Daniel B. Wackman

“To Thine Own Self Be True”: Values, Framing, and Voter Decision-Making Strategies

This article builds on multidisciplinary research on framing, motivation, and decision making to examine the relationships among media frames, individual interpretations of issues, and voter decision making. Chosen for an experimental study were two research populations, evangelical Christians and undergraduate students, who were expected to differ in their values and priorities. Subjects were presented simulated newspaper articles about an election contest and asked to make a candidate choice. Within issue environments containing candidate stands on four issues, the media frame of a single issue, health care, was altered: one experimental group in each population received an ethical textual frame and the other a material textual frame. Findings indicate that media frames and issue interpretations, in conjunction, substantially influence the type of decision-making strategy voters employ. Implications for future research on politics and media are discussed.

A communication training program for couples

A structured educational program attempts to increase each partners self awareness and contribution to interaction within significant relationships

Interpersonal Communication and Coorientation

This paper focuses on the use of coorientation measures as dependent variables in the study of face-to-face interpersonal communication in small groups. The first section discusses those coorientation variables which are likely to be most interesting as dependent variables, and several studies using these variables are analyzed. Their findings appear to indicate that information exchange is a more typical function of interpersonal communication than is persuasion. The second section of the paper offers a number of suggestions for developing a research program to look at the information exchange function of interpersonal communication, including suggestions about conceptualizations, methodologies, and uses of the general coorientation model.

Recent Progress in Understanding and Facilitating Marital Communication.

Newfindingsfrom research, leading to new insights, have in the past ten years revealed that effective couple communication is a vital key to effective marital interaction. Some of these insights are listed and described, and the new concepts which have emerged-such as awareness, self-disclosure, esteem-building, and symmetry in husband-wife input-are discussed. In conclusion, the reader is urged not to regard training in communication as a panacea.

Moral Referendums: Values, News Media, and the Process of Candidate Choice

Relatively unexplored in political communication research are the mental processes involved when political issues, particularly those framed by news media in moral terms, interact with individuals personal values in an electoral context. This study explored how the process of candidate choice is influenced by interactions between (1) individuals values and (2) news framing of issues in terms of contending values. Subjects were presented simulated newspaper articles about an election contest and asked to make a candidate choice. Across four otherwise constant political environments, a single issue which varied in the ethical dimensions emphasized was systematically altered to create parallel examinations of how voters process, interpret, and use issue information in choosing among candidates. Data from two differing subpopulations, evangelical Christians and undergraduate students, were gathered and pooled in analysis. Findings indicate that, in combination, an individuals interpretation of issues and new...

The Minnesota Couples Communication Program.

are providing feedback to Jim and Carol, one of the participant couples, immediately after a three-minute dialogue between them. In the exercise each couple discusses a real issue for three minutes, and then receives five to ten minutes of feedback from other group members. Feedback focuses on the skills used or missing in their exchange. The exercise occurs toward the end of Session 2, at a point when group members have been introduced to several of the skills and concepts taught in the program. Characteristics of the MCCP illustrated in the excerpt are discussed in the article.

Chain Newspaper Autonomy as Reflected in Presidential Campaign Endorsements.

w In 1910 when there were 2,202 daily newspapers, 13 chains held 62 papers: in 1968 there were 1,749 dailies and 159 chains held 828 papers accounting for 58% of total daily circulation. That trend continues. Whether an increase in the rate of chain ownership of Americas daily newspapers has had a resultant impact on editorial policy stimulates considerable speculation. At no time is this more pronounced than in a presidential year when newspapers endorse candidates for the nations highest office. Yet the question of chain ownership and editorial influence must be examined in a larger context as media critic Ben Bagdikian has suggested: The primary danger of chains is not that their operators are evil but that absentee owners are bad for American papers.. . they deepen the tendency for monolithic politics in an institution already suffering from ideological ossification. . .They tend. . . to present single editorial views on any national issue.. . far beyond Presidential endorsements.2 Forty-five years ago Oswald Garrison

Values and the Vote: Linking Issue Interpretations to the Process of Candidate Choice

This study explores how “moral” issues interact with individuals core values to influence the mental processes involved in choosing among candidates. Drawing upon three major domains of research - (1) construct activation and framing; (2) values and the self; and (3) decision making - we examine how individuals interpret electoral issues and the influence of these evaluations on the process of electoral choice. The same research design was used with three subpopulations - military reservists, ROTC student members, and undergraduate students - expected to be differentially involved with two issues in the study, abortion and gays in the military. Subjects were presented simulated newspaper articles about an election contest and asked to make a candidate choice. Findings indicate that an individuals interpretation of issues - as either ethical or material in nature - is strongly related to differences in the type of decision-making strategy used, even after accounting for a variety of demographic, orientational, and issue importance variables.

Rights and Morals, Issues, and Candidate Integrity: Insights into the Role of the News Media

In recent American political discourse, elections and debates tend to be presented by the news media as collisions of basic principles, with opposing parties advancing beliefs about what is right and what is wrong. When news coverage of an election campaign focuses on issues that emphasize rights and morals, voting behavior may be affected in two ways: Citizens become likely to form and make use of evaluations of the integrity of the candidates, and citizens become motivated to seek an issue-position match with candidates on those issues for which discourse is ethically charged (particularly when they hold a similar interpretation of the issue). These ideas were tested in an experiment in which labor union members and undergraduate students were presented with news stories about the contrasting positions of fictional candidates for elective office. Across three political environments, all information was held constant except for systematic alteration of a different issue in each environment. These three issues (abortion, gun control, and health care) vary in the types of value conflicts emphasized in news coverage. The results shed light on how individuals process, interpret, and use issue coverage in choosing among candidates.