Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Influence of Competitive Elite Issue Framing on Public Opinion and Mass Partisanship

政治精英在什么条件下可以影响公众舆论？本论文研究项目检视议题显著性和媒体对党派议题框架的报导对公众意见、大众党派倾向和议题演变的影响。虽然框架的力量经常被证明，但最近的分析表明，当框架相互对立时，就像新闻报道中经常出现的那样，框架效应会大大减弱。本项目旨在通过实验设计和对长期以来媒体对若干问题报道的内容分析，确定政治精英的党派框架能够影响公众舆论的条件，并作为澄清大规模党派转变过程的机制。这个项目的知识价值和创新是：(1)扩展了关于框架对态度和公众舆论影响的理论，包括问题的突出性和传播者和接受者的党派关系，(2)创造了新的数据资源，这将提高学者调查媒体对问题框架的报道与公众舆论之间关系的能力，(3)建立一种解释机制，将政治精英所采取的竞争性问题立场与公众的问题和党派偏好联系起来。该项目的内容分析考察了新闻媒体在20-30年间对四个问题的报道：堕胎、犯罪、美伊冲突和能源政策。随着时间的推移，这些问题的党派性质波动很大，为仔细确定公众舆论变化的条件提供了必要的变化。《纽约时报》和《新闻周刊》的报道将被编码，以确定政治精英在每个问题上使用的主要框架。将通过确定在公众舆论（方向和总体显著性）和大规模党派倾向发生变化之前的时期是否报告了明确、竞争和一致的党派框架来分析这些数据。实验设计将不同的问题突出性和党派标签应用于不同的框架。受试者将回答几个人口统计问题，以及评估他们对十个问题的看法的问题：同性婚姻、减税、堕胎、能源、社会保障、福利、教育、医疗、枪支管制和犯罪。本研究更广泛的影响和科学贡献在于，本研究将为政治科学和社会心理学的现有文献带来新的见解，即党派框架和突出性对公众舆论和政治党派关系的影响。从政治科学的角度来看，本项目澄清了精英党派能够影响公众舆论的条件，提供了精英党派和大众党派之间的关键联系，有助于解释问题演变的过程，以及框架和大众媒体对公众舆论的影响。从社会心理学的角度来看，该项目提高了我们对群体成员对信息源可信度的作用，预警如何影响对说服的抵抗，以及态度重要性在什么条件下足够强以抵抗来自可信来源的说服的理解。

Under what conditions can political elites influence public opinion? This dissertation research project examines the impact that issue salience and media coverage of partisan issue framing has on public opinion, mass partisanship, and issue evolution . While the power of framing has been oft-demonstrated , recent analyses suggest that when frames are pitted against each other, as they often are in news coverage, framing effects are significantly diminished. This project seeks to determine, through an experimental design and a content analysis of media coverage of several issues over time, the conditions under which partisan framing by political elites can impact public opinion and act as a mechanism that clarifies the process of mass partisan transformation. The intellectual merits and innovations of this project are (1) the extension of theories regarding the impact of framing on attitudes and public opinion to include issue salience and the partisanship of both the communicator and the receiver, (2) the creation of new data resources that will improve the ability of scholars to investigate the relationship between media coverage of issue frames and public opinion, and (3) the development of an explanatory mechanism that connects competing issue positions taken by political elites to the issue and partisanship preferences of the public. The project's content analysis examines the news media's coverage of four issues over 20-30 year periods: abortion, crime, U.S.-Iraq conflicts, and energy policy. The partisan nature of these issues has fluctuated greatly over time, providing the necessary variance to carefully determine the conditions under which public opinion changes. Coverage in The New York Times and Newsweek will be coded to determine the predominant frames used by political elites on each issue. The data will be analyzed by determining whether clear, competing, and consistent partisan frames were reported during periods that precede changes in public opinion (in both direction and overall salience) and mass partisanship. The experimental design will vary issue salience and the partisan label applied to various frames. Subjects will answer several demographic questions as well as questions that assess their opinions about ten issues: gay marriage, tax cuts, abortion, energy, social security, welfare, education, health care, gun control and crime.This research's broader impact and scientific contribution centers on the added insight this research will bring to the extant literature in political science and social psychology on the impact that partisan framing and salience have on public opinion and political partisanship. From a political science perspective, this project clarifies the conditions under which elite partisans can influence public opinion, providing the crucial link between elite partisans and mass partisans that helps explain the process of issue evolution as well as the influence of framing and the mass media on public opinion more generally. From a social psychology perspective, the project improves our understanding regarding the role of group membership on source credibility, how forewarning impacts resistance to persuasion, and the conditions under which attitude importance is strong enough to resist persuasion from credible sources.