Gaffe Appeal A Field Experiment on Partisan Selective Exposure to Election Messages

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-687 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy J. Ryan ◽  
Ted Brader

The possibility that citizens expose themselves to information in biased ways—so-called selective exposure—has acquired new importance as the media environment has evolved to provide more choices concerning what to watch and read. But evidence for the most prominent idea in selective exposure research—that citizens prefer attitude-consistent information—is notably mixed. Methodological challenges likely contribute to the inconclusive nature of findings, as researchers face trade-offs between the artificiality of lab environments and the difficult-to-disentangle confounds of observational analysis. We improve understanding of selective exposure in two ways. First, we consider how message aspects other than attitude-consistency affect exposure decisions. Second, we study selective exposure with an innovative field experiment conducted in the United States that addresses limitations of other approaches. Our results allow us to reach more confident conclusions about the prevalence of motivated selective exposure, and help to illuminate underpinnings of the oft-lamented tendency for campaign media to focus on candidate miscues rather than substantive policy differences.

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Zeinab Ghasemi Tari ◽  
Zahra Emamzadeh

In the last presidential election of the United States (2016), the interaction between the Donald Trump and the American media was remarkable and unprecedented from both political and communication perspectives. The present paper is interested in observing the interactions between then the Republican Party candidate, Donald Trump, and the media of the United States. As there were major verbal confrontations between Trump, and some media, specifically CNN, this paper observes how Trump campaign reacted to CNN that turned out to be one of his biggest opponents. The relations and reactions are explained using “agenda setting” and “selective exposure” as theories and “thematic analysis” as the research methodology. The paper analyzes CNN videos from October 7 to October 31, and Trump’s tweets during the same period. The reason for conducting the research during October is that this month is regarded as one of the most critical periods in US presidential election, known as “October surprise”. Then a thematic analysis of the data is conducted to extract all accusations and allegations against Trump. Research results show that President Trump did not react to most of the accusations and attacks raised by CNN. Apparently Trump had decided that ignoring and not responding is a better strategy. There was an exception to this rule: Trump’s treatment toward women. He did address that issue frequently and tried to justify himself and apologize. Accordingly, Trump’s presidential campaign aim was to ignore accusations, keep attacking, and answering accusations only if they are already known to too many people.


Litera ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 104-116
Author(s):  
Daria Valer'evna Nerents

In the conditions of market economy, special role is played by mass media, since they represent not only a platform for promoting any category of goods and services (permitted by the country’s legislation), but also are the key channel for advertising consumer goods manufactured in any other economic sector. The current state of affairs led to the dominance of the segment of commercially oriented mass media in the modern media environment, which usually are part of the media holding and aim to benefit by any possible means, most of the time through publication of advertising materials. The subject of this article is the processes of commercialization and monopolization as the crucial factors that entailed the transformation processes in media environment, first in the United States, and later in the Russian Federation. The scientific novelty of this research consists in detailed description of the consequences of these processes, determination of the degree of influence of the global media market upon mass media of both countries, and outlining further trends in the development of journalism under such conditions. The conclusion is drawn that the lofty aims of serving public interests, creating objective and independent content, and providing adequate coverage of the events fully depend on the media owners. Therefore, open competition, wide range of offers on the market, and variety of media choices in essence are the nonexistent phenomena, namely die to commercialization and monopolization processes that characterize modern Russian and US mass media.


2004 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 70-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Gallagher

Public opinion in the United States and elsewhere celebrated the liberation of Afghan women following the defeat of the Taliban government. The United States promised to stay in Afghanistan and foster security, economic development, and human rights for all, especially women. After years of funding various anti- Soviet Mujahidin warlords, the United States had agreed to help reconstruct the country once before in 1992, when the Soviet-backed government fell, but had lost interest when the warlords began to fight among themselves. This time, however, it was going to be different. To date, however, conditions have not improved for most Afghan women and reconstruction has barely begun. How did this happen? This article explores media presentations of Afghan women and then compares them with recent reports from human rights organizations and other eyewitness accounts. It argues that the media depictions were built on earlier conceptions of Muslim societies and allowed us to adopt a romantic view that disguised or covered up the more complex historical context of Afghan history and American involvement in it. We allowed ourselves to believe that Afghans were exotic characters who were modernizing or progressing toward a western way of life, despite the temporary setback imposed by the Taliban government. In Afghanistan, however, there was a new trope: the feminist Afghan woman activist. Images of prominent Afghan women sans burqa were much favored by the mass media and American policymakers. The result, however, was not a new focus on funding feminist political organizations or making women’s rights a foreign policy priority; rather, it was an unwillingness to fulfill obligations incurred during decades of American-funded mujahidin warfare, to face the existence of deteriorating conditions for women, resumed opium cultivation, and a resurgent Taliban, or to commit to a multilateral approach that would bring in the funds and expertise needed to sustain a long-term process of reconstruction.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Mary Coleman

The author of this article argues that the two-decades-long litigation struggle was necessary to push the political actors in Mississippi into a more virtuous than vicious legal/political negotiation. The second and related argument, however, is that neither the 1992 United States Supreme Court decision in Fordice nor the negotiation provided an adequate riposte to plaintiffs’ claims. The author shows that their chief counsel for the first phase of the litigation wanted equality of opportunity for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as did the plaintiffs. In the course of explicating the role of a legal grass-roots humanitarian, Coleman suggests lessons learned and trade-offs from that case/negotiation, describing the tradeoffs as part of the political vestiges of legal racism in black public higher education and the need to move HBCUs to a higher level of opportunity at a critical juncture in the life of tuition-dependent colleges and universities in the United States. Throughout the essay the following questions pose themselves: In thinking about the Road to Fordice and to political settlement, would the Justice Department lawyers and the plaintiffs’ lawyers connect at the point of their shared strength? Would the timing of the settlement benefit the plaintiffs and/or the State? Could plaintiffs’ lawyers hold together for the length of the case and move each piece of the case forward in a winning strategy? Who were plaintiffs’ opponents and what was their strategy? With these questions in mind, the author offers an analysis of how the campaign— political/legal arguments and political/legal remedies to remove the vestiges of de jure segregation in higher education—unfolded in Mississippi, with special emphasis on the initiating lawyer in Ayers v. Waller and Fordice, Isaiah Madison


Author(s):  
K.E. Goldschmitt

Bossa Mundo chronicles how Brazilian music has been central to Brazil’s national brand in the United States and the United Kingdom since the late 1950s. Scholarly texts on Brazilian popular music generally focus on questions of music and national identity, and when they discuss the music’s international popularity, they keep the artists, recordings, and live performances as the focus, ignoring the process of transnational mediation. This book fills a major gap in Brazilian music studies by analyzing the consequences of moments when Brazilian music was popular in Anglophone markets, with a focus on the media industries. With subject matter as varied as jazz, film music, dance fads, DJ/remix culture, and new models of musical distribution, the book demonstrates how the mediation of Brazilian music in an increasingly crowded transnational marketplace has had lasting consequences for the creative output celebrated by Brazil as part of its national brand. Through a discussion of the political meaning of mass-mediated music in chronologically organized chapters, the book shifts the scholarly focus on the music’s transnational popularity from the scholarly framework of representing Otherness to broader considerations of a media environment where listeners and intermediaries often have differing priorities. The book provides a new model for studying music from culturally rich countries in the Global South where local governments often leverage stereotypes in their national branding project.


Author(s):  
Michael X. Delli Carpini ◽  
Bruce A. Williams

The media landscape of countries across the globe is changing in profound ways that are of relevance to the study and practice of political campaigns and elections. This chapter uses the concept of media regimes to put these changes in historical context and describe the major drivers that lead to a regime’s formation, institutionalization, and dissolution. It then turns to a more detailed examination of the causes and qualities of what is arguably a new media regime that has formed in the United States; the extent to which this phenomenon has or is occurring (albeit in different ways) elsewhere; and how the conduct of campaigns and elections are changing as a result. The chapter concludes with thoughts on the implications of the changing media landscape for the study and practice of campaigns and elections specifically, and democratic politics more generally.


Book Reviews: Women and Politics in New Zealand, Voters' Vengeance: The 1990 Election in New Zealand and the Fate of the Fourth Labour Government, The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, The Politics of the Training Market: From Manpower Services Commission to Training and Enterprise Councils, Public Policy and the Nature of the New Right, Managing the United Kingdom: An Introduction to its Political Economy and Public Policy, Citizenship and Employment: Investigating Post-Industrial Options, Government by the Market? The Politics of Public Choice, Responsive Regulation: Transcending the Deregulation Debate, Regulatory Politics in Transition, The Politics of Regulation: A Comparative Perspective, Brother Number One: A Political Biography of Pol Pot, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since 1945, Welfare States and Working Mothers, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Japan and the United States: Global Dimensions of Economic Power, Political Dynamics in Contemporary Japan, Japan's Foreign Policy after the Cold War: Coping with Change, Soviet Studies Guide, Directory of Russian MPs, Mikhail Gorbachev and the End of Soviet Power, Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics, Six Years that Shook the World: Perestroika — The Impossible Project, The Politics of Transition: Shaping a Post-Soviet Future, Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference, Probabilistic Voting Theory, Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing, Queer in America: Sex, the Media, and the Closets of Power

1994 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-730
Author(s):  
Preston King ◽  
Marco Cesa ◽  
Martin Rhodes ◽  
Stephen Wilks ◽  
Christopher Tremewan ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-99
Author(s):  
Uta A. Balbier

This chapter defines Graham’s crusades in the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom in the 1950s as powerful cultural orchestrations of Cold War culture. It explores the reasons of leading political figures to support Graham, the media discourses that constructed Graham’s image as a cold warrior, and the religious and political worldviews of the religious organizers of the crusades in London, Washington, New York, and Berlin. In doing so, the chapter shows how hopes for genuine re-Christianization, in response to looming secularization, anticommunist fears, and post–World War II national anxieties, as well as spiritual legitimizations for the Cold War conflict, blended in Graham’s campaign work. These anxieties, hopes, and worldviews crisscrossed the Atlantic, allowing Graham and his campaign teams to make a significant contribution to creating an imagined transnational “spiritual Free World.”


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