Shana Kushner Gadarian

The Politics of Threat: How Terrorism News Shapes Foreign Policy Attitudes

In this paper, I argue that the features of the media environment after 9/11, particularly the media’s emphasis on threatening information and evocative imagery, increased the public’s probability of supporting the policies advocated by political leaders, principally the president. Using the National Election Studies 2000–2004 panel and a controlled, randomized experiment, I demonstrate that citizens form significantly different foreign policy views when the information environment is emotionally powerful than when it is free of emotion, even when the factual information is exactly the same. Citizens concerned about terrorism are more likely to adopt the hawkish foreign policy views communicated in threatening news stories when that policy is matched with fear-inducing cues than when it is not. These findings suggest that the role of the media is broader than simply providing a conduit for elites to speak to the public; the media influences the public through their own means as well.

Scary Pictures: How Terrorism Imagery Affects Voter Evaluations

Journalists, candidates, and scholars believe that images, particularly images of war, affect the way that the public evaluates political leaders and foreign policy itself, but there is little direct evidence on the circumstances under which political elites can use imagery to enhance their electoral chances. Using National Election Studies (NES) panel data as well as two experiments, this article shows that, contrary to concerns about the manipulative power of imagery, the effect of evocative imagery can enhance candidate evaluations across partisan lines when they originate from the news but are more limited when they are used for persuasive purposes. By looking over time, the three data sets demonstrate different circumstances in which terrorism images have different effects on candidate evaluations—crisis versus non-crisis times and through news exposure versus direct use by a candidate. The NES data reveal that exposure to watching the World Trade Center fall on television increased positive evaluations of George W. Bush and the Republican party across partisan boundaries in 2002 and 2004. The news experiment that exposed subjects to graphic terrorism news in a lab in 2005/2006 increased approval of Bush’s handling of terrorism among Democrats. Lastly, an experiment where hypothetical candidates utilized terrorism images in campaign communication in 2008 demonstrates that both parties’ candidates can improve evaluations of their foreign policy statements by linking those statements to evocative imagery, but it is more effective among their own party members.

Foreign Policy at the Ballot Box: How Citizens Use Foreign Policy to Judge and Choose Candidates

This paper uses the elections of 1980 to 2004 to illustrate that political candidates from opposing parties face different incentives in mentioning foreign policy during campaigns and in taking foreign policy positions. The paper demonstrates that citizens connect their own foreign policy views clearly to their evaluations of Republican candidates, but these same foreign policy opinions are much less likely to affect evaluations of the Democratic party and Democratic candidates. In addition, this paper reveals another significant asymmetry—in a threatening environment, Americans reward candidates and parties perceived to hold hawkish positions but even more severely punish candidates perceived to be dovish. Using two datasets, I find that Americans’ opinions on defense spending and diplomacy mattered significantly for the type of political leadership the public preferred at election time.

Public opinion on policy issues in genetics and genomics

Purpose:The aim of this study was to examine public opinion on major policy issues in genetics and genomics, including federal spending on genetic research, the perceived significance of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, and whether clinicians should be involved in direct-to-consumer genetic testing.Methods:This was a survey with a nationally representative sample of 2,100 American adults administered by the nonpartisan research firm YouGov in January 2011.Results:The majority of the respondents (57%) believe that the federal government should spend more on genetic research, 82% rank the 2008 antidiscrimination law as “important,” and 65% say that clinicians should be involved in explaining genetic test results (contra the practice of some direct-to-consumer companies). On all three policy issues, gender and political party affiliation were statistically significantly associated with respondents’ views, whereas race/ethnicity and education were less consistently associated with policy opinions.Conclusion:Americans demonstrate widespread support for scientific research on genetics, laws protecting citizens against genetic discrimination, and the need to involve medical professionals in the process of genetic testing. These results are useful for scientists designing research projects, clinicians interacting with patients, professional organizations lobbying for resources, federal agencies setting budget priorities, and legislators designing regulation.Genet Med 16 6, 491–494.

Reacting to Genetic Risk An Experimental Survey of Life between Health and Disease

Medical sociologists contend that we are living in an era of surveillance medicine, in which the emphasis on risk blurs the lines between health and disease. Yet, data to examine these claims are generally drawn from patients, raising questions about whether this modern experience of medical risk extends beyond the clinic to healthy people in the larger population. We use the specific case of genetic risk to construct a survey experiment designed to induce the conditions theorized by surveillance medicine. Each respondent in a nationally representative sample (N = 2,100) was assigned a genetic risk (20%, 30% … 80%) for a disease (colon cancer, heart disease, Alzheimers disease) and asked about many potential reactions. We find that people in the general population-regardless of health status or family history-respond to hypothetical genetic risk information by wanting to take action, and their reactions are stronger in domains related to self and family than to community and polity.

Electoral institutions, gender stereotypes, and women's local representation

Despite dramatic progress in winning election to political office, women remain underrepresented at all levels of government in the USA. A great deal of research has focused on institutional barriers to equal representation, particularly at the city level. Yet, the findings have been inconsistent across studies and little attention has been paid to the possible mechanisms that might account for the relationships between institutions and representation. In this paper, we focus on one particularly well-studied institution – the method of election for city councilors. We use a decade of candidate-level data from a single, large state (California) to show that women are significantly advantaged in district (versus at-large) elections and in city clerkships compared with mayoralties and council positions. We suggest that this may be the result of the competitiveness of elections, the status of the offices, and gender stereotypes. We offer support for this argument by analyzing the proportion of women elected to city councils and the probability of victory for different types of offices including city council, mayor, and city clerk.

Anxiety Over Terrorism Advantages Hillary Clinton

Whether the threat is terrorism, immigration, infectious disease, or the economy, American political life is often frightening, and 2016 is no exception. Recent terrorist attacks in Europe and the ...

Does genetic risk for common adult diseases influence reproductive plans? Evidence from a national survey experiment in the United States

Prospective parents have long been able to learn details about their offsprings DNA, and social scientists have demonstrated that this form of genetic information influences reproductive decision-making. Now, new tests offer adults information about their own genetic risk for common diseases that begin later in life, raising new questions about whether this kind of personal risk will also affect fertility plans. Drawing on a survey experiment (N = 223) that assigned individuals a genetic risk (20%, 30% … 80%) for an adult-onset disease (heart disease, colon cancer, Alzheimers Disease), this study examines whether such risks lead people to reconsider their plans to have children. Bringing together qualitative research on genetic risk and reproductive decision-making with demographic analyses of uncertainty and fertility, we find that when assigned a hypothetical genetic risk for a common adult-onset disease, childless individuals who plan to have children in the future are unlikely to reconsider those plans.

Selling Fear: Counterterrorism, the Media, and Public Opinion, by Brigette Nacos, Yaeli Boch-Elkon, and Robert Shapiro

individuals received nearly homogenous news coverage from the mass media outlets. In a fragmented news media environment, partisan media outlets have the opportunity to focus on different stories as well as frame those stories differently. Bringing data to bear on this question, Stroud conducted a content analysis of news coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Guided by survey evidence suggesting that conservatives who use conservative media were more likely to name terrorism as the most important problem facing the country, while liberals who use liberal media were more likely to name the Iraq war as the most important problem, Stroud set out to see if coverage on liberal and conservative news outlets differed. She content analyzed a sample of Bushand Kerry-endorsing newspapers as well as FOX News and CNN transcripts. With respect to issue emphasis, she finds weak evidence that partisan news outlets cover the news differently. Both liberal and conservative outlets covered the Iraq war more than terrorism, but the ratio between Iraq and terrorism coverage was higher for liberal outlets. A more fine-grained analysis, though, demonstrates that relative to conservative outlets, liberal outlets were more likely to frame the Iraq war as a problem and separate from the war on terrorism. Whether these differences in coverage affect viewer’s attitudes remains open, but Stroud concludes with an intriguing supposition: Perhaps partisan news viewers are particularly good at picking up on partisan cues, which in turn affect their answers on surveys. She offers support for this supposition with the help of her 2008 Web-based experiment. Conservatives and Republicans are more likely than liberals and Democrats to mention foreign policy as the most important problem if they were told that polls show Republican presidential candidate John McCain having an advantage on the issue. Stroud’s book offers an incisive and useful voice to the scholarly discussion about the extent and effects of partisan selectivity. She offers compelling evidence that partisan selectivity exists and is an important force in media politics. She also brings the path forward into focus. She opens her last chapter by noting, “There are undoubtedly people who opt out of politics and avoid news media content altogether. And not everyone who seeks out political information from the media gravitates toward news sharing their political perspective” (p. 169). If we wish to come to grips with the seismic changes in media over the past decade, we must next tackle these aspects of the hyperchoice media environment. Thankfully, Stroud has made our work easier.