Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-b4m5d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-16T19:01:22.343Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

How government-controlled media shifts policy attitudes through framing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2021

Jennifer Pan Open the ORCID record for Jennifer Pan [Opens in a new window] ,
Zijie Shao Open the ORCID record for Zijie Shao [Opens in a new window]  and
Yiqing Xu
Jennifer Pan
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Zijie Shao*
Affiliation:
School of Government and Public Affairs, Communication University of China, Beijing, China
Yiqing Xu
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Research shows that government-controlled media is an effective tool for authoritarian regimes to shape public opinion. Does government-controlled media remain effective when it is required to support changes in positions that autocrats take on issues? Existing theories do not provide a clear answer to this question, but we often observe authoritarian governments using government media to frame policies in new ways when significant changes in policy positions are required. By conducting an experiment that exposes respondents to government-controlled media—in the form of TV news segments—on issues where the regime substantially changed its policy positions, we find that by framing the same issue differently, government-controlled media moves respondents to adopt policy positions closer to the ones espoused by the regime regardless of individual predisposition. This result holds for domestic and foreign policy issues, for direct and composite measures of attitudes, and persists up to 48 hours after exposure.

Keywords

Chinaexperimentframingmediapolicy changepublic opinion
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 317 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

CUGS (2015) China Urban Governance Survey. (Technical report), Tsinghua University Research Center on Data and Governance.Google Scholar
Adena, M, Enikolopov, R, Petrova, M, Santarosa, V and Zhuravskaya, E (2015) Radio and the rise of the nazis in prewar germany. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 130, 1885–1939.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, JC and Sandberg, S (2020) Islamic state propaganda: between social movement framing and subcultural provocation. Terrorism and Political Violence 32, 1506–1526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Azjen, I and Fishbein, M (1980) Understanding Attitudes and Predicting Social Behavior. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Pearson.Google Scholar
Bleck, J and Michelitch, K (2017) Capturing the airwaves, capturing the nation? A field experiment on state-run media effects in the wake of a coup. The Journal of Politics 79, 873–889.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borah, P (2011) Conceptual issues in framing theory: a systematic examination of a decade's literature. Journal of Communication 61, 246–263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cantoni, D, Chen, Y, Yang, DY, Yuchtman, N and Zhang, YJ (2017) Curriculum and ideology. Journal of Political Economy 125, 338–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cappella, JN and Jamieson, KH (1997) Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chadwick, A (2017) The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaffee, SH (1977) Mass media effects: new research perspectives. In Nelson, LM and Schramm, W (eds), Communication Research: A Half-Century Appraisal. Honolulu, HI: East-West Center, pp. 210–241.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Y and Yang, DY (2019) The impact of media censorship: 1984 or brave new world?. American Economic Review 109, 2294–2332.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chong, D and Druckman, JN (2007) Framing theory. Annual Review of Political Science 10, 103–126.10.1146/annurev.polisci.10.072805.103054CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doherty, D, Dowling, CM and Miller, MG (2016) When is changing policy positions costly for politicians? experimental evidence. Political Behavior 38, 455–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Druckman, JN and Nelson, KR (2003) Framing and deliberation: How citizens’ conversations limit elite influence. American Journal of Political Science 47, 729–745.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Field, A, Kliger, D, Wintner, S, Pan, J, Jurafsky, D and Tsvetkov, Y (2018) Framing and agenda-setting in russian news: a computational analysis of intricate political strategies. arXiv preprint arXiv:1808.09386.10.18653/v1/D18-1393CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geddes, B and Zaller, J (1989) Sources of popular support for authoritarian regimes. American Journal of Political Science 33, 319–347.10.2307/2111150CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guriev, S and Treisman, D (2019) Informational autocrats. Journal of Economic Perspectives 33, 100–127.10.1257/jep.33.4.100CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haider-Markel, DP and Joslyn, MR (2001) Gun policy, opinion, tragedy, and blame attribution: The conditional influence of issue frames. Journal of Politics 63, 520–543.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hainmueller, J, Mummolo, J and Xu, Y (2019) How much should we trust estimates from multiplicative interaction models? Simple tools to improve empirical practice. Political Analysis 27, 163–192.10.1017/pan.2018.46CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hiebert, RE (2003) Public relations and propaganda in framing the iraq war: a preliminary review. Public Relations Review 29, 243–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hill, SJ, Lo, J, Vavreck, L and Zaller, J (2013) How quickly we forget: the duration of persuasion effects from mass communication. Political Communication 30, 521–547.10.1080/10584609.2013.828143CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houts, PS, Doak, CC, Doak, LG and Loscalzo, MJ (2006) The role of pictures in improving health communication: a review of research on attention, comprehension, recall, and adherence. Patient Education and Counseling 61, 173–190.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huang, H (2015) Propaganda as signaling. Comparative Politics 47, 419–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S (1994) Is Anyone Responsible?: How Television Frames Political Issues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jowett, GS and O'Donnell, V (2018) Propaganda & Persuasion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
Kartik, N and McAfee, RP (2007) Signaling character in electoral competition. American Economic Review 97, 852–870.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kensinger, EA and Schacter, DL (2006) Processing emotional pictures and words: effects of valence and arousal. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 6, 110–126.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kinder, DR and Sanders, LM (1990) Mimicking political debate with survey questions: the case of white opinion on affirmative action for blacks. Social Cognition 8, 73–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, G, Pan, J and Roberts, ME (2013) How censorship in china allows government criticism but silences collective expression. American Political Science Review 107, 326–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lang, A, Bailey, RL and Connolly, SR (2015) Encoding systems and evolved message processing: pictures enable action, words enable thinking. Media and Communication 3, 34–43.10.17645/mac.v3i1.248CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lasswell, HD (1927) Propaganda Technique in the World War. London, UK: Kegan PauI.Google Scholar
McCaul, KD, Ployhart, RE, Hinsz, VB and McCaul, HS (1995) Appraisals of a consistent versus a similar politician: voter preferences and intuitive judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 68, 292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McMillan, J and Zoido, P (2004) How to subvert democracy: Montesinos in peru. Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, 69–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, JM and Krosnick, JA (2000) News media impact on the ingredients of presidential evaluations: politically knowledgeable citizens are guided by a trusted source. American Journal of Political Science 44, 301–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mummolo, J and Peterson, E (2019) Demand effects in survey experiments: an empirical assessment. American Political Science Review 113, 517–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, TE and Oxley, ZM (1999) Issue framing effects on belief importance and opinion. The Journal of Politics 61, 1040–1067.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, TE, Clawson, RA and Oxley, ZM (1997) Media framing of a civil liberties conflict and its effect on tolerance. American Political Science Review 91, 567–583.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, J and Siegel, AA (2020) How saudi crackdowns fail to silence online dissent. American Political Science Review 114, 109–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, J and Xu, Y (2020) Gauging Preference Stability and Ideological Constraint under Authoritarian Rule. Working Paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pornpitakpan, C (2004) The persuasiveness of source credibility: a critical review of five decades’ evidence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 34, 243–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, V and Tewksbury, D (1997) News values and public opinion: a theoretical account of media priming and framing. In Barnett, GA and Boster, FJ (eds), Progress in Communication Sciences. Vol. 13. New York, NY: Ablex, pp. 173–212.Google Scholar
Roberts, ME (2018) Censored: Distraction and Diversion Inside China's Great Firewall. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rozenas, A and Stukal, D (2019) How autocrats manipulate economic news: evidence from Russia's state-controlled television. The Journal of Politics 81, 982–996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slothuus, R (2008) More than weighting cognitive importance: a dual-process model of issue framing effects. Political Psychology 29, 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockmann, D and Gallagher, ME (2011) Remote control: how the media sustain authoritarian rule in china. Comparative Political Studies 44, 436–467.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szostek, J (2017) News consumption and anti-western narratives in Russia: a case study of university students. Europe-Asia Studies 69, 284–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomz, M and Van Houweling, RP (2012) Candidate repositioning. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Webster, JG and Ksiazek, TB (2012) The dynamics of audience fragmentation: public attention in an age of digital media. Journal of Communication 62, 39–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weeks, JL (2008) Autocratic audience costs: regime type and signaling resolve. International Organization 62, 35–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, JC (2013) Authoritarian signaling, mass audiences, and nationalist protest in china. International Organization 67, 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yanagizawa-Drott, D (2014) Propaganda and conflict: evidence from the rwandan genocide. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, 1947–1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zakem, V, Saunders, P, Hashimova, U and Frier, PK (2018) Mapping Russian Media Network: Media's Role in Russian Foreign Policy and Decision-Making. (Technical report), CNA Analysis and Solutions.Google Scholar
Zaller, JR (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhao, Y and Guo, Z (2005) Television in China: history, political economy, and ideology. In Wasko, J (ed.), A Companion to Television. Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp. 521–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Pan et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LBLOVK
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Pan et al. supplementary material

Pan et al. supplementary material

Download Pan et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.8 MB