Selective exposure to partisan media: Moderating factors in evaluations of the president

The conditions in which moderating factors – media trust, mediabias, and political ideology – increase or limit the approval ratings of a politician in a partisan media environment were investigated using data obtained from the 2010 Pew survey. The findings show that media trust and media bias intensify negative presidential evaluations among consumers of conservative news programs, whereas these factors do not influence presidential approval among consumers of liberal news programs. The findings also reveal that conservatives tend to choose to be exposed to news messages that are congenial to their ideological orientations, while liberals select a more balanced diet of news messages. This study proposes that moderating factors have different effects on conservative and liberal news consumers.     

“党派实在论”的结构诠释学

如果政治宣传,意识形态以及党派性等概念真的从这些概念本身的内涵来界定自身,那么,在追逐某个政治议程时,这些概念由于存在明显的偏见,从而会导致自相驳斥的结果。因此,毫不奇怪,这些沟通类型的显明特征之一就是宣称它们在精准和公平地再现实在,并且否认存在政治偏见的丑恶内涵。笔者称这种类型为“党派实在论”,即被政治驱动的媒体演出,它们象征性地把自己呈现为是在实在论类型下运作的。本文的问题是,党派性媒体报导是如何在追逐自身的政治议程的同时创造出一种中立且无偏见的实在论表象的。为此,本文借用文化社会学的结构诠释学方法,以“奥莱利实情”这档非常流行的美国电视新闻节目作为党派实在论的分析案例。本文认为,“奥莱利实情”是通过如下几个范畴来生产一种用以诠释新闻的“党派实在论”框架的：主持人形象建构、围绕二元对立符码形成复杂的潜在意义结构,以及一套精致奥妙的修辞技巧。虽然这档节目自诩是一扇投射现实的简单窗户,但事实上,它启用一套精妙的党派文化系统来确证观众通过这扇明显中立的窗户所看到的东西能够支持节目制作人的政治利益。为了让新闻呈现在一定程度上暗合各种党派结论但又看起来依然是实在论,而非充斥着偏见,节目的每个情节和片段都依据一个意义结构来搭建问题。这个意义结构虽然具有强烈的党派结论导向性,但又能给人一种对各方观点都进行过理性思考的外表。本文认为,这种针对意义结构的深度分析对于理解作为政治沟通类型的“党派实在论”具有重要意义。     

An Experimental Test of the Effects of Fictional Framing on Attitudes*

Objectives. Most studies of media effects in political communication focus on news media. A smaller body of work extends theories of news media effects to fictional entertainment media. Just as news media engage in priming and agenda setting, these studies suggest that fictional media do as well. In this study, we deal with fictional media's framing of issues. No research has sought to test the effects of framing in explicitly fictional media on political opinions. We develop the outlines of a theory we call “fictional framing” and test it in an experiment. Methods. Participants in our treatment group watched the film Cider House Rules. The movie frames the issue of abortion in the case of incest in a pro‐choice way, and frames morality in terms of following one's own conscience. Results. The film influenced opinions in ways consistent with the framing of these issues. Conclusions. Since abortion opinions and moral values tend to be entrenched, we consider this a strong first test of the effects of fictional framing.     

Garbage‐can Policy‐making Meets Neo‐liberal Ideology: Twenty Five Years of Redundant Reform of the English National Health Service

The garbage‐can theory of decision‐making (Cohen et al. 1972), has been adapted into a perspective on policy‐making, with adaptations of the approach placing notable emphasis upon the health sector (Kingdon 2006; Paton 2006). This article creates an adapted ‘garbage‐can’ framework to help explain each stage of the reform of the English National Health Service (NHS) over the last 25 years. The emergence of the key idea and resultant policy at each stage of reform of the English NHS has been arational and indeed sometimes irrational. Policy has reflected advocacy by policy‐salesmen (Kingdon 2002), proffering ‘solutions’ to ill‐defined problems and answers to unasked questions, and politicians' short‐termist responses at each decision‐point. Yet the garbage‐can alone is not enough: if arationality rules in policy‐making day to day, this does not mean that there is not an overall ideological context, trend or bias in reform. The article also posits that ‘market reform’ has derived from the ideological hegemony of a naive anti‐statism (hostility to a misleadingly defined and often mythological ‘centralist state’) in public services and enthusiasm for market competition rather than any evidence‐based application of pro‐market ideas to health policy. A question arises: how are these two approaches (short‐term arationality and longer‐term ideological bias) combined in explanation of how policy over time is biased in a particular direction while seemingly arbitrary and directionless at each messy decision‐point. The article attempts to combine the insights of a garbage‐can approach with wider explanations of ideological hegemony.     

Structured Partisan Competition: A Vote Shares Model of Party Alignments and Realignments*

Objective. This study develops and tests an aggregate “vote shares” model of party alignments and realignments, building a theoretical framework around “structured political composition” (Rabinowitz, Gurian, and Macdonald, 1984, p. 6). The vote shares model conceptualizes party alignments as latent class constructs, or factors, and changes in these latent class constructs as party realignments. Methods. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model with bias corrected bootstrap estimates and standard errors is used where the cases are counties and the variables are aggregate election outcomes. The data come from Kansas from 1900 to 2010. Results. Comparing the findings of the vote‐shares approach to those of Nardulli (2005) and Sundquist (1983) suggests that the vote shares model provides a greater depth of understanding and a more accurate portrait of the timing of realignments and the partisan bias of new alignments in Kansas. The vote shares model also overcomes the major problem of false positives associated with landslide elections, a problem that plagued most previous aggregate voting models. Conclusion. The vote‐shares model of party alignments and realignments provides a viable alternative for analyzing historic and current election returns where the votes are aggregated by a geographically defined government jurisdiction (parish, county, city, or district).     

The Politics of Expertise in Congress and the News Media

Objective. Experts are increasingly active in U.S. policymaking, but what accounts for their varied visibility is unclear. The agenda-setting and media studies literature suggest that experts are generally neutral, distant actors in policymaking whose products are made visible by Congress and the news media when helpful. This study examines how and when the intentional efforts of experts can also affect their relative visibility and whether a proliferation of expert organizations, as has occurred in American policymaking in recent decades, is correctly viewed as creating conditions for more rational, thoughtful decisionmaking, as some existing scholarship might suggest. Methods. I consider the conveyance of expertise among a sample of 66 public policy think tanks in congressional testimony and three national newspapers between 1991 and 1995. In a multivariate analysis, I evaluate what accounts for the quantity of congressional and media visibility. I then use a content analysis to examine differences in the nature of visibility received by think tanks. Results. Washington-based think tanks and think tanks of no identifiable ideology have some advantage in gaining congressional and media visibility overall. Think tanks deemed credible receive more, and more substantive, visibility than those that are ideological and marketing-oriented. Conclusions. Cumulatively, my findings suggest that more credible, staid, not identifiably ideological expert organizations are slightly favored by congressional staff members and journalists to provide guidance on issues and news stories. More ideological and marketing-oriented sources of expertise, by contrast, are more relied upon to build support for ideas, either in staged congressional hearings or on the editorial pages of newspapers. Expert organizations can affect their relative visibility; the evidence is mixed on whether their proliferation makes policymaking and decisionmaking better informed or more rational or thoughtful.     

Asian‐Pacific‐American Partisanship: Dynamics of Partisan and Nonpartisan Identities*

Objectives. This article seeks to understand the development of partisanship among Asian Americans since a significant portion do not choose either major party affiliation, but select an independent or a truly nonpartisan status. With a rapidly growing Asian‐American population, examining its pattern for both partisan and nonpartisan identification has been ignored. This research took a developmental process in which acquisition of any partisan affiliation/identification is a critical juncture for Asian‐American political incorporation. Therefore, considering contributing factors that affect the acquisition of any partisan affiliation as a precursor to specific Asian‐American partisan affiliation/behaviors is our direction. Methods. Using a logistical regression model and data from the Pilot National Asian American Political Survey, a category of variables, including sociodemographic, Asian‐American subgroup status, U.S. political orientations and attitudes, and experiences with U.S. society, are used to understand a partisan and nonpartisan affiliation. Results. This study reveals that aspects of socioeconomic status, political attitudes, and immigrant experiences are important, in varying degrees (especially Asian subgroup status) to understand partisan acquisition for Asian Americans. More so, Asian‐American subgroups, persons with lower educational and income levels, and participants in the labor force are less likely to assume a partisan affiliation. Levels of interest in U.S. politics and length of time in the United States do contribute to a partisan affiliation. Conclusions. Viewing partisan affiliation as a developmental process is an important research avenue to approach the Asian‐American community. The inclusion of not only sociodemographic variables, but experiences and evaluation of the U.S. political system, as well as recognizing the political “culture” of Asian‐American subgroups, provides a more complete understanding of the partisan acquisition process.     

Spinning the Rural Agenda: The Countryside Alliance, Fox Hunting and Social Policy

This paper investigates the ways in which the UK hunting lobby has historically sought to widen its appeal by wrapping the hunting debate up in broader countryside issues in an attempt to present it as an integral part of rural life. It is based upon a detailed analysis of the re‐branding of the hunting lobby and the subsequent framing of the Countryside Alliance's Liberty and Livelihood March in the British newspaper press in September 2002. This illustrates how the hunting lobby has fed upon and promoted the perception of a growing urban–rural divide in the UK. The analysis suggests that there is a long history of symbiotic relationships between campaigning organizations promoting a ‘countryside agenda’ and the politically partisan UK press. Gaining extensive newspaper access, however, does not guarantee that a protest group is successful in its aims. This case study suggests that it is important to consider the less visible processes of news production within their historical context, and in relation to the broader policy‐making arena, to adequately assess whether there has been a fundamental shift in the relationship between protest movements and the press in recent years.     

Guns,Hollywood, and School Safety: Defining the School‐Shooting Problem Across Public Arenas*

Objective. Research in agenda setting has demonstrated that dramatic news events can drive particular issues to the top of the media and governmental agendas. The objective of this study is to analyze how different aspects of an event‐driven problem compete for attention in those arenas. Methods. The method is content analysis of media coverage and congressional legislative activity following the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. Results. The results show that while both agendas converged on the gun‐control aspect of the problem, they substantially diverged on other understandings of what kind of problem the Columbine shooting represented and how to address it. Conclusions. We conclude that the differing institutional structure and incentives of the news media and Congress can create or inhibit interinstitutional positive feedback in the problem‐defining process. Agenda divergences are amplified when prominent politicians cue the media to follow particular story lines that depart from actual legislative activity.     

To tweet or not to tweet: Exploring the determinants of early adoption of Twitter by House members in the 111th Congress

The adoption of communication forms like Twitter presents students of congressional behavior an interesting case to examine the intersection of technology and politics. Twitter represents a social media venue that provides an immediate and direct link between the Member of Congress (MC) and constituents, which entails a benefit and a potential risk. In this paper, I examine Twitter use in the 111th Congress in order to better understand congressional early adoption of new technology. The primary question addressed is what systematic determinants shape the decision to adopt Twitter as a component of an MC's media strategy. Using data collected from MC Twitter accounts and the 2008 congressional election, I find partisan, cohort, and ideological determinants on early Twitter adoption. Republicans are more likely to use Twitter even in multivariate analysis; ideological extremism influences the use of Twitter. In contrast to past technologies, district demographics have no systematic effect on the early adoption of Twitter.     

Partisan Gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act*

Objective. The goal of the study is to empirically assess the extent of partisan and incumbent gerrymandering in the 2000 congressional redistricting. Critics of congressional redistricting have argued that recent partisan gerrymandering severely undermines electoral competitiveness to the point of violating constitutional equal protection standards. Method. We first analyze the legal precedents and arguments central to the contemporary redistricting debate. We then analyze district‐level data measuring the change in a congressional incumbent's presidential party vote share before and after the 2000 redistricting. We conduct regression analyses that test for partisan and incumbent gerrymandering effects with an eye toward noting implications for the Voting Rights Act, particularly majority‐minority districting. Results. We find that recent redistricting significantly contributed to a further decline in electoral competitiveness; however, most of this decline in competitiveness came through incumbency protection, not partisan gerrymandering. Majority‐minority districts lost about 5 percent incumbent party vote share, though only 3 percent in southern states. Conclusion. Given these results, we conclude that the logic of partisan gerrymandering is at variance with the mandate of racial redistricting. One effect of establishing a strict judicial standard limiting statewide partisan biases would be to restrict states' capacity to draw majority‐minority districts.     

Testing a Political Economic Theory of the Media: How Were Steel Tariffs Covered?*

Objective. The objective of this article is to test Strömberg's (2001) prediction that newspapers will devote more space to costs of tariffs than to their benefits, using the recent steel tariff issue as a test case. Method. A content analysis was performed on a sample of 123 New York Times (NYT) and 177 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) articles published between January 1 and September 10, 2002. The articles were coded sentence by sentence for pro‐, anti‐, and neutral‐tariff content. Comments or information deemed supportive of the tariffs, that is, touting their benefits, were coded +1, while those emphasizing the costs of tariffs were coded –1. A statement that was neutral with regard to the tariff issue was coded 0. The proportion of sentences coded –1 was then compared with the proportion coded +1. Results. The coders found 395 sentences devoted to the negative impacts of steel tariffs versus 124 sentences devoted to their benefits out of a combined total of 3,207 sentences. The results also reveal a mild “slant” toward free trade in the WSJ relative to the NYT. In the WSJ, the proportion of lines criticizing tariffs (0.11) exceeds the proportion supporting tariffs (0.02) by a wider margin than in the NYT (0.13 vs. 0.06). Conclusions. This article provides empirical support for Strömberg's (2001) political economy model of the media. The model implies that mass media will weaken the power of special‐interest lobbies relative to unorganized interests. Specifically, the data support Strömberg's prediction that more newspaper space would be devoted to the costs of steel tariffs—which are widely dispersed—than to their benefits—which are narrowly targeted.     

Voting for Catholic Candidates: The Evolution of a Stereotype*

Objectives. This article looks at the effects of candidate Catholicism on individual voters, turning the traditional inquiry into voters' religion on its head. Specifically, it hypothesizes that individuals stereotype Catholic candidates based on the voting behavior of Catholics in general, and that these stereotypes help voters make a decision in elections with Catholic candidates. Methods. Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), this article argues that citizens hold stereotypes of Catholics based on actual Catholic political behavior—solidly Democratic from the 1950s to the 1970s, but trending Republican starting in the 1980s. It also tests these stereotypes with Gallup data on hypothetical Catholic candidates and analyzes, through election‐day exit polls, the impact on voters of the Catholic conversion of a sitting U.S. Senator. Results. The data analyses strongly support the article's hypothesis, demonstrating that partisan attitudes toward hypothetical Catholic candidates shifted direction as the Catholic electorate shifted. In addition, Senator Sam Brownback's (R‐KS) conversion to Catholicism increased partisan polarization in his support—indicating a conservative shift in perceptions. Conclusions. Candidate religion plays a role in elections. Specifically, voters stereotype candidates based on candidate religion and use this stereotyped information to help them make an electoral decision. This article demonstrates this effect for Catholicism, but other religions should evidence similar impacts.     

Ideological Realignment in the Contemporary U.S. Electorate Revisited*

Objective. In this study, we revisit the ideological‐realignment theory proposed by Abramowitz and Saunders (1998) by assessing the varying impact a person's ideology had on his or her partisan identification for individuals in different regions and between men and women. Method. Through an examination of the NES cumulative data file and the 1992–1994 NES Panel Study, we present a series of tabular findings, an OLS regression model, and partial correlation coefficients to assess these changing subgroup dynamics. Results. Between 1978 and 1994, the impact of a person's ideology on his or her party identification grew in magnitude, while the impact of respondents' parental party identification on their own party identification waned. However, these changes were not felt uniformly throughout the electorate, with Southern white males and Southern white females exhibiting the greatest changes. In the case of Southern white males, racial issues now appear to be related to their party identification. Conclusion. We find support for the ideological‐realignment theory, but find evidence that such changes occurred rather unevenly throughout the electorate, suggesting that different dynamics of realignment may be at work simultaneously.     

Memorable encounters: Ideology,information acquisition,and television news

Many consumers of television news perceive the ideological position held by certain networks as being either consonant with, or dissonant from, their own political beliefs. This raises the question of how the perceived consonance or dissonance of media sources influences the viewer's ability to acquire and recall information. It is possible that being exposed to a consonant media source could lead an individual to pay more attention, whereas the individual would be more inclined to dismiss a dissonant media source. In contrast, however, it is also possible that an individual may pay extra attention to the dissonant media source because it presents a perspective that differs from the one that individual currently holds. Utilizing an experimental research design, I am able to demonstrate that individuals are better able to acquire and recall information presented to them by a media source that they perceive to be ideologically dissonant from their own political position.     

Do young children preferentially trust gossip or firsthand observation in choosing a collaborative partner?

From early on in ontogeny, young children hear things being said about particular individuals. Here we investigate the ways in which testimony with social content, that is, gossip, influences children's decision‐making. We explored whether five‐year‐old (N = 72) and seven‐year‐old (N = 72) children trust gossip or firsthand observation in a partner choice setting. Seven‐year‐old children preferentially trusted what they had seen firsthand over gossip; five‐year‐old children, in contrast, did not differentiate between these two sources of information. However, five‐year‐old children (but not seven‐year‐olds) generally gave negative information more weight, that is, they showed a “negativity bias.” These results suggest that at around school age, young children become more “epistemically vigilant” about gossip.     

What kind of country we want for our children: an analysis of media coverage of the 2017 New Zealand General Election

ABSTRACT

This article is the third in a series investigating media reporting of New Zealand elections. Based on content analysis of 510 articles published in the New Zealand Herald, and thematic analysis of a subset of news stories related to young people, the study examines media coverage of the 2017 elections by looking at the topics of news stories, presence of party policies, diversity of sources and references to social groups. Comparing the 2017 results with the results of the Herald’s coverage of 2014 elections, we register a shift towards a stronger presence of policy issues, more female voices in the reports and significantly higher reference to young people. We further investigated the high number of references to young people by conducting qualitative analysis on the subset of articles mentioning young people.     

E-Nose for News?

ABSTRACT

Many journalists claim to have a “nose for news.” This metaphor, where a body part is used in a transferred sense for metaphorical change has occupied a central place in journalists' discourses. It appears to express something essential about their identity, profession, practice, and how they “see” and experience the world. This article uses the figure/ground approach of Marshall McLuhan to inform an exploration of the “nose for news” metaphor. By studying the “nose for news” we can understand how and why electronic noses and the Internet have made this once vital and living metaphor obsolete. We can also discover ways to reanimate this metaphor in order to: (a) help recover something of the essence of journalism expressed by journalists' claims to possess a “nose for news,” and (b) re-conceptualize the current “crisis” in journalism.     

Book Reviews

The Guide to United States Popular Culture. Edited by Ray B. Browne and Pat Browne. The Detective as Historian: History and Art in Historical Crime Fiction. Edited by Ray B. Browne and Lawrence A. Kreiser, Jr. Preface by Robin W. Winks. Materialist Feminism: A Reader in Class, Difference, and Women's Lives. Rosemary Hennessy and Chrys Ingraham, eds. Popular Culture: Cavespace to Cyberspace. Marshall W. Fishwick. Great Cars of the Great Plains. Curt McConnell. Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia. Ed. James L. Watson. The History of Jazz. Ted Gioia. Puppets and “Popular” Culture. Scott Cutler Shershow. Theater and Society: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama. Haiping Yan, ed. Armonk Teenage Nervous Breakdown: Music and Politics in the Post‐Elvis Age. David Walley. The Ignorance Explosion: Understanding Industrial Civilization. Julius Lukasiewicz. The Unofficial Encyclopedia of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nick Talevski. Graphic Novels: A Bibliographic Guide to Book‐Length Comics. D. Aviva Rothschild. Elvis, Hank, and Me: Making Musical History on the Louisiana Hayride. Horace Logan with Bill Sloan. Women Imagine Change: A Global Anthology of Women's Resistance from 600 B.C.E. to Present. Eugenia DeLamotte, Natania Meeker, and Jean O'Barr, eds. We Mean to Be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia. Elizabeth R. Varon. Gender and American Culture series. Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited. Deirdre Boyle. What Evil Means to Us. C. Fred Alford. A Sense of Place: Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Essays in Honor of William and Margery Vandament. Edited by Russell M. Magnaghi and Michael T. Marsden.     

A political-economic theory of relevance: Explaining climate change inaction

Why have societies failed to effectively respond to climate change? We address the question of climate change inaction by (1) examining how an unambiguously ominous report about climate change (IPCC 2018) was made palatable by news media and (2) explaining why climate change is typically unthematized in everyday life. Drawing on Adorno and Schutz, we develop a political-economic theory of relevance. The imperative to accumulate capital is not only a social-structural reality but also shapes why particular facts are regarded as relevant in experience (topical relevance) as well as how relevant material is interpreted (interpretative relevance) and acted toward (motivational relevance). Applying this framework, we (1) argue that media popularizations of the IPCC's dire Global Warming of 1.5°C (2018) are constituted by relevance systems conditioned by a capitalist social context and (2) strengthen Ollinaho's (2016) Schutzian explanation for climate change inaction by examining how productive relations and the culture industry perpetuate climate change irrelevance in everyday life. Schutz's framework helps conceptualize the intricacies of ideology and, when revised with Adorno's sociology, shines new light on an old question: the relations between social conditions and knowledge.