy where parties of the left and right won national presidential elections and relinquished power when their terms ended. More recently the quality of Nicaragua’s democracy has deteriorated. This change is due partly to autocratic behaviour by the elected leftist president, Daniel Ortega. But democratic decline is also the result of factional divisions and vague, outmoded policy commitments on the right that have crippled its electoral competitiveness, enabling Ortega’s behaviour. Utilizing an experimental research design, this article identifies two modernized policy platforms that could significantly broaden rightist electoral support in presidential campaigns, aiding democratic resurgence in Nicaragua. At a point when opposition parties are struggling to retain strength and coherence in many other democracies, the study presents a research strategy that could help clarify the ways such parties might reinvigorate their electoral competitiveness.     

Media and subnational democracy: the case of Bahia,Brazil

It is a well-known fact that the transition to and consolidation of democracy in Latin America have been problematic, especially at the subnational level. It is also commonplace to equate an independent media system with a strong democracy. While each of these fields has witnessed important developments in the last decade or so, there have been sparse attempts to draw the theoretical links between them. In this article, I argue that there are important insights to be gained from such an endeavour. Bahia, a state in north-eastern Brazil, is an ideal case study to bring these perspectives together. This study offers fresh insights on state–society relations at the subnational level and on the contemporary interaction between the public and the private spheres in Latin America. Last but not least, it will also provide a better grasp on the challenges democratization faces at the subnational level and the role of the media in them.     

The Changing Nature of Political Debate Consumption: Social Media,Multitasking, and Knowledge Acquisition

This study examines the influence of debate viewing-social media multitasking on campaign knowledge during the 2012 presidential election. Results from three waves of a national cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults conducted during and after the 2012 presidential election suggest that social networking site (SNS) use overall correlates with increased knowledge of campaign issues and facts above and beyond the use of other sources of news media. In addition, watching a debate with or without simultaneous social media engagement is better for knowledge generation than not viewing a debate at all, but the effect of debate viewing is dulled when simultaneously engaging in social media multitasking. The debate viewing-social media multitasking effect is moderated by candidate preference, with differential learning occurring largely for knowledge that is favorable to one’s preferred candidate.     

Issue Frame Ownership: The Partisan Roots of Campaign Rhetoric

Campaigns can shape vote choice decisions by effectively framing issues for voters. I examine how campaigns do this by studying the content of issues appeals in television advertisements from U.S. House and Senate candidates. The use of issue frames is partisan. The two parties develop their own distinct rhetorical strategies on particular issues, showing that each party owns particular issue frames. In addition, campaign messages are sensitive to the partisanship of voters. Campaigns are more likely to use conservative frames in Republican-leaning districts and liberal frames in Democratic-leaning districts. Models of campaign strategy should incorporate not just what issues are discussed, but also the rhetorical choices campaigns make to address these issues.     

媒体融合背景下海外华文媒体的开拓与创新——以马来西亚星洲媒体集团为例

本文以马来西亚星洲媒体集团为例,论述了在媒体融合的背景下,海外华文媒体所面对的冲击以及所作出的应对措施。文章指出,海外华文媒体可借鉴星洲媒体集团成功实现媒体融合的经验,紧紧抓住新媒体迅速发展的契机,加快朝媒体融合的方向发展,以开拓新的生存空间,继续承传中华文化。     

The Effects of Issue Salience,Elite Influence,and Policy Content on Public Opinion

When do citizens rely on party cues, and when do they incorporate policy-relevant information into their political attitudes? Recent research suggests that members of the public, when they possess some policy-relevant information, use that information as much as they use party cues when forming political attitudes. We aim to advance this research by specifying conditions that motivate people to use content over cues and vice versa. Specifically, we believe that increased issue salience motivates people to go beyond heuristics and engage in the systematic processing of policy-relevant information. Using data from a survey experiment that isolates the effects of policy-relevant information, party cues, and issue salience, we find that people are more likely to incorporate policy-relevant information when thinking about hydraulic fracturing (fracking), a relatively high-salience issue. When thinking about storm-water management, a relatively low-salience issue, people are more likely to rely on party cues.     

The Friendly Media Phenomenon: A Cross-National Analysis of Cross-Cutting Exposure

We hypothesize that in the real world, as opposed to the lab, the norm is for people to experience friendly media that favor their political predispositions when political favoritism is perceived at all. For this reason, media are generally limited in their ability to create cross-cutting exposure. We test this hypothesis using representative survey data drawn from 11 different countries with varying media systems. We further hypothesize that television will contribute more to cross-cutting exposure than newspapers. Finally, and most importantly, we test the hypothesis that the more the structure of a country's media system parallels that of its political parties, the more that country's population will be dominated by exposure to like-minded views via mass media. We find confirmation for all 3 of these hypotheses and discuss their implications for the role of mass media in providing exposure to cross-cutting political perspectives.     

内战域内蔓延的影响条件：选举支持与地理环境

理解内战中武装冲突波及范围的影响因素对当事国和国际冲突管理机制都具有重要意义。既有研究普遍认为,选举事件和地理环境要素可能对国内冲突发生和发展过程起显著作用,但关于这些因素如何作用于内战的域内蔓延路径仍存在深入讨论的空间。不同于现有文献的常见解释,通过讨论选举中地方投票支持情况和社会经济地理环境对各地武装冲突爆发的作用,并以斯里兰卡内战案例中的次国家行政单元为经验观察对象,在同一分析框架内考察两类条件在内战蔓延过程中的实际影响。实证研究发现,不同单元之间的武装冲突风险存在空间集聚效应;相比于自然地理条件,反映社会经济地理条件的城乡距离更加显著地影响本地冲突风险;较短的城乡距离在增加当地冲突风险的同时也会增加临近单元的冲突风险;地方对中央政府的选举支持在调节武装冲突发生和风险蔓延方面的作用并不稳健。     

Palestinian Social Media and Lone-Wolf Attacks: Subculture,Legitimization, and Epidemic

ABSTRACT

This article examines the impact of social media on the wave of Palestinian lone-wolf attacks against Israelis from October 2015 through September 2016. My principal argument is that social media played an important role in shaping the identity, perceptions, and behavioral patterns of dozens of assailants, and was key in creating the dynamic that ultimately characterized both the spreading of the idea of lone-wolf attacks and its execution. Social media reflected reality on the ground while simultaneously nourishing, amplifying, and escalating the situation by providing a platform for the emergence of new sources of authority, including an online subculture with distinct codes and pseudo-ritual patterns to support assailants. Social media also contributed substantially to shaping the contagious character of the attacks, and their capacity to persist without direct organizational guidance, following a typical epidemiological dynamic of spread, containment, and preservation.     

越南华文媒体:历史、现状与前景

越南华文报纸经历了华人自办、华人自办和官办同时存在和完全官办3个时期。目前越南有3家华文媒体：《西贡解放日报》（华文版）、《越共电子报》中文版和《平阳日报》中文电子版．由于种种原因，越南华文媒体的发展空间有限。     

拉美中产阶级政党的困境:以墨西哥国家行动党为例

中产阶级政党的发展与其阶级基础和政治立场等因素有关。拉美中产阶级政党在进口替代工业化进程中崭露头角,但在近年来普遍面临发展困境。本文以墨西哥国家行动党为案例探讨这种困境的成因,对该党内部派系斗争、社会基础等因素进行历史分析。作为持中右立场的中产阶级政党,墨西哥国家行动党长期面临两大制约。一是来自右翼势力的渗透,导致该党政治定位出现摇摆,从中间立场向右翼摆动,党内长期分裂,党政不和。二是狭隘的阶级基础所造成的地域局限性。国家行动党的主要力量集中在中小企业发达的北部地区,难以成长为全国性大党和国会中的多数党。在这两种制约因素的共同作用下,国家行动党选举竞争力不强、执政能力低下,始终无法建立广泛而稳定的群众基础,陷入发展困境。结合阿根廷激进公民联盟和哥斯达黎加民族解放党的类似情况,本文认为拉美国家中产阶级政党普遍面临相似的困境。能否突破这些结构性制约,是拉美中产阶级政党发展面临的挑战。     

Media coverage of the economy and aggregate economic evaluations: Uncovering evidence of indirect media effects

Goidel, Robert K. & Langley, Ronald E. (1995). Media coverage of the economy and aggregate economic evaluations: Uncovering evidence of indirect media effects. Political Research Quarterly, 48, 313–328.