Political Communication

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Political Communication

• GOVT311 Lecture 17

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Types of Political Media

• Personal Contact
• Primary and Secondary Groups
• Phoning, Door to Door
• Direct Mail
• Newspapers and Magazines
• Television
• Internet

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Campaign Contact (Besides TV)

• Voter Lists (voter registration files)
• Target message based on demographic information
  on voter lists
• ID supporters
• GOTV (Get Out the Vote)
• Recently, absentee balloting requires additional
  organization to get out mail ballots.

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Four Eras of Media

• Partisan Press Era (1787-1832) people subscribed
  to newspapers without advertising! Some
  newspapers were printed by the political parties.
• Commercial Press Era (1833-1900) advertising
  begins and prices for newspapers drop, rise of
  penny press. yellow press evolves.
  Forerunners to Monica Lewinsky, shark attacks,
  abducted children, etc.
• Era of Objective Media (1900-1984) Emergence of
  a trained, professional media.
• Era of New Media (1985-Current) Consolidation of
  newspapers and other old media. Rise of national
  daily newspapers and interpretive journalism.
  Fragmentation of news choices driven by more
  choices available through cable television, talk
  radio, and internet.

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Radio

• 1920s development of radio networks
• 1930s FDR fireside chats, rise of presidential
  press conference
• 1988 rise of talk radio

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Video Killed the Radio Star

• 1950s television ownership rises from 0 to 90
  of US households in a decade
• 1952 Eisenhower hires a media consultant to
  make television ads, Stevenson did not
• 1960s first televised presidential debate,
  images from television credited with Northern
  support for Civil Rights
• 1980 emergence of cable television
• From 1968-present, amount of time dedicated to a
  single story has shrunk, giving rise to the
  sound bite.

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Is the Media Biased?

• Newspaper editors and owners are more
  conservative than general public.
• More newspapers endorsed Bush than Gore
• Newspapers rely on business advertising
• Reporters are more liberal (on some issues) than
  general public
• Liberals may gravitate towards media careers
• Media concerned with balanced viewpoints
  (conflict makes good television).
• People perceive bias through their partisan
  filter.

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More Subtle Media Biases

• Media is biased towards negative Man bites dog
  stories.
• Media cover personalities over process
• Election coverage is about the Horse Race not
  the issues
• Redistricting never made it as a story
• Media may be less critical of presidents for fear
  of losing access to White House

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Agenda Setting and Gatekeeping

• Choice of stories affects how people view the
  world (Priming which stories are most important
  to evaluate candidates?)
• Iyengar and Kinder found that placing a story
  in the news increased persons perceptions that
  the story was the most important issue and
  people began evaluating the president on that
  issue
• Limits to agenda setting
• People learn from their daily lives, too. Cant
  make an issue out of nothing, cant reduce an
  important issue to nothing.
• However, perception of crime rate is tied to
  media coverage of events.
• Media report on stories of interest to people
  (ratings!)

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Political Learning

• People who read newspapers have higher levels of
  political information, higher levels of recall of
  information
• Chicken and egg problem do people with high
  levels of information seek out newspapers?
• Most people dont follow political news
• Opinion leaders and cue givers only need to
  follow news if friends who follow it say that
  something is important

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Can Politicians Manipulate the Media?

• The rally effect in times of crises, people
  rally in support of the government (and
  president), even the news organizations
• Information is most effective in persuasion when
  there is no counter argument!
• Presidents can demand a national audience, but
  the networks have only so much time they are
  willing to devote to the president

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Going Public

• Using the media to rally the people to put
  pressure on government to force an issue on the
  agenda of elected officials
• Only popular presidents are effective in
  manipulation, as people evaluate presidential
  proposals in light of their evaluation of the
  president
• Presidents must choose issues that enjoy at least
  some popular support (president uses gatekeeping
  of this own to choose issues)
• Other politicians can go public presidents
  are most effective because of bully pulpit.

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Which approach to use?

• Depends on
• If a simple argument can be made.
• How the response is framed in existing attitudes
  towards the politician. How favorably are they
  viewed? Does the issue relate to other, similar
  episodes?
• Can the response be framed in terms of moral or
  collective reasons? For example, I broke the
  law because it was the right thing to do in this
  case
• People do not like blaming others.

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Negative Advertising

• (McDonalds spends more on advertising than all
  presidential campaigns combined only 1 of 1996
  advertising was political.)
• Need to distinguish between contrast ads
  pitting one candidates stand on issues against
  anothers, and pure negative advertising.
• Political ads are more negative than regular
  advertising no accountability because of 1st
  Amendment free speech rights.
• Academic research divided on whether negative ads
  reduce voter turnout.

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Social Judgment Theory

• Assimilation If people perceive two objects to
  be related, then negative perceptions of one will
  affect the other negatively.
• People like happy ads better in happy programs
  and sad ads better in sad programs.
• Political advertising is most effective in local
  news
• Contrast If people perceive two objects in
  different categories, negative perceptions of one
  will affect the other positively.

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Iyengar and Prior

• The relationship between political and commercial
  advertising may be related to the ability of
  people to process political information.
• Experiment sit people down to randomly watch
  different types (negative/positive/none) of
  political and commercial ads and see how people
  judge the commercial ads.

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Findings

• More educated people people who should be
  better able to contrast political and commercial
  advertising are more likely to view all ads in
  a negative light after viewing a negative
  political ad.
• Less educated people were more likely to respond
  favorably to commercial ads, but only if
  presented with 1 of 9 ads, when presented with 2
  of 9 ads, they were just as negative as educated
  persons.