Political Communication 2015 Abstracts
Incivility or Sarcasm? Expanding the Concept of Attacks in Online Social Media • Ashley A. Anderson, Colorado State University; Heidi E. Huntington, Colorado State University; Kim Kandra, Colorado State University • This study expands the definition of incivility, an oft-cited concern of computer-mediated communication. We propose sarcasm – a subtler form of provocation – as a concept related to incivility – which involves more explicit attacks. Using a content analysis of Twitter posts about climate change, we find the two concepts are not used simultaneously in the same posts but are employed in similar patterns. This indicates sarcasm is an important and distinct concept in online discussions.
Antecedents of Internal Political Efficacy. Incidental News Exposure Online and the Role of Political Discussion • Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu, University of Vienna; Trevor Diehl, University of Vienna; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna • Internal political efficacy has become a key concept in political science, since it has long been considered a predictor of a variety of pro-democratic behaviors. However, the effect of incidental news exposure online is underdeveloped in the literature. This study argues that both general news media use and incidental news exposure online lead to political efficacy through discussion. The paper also tests whether discussion with weak versus strong ties yield different results predicting efficacy.
Attitudes toward Illegal Immigration and Exposure to Public Service and Commercial Broadcasting in France, Norway, and the United States • Audun Beyer, Department of media and communication, University of Oslo; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna • This paper investigates the relationship between news exposure and attitudes toward illegal immigration. Based on comparative survey data from three countries (U.S.; France; Norway), findings suggest that political orientation is the strongest predictor of attitudes toward illegal immigration and that exposure to commercial news is positively related to negative attitudes toward illegal immigration in all countries. Public service broadcasting, in contrast, leads to more positive attitudes toward illegal immigration only in the U.S.
Television vs. YouTube: Political Advertising in the 2012 Presidential Elections • porismita borah, Washington State University; Erika Fowler; travis ridout • We employ a unique data set to compare both online political ads and televised political ads from the 2012 presidential campaign, relying upon data from the Wesleyan Media Project and YouTube. Primary findings show negative ads are mostly sponsored by political groups and not candidates in both TV and online. Online ads are less negative and less policy driven, consistent with the theory that they are designed for a different audience than television.
Online media and the Social Identity Model of Collective Action: Examining the roles of online alternative news and social media news • Michael Chan • This study integrates the literature on the mobilizing potential of online news media to engender protest participation with recent theoretical syntheses from socio-psychological perspectives of collective action. More specifically, it examines the potential for alternative media and social media to stimulate the core antecedents of collective action (identity, efficacy and anger) in the context of a pro-democracy movement. Findings from a representative sample using structural equation modeling supported the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA) framework, such that all three antecedents predicted protest participation and that higher levels of identity were positively relate to anger and efficacy. Moreover, the same antecedents mediated the relationship between online media use and protest participation. The findings demonstrate the benefits of theoretical integration from related disciplines so as to better understand the dynamics of collective action at the individual level.
The Effect of Self-Expression on Political Opinion • Saifuddin Ahmed, California, Davis; Heejo Keum, Sungkyunkwan University; Yeo Jeong Kim, Sungkyunkwan University; Jaeho Cho, California, Davis • The political impact of social media has drawn considerable attention, however, the scientific understanding of how engaging in expressive behavior via social media influences the way the expresser makes political decisions remains limited, if not unknown. An analysis of 1,209 survey responses revealed consistent results across six issues where the effects of party identification on opinions about political issues became stronger as political expression on social media increased. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Herbert Gans Revisited: Proposing a Network Analytic Approach to Source Use • Bethany Conway, University of Arizona • This study investigates the information resources journalists attained from sources in midterm election coverage. Moving beyond past research, it investigates resource fulfillment while incorporating concepts of source interdependence through the application of social network analysis. Results of a nationwide survey of journalists suggest that source centrality within the network is heavily based on the information resource being provided. At the same time, certain sources are also seen as structurally equivalent, and may even be complementary.
The 2014 Midterm Elections on Local Television: Frames, Sources and Valence • Daniela Dimitrova; Sisi Hu • Local television remains the main information source for the average American, yet studies of local television content are rare. This study investigates the coverage of the 2014 midterm election on two local televisions stations in Iowa, KCCI-TV and WOI-TV. Using a content analysis approach the study shows that local election news reporting is more likely to focus on the horse race rather than political issues, and tends to be more episodic rather than thematic in nature. The coverage relies primarily on elite sources such as politicians and government officials rather than experts and ordinary citizens. Local election news reporting remains mostly neutral in tone. Human-interest coverage is not uncommon while pieces about the role of media in elections are quite rare.
Income Inequality and the Media: Perceptions, Evaluations, and the Role of the Government • Itay Gabay, Bowling Green State University • The study takes the first step in examining the effect of media use and political talk on perceptions of income inequality and the role of the government to reduce it. Using ANES 2012 Time Series Study we show that while radio listeners tend to support income inequality, individuals who receive their information from the Internet, were more likely to think that income inequality has risen in the last twenty years, and TV viewers support government action to reduce it. Political talk tens to echo political predisposing.
Motivations for Political Discussion: Antecedents and Consequences on Civic Participation • Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; Sebastian Valenzuela; Brian Weeks, University of Vienna, Department of Communication • To date, most scholarship on informal discussion of politics and current events has mainly focused on its cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral effects. In comparison, few studies have addressed the antecedents of political talk. We seek to fill in this gap by using two-wave U.S. panel survey data (W¹=1,816; W2=1,024) to study two sets of motivations people may have for engaging in political conversation: civic-oriented and social-oriented goals. Furthermore, we examine if these motivations matter by analyzing their relationship with civic participation. Using structural equation modeling, our results suggest that both civic and social motivations are strong predictors of frequency of political discussion and, consequently, are indirectly associated with levels of civic engagement. From a theoretical perspective, these findings cast political talk as a more complex phenomenon than what deliberative theory suggests, and point to social motivations as an additional path to civic life.
From Consumer to Producer: Relating Orientations, Internet Use, and Lifestyle and Contentious Political Consumerism • Melissa R. Gotlieb, Texas Tech University; Sadia Cheema, Texas Tech University • This study uses national survey data collected from U.S. adults to explore the relationships among individual and collective orientations to political consumerism, Internet use, and participation in lifestyle and contentious political consumerism among Generation Y. Results demonstrate although both orientations motivate online content consumption, only holding a collective orientation motivates content production. Moreover, although both uses of Internet facilitate socially-conscious consumption practices, only content production mobilizes more active participation in organized boycotts and “buycotts.”
Image, Issues and Advocacy in White House E-mail Newsletters • Joseph Graf, American University • The Obama administration is the first to send an e-mail newsletter, allowing it to control the president’s image and advocate for his agenda. We analyze four years of newsletters (N = 701). The administration portrays the president formally, impersonally, and rarely with the military or business. It projects the administration as the government, with few mentions of the other branches or political opposition; and the administration is increasingly using the newsletter and social media for political advocacy.
Newspaper Coverage of 2012 U.S. Presidential Candidates’ Digital Campaign Communication • Charles Watkins, University of Alabama; Jennifer Greer, University of Alabama • To examine how journalists cover campaign websites, social media, and mobile applications, U.S. newspaper coverage of Obama’s and Romney’s 2012 digital communication was analyzed. Only 1.4% of all campaign articles mentioned digital campaigning, and prominence of these 292 articles was low. Mentions focused on message content and political strategy. Fact-checking was rare, and half of the mentions had no tone or analysis. Obama’s digital communication was covered more frequently and more positively than was Romney’s.
Partisan Conflict Framing Effects on Political Polarization • Jiyoung Han, University of Minnesota; Marco Yzer, The University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication • Consistent with self-categorization theory, we test whether exposure to partisan conflict- framed news produces group polarization between Democrats and Republicans. A set of analyses of variance showed persistent patterns of increased partisan identity salience, extremitization, conformity, and political polarization as a result of news exposure. Using structural equation modeling, we integrated all the hypothesized cognitive paths toward political polarization into a single model and found supporting evidence of the indirect effect of partisan conflict framing.
Partisan Provocation: The Role of Partisan News Use and Emotional Responses in Motivating Information Sharing • Ariel Hasell, University of California Santa Barbara; Brian Weeks, University of Vienna, Department of Communication • Citizens increasingly rely on social media to consume and disseminate news and information about politics. This study focuses on how partisan news use influences information sharing in part because of the negative emotions it arouses in its audience. Using panel survey data, we find that use of partisan news is associated with increased anger and anxiety directed at the opposing party’s presidential candidate and indirectly facilitates information sharing about the election on social media.
State legislative candidate evaluation of campaign news quality • James Hertog, University of Kentucky; Matthew Pavelek, University of Kentucky • Political candidates’ evaluation of the news coverage their campaigns received was studied using an online survey of candidates who sought state legislative offices during 2012. A sample of 515 former candidates was gathered and asked a series of questions concerning interactions with journalists during their campaigns and their evaluations of the coverage their contests received. Candidates indicated amicable relations with journalists, extensive attempts to gain news coverage and a significant level of outreach efforts and responsiveness to candidate efforts on the part of newspersons. Candidates did express a significant level of critique of overall press performance, though, and we found some indication that those who had a cooler relationship with journalists were also more critical of news coverage of their election campaigns.
Communication and Democracy: Effects of Agreement and Disagreement on Democratic Ideals Through Information Processing Strategies • Myiah Hutchens, Washington State University; Chan Chen, Washington State University; Jay Hmielowski, Washington State University; Michael Beam, Kent State University • Grounded in the ideals of deliberative democracy, this study examines the relationship between exposure to counter-attitudinal and attitude consistent political communication and the belief that discussion leads to better decision-making. Using data collected in the week prior to the US midterm election, we examine both the direct effects, and indirect effects mediated by systematic and heuristic processing. We determined that exposure to disagreement is associated with beliefs that discussion leads to good decisions both directly and indirectly through increased systematic processing and reduced heuristic processing. Exposure to agreement has positive indirect effects via increased systematic processing, and negative effects via increased heuristic processing.
Are Voting Rights Newsworthy? How Sources Depicted Electoral Participation in 1965 and 2013 • Sharon Jarvis, University of Texas at Austin • This study examines how sources in coverage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court Decision discussed electoral participation in The New York Times and Birmingham News. In 1965, sources in both outlets treated voting as a cherished and contested right. In 2013, voices in the Birmingham News continued to do so whereas those in the New York Times had shifted attention to gay rights and depicted elections as controlled by partisan elites.
Overcoming Hard Times: Televised U.S. and Russian Presidential Rhetoric in Times of Crisis • Tatsiana Karaliova, Missouri School of Journalism • The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of how televised presidential rhetoric is used by the leaders of the United States and Russia in times of domestic and foreign affairs crises. The analysis revealed both similarities and differences in presidential crisis rhetoric in the United States and Russia. The presidents showed differences in how they construct their identities, what frames they use to define crises, interpret them, and provide moral evaluation and treatment recommendation. The rhetorical quality of the addresses in terms of tone, structure, and strategies also differed. This study showed that presidential crisis rhetoric combined characteristics of national eulogies and deliberative rhetoric and has different purposes at different stages of a crisis. Timing appeared to be more important for crisis rhetoric than for any other genre of presidential rhetoric, especially in the case of immediate threats and human losses. Presenting a strong argument, applying a strong and decisive frame that is rooted in history and cultural perceptions of the audience, as well as identifying the guilty in a polarized foreign affairs crisis could be particularly effective in the “cold war of frames” as it helps build rhetorical capital for presidents as world leaders.
Gender, stereotypes, and attitudes toward female political leaders: The moderating roles of news media use • Heejo Keum; Jaeho Cho, University of California, Davis; Yeo Jeong Kim; choi eunyoung, SungKyunKwan university • This study examines the complex relationships between gender, stereotypes, media, and attitudes toward female political leaders. Our analyses of 2012 ANES data reveal that women voters and individuals who have lower levels of traditional gender role stereotypes and modern sexism show positive attitudes toward the prospect of a woman becoming president and positive feelings toward Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, the effects of gender stereotypes and sexism on attitudes toward female political leaders become stronger when individuals’ news media use increases.
The Interaction Effect of Political Identity Salience and Culture on the Third-Person Perception of Polling News • Hyunjung Kim, Sungkyunkwan University • This study examines the interaction effect of political identity salience and culture on the third-person perception of election polling news in the U.S. and South Korea. A web-based experiment was conducted prior to the 2012 presidential election in the two countries. Results demonstrate that the differential between in- and out- groups is greater in the identity salience group than in the control group only for South Korean participants.
Media and Party Communication Effects on Intra-Campaign Vote Switching • David Johann; Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, University of Zurich; Sylvia Kritzinger; Kathrin Thomas • This paper examines why voters change their vote intention during an electoral campaign. In particular, we explore the impact of media and party communication on voters’ likelihood to switch their party preference. During an election campaign, voters are exposed to news media reporting that provides the information necessary for their voting decisions and that raises awareness of salient issues. Voters are also exposed to campaign communication by political parties: politicians and party members approach them in rallies, on the street and at home to persuade them to vote for them at the polls. Following an integrative approach, this paper links data from a media content analysis of six main news outlets (N = 4,265) to public opinion data based on a rolling cross-sectional panel design (n = 2,607) to jointly investigate the relative impact of exposure to media and party communication on vote switching. Using logistic regressions based on a stacked dataset, our study reveals that both individual exposure to positive media reporting about a party as well as interpersonal contact to this party increased the likelihood of vote switching in favour of that party. Impersonal campaign contacts, by contrast, were unable to convince voters to switch.
Persuasive Political Docu-Dramas: Examining Motivation, Elaboration, and Counter-Argumentation in Strategic Political Narrative Processing • Heather LaMarre, Temple University • Recent work within political and policy communication has begun examining the concept of narrative strategy wherein persuasive messages are thought to be intentionally embedded within entertaining narratives as a means of influencing political or policy outcomes (e.g., Jones & McBeth, 2010). As opposed to the unintentional effects often observed in entertainment media, strategic narratives are purposive, aiming to achieve specific attitudinal, opinion, or policy outcomes (Shanahan, et al., 2011; Jones & McBeth, 2010). The present study builds on this growing research area, focusing on the role of cognitive elaboration within strategic political entertainment and policy narratives. Using healthcare policy as a context of study, a random assignment 2 (motivation: high, low) x 2 (media stimuli: healthcare policy docu-drama, satirical healthcare policy docu-drama) post-test only experiment was conducted to examine individual-level cognitive elaboration and subsequent attitudes concerning U.S. healthcare policy. Results suggest that motivation plays a significant role in policy-relevant cognitive elaboration. Additionally, satirical narrative viewers were less able to counter-argue the policy issue than dramatic narrative viewers, which is discussed in terms of the political satire elaboration paradox. Both types of policy narratives led to more narrative-consistent healthcare attitudes.
Social Movement as Political Education: Communication Activities and Understanding of Civil Disobedience in the Umbrella Movement • Francis L. F. Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong • Occupy Central, which would later evolve into the Umbrella Movement, was conceived as a civil disobedience campaign when it was first proposed in early 2013. Although civil disobedience arguably has a history of decades in Hong Kong, the concept was seldom discussed in the public arena, and the practice was not well established in the society’s repertoire of contentious actions. Year 2013 and 2014 thus constituted a critical discourse moment in which the concept of civil disobedience was intensively discussed and debated. This study examines if the Occupy campaign and the Umbrella Movement had an educational function leading to higher levels of public understanding of civil disobedience. Analysis of two surveys conducted in September 2013 and October 2014 respectively shows that public understanding of civil disobedience did increase substantially over the year. After the Umbrella Movement started, attitudinal support for and actual participation in the movement, political use of social media, and discussion with disagreeing others significantly predict understanding of civil disobedience. Theoretical and social implications of the findings are discussed.
Except if He’s Black: How Race Conditions The Effect of Religious Cues on Candidate Evaluation • Bryan McLaughlin, Texas Tech University; Bailey Thompson, Texas Tech University • The relationship between religion and politics is contingent upon race, but work examining the effect of religious cues on political outcomes has focused exclusively on White politicians. We employ an experimental design where White and Black participants were introduced to a congressional candidate. We manipulated whether the politician was White or Black and whether or not they used religious cues. Results demonstrate that religious and racial cues interact, but in more nuanced ways than expected.
Catalyzing Events: Exploring the Intersection of Electoral Campaigns and Social Movements • Laura Meadows, Indiana University Bloomington • Through an ethnographic study of North Carolina’s LGBT movement, this study proposes the conceptualization of a catalyzing event, defined as a political happening that fundamentally alters the trajectory of a social movement to provide a distinct perspective through which to examine the trajectory of a social movement and the experiences, interactions, and events that alter its course.
Michael Brown as a News Icon: Event-driven news and its impact on protest paradigm • Rachel Mourao, The University of Texas at Austin; Danielle Kilgo; George Sylvie, University of Texas at Austin • The shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer cued an intense reaction from citizens, officials, and activists. Through a content analysis of newspaper stories and guided by the theory of indexing during event-driven news, this study converges sourcing with adherence to the protest paradigm, a pattern that emphasizes violence and deviant behavior. Findings reveal that while nonofficial sources dominate coverage about Ferguson, they do not provide critical viewpoints that challenge the protest paradigm.
#That’sFunny: Second-Screen Use during Comedy TV News Viewing as a Predictor of Online Political Activism • Rebecca Nee, San Diego State University • Using national survey data (n = 645), this study explores political activism as an outcome of complementary simultaneous media use. Framed by the theoretical concepts of participatory culture and active audiences, this study provides tangible evidence of newer forms of political participation among TV viewers who use digital platforms to interact socially and seek information. Findings show a relationship between online political activism and second-screen use during TV news watching, particularly among comedy news audiences.
Dispelling the Myth of Ideological Polarization in News Consumption: A Network Analysis of Political News Websites • Jacob Nelson; James Webster • Political polarization is increasing in this country, and its effects are many and far-reaching. Many assume that a primary cause of political polarization is the increasing availability of ideologically tinged political news. Other scholars who have examined political polarization in news consumption have found that news audiences predominantly consume centrist or moderate news and for the most part ignore ideological news sources altogether. Yet the myth of ideologically driven news consumption doggedly persists. This paper finally dispels that myth. Using social network analysis of comScore web analytic data, we argue that audience duplication among the fifty most popular political news sites in the month leading up to the November 2014 election occurs at a rate greater than chance. We find that political news sites share more audiences than many realize, and that this holds true regardless of the political ideologies of either the audience or the outlet. We conclude that a site’s popularity, rather than its ideology, is what drives political news consumption.
How Political Talk and Political Efficacy Jointly Mediate the Impact of News Consumption on Political Participation? • Chang Sup Park, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania • This study suggests a two-step mediation model, which highlights the role of political talk and political efficacy in political communication. Based on two cross-sectional analyses and one auto-regressive analysis from the dataset of a two-wave panel survey during the 2012 presidential campaign in South Korea, this study finds that political discussion and political efficacy jointly mediate the impact of news consumption on political participation. Through involvement in the discussion with others, individual news consumers make more sense of the information obtained from the media and such sense-making are more likely to result in political participation through political efficacy. The result suggests that political talk and political efficacy jointly play a pivotal role in connecting citizens’ information-seeking behaviors to political participation. Additionally, this study finds that news consumption via online media and social media is significantly influential in triggering citizen engagement in political processes.
Offline Talk, Online Talk, and News Reflection in Political Learning • Chang Sup Park, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania • This study assesses how different types of political reasoning – offline political talk, online political talk, and news reflection – play a role in political learning. Drawing on online survey data collected during the 2012 presidential election in South Korea, this study finds that online political talk is more closely related to political knowledge than offline political talk and new reflection. News reflection was positively associated with political knowledge, yet the strength of the relationship was weaker than that of political talk. This outcome indicates that interpersonal reasoning (political talk) is more closely related to the essence of deliberation than intrapersonal reasoning (news reflection).
Antecedents of Strategic Game Framing in Political News Coverage • Desiree Schmuck, University of Vienna; Raffael Heiss, University of Vienna; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna • “The use of strategic game framing is predominant in mainstream news reporting of politics. Nevertheless, systematic research on the specific antecedents of strategic game framing is scarce. In this study, we employ a quantitative content analysis to investigate different media- and content-related antecedents of strategic game framing. Findings reveal that both media- and content-related variables predict higher strategic game framing. However, content-related variables, such as story type or issue exert the strongest impact.”
Using Media to Prepare for Understanding or Persuading: Partisan Selective Exposure and Future Discussion Expectations • Mingxiao Sui; Raymond J. Pingree • Despite widespread concern about partisans selecting attitude consistent media, only a few experiments have used media selection as an outcome. Such experiments are important to isolate the causal factors that lead to partisan selective exposure and may help suggest conditions under which this phenomenon could be reduced. This experiment tested the effects of two factors that seem highly relevant in new media contexts: expectations of future discussion and the presence or absence of entertainment options. Participants were led to expect a discussion oriented toward either persuasion or understanding, and were given a choice of media clips from different sources that either included or did not include an entertainment option. Entertainment options reduced time spent watching both own-party media and other-party media. Among Democrats but not Republicans, entertainment options appeared to be used as a substitute for time spent watching other party media. Republicans responded to expectations of understanding-oriented discussion by watching more own-party media, whereas Democrats responded by watching less own-party media. Implications and future research directions are discussed.
The fictitious ‘Newsroom’: The influence of entertainment media on attitudes of news trust • Jason Turcotte, Cal Poly Pomona • Polls show that people increasingly harbor unfavorable views of the press, as the public grows more attentive to fictional programs over news. Using HBO’s The Newsroom as stimuli, this study tests whether entertainment media can restore public trust in the news. I find that exposure has no effect on general news trust; however, a negative relationship with gatekeeping trust is observed. In short, exposure to the program reduces confidence in news professionals as effective gatekeepers.
Investigating Social Capital in the New Media Environment: SNS, Internal Efficacy, and Civic Engagement • Zachary Vaughn, Indiana University • This paper explores the role that social networking sites have on social capital. Using secondary data from Pew Research Internet Project: Civic Engagement in the Digital Age this paper finds that use of social networking sites and the internet for news and information gathering is positively correlated to civic engagement. This paper also introduces the variable of internal efficacy, and it finds that internal efficacy is positively related to civic engagement.
Social Identities and the Illinois Pension Problem: Constructing a “Just-in-Time” Model of Belief Development • Aaron S. Veenstra, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Benjamin Lyons, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Cheeyoun Stephanie Kang, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Zachary Sapienza, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • For years, Illinois and Chicago have underfunded their employee pension systems, leading to significant recent controversy over the extent of the problem. This study proposes a “just-in-time” social identity influence model to identify salient social identities (union membership, political affiliations, region of residence) and test their influence on pension beliefs. Findings show that despite being strongly related, influences on beliefs about Illinois and Chicago differ based on demographics and media use.
Skip to the Comments: News Engagement, Discussion and Political Participation in Austria • Ramona Vonbun, University of Vienna; Trevor Diehl, University of Vienna • This study explores how engaging with political information online might lead to offline discussion and political participation in Austria. This study extends recent work on the mediating influence of discussion in connecting news engagement and political action, to include reading political comments attached to news and social media websites. Do political postings fuel further discussion offline, and in turn, political action? The analysis draws on data from the Austrian National Election Study.
How Journalists Experience the Hostile Media Effect • Mike Wagner • The hostile media effect, the systematic tendency for people to believe that news coverage is hostile to their views, is a robust finding. In this article I ask, do journalists perceive a hostile media too? A web-based survey experiment of television and print journalists in the top 150 media markets in the United States (N=631) varied whether the story was about an issue owned by the Republicans (tax relief) or the Democrats (health care) and whether the partisan senator of the party that owned the issue engaged in “cheap talk” or “costly talk.” Ideological journalists were more likely to perceive a hostile media when a member of their preferred political party was reported to have engaged in costly talk—especially when costly talk came from a partisan source whose party owned the issue. Despite these attitudes, journalists across the ideological spectrum found each type of story to be equally newsworthy.
Charismatic rhetoric, integrative complexity and the U.S. Presidency: An analysis of the State of the Union Address (SOTU) from George Washington to Barack Obama. • ben wasike • This study adopted Thoemmes and Conway’s seminal work on integrative complexity (IC) of U.S. presidents to examine the interaction between IC and charisma in the State of the Union address. The study examined a census of all the SOTU addresses given from George Washington to Barack Obama. The study found positive correlation between IC and charisma, inverse correlation between charisma and reelection and overall, congressional opposition elicited more charisma. Unlike IC, charisma forms an inverted U-shaped curve, conservatives displayed more of it and charisma could be immune to crisis effects.
Issue importance, perceived effects of protest news and political participation • Ran Wei, U. of South Carolina; Ven-hwei Lo, Chinese U of Hong Kong; Hung-Yi Lu, National Chongchung University • How do news coverage of a grass-root protest movement and perceived importance of the movement affect people’s participation? And how do people infer the effect of the news on themselves differently than on others? Informed by the third-person effect hypothesis, we examine these questions in the context of the student-led Sunflower movement in Taiwan that rose in opposition to a trade pact with China. In the study, we advanced three propositions. First, that the perceived effects of the protest news on oneself would be a better predictor of political participation than would perceived effects of such news on others. Second, that the perceived effect on oneself, not on others, would enhance the impact of issue importance on participation in the movement. And third, how people processed protest news would be another intermediate mechanism on subsequent participation activities. We found support for these propositions in data collected from a probability sample of 1,137 respondents. The contributions of the findings to the robust third-person effect research are discussed.
Linking Agenda Networks between Media and Voters: An Investigation of Taiwan’s 2012 Presidential Election • Denis Wu; Lei Guo, Boston University • This study investigates the Network Agenda-Setting (NAS) model with original data gathered from 2012 presidential election in Taiwan. Networks of media coverage on the most important issues and candidate attributes and affects are compared with the counterparts generated from public opinion data. The overall correlations between media’s networks and voters’ networks are positive and significant, indicating a confirmation of NAS effect in a non-U.S. country. Partisan media and selective exposure in the media system are also incorporated into the investigation. Results show that partisan selective exposure did not lead to consistent conclusions about accentuated impact of like-minded media consumption.
The dual process of influence: Examining the hydraulic pattern hypothesis of media priming effects • Sung Woo Yoo, SUNY Cortland • This paper examined the hydraulic pattern of media-priming effects, an argument that increase in the importance of an issue is accompanied by decrease in importance of other issues. Granger causality between media coverage and the perceived importance of issues was examined using a content analysis and secondary survey data. In the findings, media coverage caused changes in the issue-weight of other issues. Also, the time-lag of the hydraulic pattern preceded the main priming effects.
The personal is political?: The relationship between passive and active non-political and political social media use • Rebecca Yu, University of Michigan • Previous research indicates that social media use for news or political purposes increases political participation, but little is known about if and how political social media behavior might emerge out of everyday, non-political usage of such sites. Using two separate adult samples of Facebook and Twitter users, this study examines the extent to which and how non-political, passive (NPP, consuming content about entertainment interests and personal life) and non-political, active (NPA, producing content about entertainment interests and personal life) social media use relate to exposure to and expression of political voice on the sites. The overall findings are consistent across the two platforms, such that while both NPP and NPA use are positively associated with political information exposure on the sites, NPA use is positively related to political expression, and this relationship is partially explained by political efficacy. Together, these findings support the possibility that the “political” may be an extended terrain of “the personal,” while drawing attention to the possible differential political outcomes resulting from NPP and NPA social media use.
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