Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: The Impact of Alternative Elite Discourse on the Formation of Public Opinion: A Study of the Racial Divide in American Opinion

在对美国公众舆论的研究中，更有趣的经验性规律之一是美国黑人和美国白人在公共政策问题上的巨大分歧。从平权行动，到AFDC，再到美国干预阿拉伯/以色列冲突，黑人和白人似乎在政府应该在一系列政策问题上采取的方向上存在分歧。虽然之前的研究已经表明，为什么黑人和白人在种族特定问题上的观点应该不同，但我们还没有解释为什么黑人和白人在表面上与种族无关的问题上观点不同，比如社会保障或医疗保健。在这个博士论文研究项目中，学生更深入地探索非种族特定政策问题上非黑人和白人分歧的本质。除了其他学者关注政治倾向和黑人和白人在非种族特定问题上的意见差异之间的关系，学生开发了一个理论框架，考虑到接触不同的精英话语对扩大黑人和白人公众舆论差距的影响。这名学生表明，为了在各自的种族选民、非裔美国精英(包括黑人民选官员、记者、宗教和组织领导人等)和主流精英(那些能够主导主流话语的精英)中推进自己的利益、思想和意识形态，他们以本质上不同的方式框定了与种族无关的政治问题。鉴于这种差异，我将展示非洲裔美国人如何接触到他们自己的土著精英话语和美国白人。缺乏对这种另类话语的接触，是研究人员在非种族特定问题上观察到的黑人和白人观点存在差异的重要原因。为了做到这一点，学生制定了一项研究设计，不仅分析了黑人和主流精英关于非种族特定问题的话语的内容，而且通过一系列框架实验，通过实验测试了这些不同的话语社区提供的信息对非裔美国人和白人在这些问题上的观点的不同影响。他从内容分析开始，考察了黑人和主流媒体框定三个与种族无关的重要政治问题的不同方式：社会保障改革、阿拉伯/以色列冲突和1993年克林顿医疗改革法案。这位学生考察了过去15年来全国黑人媒体来源(国家黑人新闻杂志和几家黑人报纸)和国家主流媒体来源(国家新闻杂志和主流报纸)在不同时期的内容，发现了这些媒体来源在设计这些问题的方式上的差异。接下来，为了了解黑人和主流媒体对这些问题的框定可能会如何影响黑人和白人的公众舆论，我设计了一系列实验，让我能够梳理黑人和主流精英问题框框对非种族问题的黑人和白人公众舆论的不同影响。这些实验可以测试黑人社区内非种族问题的替代框架是否会导致对非种族问题的不同解释，因此可能有助于解释美国黑人和白人在这些问题上的不同看法。

One of the more interesting empirical regularities within the study of American public opinion has been the enormous disagreement between black Americans and white Americans on issues of public policy. From affirmative action, to AFDC, to the United States intervention in the Arab/Israeli conflict, blacks and whites appear to disagree with each other on the direction that government should take on a whole host of policy issues. While previous research has suggested why blacks and whites should differ in their opinions on race specific issues, we have yet to explain why blacks and whites differ in their opinions on ostensibly non-racial issues, such as social security or health care. In this Doctoral Dissertation Research project the student explores more closely the nature of the black and white disagreement on non-race specific policy issues. Moving beyond other scholars focus on relationships between political predispositions and black and white differences in opinion on non-race specific issues the student develops a theoretical framework that considers the effects that exposure to differing elite discourses has on widening the gap in black and white public opinion. The student shows that an attempt to advance their own interests, ideas, and ideologies among their respective racial constituencies, African-American elites (including black elected officials, reporters, religious and organizational leaders, etc) and mainstream elites (those elites who are able to dominate mainstream discourse) frame non-race specific political issues in substantively different ways. Given this difference, I will then show how African Americans exposure to their own indigenous elite discourse and white Americans. lack of exposure to this alternative discourse plays an important role in contributing to the differences researchers have observed in black and white opinion on non-race specific issues. To do this the student has formulated a research design that analyzes not only the content of black and mainstream elite discourse on non-race specific issues but which also, thorough a series of framing experiments, experimentally test the differential effects that the messages supplied by these distinct discursive communities have on African American and white opinion with regard to these issues. He begins with a content analysis where he examines the different ways in which both Black and mainstream media have framed three important non-race specific political issues: social security reform, the Arab/ Israeli conflict and 1993 Clinton health care reform act. Examining the content of national black media sources (national black news magazines and several black newspapers) and national mainstream media sources (national news magazines and mainstream newspapers) at various points over the last decade and a half, the student identifies differences in the way these issues have been framed by these respective media sources. Next to get an idea about how the black and mainstream media's framing of these issues might influence black and white public opinion, I designed a set of experiments that allow me sort out the differential effects of black and mainstream elite issue frames on black and white public opinion of non-racial issues. These experiments allow testing of whether the alternative framing of non-racial issues within the black community leads to different interpretations of non-racial issues and as a result may help explain differences in black and white Americans opinions on these issues.