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1.
THE ACCESSIBILITY BIAS IN POLITICS: TELEVISION NEWS AND PUBLIC OPINION   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  
The influence of television news over public opinion is tracedto the ‘accessibility bias’ in processing information.In general, the argument stipulates that information that canbe more easily retrieved from memory tends to dominate judgments,opinions and decisions. In the area of public affairs, moreaccessible information is information that is more frequentlyof more recently conveyed by the media. Four different manifestationsor the accessibility bias in public opinion are described includingthe effects of news coverage on issue salience, evaluationsof presidential perfomance, attributions of issue responsibility,and voting choices.  相似文献   

2.
This study examines the triangular relationship of the press,the president and public opinion about the drug issue in theUnited States from 1985 to 1990. Agenda-setting theory servesas the theoretical foundation for the ARIMA time-series analysis,which attempts to address who is driving the public opinionformation process about drugs: the press, the president, orthe public. The study employs a unique method in that ‘mostimportant problem’ survey results from nine organizationsare quilted into a time-series of 70 monthly points to measurethe public agenda. The press agenda is based on a computerizedcontent analysis of the frequency of coverage of the drug issue,and the presidential agenda is based on a similar analysis ofthe presidents’ public relations agendas. The three univariatetime-series are identified, estimated, and diagnosed. Then thewhite-noise component of each is used in a cross-correlationanalysis to address the research question. The results indicatethat public opinion mirrors or immediately follows the press,though public opinion also drives the press agenda. Second,the study suggests that the president is following the publicagenda, though the president also has strong immediate influenceon public opinion. And, finally it suggests the president mirrorsand follows the media, in addition to following public opinion.The trend of opinion, when viewed in relation to the historyof events surrounding the issue, suggests that the public opinionformation process, as measured through the lens of public opinionpolls, may be a matter of public perceptions of the realityof the issue and of the pseudo-realities of information campaignsand presidential and press attention, which may have their originsback in the heart of the public concern.  相似文献   

3.
This study examined multiple factors associated with the processof public opinion including relevant predispositions, mediause, interpersonal discussion, and perceptions of communityopinion in order to test a theoretical model of public opinion.We conceptualized these factors as intrapersonal, media, andsocial ‘filters’ within the public opinion process.To test the impact of these filters, we conducted a survey withtwo independent samples—the first sample was collectedduring the introduction phase of a community ballot issue andthe second just a week before the issue vote. Findings indicateall three filters impacted public opinion regarding the ballotissue. Within these filters, important subprocesses were analyzedto better understand each filter's contribution to the formationof public opinion. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression equationsused to test the proposed process model revealed that the intrapersonalfilter accounted for a substantial amount of the overall variancein public opinion, but that media and social filters were alsoimportant predictors. Results highlight the importance of communicationvariables in the formation of public opinion. Received for publication May 4, 2006. Accepted for publication April 19, 2007.  相似文献   

4.
This study tests the agenda-setting hypothesis for the environmentalissue in Hong Kong from 1983 to 1995. It was found that theagenda-setting hypothesis was supported for the initial periodof five and a half years. In the subsequent period of sevenand a half years, despite the increased media coverage of theissues, there was a significant drop in the perceived salienceof the environmental problem. This may be due to the dilutionof public attention as a result of diversity in the news agendaand reporting of local environmental problems as ‘soft’news. It was also found that the environmental issue failedto compete with other prominent issues directly affecting thepublic. The mass media played a much less important role inkeeping the environmental issue on the public agenda at thelater stage.  相似文献   

5.
This paper presents the results of a relatively large numberof public opinion surveys conducted in Britain during the Gulfcrisis—August 1990 to February 1991—many at weeklyintervals. The questions detailed here not only dealt with publicattitudes to the crisis itself but on its impact on the perceptionof the superpowers and the Arab world; again comparative trends,stretching back for almost forty years. There is also a discussionof the Gulf crisis and the British domestic political situation—wouldthe so-called ‘Falklands effect’ of 1982-1983 bereplicated by a ‘Gulf effect’ in 1991? This collectionof surveys probably represents one of the largest databaseson the topic in Britain. The paper shows a fairly stable positionof public opinion during the crisis; an improvement in the imageof the United States but a deterioration in that of the SovietUnion; but no significant effect on the British domestic politicalscene.  相似文献   

6.
This paper provides an empirical test of the argument that thebroadcast newsmedia help create a ‘national’ publicopinion and mute localized opinion rooted insociodemographiccharacteristics. Using Canadian data, we provide evidence thatmajor social cleavages are reduced as exposure to the broadcastmedia goes up. However, we also provide evidence that exposureto media directed toward segmented aaudiences exacerbates socialcleavages. We conclude by speculating that public opinion maybecome more polarized around sociodemographic cleavages as narrowcastmedia become more dominant and we suggest that this has implicationsfor the study of media effectsusing survey research.  相似文献   

7.
Three aspects of the ‘most important problem’ questionused in agenda-setting research to measure issue salience amongthe public were examined. A split-ballot design in a state-widesurvey compared versions of the public agenda with a socialframe of reference versus a personal frame of reference, versionsusing the traditional term ‘problem’ versus ‘issue’,and the effects of question order. High correlations betweenthe different versions were found in all three sets of comparisons.  相似文献   

8.
For the first time in more than four decades, Central and EastEuropeans can openly voice their opinion about everything fromthe price of bread to the performance of the government. Publicopinion has become a dynamic factor in the decision-making processof the new governments of Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakiaand will play an important role in determining what kind ofpost-communist societies develop in these countries. In an effortto explore public sentiment about what kind of society theywant to develop, we analyze results from 14 nationwide, representativepublic opinion polls commissioned by the United States InformationAgency's Office of Research between June 1989 and January 1992in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. After tracing trendsin public opinion over this period, we look at some aspectsof the political culture in these countries. We then reporton our preliminary attempts to understand the determinants ofindividual preferences for either a society that emphasizesindividual freedom and responsibility (‘individual opportunities’society) or one in which the state assumes responsibility forassuring public welfare (‘state guarantees’ society).  相似文献   

9.
This paper explores the role of perceptions of the opinionsof others as they relate to the formation of public opinion.Two interrelated theories involving such perceptions, the thirdperson effect and the spiral of silence, are tested in the contextof public opinion regarding divestment of financial interestsin South Africa. As hypothesized by the third person effect, perceptions of theinfluence of media reports on others were found to be consistentlygreater than perceptions of influence on self. Findings werestrongly supportive of this component of the ‘third personeffect’ hypothesis. Perceptions of the opinions of otherswere also explored in relation to respondents' willingness toexpress their opinions publicly. As suggested by the spiralof silence theory, respondents were found to be more willingto express their opinions publicly when they perceived a trendin support of their viewpoint, or when there was a greater perceivedlikelihood of achieving success for their issue position. The size of the effect produced from joining these two processesis moderated by the role of issue salience. People perceivingdivestment as a highly important issue are more likely to ascribegreater media influence to others than to themselves, but theirwillingness to express their opinions publicly is least likelyto be influenced by perceptions of the climate of opinion.  相似文献   

10.
‘Here is a book that makes you want to shout, "Finally!"’That is the opening sentence of a recent book review that theauthor of this review wrote for the International Journal ofPublic Opinion Research about Campaigning for Hearts and Minds:How Emotional Appeals in Political Ads Work by Ted Brader (2006).The remark refers to the fact that Brader’s book focuseson an issue that has thus far received very little attentionin the field of communication studies, or, for that matter,in the fields of political science or sociology, namely, themajor role emotions play in explaining collective behavior,social decisions, opinion formation and—especially inthe case at hand—the effects of media coverage on opinionformation. Now, in the form of Katrin Döveling’scomprehensive new  相似文献   

11.
The paper addresses two propositions: (1) that by publishingnews stories about the electoral strength of parties or candidates,the mass media contribute to shaping the voters' expectationsabout the likely outcome of an upcoming election; (2) that theseexpectations in turn stimulate a bandwagon effect, i.e. theyinfluence vote choice to the advantage of the apparent futurewinner of the election. Analyzing media content and survey datagathered during the campaign for the first all-German nationalelection of December 2, 1990, it can be shown that (1) interestin the media's political reporting as well as interpersonalpolitical communication contributed significantly to convertingvoters to the view of the election outcome that was constantlypresented by the mass media; (2) this belief in turn causedparticularly unsophisticated independent voters to vote forthe apparent winner of the election. Referring to the conceptualframework of ‘low information rationality’, thisbandwagon effect is interpreted as ‘majority-led proxyvoting’. Since public opinion polls play the key rolein its definition, the media portrayal of the competing parties'electoral prospects can be assumed to be fairly accurate, sothat voters relying on such information in casting their voteare not misled.  相似文献   

12.
This paper presents a content analysis of the manner in which‘world opinion’ is used in stories and editorialsof two nations' major newspapers. The authors studied the InternationalHerald Tribune and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for themonths of February, March, and April 1986 for articles whichcontained implicit or explicit references to ‘world opinion’.These refernces were studied using a pre-designed survey instrument,which analyzed several features of the term's usage. Topicsfor discussion included: (1) the various syonyms for world opinion;(2) the agenda for world opinion; (3) the timing of referenceto particular issues on the agenda; (4) the moral and pragmaticcomponents of world opinion; and (5) the link between worldopinion and the ‘international isolation’ of nationsor individuals. The paper concludes by combining the resultsof the study into a preliminary definition of ‘world opinion’,based upon the common usage of this term. The definition comparesthe characteristics of ‘world opinion’ and ‘publicopinion’, and discusses the possible ramifications ofunderstanding the concept in this manner.  相似文献   

13.
It is a common assumption that in many countries mass mediacensorship is imposed by an authoritarian government on an unwillingpublic. This study examines public opinion about televisioncensorship in the island nation of Singapore. More specifically,we tested the third-person effect hypothesis, which suggeststhat people expect media content to have more negative influenceon others than on themselves, and that some support for censorshipis based on that perceptual bias. Data for the study came from face-to-face interviews with 506randomly selected Singaporeans who evaluated ten categoriesof ‘sensitive’ television content. Results revealed(1) a substantial perceptual bias in all content categories;(2) generally strong opinion favoring censorship of televisioncontent; and (3) a significant relationship between these twofactors, suggesting that people may support censorship of mediain part because of a tendency to overestimate its negative influence.  相似文献   

14.
In recent years, a number of new techniques have been developed—includingdeliberative polls and educational surveys—that attemptto gather measures of public opinion that is of higher quality(i.e. better informed or more deliberative) than that recordedin typical mass opinion surveys. This paper addresses severalgeneral sets of questions. What is meant by ‘quality’in public opinion? What criteria can be enumerated by whichthe quality of public opinion can be assessed? In grapplingwith these questions, the paper argues that conceptions of qualityin public opinion are inextricably bound to broader conceptionsof quality in democratic decision making, a complex processinvolving multiple phases and collective participants. In addition,a number of important contradictions and ambiguities underlieconceptions of quality in public opinion.  相似文献   

15.
Greece became an EEC member in 1981, following a parliamentaryvote in the then New Democracy (conservative)–controlledparliament. Opinion polls indicated though that were a referendumheld at the time, membership would have been rejected, as thegovernment had lost its popular support (and lost power in thecourse of that year) and an across-the-board anti-western majorityhad emerged in a country whose people's national identity wasfirst defined during and as a defense against the crusades.Ten years later, there exists in Greece a very large consensusin favor of EEC membership which includes even the communistleft, at least programmatically. The spectacular, and unprecedentedamong Community countries, pro-EEC conversion is the subjectof this paper. First, using the European Commission's Eurobarometerand Eurodim's Helleno-barometer data, the evolution of Greekpublic opinion towards the EEC is documented. Secondly, thetrend data in the various voting groups show that this conversionis basically the result of the transformation of the socialistelectorate from anti-EEC to pro-EEC, but with a lag behind thesimilar change in the party's (PASOK) policies during its eight-yearrule (1981–9). Thirdly, evidence is provided that anti-westernismhas not died out in Greece, but that it has both mellowed andbecome ‘selective’. So, we conclude that the pro-EECconversion was not the result of some general ‘Westernization’of Greek public opinion, but the outcome of a ‘learningexperience’: during their country's ten-year EEC membership,the Greeks discovered that the benefits from this internationalcommitment far outweighed the costs. In fact, it is argued thatthe pro-EEC conversion of Greek public opinion has contributedto the mellowing of its anti-westernism: whereas the crusadeswere instrumental in cutting the Greeks from Europe, the EECappears now the vehicle of their reintegration into a worldin whose development they have historically played a major role.  相似文献   

16.
There is growing research on voting behavior in referendums.However, the dynamics of opinion formation in popular referendums,referendums initiated by the electorate to approve or rejectdecisions made by representative bodies, has not yet been studied.This is especially unfortunate as voting decisions in popularreferendums differ from those in other referendums in interestingways. Opinion formation can be a very dynamic process in popularreferendums, making the referendum campaign crucial. This paperstudies the dynamics of opinion formation in popular referendumsand relates them to particular characteristics of the campaignsand the issues at hand. Based on the literature, we consideredthe effects of the intensity of the yes and no campaigns, familiaritywith the issue, and partisan cues. Our study uses content analysisdata and data from public opinion surveys dealing with variouspopular referendums held in the Netherlands. The study revealedseveral factors that contributed to the volatility of opinionsin the referendum campaigns: the issue (new and did not fittraditional political schemes), lack of support from societaland community organizations for the position of the local authorities,and low profile campaigns on the part of local authorities.While some of these factors are general and may play a rolein referendums everywhere, some can be considered ‘typicallyDutch’, related to the characteristics of popular referendumsin the Netherlands and the country’s political system.  相似文献   

17.
The emergence of media-oriented terrorism led several scholarsof modern terrorism to reconceptualize the phenomenon of terrorwithin the framework of symbolic communication theory. However,the success of media-minded terrorists has been studied mainlyby measures of amount of coverage given to terrorist acts andnot by examining the impact of this coverage on public opinion.The present study sets out to examine the effects of media coverageof two terrorist events on the public's attitudes and perceptions.By means of an experimental design, the impact of press andtelevision reports of two terrorist incidents was studied. Thefindings highlight the ‘redefinition of image’ causedby exposure to media reports and relate media functions suchas status-conferral and agenda setting to the specific caseof mass-mediated terrorism.  相似文献   

18.
Over the last few years, questions in the Australian polls aboutthe rate of immigration and the rate of Asian immigration havegenerated a remarkably wide range of response. While most ofthe polls conducted since 1984 suggest majority opposition tothe rate at which immigrants, including Asian immigrants, havebeen coming to Australia, other polls suggest majority support.Differences between the 1984 poll figures and some of the morerecent polls may reflect changes over time. Other polled differencesalmost certainly reflect differences in the way the questionswere worded. However, the most remarkable if least obvious causeof the difference seems to be the contexts in which the questionswere asked; more precisely, differences in the length and focusof the various questionnaires in which questions on immigrationwere embedded. Public opinion on the rate of immigration isnot only ‘soft’, it is created in the very attemptto measure it. Under these circumstances there is little pointin trying to isolate ‘majority opinion’ or in attemptingto establish which of the polls provides the most accurate reading.Where different readings are a product of differing contextsthey may be best understood in terms of competing conceptionsof what ‘public opinion’ itself is all about.  相似文献   

19.
Some years ago, major French firms and institutions joined forcesto develop the AGORAMETRIE system, which analyzes and followsup public opinion about controversial matters in French society.The system is based on annual comprehensive surveys of representativesamples of the French population. We present here the theoreticalbasis of the system, and its application as a decoding toolto the analysis of specific social problems, by consideringthe following points: the modelling of public opinion througha constructivist approach; questionnaire design and interpretationof structural factors; evolution of public opinion, effectsof date, age and generation; and the ‘grafting’procedure and its application, illustrated by opinion aboutAIDS.  相似文献   

20.
'NO OPINION'-FILTERS: A COGNITIVE PERSPECTIVE   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  
Research on the use of ‘no opinion’-filters suggeststhat respondents are the less likely to offer a substantiveresponse the more strongly the filter question is worded. Aseries of experiments is reported that demonstrates that filterquestions influence respondents' perception of their task: themore strongly the filter question is worded, the more respondentsassume that they will have to answer difficult questions, andthat they may not have the required knowledge. Accordingly,filter questions discourage respondents from offering globalopinions that they may hold. In line with this assumption, allrespondents who reported not having an opinion in response toa filter question, subsequently provided substantive responseson a global opinion question—presumably because the globalquestion asked was less demanding than expected on the basisof the filter. Analyses of these substantive responses indicatedthat respondents who initially reported not having an opiniondiffered from respondents who reported having one. Methodologicalimplications of these findings for the use of filter questionsand for research on the nature of ‘floating’ arediscussed.  相似文献   

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