Polsci 329

minimal effects era

Direct persuasion is infrequent, media activate and reinforce existing predispositions. (Ex. Climate change, commitment to candidate)

Which of the following comes closest to Lippmann's advice/solution?

Impossible for journalist to provide the truth, thus elected officials must instead rely on experts/polisci scholars

The central finding of Tversky and Kahneman's Prospect Theory is?

People are less likely to take a risk when a choice is framed in terms of gain

selective exposure

People are motivated to seek out information they agree with (and avoid what they disagree with). Correlation between audience and message: conservatives and Fox.

prospect theory

People are risk averse when faced with certain gains. People will evaluate a problem based on explanation of risk. People will be averse to taking a chance if there is something to lose.

Which of the following is the definition of disconfirmation bias?

People spend more cognitive resources disintegrating and counterarguing attitudinally incongruent arguments.

motivated reasoning

We don't change our minds because we hang on to previous viewpoints. Explains why people are motivated to selectively exposure. The theory: 1. All reasoning is motivated--why would you think about something without a goal? 2. We have competing goals--accuracy and group belonging 3. Feelings come first, can interfere with cognition (ex. Cream cheese is better here)

Going public

A governing strategy whereby the president (or other executive) bypasses the legislature and appeals directly to the public for support of their legislative proposals. The executives uses popularity as a weapon against the congress and forces compliance without any mechanism for rewarding cooperation. It tends to produce less moderate legislative outcomes, and may also lead to unstable lawmaking based simply on the time in office or other exogenous shocks to a candidate's' popularity.

opinion leaders

A leader for a certain group who gives gives details and information to those within the group who are less active participants. The opinion leader of a group has the ability to shape the information it shares with a certain group.

How has the ratio of local to national news changed over time?

A lot more local news than national news today compared to 30 years ago.

Buckley v Valeo

Buckley v. Valeo, consequences for campaigns, loopholes give rise to issue ads

Differences in which of the following forced cause(s) knowledge gaps between the least and most well off society.

Access to information Social connections Technological skills Motivations-interest

Motivated reasoning

All reasoning motivated. Two motivations that are most important are accuracy and group belonging. Feelings motivate thinking. Effects: extreme attitudes and polarization, effects much larger for most sophisticated, we cannot solve the problem with increases in education.

Which of the following is the best example for Americans' distinct lack of political knowledge compared to European citizens?

American news media do not present substantive information about public affairs

Which of the following is the best definition of Zaller's reception axiom?

As awareness increases, the likelihood of receiving a message increases.

agenda setting

By covering some issues and ignoring others, the media influence which issues people view as important. There are audience factors that moderate agenda setting: 1. political awareness 2. personal relevance which is bigger than the agenda setting effect. Factors that moderate agenda setting: plausibility -->does it work in this environment? and prominence→ do you have to click through? Sometimes what happens is that there is a shift in attention to sensational news coverage. Sometimes there are also political implications from agenda setting.

priming

Calling attention to some matters while ignoring others. Tv news influences the standards by which governments, presidents, policies and candidates for public office are judged. We could test for media priming by comparing the impact of issue performance with/without a prime.

Boydstun mentions "institutional setup" by which she means the norms and constraints we have discussed. Why doesn't she test the impact of these forces on content in her book?

Cannot compare one set of institutional norms/constraints with another, because she only studies US media and so these are all constraints

How could we measure these biases (flags and memorials in 9/11 anniversary coverage), if they existed?

Compare US coverage with other places

Kull et. al claim watching Fox News causes misperceptions about Iraq and that led to support for the war:::alternative hypothesis

Conservatives both watch Fox and support the war, but watching does not cause support

framing

Considered the "angle" of the story. There can be many different frames of a story. The media highlights some aspects of an event or issue and ignore other. Which in turn causes the media to influence how people think about that event or issue. Thus we say that the media chooses how an event will be portrayed to the public.

Which of the following campaign effects is consistently smallest?

Conversion-getting voters from one party to support the other party

Riding the wave hypothesis refers to the strategy whereby candidates:

Coordinate ad messages with current headlines

thematic frame

Coverage based upon abstract, general and societal level factors. It places a public issue in a general context and usually takes the form of an in-depth background report. Ex. Story about a war that addresses the historical context/factors.

Why do news outlets feel they must fire the photogs?

Credibility of the entire news industry

2 step flow of communication

Expected to find that people are most influenced by the media when selecting a presidential candidate. However, most said that they were more influenced by opinion leaders. Therefore, it was thought that opinion leaders were influenced by the media and used their interpretations of media coverage to influence their social groups.

Which research design would most improve confidence about Kull et al's causal claim?

Experiment in which subjects randomly assigned to watch Fox vs other station, after which their knowledge was measured

anxiety vs anger

Findings from Valentino 2011 experiment: research question was how do emotions influence desire to vote? Valentino hypothesized that emotion was what motivates people to vote. Prediction that strong out-groups trigger negative emotions, including anxiety, when consistent with stereotypes. Results: Anger boosts participation while anxiety decreases participation.

conversion

Getting voters from one party to support the other party (campaign effect that is the smallest).

loss aversion

Has to do with the equivalency frame: people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains.

Best definition of soft money

Money donated to parties with intentions of building the party, but not for helping specific candidates

Who were the lapdog journalists?

Mostly white men, increasingly college educated

Ladd: which describe history of independent, non-partisan press in US

News media were truly independent and non-partisan only for a brief moment in our history (mid 20th century)

elaboration likelihood model

Persuasion can occur through two distinct models: the central route and peripheral route. The central route is an effortful generation of thoughts about a message. The peripheral route is processes that are invoked by simple cues in the persuasion context and can have a number of arguments. The determinants of the routes we choose to use are self-relevance and source credibility. Results from the experiment: one sided messages are rare, messages vary in terms of intensity, and prior opinion strength varies.

1st Amendment: which was the Founding Fathers' idea of role of the press in democracy?

Press viewed as mouthpiece for party out of power, voice needs protection similar to any other indv citizen

motivated reasoning biases

Prior attitude effect, disconfirmation bias, confirmation bias (selective exposure), and attitude polarization. Most educated and sophisticated are most vulnerable to these biases.

Which is best description of campaign finance law prior to 1971?

Some restrictions on the books, but there was almost no enforcement

What is the definition of the reception axiom in the Zaller/Converse model of persuasion?

Sophistication goes up, more likely to be exposed to and understand persuasive messages

fundamental attribution error

The attribution theory is the process of automatically and always assigning causes to events, which influences how people immediately think about these events. The fundamental attribution error is when people exaggerate the role of others' motives and intentions, while underestimating the societal/contextual causes of that event.

Which of the following is the best definition of the golden mean rule?

The notion that those at moderate levels of awareness will be most persuaded by a given message

golden mean rule

The notion that those at moderate levels of awareness will be most persuaded by a given message. Attitude change persuasion occurs in the middle range of sophistication.

equivalency frame

The use of different but logically equivalent words or phrases to describe the same outcome, problem or issue. Preferences are affected by how risk is framed. Tversky and Kahneman experiment found that when people were exposed to a potential loss they chose the riskier decision. In essence, losses vs gains that are equal have powerful effects on opinion.

In comparing how often the most and least aware are persuaded during campaigns, Zaller finds that

They are both unlikely to be affected by persuasive messages

According to Lippmann, why can't the public hold informed opinions?

They don't have the time, energy, and access

People often use mental shortcuts instead of thinking deeply about policies.

This means they will often make decisions based on Recently or frequently embedded in memory

Which of the following statements best describes the attentive public theory?

Those interested in politics tunes in to all forms news, while the rest tune out politics in general

Which of the following was the primary goal of the McGovern-Fraser Commission reforms of 1968-72?

To ensure the nominating process reflected the will of the mass public

episodic frame

depicts issues in terms of the individual instances or specific events—example: carnage resulting from a particular terrorist bombing, depicts more dramatic visual footage and pictures.

During Height of Gulf War, president's popularity 90%. Lost election due to concerns about economy. Example of what media effect?

priming

institutional agenda setting

when media attention triggers policy action. The news can alter legislative agendas even when public opinion doesn't change. In 1963, Cohen tests the agenda setting hypothesis and finds that the news doesn't necessarily tell people what to think but rather what to think about.