Amy Fried

Terrorism as a Context of Coverage before the Iraq War

This article examines terrorism as a context in the major newsmagazines’ coverage of Iraq in the prewar period. Contexts and associated issues help create news frames, which can affect judgments of events and policies. This investigation relies on the issues of Time and Newsweek published in September 2002 and from the first issue of January 2003 through the March 24, 2003, issue and includes analysis of the issues’ cover art, graphics within news stories, and Iraq and terrorism stories. During this period, newsmagazines frequently juxtaposed terrorism and Iraq and used graphics that linked Iraq to terrorism and terrorists.

Talking about public opinion and public opinion yet to come: Media and legislator constructions of public opinion in the Clinton‐Lewinsky Scandal

Previous scholarship has argued that constructions of public opinion serve one of three dominant purposes: (1) to provide drama; (2) to promote particular strategic political interests; and (3) to symbolically legitimize the publics role in democracy. This paper analyzes media and legislator constructions of public opinion in the Clinton‐Lewinsky scandal. We assess the uses of public opinion and the purposes to which they were put, and particularly examine the use of different time frames in this discourse. Throughout the scandal, the public remained firmly ambivalent about President Clinton, with majorities supporting him remaining in office, even as they disapproved of his sexual relationship with Ms. Lewinsky. However, the media frequently emphasized the possibility that public might change, and this future orientation was joined to a strongly disapproving emphasis on public morality, rooted in a construction of past values. Later the media took present public opinion as a given, but political implications for the present and future framed the coverage. Once the scandal came to Congress, members of Congress usually recognized the publics support for President Clinton, but offered different interpretations of the roots of this support, its proper influence on Congress, and its future course. In assessing political consequences of their votes, legislators acted like investors involved in futures markets, and judged which opinions were likely to retain intensity in the coming months and years. Changing in a dynamic fashion in response to events, elites’ judgments, and polls, constructions of public opinion served multiple purposes, and were strongly tinged by assessments about the stability and basis of public opinion. The low use of present‐oriented time frames delegitimized citizen views.

US Environmental interest groups and the promotion of environmental values: The resounding success and failure of earth day

The US environmental movement has borne a number of fruits, from an array of legislative accomplishments to a new, widely commemorated holiday ‐ Earth Day. Theoretical insights based in literatures on symbolic politics, collective memory, political socialisation, and the sociology of time suggest that the regular observance of this holiday inserts environmental values into the national consciousness on a regular basis, socializes children and adults, and unobtrusively legitimizes environmental interest groups. However, Earth Day demonstrates the US environmental movements limitations and problems. A number of environmental groups consider the holidays very popularity to be its own undoing, as corporate and business groups use Earth Day as an opportunity to define themselves as supportive of the environment. Drawing from textual sources and a survey of US environmental group leaders and staff, this article demonstrates how the holiday has proved to be a mixed legacy, reflecting the schisms permeating Ame...

Governing with the Polls

INTRODUCTION During the 2000 presidential campaign and the early years of his presidency, President George W. Bush purported to be a politician who was not interested in public opinion polls. As part of this image-making, Bush presented himself as different from his predecessor, President Bill Clinton, who was known as a consumer of polling data and was portrayed as unusual in this regard. President Bush’s team also meant to evoke an image of Bush as a leader who set out his own path to presidential achievement regardless of public sentiment. Yet the Bush administration used polls quite a bit, developing language to promote its policy agenda. For instance, under President George W. Bush, one rhetorical move generated by opinion researchers was the refiguring of the estate tax as the “death tax.” By the same token, the narrative about President Clinton both disregarded cases of him acting contrary to the polls and overlooked the decades-long practice by previous elected officials to govern with the polls. In fact, the use of quantitative public opinion data in politics and government dates back to the 1930s. During this decade, electoral campaign strategists, administrators in government agencies, and presidential advisors gathered and used information from polls. To be sure, during these early years and beyond, citizens and legislators voiced their suspicion and dislike of polls. However, as polling for politics, academic analysis, and market research grew over the decades, public opinion studies became increasingly common in government. By the turn of the twenty-first century, bureaucrats and politicians in the United States were governing with the polls.

Preparing to Fight the Good Fight: Advice from Two Associate Deans to Faculty Friends.

In our professional work, many of us are involved in university service and politics and some of us enter administrative positions. As political scientists who became associate deans of colleges of liberal arts and sciences, our observations from our administrative perches and our disciplinary knowledge have provided insights on how faculty can protect and promote academic values.

Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism

Why Trust Matters: Declining Political Trust and the Demise of American Liberalism. By Marc J. Hetherington. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 208p.

The Personalization of Collective Memory: The Smithsonian's September 11 Exhibit

35.00. Fifteen years after the signing of the Social Security Act, this already broad government program was expanded. With the amendments of 1950, an additional 10 million additional people were covered, including some of the poorest—domestic and agricultural workers. By using the payroll tax to support Social Security payments, citizens saw the program as one to which they contributed and from which they should receive. Even in very different times 55 years later, Americans continued to support this approach to public pensions. Despite comparatively low levels of trust in government and decades of antitax and antigovernment movement successes, President George W. Bushs efforts to privatize Social Security fell flat.