The public wouldn’t get the policies it wants; it would get the policies it was duped into wanting.
In a democracy, politicians and policy outcomes should be responsive to changes in public opinion. But what if politicians (or others, such as media commentators) were able to manipulate public opinion through propaganda or other, more subtle methods? We might appear on the surface to have democracy, but it would be a farce. The public wouldn’t get the policies it wants; it would get the policies it was duped into wanting.
Political scientists have fretted over that possibility for decades. The first major findings found that mass media had “minimal effects” on public opinion.1 More recently, scholars have found that political communications can influence opinion in a few ways. Of particular importance for this study, some scholars have reported that politicians and mass media can influence public opinion by choosing how to frame a story. Is protecting rainforests about indigenous rights or environmental concerns?2 Are urban growth limits about protecting greenbelts or attracting greenbacks?3
Chong and Druckman’s argument, in essence, is that previous studies have used methodologies that exaggerate the real-world importance of framing. Overwhelmingly, previous experiments have tested the effect of exposing people to a single frame (on one side of the issue) or none at all (the control group). These studies have found strong framing effects.
By contrast, Chong and Druckman develop two frames–one strong, one weak–on each side of their chosen issues, for a total of four frames. Read More
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