Media, Political Elites, & the Public

Public Opinion

The distribution of the population's beliefs about politics and policy issues

Pierre Bourdieu's Critique

Claimed that an idea may be something in public opinion, but it's difficult to measure
Non-response is a political statement

Aggregation

Condorcet "If individuals have a modest tendency to be correct, a collective decision by these individuals can have a very high likelihood of being right"

Heuristics

Individuals can use informational shortcuts to inform their thinking & behavior
Reading headlines & getting informed, memes
Shortcut for thinking and behavior

RAS (Receive, Accept, & Sample) Model

Reception Axiom

Greater level of cognitive engagement with an issue makes the person more likely to be exposed to & comprehend (receive) political messages concerning that issue
The more engaged you are on a knowledgeable base; interest → measures engagement
More likely to seek out information & comprehend it & understand it
Receiving information

Resistance Axiom

People tend to resist arguments that are inconsistent with their political predispositions, but only to the extent that they possess the contextual information necessary to perceive a relationship between the message & their predispositions
Being exposed to the information, receiving it, does not mean that you will accept it
Highly politically knowledgeable, high political interest, but not believing in climate change will not change your opinion
Accept information that is aligned with your belief & reject information that is not in line with your belief
People highly knowledgeable are better at accepting & resisting information

Accessibility Axiom

The more recently a consideration has been called to mind or thought about, the less it takes to retrieve that consideration or related considerations from memory & bring them to the head for use

Response Axiom

Individuals answer survey questions by averaging across considerations that are immediately salient or accessible to them

Political Elites

Persons who devote themselves full-time to some aspect of politics or public affairs
Include politicians, higher-level government officials, journalists, some activists, many kinds of experts & policy specialists

Party Conversion Thesis

Mass polarization along party lines could have come about from the reshuffling of party loyalties, with racial liberals flocking to the Democratic Party & racial conservatives moving to the Republican side

Opinion Leadership Thesis

Polarization could have come about from opinion conversion; existing Democrats becoming more racially liberal & existing Republicans becoming more racially conservative

Political Awareness

Refers to the extent to which an individual pays attention to politics & understands what he or she has encountered

Political Predisposition

Stable, individual-level traits that regulate the acceptance or non-acceptance of the political communications the person receives
A characteristic of individuals that is predictive of political behavior
People's opinions are a combination of information & prior beliefs
Party membership
Giving a set of political considerations, things you believe in politics, background, upbringing, comes from peers, friends, family, etc.

Values

General & enduring standards that hold a more central position than attitudes in an individual's belief systems & that lead us to take particular positions on social issues

Consideration

Any reason that makes an individual decide to come down on one side of a political issue (i.e. a position)
Any reason to think about a political issue
Any reason that might induce an individual to decide a political issue one way or another; a compound of cognition & affect

Cognition

A belief concerning an object
"What I know about an object"; your knowledge of an object

Affect

An evaluation of a belief
Evaluation on an object

Persuasive Messages

Arguments providing a reason for taking a position. If accepted by an individual, they become considerations
Messaging, expecting, and providing a reason to people to sample from the side of distribution
Ex: Informing people about a product
Arguments or images providing a reason for taking a position or point of view; if accepted by an individual, they become considerations

Cueing Messages

Contextual information about the ideological or partisan implications of a persuasive message. Allows individuals to link between the persuasive message & political predisposition
Allows you to persuade but not in a politically neutral way
Links it to an ideology or party
Ex: "I want you to buy my product"

Ideology

A set of stable, more or less consistent set of ideas about the world that provides a guideline for political action

Party ID

A subjective association with a political party (psychological bond)
A sense of belonging that an individual feels for a political party, a psychological attachment to a party
Stems from upbringing

Core of Zaller's Argument

The probability that a person will support or oppose a given policy depends on the mix of positive & negative considerations available in the person's mind when answering a question

Panel Survey

Same set of people, living in a household, that are traced & asked to survey across their life course

Opinion Statements

The outcome of a process in which people receive new information, decide whether to accept it, & then sample at the moment of answering questions

Rational Updating ("Cold Cognition"/Bayesian Updating) (Gerber & Green)

Expectations over economy → is it better or worse
System 2 cognition
Rational processing; updating downwards or upwards depending on the information
Discussion on what's rational or not; Directional updating → willing to update both sides

Biased Updating ("Hot Cognition"/Motivated Reasoning) (Taber & Lodge)

Idea of responding right away → system 1 responding
Seeing something, & reacting straightway
Motivate in such a way that your party always looks better than the other parties
Impression of motivated reasoning in the graph of perceptions of the economy
Some people do not want to hear certain/bad information; most often reject bad information & accept good information

Partisanship

The extent to which people identify with supporters of a party

Prospective Performance Evaluation

How they assess what a party does in government/parliament

Party Differential

A combination of prior beliefs & current information
If correlated over time, voters use information from today's performance to make inferences about what parties will do in the future
They adjust their expectations of policies for the future based on the past of the party

Accuracy Goal

We are motivated to use correct information; In line with motivated reasoning

Partisan Goal

We are motivated to defend our priors

Prior Attitude Effect

People who feel strongly about an issue — even when encouraged to be objective & leave their preferences aside — will evaluate supportive arguments as stronger & more compelling than opposing arguments

Disconfirmation Bias

People will spend more time & cognitive resources denigrating & counterarguing attitudinally incongruent than congruent arguments

Confirmation Bias

When free to choose what information they will expose themselves to people will seek out confirming over disconfirming arguments

Attitude Strength Effect

Those citizens voicing the strongest policy attitudes will be most prone to motivated reasoning

Sophistication Effect

The politically knowledgeable, because they possess greater ammunition with which to counter-argue incongruent facts, figures, & arguments, will be more susceptible to motivated bias than will unsophisticated

Malinformation

Has a purpose of individual harm in the private interest
Ex: Acts of bullying, fabricating personal letters to deliberately harm personal cooperative interest, & going as far as revenge porn; Deliberate change of context, date or time of genuine content

Information

Facts provided about something that generally involves data & investigation. It is data that has been converted into a more useful or intelligible form (e.g. each sale is a data point, & monthly sales are information)
"How many migrants are in a country; this is what people think, here's a survey; politicians state this..."

Misinformation

Information that is false, but not intended to cause harm. For example, individuals who don't know a piece of information is false may spread it on social media in an attempt to be helpful
Providing information with false data, but the person may not know it's false; Unintentional
Ex: Inaccurate captions, dates, statistics or translations, or when satire is taken seriously

Disinformation (Malinformation)

False information that is deliberately created or disseminated with the express purpose to cause harm. Producers of disinformation typically have political, financial, psychological, or social motivations
Ex: Intentionally created conspiracy theories or rumors

Exposure Effect

More likely to cumulate for people who pay more attention to potentially misleading news & information
More exposure, more acceptance
People who hold things to be true, select a lot of information that feeds to their misinformation, which leads to a cycle

Cognitive Scrutiny Effects

When people fail to apply adequate cognitive scrutiny to the dubious claims they receive
Double-check/fact-check that information

Source Identity Effects

People are more vulnerable to information from trusted sources
If you know the source, you're more likely to believe the source
Could be partisanship, people from your network in social media (family members, friends)

Sophistication Effects

More knowledge does not always reduce misperceptions, may actually be more susceptible to false claims
Rejecting information that's not in line with our beliefs

Attitude Formation

An interactive process between people's predispositions & the information they receive from intermediary actors

Cueing

Relates to political messages that aim to move people to a side, i.e. move opinion
Either the political elites or media put messages to move people to either one side or another

Bottom-up (Cueing)

Reaction of elites to stances of voters through process of representation & responsiveness (voters cue elites)

Top-down (Cueing)

Mass publics take position of elites through processes of priming & persuasion (elites cue voters)

Mainstream Effect

Political elites across the political spectrum are in consensus about the policy
Greater political awareness, greater reception of mainstream messages, so if all cueing messages are favorable → Acceptance of policy
Convincing people to align that consensus
All cueing messages are on the same side

Polarization Effect

Political elites across the political spectrum disagree about the policy
Greater political awareness, greater reception of messages in line with your prior and more reception → Polarization about policy

Normalization

If people observe a norm not being followed, then they may begin to see compliance as both optional & less normatively desirable, especially if norm violations occur frequently

Desensitization

The tendency for aversive stimuli to evoke weaker psychological responses as exposure levels increase
More you see the same images, the less impact they have on you

Limited Exposure

Only a small segment of voters follow media messages about politics

Selective Exposure

People tend to expose themselves to messages favorable of 'their candidate'

Biased Perception

Confirmation bias distorts information reception

Agenda-setting

Ability by the media to influence the perceived importance of topics through intensity & selective attention in media messages
Media sets the agenda, raises salience or raises the importance of the issue
The ability of media to influence the importance of issues in people's mind
Priorities of the press may become priorities of people

Framing of Media

Presenting media messages from a certain angle

Frame

An angle with which an issue is being presented, i.e. packaging the issue in such a way as to encourage certain interpretations & to discourage others
Provide people with a quick & easy way to process information
Serve as mental filters to make sense of incoming messages
A "central organizing idea, suggesting what is at issue"
Not only saying what is happening, but how to think about the issue

First-Level Agenda-Setting

The media's ability to influence the salience & importance of issues; this involves the media's power to determine which topics receive attention & prominence

Second-Level Agenda-Setting

The media's influence on the attributes, characteristics, & framing of the issues they cover. It includes shaping the public's understanding of the issues & associated details

Marshall Plan (1948)

Largest foreign assistance program in the century in which financial help was given by the US to Europe to recover from WWII
Massive transfer of aid money to help rebuild postwar Western Europe, intended to bolster capitalist and democratic governments and prevent domestic communist groups from riding poverty and misery to power

"Rally-Round-The-Flag" Effect

Refers to the tendency of public support for the president to increase in the time of a foreign policy crises
Every in-group has the same division but when a group is threatened by an external threat, groups tend to come together
For a while, groups become cohesive, more coherent, & more powerful

Selection Bias

If your sample is systematically different from the broader population you are interested in (i.e. "non-representative"), then the estimates you get from the sample & true effects in the population will be different ("bias")

Survey Experiment

Take a group of people that resemble people you're trying to understand
Ex: Trying to understand Italian public opinion, you take a group of Italian people

League of Nations

Founded after WWI
WWIwas violent, deadly, & the first major industrial war to occur
War had changed, people saw that war can be more destructive & violent compared to before
Main purpose: Preserve peace
Product of a 9-month-long conference
Brainchild of US President Wilson
Unfortunately, Wilson failed to convince the US Congress to ratify the agreement & join the League of Nations
Born without US support, LN was ineffective & replaced by UN after WWII

Agreement Stage

Level 1: Involves bargaining between national actors

Ratification Stage

Level 2: Involves bargaining between domestic actors

Involuntary Defection

Agreement signed, but not ratified by a country

Winset

The set of all the proposals that an actor prefers to the "no agreement" option

Hardline Domestic Public (Opinion)

Provides a democratic leader with a "manifest instability to make concessions"
Must be vulnerable to public opinion in the domestic stage
It can make the country's Level 1 winset smaller & bring an advantage BUT, if public opinion makes Level 1 win-set "too" small, then negotiations can collapse

Politicization

Making an issue political, debating it as an issue of public contestation

Nonrepresentative Sample

Draws biased inferences

Issue (or Political/Ideological) Polarization

Differences among people's policy positions
DISAGREEING with the other party
How much you disagree about the ideas of people who belong to other political parties or movements in your society
Process of polarization

Affective Polarization

Negative feelings toward other political parties & their supporters
DISLIKING the other party
People have strong emotions toward people who belong to other political parties
Process of polarization

Elite Polarization

Divisions among elected officials, party activists, policy intellectuals
Level of polarization

Mass Polarization

Divisions among voters, ordinary citizens
Level of polarization

Partisan Divergence

Voters of different parties having increasingly divergent opinions of policy
People from different parties, increasingly move away from each other in the ideological space

Party Sorting

Voters sorting into parties so that people with similar views are all in one party

Feeling Thermometer

"How do you feel about the other party's voters?"
Giving surveys to people from different parties & asking what they think about different political parties
A way to measure Affective Polarization

Echochamber

When, especially through social media, where you only talk to or read tweets from people who think like you
Try & get you to engage
One way is by showing you things that you agree with
Confirmation Bias

Social Movement

A loosely organized & sustained effort by a large group of people to achieve a social or political goal; Ex: Black lives Matter & MeToo Movement

Signaling

An action taken by an informed party to reveal private information to an uninformed party

Costly Signal

An action that involves some risk or sacrifice; or else a person would not commit the signal

Horizontalism

Technology has allowed ad hoc organizing to address coordination & logistical needs in an unprecedented fashion, with no prior experience of working together

Slacktivism

The tendency to click on links or like posts rather than take concrete actions or steps

Leadership

The role of the media in influencing who has standing in the movement

Action Strategy

The role of the media in influencing which collective-action strategies & tactics are pursued

Framing Strategy

The role of the media in influencing how the movement represents its message in the contest over meaning

Standing

The extent to which the group is taken seriously by being given extensive media coverage, regardless of content

Preferred Framing

The prominence of the group's frame in media discourse on the issues of concern

Movement Sympathy

The extent to which the content of the coverage presents the group in a way that is likely to gain sympathy from relevant publics

Positive Treatment

Describing X as better than the Y (Ex: Describes the COVACID as better than the flu vax)
Increases acceptance & reduces beliefs in conspiracies

Neutral Treatment

Describing the X as equal in all aspects to the Y (Ex: Describes the COVACID as equal in all aspects to the flu vax)
Doesn't affect acceptance, but increases conspiracy & also slightly raises trust

Negative Treatment

Describes the X as inferior to Y (Ex: Describes the COVACID as less effective, with more side effects, & a shorter test period than the flu vax)
Reduces acceptance & slightly increases conspiracies

Vague Treatment

Describe the X broadly (Ex: Suggests that publicly available information does not allow for precise comparisons with the flu vax, but authorities say COVACID is "sufficiently effective")
Brings an increase in conspiracy theories & decreases trust

Domestic Audience Cost

The domestic price a leader would pay for making foreign threats and then backing down

Veto Players

Any domestic actor whose approval/consent is necessary for an international agreement to be implemented