James N. Druckman

The Implications of Framing Effects for Citizen Competence

Social scientists have documented framing effects in a wide range of contexts, including surveys, experiments, and actual political campaigns. Many view work on framing effects as evidence of citizen incompetence—that is, evidence that citizens base their preferences on arbitrary information and/or are subject to extensive elite manipulation. Yet, we continue to lack a consensus on what a framing effect is as well as an understanding of how and when framing effects occur. In this article, I examine (1) the different ways that scholars have employed the concepts of framing and framing effects, (2) how framing effects may violate some basic criteria of citizen competence, and (3) what we know about how and when framing effects work. I conclude that while the evidence to date suggests some isolated cases of incompetence, the more general message is that citizens use frames in a competent and well-reasoned manner.

Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects

One of the most contested questions in the social sciences is whether people behave rationally. A large body of work assumes that individuals do in fact make rational economic, political, and social decisions. Yet hundreds of experiments suggest that this is not the case. Framing effects constitute one of the most stunning and influential demonstrations of irrationality. The effects not only challenge the foundational assumptions of much of the social sciences (e.g., the existence of coherent preferences or stable attitudes), but also lead many scholars to adopt alternative approaches (e.g., prospect theory). Surprisingly, virtually no work has sought to specify the political conditions under which framing effects occur. I fill this gap by offering a theory and experimental test. I show how contextual forces (e.g., elite competition, deliberation) and individual attributes (e.g., expertise) affect the success of framing. The results provide insight into when rationality assumptions apply and, also, have broad implications for political psychology and experimental methods.

Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies

What is the effect of democratic competition on the power of elites to frame public opinion? We address this issue first by defining the range of competitive contexts that might surround any debate over a policy issue. We then offer a theory that predicts how audiences, messages, and competitive environments interact to influence the magnitude of framing effects. These hypotheses are tested using experimental data gathered on the opinions of adults and college students toward two policy issues—the management of urban growth and the right of an extremist group to conduct a rally. Our results indicate that framing effects depend more heavily on the qualities of frames than on their frequency of dissemination and that competition alters but does not eliminate the influence of framing. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for the study of public opinion and democratic political debate.

How Elite Partisan Polarization Affects Public Opinion Formation

Competition is a defining element of democracy. One of the most noteworthy events over the last quarter-century in U.S. politics is the change in the nature of elite party competition: The parties have become increasingly polarized. Scholars and pundits actively debate how these elite patterns influence polarization among the public (e.g., have citizens also become more ideologically polarized?). Yet, few have addressed what we see as perhaps more fundamental questions: Has elite polarization altered the way citizens arrive at their policy opinions in the first place and, if so, in what ways? We address these questions with a theory and two survey experiments (on the issues of drilling and immigration). We find stark evidence that polarized environments fundamentally change how citizens make decisions. Specifically, polarization intensifies the impact of party endorsements on opinions, decreases the impact of substantive information and, perhaps ironically, stimulates greater confidence in those—less substantively grounded—opinions. We discuss the implications for public opinion formation and the nature of democratic competition.

The Growth and Development of Experimental Research in Political Science

Although political scientists have long expressed skepticism about the prospects for experimental science, an analysis of the first hundred volumes of the American Political Science Review reveals that randomized experiments have grown in impact and prominence. We document how thinking about experimentation has evolved over the century, and demonstrate the growing influence of laboratory, survey, and field experiments. A number of experiments have transformed how political scientists think about causal relationships in specific substantive areas. There are limits to the kinds of questions that experiments can address, but experiments have made important contributions in an array of political science subfields.

The Impact of Media Bias: How Editorial Slant Affects Voters

We investigate how editorial slant—defined as the quantity and tone of a newspapers candidate coverage as influenced by its editorial position—shapes candidate evaluations and vote choice. We avoid various methodological pitfalls by focusing on a single Senate campaign in a single market with two competing, editorially distinct newspapers. Combining comprehensive content analyses of the papers with an Election Day exit poll, we assess the slant of campaign coverage and its effects on voters. We find compelling evidence that editorial slant influences voters’ decisions. Our results raise serious questions about the medias place in democratic processes.

Dynamic Public Opinion: Communication Effects Over Time

We develop an approach to studying public opinion that accounts for how people process competing messages received over the course of a political campaign or policy debate. Instead of focusing on the fixed impact of a message, we emphasize that a message can have variable effects depending on when it is received within a competitive context and how it is evaluated. We test hypotheses about the effect of information processing using data from two experiments that measure changes in public opinion in response to alternative sequences of information. As in past research, we find that competing messages received at the same time neutralize one another. However, when competing messages are separated by days or weeks, most individuals give disproportionate weight to the most recent communication because previous effects decay over time. There are exceptions, though, as people who engage in deliberate processing of information display attitude stability and give disproportionate weight to previous messages. These results show that people typically form significantly different opinions when they receive competing messages over time than when they receive the same messages simultaneously. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for understanding the power of communications in contemporary politics.

Cambridge Handbook of Experimental Political Science: Students as Experimental Participants

An experiment entails randomly assigning participants to various conditions or manipulations. Given common consent requirements, this means experimenters need to recruit participants who, in essence, agree to be manipulated. The ensuing practical and ethical challenges of subject recruitment have led many researchers to rely on convenience samples of college students. For political scientists who put particular emphasis on generalizability, the use of student participants often constitutes a critical, and according to some reviewers, fatal problem for experimental studies. In this chapter, we investigate the extent to which using students as experimental participants creates problems for causal inference. First, we discuss the impact of student subjects on a studys internal and external validity. In contrast to common claims, we argue that student subjects do not intrinsically pose a problem for a studys external validity. Second, we use simulations to identify situations when student subjects are likely to constrain experimental inferences. We show that such situations are relatively limited; any convenience sample poses a problem only when the size of an experimental treatment effect depends on a characteristic on which the convenience sample has virtually no variance. Third, we briefly survey empirical evidence that provides guidance on when researchers should be particularly attuned to taking steps to ensure appropriate generalizability from student subjects. We conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of our findings.

Media matter: How newspapers and television news cover Campaigns and influence voters

How do different media cover politics and affect voters? Are newspapers a boon and television a bane to democratic functioning? While these questions have long been the subject of debate, a variety of methodological hurdles have hampered prior attempts to document media differences and their effects. In this article, I discuss these challenges and offer an approach for overcoming them to the greatest extent possible. I then combine comprehensive media content analyses with an election day exit poll to assess campaign coverage and its effect on voters. I find that television news and newspapers differ substantially in the quantity of coverage but do not drastically differ in terms of content. More important, I find that newspapers, and not television news, play a significant, although potentially limited, role in informing the electorate.

Candidate Strategies to Prime Issues and Image

A burgeoning literature shows that campaigns exert substantial influence on voters by priming selected policy issues. We extend this research by offering a framework that (1) incorporates a model of campaign image priming and (2) describes the political conditions that shape campaign priming strategies. We test our framework in the context of Richard Nixons 1972 presidential campaign. Using internal campaign memoranda, Nixons private public opinion polls, and a comprehensive content analysis of Nixons public statements, we find that Nixon engaged in both issue and image priming. Specifically, White House polling reports of strong public support for particular domestic policy positions prompted Nixon subsequently to prime those issues and positions. Moreover, poll reports of negative evaluations of his personality traits led Nixon to emphasize foreign policy issues so as to convey an impression of his competence and strength. We conclude that candidates tailor issue and image priming strategies to the parameters of public opinion and the strategic opportunities offered by the political conditions of their time.