Communication and Opinion

Annu. Rev. Polit. Sci. 1998. 1:167–97 Copyright © 1998 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved

COMMUNICATION AND OPINION Donald R. Kinder Center for Poli Center Politic tical al Stu Studie dies, s, Uni Univer versit sity y of Mic Michig higan, an, Ann Arbo Arbor, r, Mic Michig higan an 481 4810909-124 1248; 8; e-mail: [email protected] KEY WORDS: WORDS: mass media, agenda agenda setting, priming, framing, framing, campaigns

ABSTRACT This chapter reviews the vast and sprawling literature that seeeks to illuminate and explain the effects of mass communication on American public opinion. Klapper’s famous verdict of “minimal effects,” delivered some 40 years ago on this subject, was faithful to the evidence available to him at the time, but now seems quite mistaken. With sharp improvements in design, measurement, and analysis, and with keener understanding of human informati ma tion on pr proc oces essi sing ng,, mi mini nima mall ef effe fect ctss ha have ve gi give ven n wa way y to an en enti tire re fa fami mily ly of re real al effects: agenda-setting, priming, framing, and even, looking in the right places, persuasion.

INTRODUCTION My topic is the interplay between mass communication and public opinion in contemporary American society. This terrain was scouted famously by Walter Lippmann more than 70 years ago, first in Public Opinion (1922) and then in The Phantom Public (1925). Persuasively and poetically, Lippmann drove home the point that in societies the size and complexity of the United States, ordinary citizens must come to depend on others for their news about national and world affairs: Each of us lives and works on a small part of the earth’s surface, moves in a small circle, and of these acquaintances knows only a few intimately. Of any public event ev ent that has ha s wide effects effec ts we see at best b est only a phase p hase and an aspect.... asp ect.... Inev In evit itab ably ly ou ourr op opin inio ions ns co cove verr a bi bigg gger er sp spac ace, e, a lo long nger er re reac ach h of ti time me,, a gr grea eate ter r number of things, than we can directly observe. They have, therefore, to be pieced together out of what others have reported and what we can imagine. (Lippmann 1922, p. 53)

To clarify the relations relationship hip between “what others have reported” and “what we can imagine” is my primary purpose here. Since Lippmann’s time, advances in education have dramatically lowered cognitive barriers to political enlightenment, and thanks to the invention and 167

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rapid diffusion of electronic media, information about politics has become vastly more accessible. Perhaps not accidentally, these developments have been acco ac comp mpan anie ied d by a re rece cent nt in incl clin inat atio ion n in de demo mocr crat atic ic th theo eori rizi zing ng to pl plac acee as aspe pect ctss of communication—deliberation and discussion—at the center of politics (e.g. Barber 1984; Dahl 1989; Fishkin 1991, 1995; Guttmann & Thompson 1996; Habermass 1989; Mansbridg Haberma Mansbridgee 1980; Sunstein 1993). If democracy is not entirely “government by discussion,” it is certainly government by discussion in part. With normative concerns lurking in the background, this chapter aspires to organize a sprawling literature and to suggest productive lines for future research. The chapter turns on the notion that the interplay between mass commucommunication and public opinion can be apprehende apprehended d by imagining that citizens undertake three generic tasks: They make sense of the carnival of personalities, issues, and events that, moment to moment, comprise the political realm; they decide what is important in politics and what is not; and they evaluate political alternatives—can alternati ves—candidates, didates, policy proposals, and more—tha more—thatt are placed before them. I treat each of the three separately because it is analytically useful to do so,, bu so butt wi with thou outt fo forg rget etti ting ng th that at in pr prac acti tice ce th they ey ar aree of ofte ten n as no nott th thor orou ough ghly ly in inte terrmingled. I could refer to these three tasks, alternatively, as “memory,” “attention,” and “choice.” This more explicitly psychological terminology is a sign of the chapter’s tilt towards the microfoundations of mass communication and opinion. No doubt others, given the same assignment, would place the emphasis elsewhere. (For reviews that slice the field differently, see Converse 1996, Kinder 1998, and Sniderma Sniderman n 1993.) Some selection is definitely necessary. In the preamble to an essay with roughly the same purpose as mine, Lazarsfeld & Merton Mer ton (19 (1948) 48) co comp mplai lained ned of the their ir “un “ungra gratef teful ul tas task.” k.” Why Why?? Be Beca cause use the they y fou found nd “certified knowledge” concerning the political role of mass media “impressively slight.” Fifty years later, the task is perhaps equally ungrateful, but for anot an othe herr re reas ason on en enti tire rely ly.. Th Thee pr prob oble lem m no now w is av avoi oidi ding ng be bein ing g sw swep eptt aw away ay by th thee aval av alan anch chee of re rese sear arch ch;; th thee tr tric ick k is ke keep epin ing g on on one’ e’ss fe feet et wh whil ilee at atte temp mpti ting ng to de de-termine which parts of the massive flow should be singled out and certified. If the job is impossible, I find consolation in the fact that those who follow will be presented with the same opportuni opportunity ty and will no doubt uncover many things I missed.

MAKING SENSE OF POLITICS How do citizens go about making sense of the “swarming confusion of problems” (Lippmann 1925, p. 24) that constitute public life, and what role might comm co mmun unic icat atio ion n pl plaay in th this is pr proc oces ess? s? In so some me wa ways ys th thee si sing ngle le be best st so sour urce ce on th this is question ques tion rem remains ains Lipp Lippman mann’s n’s Public Opinion, br brim immi ming ng wi with th in insi sigh ghts ts in into to th thee predicament of the citizen citizen in the modern world. Lippmann portrayed citizens citizens as

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rapid diffusion of electronic media, information about politics has become vastly more accessible. Perhaps not accidentally, these developments have been acco ac comp mpan anie ied d by a re rece cent nt in incl clin inat atio ion n in de demo mocr crat atic ic th theo eori rizi zing ng to pl plac acee as aspe pect ctss of communication—deliberation and discussion—at the center of politics (e.g. Barber 1984; Dahl 1989; Fishkin 1991, 1995; Guttmann & Thompson 1996; Habermass 1989; Mansbridg Haberma Mansbridgee 1980; Sunstein 1993). If democracy is not entirely “government by discussion,” it is certainly government by discussion in part. With normative concerns lurking in the background, this chapter aspires to organize a sprawling literature and to suggest productive lines for future research. The chapter turns on the notion that the interplay between mass commucommunication and public opinion can be apprehende apprehended d by imagining that citizens undertake three generic tasks: They make sense of the carnival of personalities, issues, and events that, moment to moment, comprise the political realm; they decide what is important in politics and what is not; and they evaluate political alternatives—can alternati ves—candidates, didates, policy proposals, and more—tha more—thatt are placed before them. I treat each of the three separately because it is analytically useful to do so,, bu so butt wi with thou outt fo forg rget etti ting ng th that at in pr prac acti tice ce th they ey ar aree of ofte ten n as no nott th thor orou ough ghly ly in inte terrmingled. I could refer to these three tasks, alternatively, as “memory,” “attention,” and “choice.” This more explicitly psychological terminology is a sign of the chapter’s tilt towards the microfoundations of mass communication and opinion. No doubt others, given the same assignment, would place the emphasis elsewhere. (For reviews that slice the field differently, see Converse 1996, Kinder 1998, and Sniderma Sniderman n 1993.) Some selection is definitely necessary. In the preamble to an essay with roughly the same purpose as mine, Lazarsfeld & Merton Mer ton (19 (1948) 48) co comp mplai lained ned of the their ir “un “ungra gratef teful ul tas task.” k.” Why Why?? Be Beca cause use the they y fou found nd “certified knowledge” concerning the political role of mass media “impressively slight.” Fifty years later, the task is perhaps equally ungrateful, but for anot an othe herr re reas ason on en enti tire rely ly.. Th Thee pr prob oble lem m no now w is av avoi oidi ding ng be bein ing g sw swep eptt aw away ay by th thee aval av alan anch chee of re rese sear arch ch;; th thee tr tric ick k is ke keep epin ing g on on one’ e’ss fe feet et wh whil ilee at atte temp mpti ting ng to de de-termine which parts of the massive flow should be singled out and certified. If the job is impossible, I find consolation in the fact that those who follow will be presented with the same opportuni opportunity ty and will no doubt uncover many things I missed.

MAKING SENSE OF POLITICS How do citizens go about making sense of the “swarming confusion of problems” (Lippmann 1925, p. 24) that constitute public life, and what role might comm co mmun unic icat atio ion n pl plaay in th this is pr proc oces ess? s? In so some me wa ways ys th thee si sing ngle le be best st so sour urce ce on th this is question ques tion rem remains ains Lipp Lippman mann’s n’s Public Opinion, br brim immi ming ng wi with th in insi sigh ghts ts in into to th thee predicament of the citizen citizen in the modern world. Lippmann portrayed citizens citizens as

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preoccupied with the trials and tribulation tribulationss of private life, “concerned in public affairs,” but “immersed” in private ones, and so likely to think twice before taking tak ing the tro troubl ublee to bec becom omee inf inform ormed ed ab about out the ma mach china inatio tions ns of gov gover ernm nment ent.. In An Economic Theory of Democracy , Downs (1957) turned Lippmann’s intuitions into a sustained and powerful argument. Downs pointed out that there are costs attached to the acquisition and analysis of political information—m tio n—mea easur sured ed in tim time, e, ene energy rgy,, and opp opport ortuni unity— ty—and and tha thatt ra ratio tional nal vot voter erss wil willl pay such costs only insofar as the t he information informati on promises a return. But in a large society, one person’s vote is “lost in a sea of votes,” and so the instrumental benefits from an enlightened vote are infinitesimal. The result, according to Downs, is “rational ignorance.” ignorance.” Rati Ra tion onal al or no not, t, th thee de dept pths hs of ig igno nora ranc ncee de demo mons nstr trat ated ed by mo mode dern rn ma mass ss pu pubblics can be breathtaking. For example, after more than 40 years of continuous Demo De mocra cratic tic co contr ntrol ol of the US Ho House use of Re Repre prese senta ntativ tives es,, onl only y 59% of Am Ameri erica cans ns knew in the fall of 1992 that the Democratic Party held the majority of seats in the House. In late 1995, more than twice as many Americans held the stupendous do usly ly in inco corr rrec ectt be beli lief ef th that at th thee fe fede dera rall go gove vern rnme ment nt sp spen ends ds mo more re mo mone ney y on fo forreign ei gn ai aid d th than an on Me Medi dica care re (a (and nd on an and d on on;; se seee De Dell llii Ca Carp rpin inii & Ke Keeete terr 19 1996 96). ).1 Conceding that the average American, most of the time, cares little about politics and knows kno ws less is i s not the same as concluding concludi ng that politics is an incom prehensible mess, that the grand events, issues, and personalities of the time remain ma in al alwa ways, ys, in Ja Jame mes’s s’s (18 (1890, 90, p. 488 488)) fa famou mouss for formul mulati ation, on, “on “onee gre great at,, blooming, buzzing confusion.” Nevertheless, it would be imprudent to forget that the fascination political scientists find in politics is seldom shared by the general public. Keeping our expectations properly modest, how do citizens figure out what’s going on?

Stereotypes, Frames, and Analogies At the center of Lippmann’s answer to the puzzle of political understanding lies the notion of stereotype. In Lippmann’s account, stereotypes are “mental maps” that allow us to navigate successfully the world of politics, a world “altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance” acquaintance” (Lippmann 1922, p. 16). This turns out to be a good answer and a prescient one. Lippmann wrote Public Opinion before the cognitive revolution that would overtake psychol1 1Thi Things ngs are wor worse se tha than n the they y see seem. m. Eve Even n the mos mostt met method hodolo ologic gically ally scr scrupu upulou louss sur survey veyss (e. (e.g. g. the National Election Study, the General Social Survey) are able to complete interviews with only about 75% of the originally targeted sample. Those who refuse to be questioned, or who are never cont co ntac acted ted in th thee fi firs rstt pl plac ace, e, an and d so pl play ay no ro role le in es estim timat ates es of th thee pu publ blic’ ic’ss kn know owle ledg dge, e, ar aree mu much ch le less ss likely to take an interest in politics than the public as a whole. This means Americans are even less well informed than the figures just cited suggest—by roughly 25%, in corrections suggested by Brehm (1993).

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ogy had appeared on the horizon, yet his approach is in certain respects indistinguishable from the central thrust of contemporary cognitive psychology. In this line of work, stereotypes are regarded as categories and stereotyping as one ordinary manifestation of the ubiquitous human process of categorization (Fiske 1998). Stereotypes are inevitable, an intrinsic and essential aspect of cognition. Without such categories, mental life would be chaotic. If we perceived each entity as unique, we would be overwhelmed by the sheer diversity of what we experience and unable to remember more than a minute fraction of what we encounter. And if each individual entity needed a distinct name, our language would be staggeringly complex, and communication virtually impossible. Fortunately, though, we do not perceive, remember, and talk about each object and event as unique, but rather as an instance of a class or object that we already know something about (Smith & Medin 1981, p. 1; italics added).

Under this account, citizens understand new developments in politics— emerging candidates, novel proposals, breaking events—by recognizing such developments as instances of something they already understand (Graber 1984). Research on stereotypes in psychology has concentrated in recent years on issues of mental representation, on how social groups are represented in the mind. Stereotypes are thought to exist as a network of semantic elements, including a category label (e.g. blacks), a set of features that represent presumptive beliefs regarding the most typical characteristics of category members (e.g. athletic, dull, violent), and exemplars that illustrate the category (e.g. Jesse Jackson, Michael Jordan). These elements are organized together in a tangled hierarchy. Features and exemplars vary in their strength of association to the category; features are more or less prototypical, just as exemplars are more or less stereotypical. These can be thought of as vertical links, or associations, within the stereotype. There are also horizontal associations, which connect related concepts at a similar level of generality (for example, the category labels black and Jew). The features that contribute to a stereotype are widely assumed to be traits (as in the example above), although they might also include visual images, physical attributes, and beliefs and attitudes (e.g. Brewer & Campbell 1976, Fiske & Neuberg 1990, Smith & Zarate 1990, Stangor & Lange 1993). Stereotypes, like other knowledge structures, are embedded in a larger information processing system. That system’s architecture is composed of a series of independent memories. Most important for present purposes is the distinction between a short-term or working memory (the capacity of which is severely limited, both as to how much information can be re presented and how much can be successfully transferred), and a long-term memory (where stereotypes and other forms of knowledge structures reside),

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which can accommodate huge amounts of information stored in a variety of formats (Anderson 1983, Newell 1990, Newell & Simon 1972). This system is characterized by finite mental energy and limited representational capacity. These constraints encourage category-based understanding and imply satisficing as the operative standard for performance; that is, a search will be terminated when an acceptable, but typically not optimal, understanding has been achieved. A final point is that knowledge structures in long-term memory, like stereotypes, become available through spreading activation. Activation spreads from a currently active location in a knowledge structure (e.g. the category label) to other nearby locations in the tangled hierarchy; the spread is rapid, perhaps automatic (not under conscious attentional control), increases with strength of association, and diminishes sharply with distance from the source of activation (Anderson 1983, Collins & Loftus 1975). The power of stereotypes in the interpersonal domain is well established. We know that visible features such as skin color or hair texture that are associated distinctively with membership in social groupings are attended to spontaneously and are used as a basis for initial categorization; that this primitive categorization rapidly activates personality traits that are associated with the category in long-term memory; and that such activated traits influence both judgment and behavior in a variety of ways (Brewer 1988, Stangor & Lange 1994). Stereotypes are but one kind of knowledge structure, and if their mental representation and dynamic operation are well understood in the domain of inter personal relations, there remains the task of identifying those knowledge structures that dominate political understanding. Schank & Abelson (1977, p. 10) put this point forcefully: There is a very long theoretical stride, however, from the idea that highly structured knowledge dominates the understanding process, to the specification of the details of the most appropriate structures. It does not take one very far to say that schemas are important: one must know the content of the schemas.

One possibility is ideology, the proposition that commitment to an abstract ideological principle (e.g. liberalism, social Darwinism) would provide citizens with a deep and rich understanding of politics. Should citizens reason in this way, then “new political events have more meaning, retention of political information from the past is more adequate, and political behavior increasingly approximates that of sophisticated ‘rational’ models, which assume relatively full information” (Converse 1964, p. 391). Perhaps, but never mind: Only a tiny percentage of citizens appear to be in possession of the abstract master principles that could do this work (Converse 1964; Kinder 1983, 1998).

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Another possibility is what Rahn (1993) calls “partisan stereotypes,” the packets of knowledge that citizens develop about prototypic Democratic and Republican officials, including their likely policy positions, group affinities, and political priorities. The rationale for understanding based on partisan stereotypes was well expressed by Stokes (1966, pp. 126–27): To the average person the affairs of government are remote and complex, and yet the average citizen is asked periodically to formulate opinions about these affairs.... In this dilemma, having the party symbol stamped on certain candidates, certain issue positions, certain interpretations of political reality is of great psychological convenience.

Living in a stable two-party system where the party cue is a conspicuous and recurrent feature of political discourse, Americans do indeed seem to rely on partisan stereotypes to fill out their impressions of candidates, to make sense of the choices they confront (e.g. Conover & Feldman 1989, Lodge & Hamill 1986, Hamill et al 1985, Rahn 1993). As partisan stereotypes are to political candidates, so frames may be to issues. The issues taken up by government are always complex, always subject to alternative interpretations. What exactly is affirmative action? Is it reverse discrimination? Is it compensation for the injustices of the past? Is it an undeserved handout? Which of these interpretations prevails affects how citizens will understand affirmative action, and, in the end, what their opinions on affirmative action turn out to be. More precisely, how citizens understand an issue—which features of it are central and which are peripheral—is reflected in how the issue is framed. The analysis of frames and public opinion is especially indebted to the work of Gamson (1992, Gamson & Modigliani 1987).2 Gamson presumes that the defining of issues is central to politics. Every issue is contested; advocates of all persuasions are always attempting to define the issue their way, employing “metaphors, catch-phrases, and other condensing symbols that frame the issue in a particular fashion” (Gamson & Modigliani 1987, p. 143). Frames seek to capture the essence of an issue. They define what the problem is and how to think about it; often they suggest what, if anything, should be done to remedy it. Public opinion does seem to depend in a systematic and intelligible way on how issues are framed (e.g. Bobo & Kluegel 1993, Chong 1993, Iyengar 1991, Nelson & Kinder 1996). More important, framing effects show up reliably in 2 2On other uses of frame, see for example Goffman’s (1974) account of how individuals construct meaning out of their social experience; Tversky & Kahneman’s (1981) celebrated experimental demonstrations that, contrary to expected utility theory, decision outcomes can be systematically and decisively influenced by altering how the options are framed; and “social movement frames,” which “justify, dignify, and animate collective action” (Tarrow 1994, p. 22).


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studies that deliberately mimic elite debates and journalistic habits (Iyengar & Kinder 1987; Kinder & Sanders 1990, 1996; Mendelberg 1997; Popkin 1991; Price 1989; Stoker 1997). These demonstrations provide empirical backing to Schattschneider’s bold contention that “[p]olitical conflict is not like an intercollegiate debate in which the opponents agree in advance on a definition of the issues. As a matter of fact, the definition of the alternatives is the supreme instrument of power ; the antagonists can rarely agree on what the issues are because power is involved in the definition. He who determines what politics is about runs the country” (1960, p. 68; italics in original). Although the concept of frame provides a promising conceptual tool for examining the process by which issues are defined in politics, a number of puzzles remain. Do frames exist both in political discourse and in cognitive processing? How do citizens choose frames and how do they make them their own (Capella & Jamieson 1997, Chong 1996)? And finally, notice that the empirical literature on frames skips over the focal concern of this section: How do citizens come to understand public issues? Invoking alternative frames produces alterations in opinion, but it is less clear whether alternative frames lead to systematic alterations in understanding, and if so, what mechanisms might account for such alterations. Understanding is the focus of the final possibility taken up here: that citizens come to understand current events through what Holyoak & Thagard (1995) call “analogic reasoning.” No doubt for many us, most of the time, the news of the day flies by; events burst onto the national and international stage and expire just as quickly, without citizens feeling any interest or obligation to sort things out. But some developments have more staying power; thanks largely to the focusing function of the news (see below), they remain for some time in the forefront of public consciousness. What then? Then, by Holyoak & Thagard’s account (1995), analogic reasoning comes into play. Confronted with a novel and unfamiliar event (the target analog), people do their best to understand it in terms of events they know well already (the source analog), even when connecting the two requires a “mental leap” (Holyoak & Thagard 1995, p. 2). The burden of Holyoak & Thagard’s work is to show that such mental leaps are not haphazard, that they follow a predictable logic. When faced with an unfamiliar event, people first select a source analog by retrieving information about it from long-term memory (selection); next they map the source to the target, considering correspondences of specific attributes as well as abstract relations, thereby generating inferences about the target (mapping); and finally they evaluate and modify these inferences to take into account what they happen to know of the target itself (evaluation). Each stage in this process is subject to pressures, e.g. parallelism between the roles of major protagonists in target and source. Empirical support for this general picture of analogic reasoning comes from diverse sources including computer

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simulations, surveys, and experiments (Holyoak & Thagard 1995, Spellman & Holyoak 1992, Gentner 1983; for additional arguments and evidence on the political importance of reasoning by analogy, see Gilovich 1981, Jervis 1976, Neustadt & May 1986). Even when events do not capture the public’s attention, citizens may find themselves encouraged to think about new events in analogic ways. That is, when “coupled with mass communication, analogy can be used as an instrument of propaganda” (Holyoak & Thagard 1995, p. 100). A case in point is President Bush’s generally effective argument in late 1990 early 1991 that the brewing conflict in the Persian Gulf should be understood in terms provided by World War II: Iraq was Germany, Saddam Hussein was Hitler, and (therefore) appeasement would be disastrous (Spellman & Holyoak 1992).

Uncertainty It is hard to imagine a purer case of judgment under uncertainty than what is required of citizens in modern, complex societies. On the one hand, “public opinion deals with indirect, unseen, and puzzling facts, and there is nothing obvious about them” (Lippmann 1922, p. 17). And on the other, as noted above, judgments are often based on fragmentary and partial information. As a result, citizens must be at least somewhat uncertain about practically everything. Indeed they are. Recent investigations show that however it is measured, uncertainty is rampant. Even at the tail end of presidential campaigns, for example, large numbers of voters remain in the dark about the positions taken by the candidates on the major issues of day (Bartels 1986; see also Alvarez & Franklin 1994, Alvarez 1997, Bartels 1988). Such uncertainty is not only pervasive but consequential. Voters appear to be risk averse: They penalize candidates for being insufficiently clear about their positions (Alvarez 1997, Bartels 1986). The antecedents of uncertainty are partly to be found in the resources and outlooks that citizens bring to politics. Education, cognitive skills, information, attention, and interest all tend to diminish uncertainty (Alvarez 1997, Bartels 1988). Uncertainty also varies in ways that directly implicate communication processes. Voters are more uncertain about challengers than incumbents (especially in House elections where challengers are typically underfinanced); they are more uncertain about minor candidates than major ones; and they are more uncertain at the beginning of a campaign than at the end—particularly if they have been paying attention to news about the cam paign (Alvarez 1997; Bartels 1986, 1988; Brady & Johnston 1987; Patterson 1980). Campaigns reduce voter uncertainty—as indeed they are supposed to—but equally impressive in these results is how modest the effect of campaigns


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seems to be, how much uncertainty remains when they are through. How true this is depends partly on the content of the campaign itself. Thus voters’ uncertainty about the ideological position of their incumbent senator declines when the incumbent runs a campaign emphasizing issues (as against personal qualifications or service to the state), but increases when the opponent attacks the incumbent’s positions (Franklin 1991). Likewise, in presidential campaigns, uncertainty diminishes when candidates stake out distinctive positions on central policy questions (Page & Brody 1972, Page 1978). In short, the mere presence of a campaign is insufficient; what candidates choose to say determines whether voters go the polls relatively clear-eyed or more confused than ever. Franklin takes these results to mean “the dominance of politics over institutions” (1991, p. 1210).

Shortcuts to Knowledge That so few Americans know how Boris Yeltsin makes a living or who represents them in Washington is not exactly inspiring, but perhaps not as unsettling for democratic sensibilities as it first appears. Granted that encyclopedic knowledge is out of reach—and perhaps even irrational—the public may nevertheless muddle through. How? By relying on a variety of sensible and mostly adaptive shortcuts (Popkin 1991, Sniderman et al 1991). All such shortcuts seem to involve taking cues from well-informed or at least better-informed sources. The general claim is that although average citizens “do not patrol government looking for problems,” they very well may “pay attention to people who do” (Popkin 1993, p. 19). A good illustration is provided by Lupia’s (1994) investigation of California voters contemplating several complicated proposals for reform of their state’s automobile insurance industry. Lupia argued that although voters may be impressively ignorant of the content of referenda put before them, they may still be able to choose wisely if they happen to know the positions taken by well-informed sources with clear reputations. In an ingenious analysis, Lupia showed that voters who knew little about the details of the various proposals nevertheless made sensi ble choices, ones that were indistinguishable from those made by wellinformed voters. The vital piece of information here was the position taken by special interest groups. When Californians knew that the insurance industry itself or associations representing trial lawyers supported a proposal, they knew enough: They voted against it. So by taking cues from expert sources—elites (Brody 1991, 1994), opinion leaders (Katz & Lazarsfeld 1955), interest groups (Lupia 1994)—citizens may “be knowledgeable in their reasoning about political choices without necessarily possessing a large body of knowledge about politics” (Sniderman et al 1991, p. 19).

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Do shortcuts solve the democratic problem of miserably informed citizens? No. First, although citizens may be willing to rely on the views expressed by experts, we should not presume that experts always get things right, or that citizens always know what experts think. In the case of automobile insurance reform in California, for example, the insurance industry and the trial lawyers understood perfectly well their reputational problem, so that in the advertisements they purchased, they hid their identity as much as the law would allow (Lupia 1994). Second, showing that poorly informed voters can mimic the decisions of their better-informed counterparts is not the same as showing that they always or often do so. On the contrary, Bartels (1996a) showed that in recent American presidential elections, poorly informed voters have made decisions in ways that differ systematically from those of well-informed voters. Moreover, when aggregated, these differences generally do not cancel out: In four of the six elections Bartels examined, deviations from hypothetical “fully-informed” election outcomes are both statistically significant and sizable, ranging from about three percentage points to nearly six. Third, shortcuts have little to say to the glaring fact of inequalities in information, that some people can recall so little and others so much (Converse 1990). It would be surprising if inequalities of information as large as this turned out to be politically innocuous. They are not. The well informed are more likely to express opinions, to use ideological terminology correctly, to possess stable opinions, to make use of facts in political discussions, to take an active part in politics, and to pick up new information easily and retain it readily (e.g. Delli Carpini & Keeter 1996, Price & Zaller 1993, Zaller 1992). Finally, we should keep in mind that when we take shortcuts, sometimes we end up in the right place and sometimes we get lost. The problem here is not just that citizens don’t know enough, it is that they know things, or think they know things, that are factually incorrect (e.g. that a huge fraction of the national treasury is being squandered on foreign aid). In the end, shortcuts to knowledge are unlikely to be effective substitutes for the real thing.

DECIDING WHAT’S IMPORTANT Among the most important decisions in a democratic society are those that determine which issues become part of public discussion. In Schattschneider’s famous and crisp formulation, “Some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out” (1960, p. 71). Put somewhat differently, power is implicated at least as much in the determination of which issues are to be decided as in what actions are ultimately decided on (Bachrach & Baratz 1970).


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My purpose here is to explicate the process of agenda setting, as it is commonly called, at an early stage: agenda setting among the general public, the “misty swamp” (Riker 1993a, p. 2) of everyday thinking and talking about politics. How do average citizens decide that crime, to take one example, is overwhelming their society? “Deciding” may be a presumptuous way to put the question. Somehow citizens come into possession of ideas about what is, and what is not, important; which problems are, and which are not, proper sub jects for government action; even what is, and what is not, political. How does this happen? Lazarsfeld & Merton (1948) were the first to suggest that citizens’ beliefs about what (and who) is important come from mass media. While generally quite skeptical about the power of mass communications in a free society (they regarded the automobile as vastly more consequential than the radio and thought that much of what passed for contemporary analysis was infected by “magical” thinking) Lazarsfeld & Merton nevertheless suggested three ways that mass media might have measurable effects on society. The first of these is agenda setting: “The mass media confer status on public issues, persons, organizations, and social movements” (p. 101). The mere fact of recognition, of being singled out for attention, is evidently enough to bestow prestige and authority. Lazarsfeld & Merton could cite no evidence on behalf of agenda setting, and their enunciation of the potential importance of agenda setting had no ap parent impact on empirical research. Klapper’s (1960) influential review of findings on the effects of mass communication was nothing if not thorough, yet it managed just two pages on agenda setting, most of that lifted directly from Lazarsfeld & Merton (1948) and the remainder stained with such disheartening phrases as “some writers believe” (1960, p. 104). But shortly afterward came Bernard Cohen’s detailed analysis of the role of the press in US foreign policy. Based on intensive interviews with leading journalists and government officials, Cohen (1963, p. 13) concluded that the press is significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about . ... The editor may believe he is only printing the things that people want to read, but he is thereby putting a claim on their attention, powerfully determining what they will be thinking about, and talking about, until the next wave laps their shore.

Cohen had in mind foreign policy, the attentive public, the prestige press, and policy experts, so his strong conclusion doesn’t speak directly to our question: When it comes to politics, are mass media in fact “stunningly successful” in determining what ordinary Americans think about?

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McCombs & Shaw (1972) found that they were. Toward the end of the 1968 presidential campaign, McCombs & Shaw interviewed a small sample of uncommitted voters living in and around Chapel Hill, North Carolina. (Uncommitted voters were selected because they were presumed most susceptible to the influence of the news media’s coverage of the campaign.) Voters were asked, among other things, to name the problems that government should most try to solve. While voters were being interviewed, McCombs & Shaw were poring over the Durham Morning Herald , Newsweek , the evening national news broadcasts of CBS and NBC, and more, coding the attention each was paying to various national problems. McCombs & Shaw found an almost perfect correlation between the two: Those problems given great prominence in the news were the same problems voters considered the country’s most serious. They concluded that “[i]n choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality” (p. 176). McCombs & Shaw’s wildly successful demonstration, based on a contem poraneous comparison between the aggregated priorities of voters and the aggregated priorities of news organizations, inspired numerous replications and, unhappily, considerable confusion. The best contemporaneous analysis found modest and mysteriously context-dependent support for agenda setting (Er bring et al 1980): Newspapers’ emphasis on problems influenced readers’ judgments about them only for some problems, only for those readers sensitized to the problems by relevant personal experiences, only for those who seldom discussed politics with friends, and only for those who were also regular viewers of network news programs. “Stunningly successful” overstates this evidence considerably. But perhaps agenda setting should be investigated dynamically over time, as problems emerge, move to the center of the national stage, and then gradually drift back into the wings. Funkhouser (1973) thought so, and was rewarded with strong positive results: close correspondence between the amount and timing of attention paid to various problems in the national press during the 1960s and the importance accorded those problems by the American public over the same period. Public opinion seemed to follow, not lead, the agenda set by the press. Funkhouser was on to something. His basic finding has since been replicated in more elaborate and demanding time-series analyses. In estimating the effect of news agendas on the public, these analyses control for the possibility that news organizations are responding to the public’s priorities (and not exclusively the other way around); take into account the independent effects of real world conditions (e.g. changes in prices or interest rates); and consider the possibility that presidents can alter what the public takes to be important through major addresses to the nation. With all these safeguards in place,


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strong support for agenda setting emerges. For a wide variety of problems, the American public’s concern for political problems closely and rapidly tracks changes over time in the attention paid them by national media (MacKuen 1981, 1984; Iyengar & Kinder 1987; McCombs & Zhu 1995). These results are neatly complemented by the findings of a series of experiments by Iyengar & Kinder (1987). These studies in effect convert the variation in news coverage that occurs naturally over time to contemporaneous variation across experimental conditions. People shown network broadcasts unobtrusively edited to highlight a particular problem ended up assigning greater importance to that problem—greater importance than they themselves did before the experiment began and greater importance than did people randomly assigned to control conditions emphasizing different problems. These effects were apparent immediately after the conclusions of the broadcasts as well as one week later, were enhanced when the edited stories led off the broadcasts, and emerged for a wide array of problems: national defense, pollution, unemployment, inflation, arms control, civil rights, energy, the social security system, education, and drugs. News appears to be an important influence on the public’s agenda, but it is not the only one: Americans exposed to the same stream of stories will differ in their views about what is important for the country as a whole. Such differences can be traced partly to self-interest, partly to political principles, and perhaps most of all to social group membership (Boninger et al 1995, Iyengar & Kinder 1987, Kinder 1998). Nor does news have its way uniformly: Americans exposed to the same stream of stories will draw different lessons regarding which problems are serious and which are not, with the clearest example again supplied by social groups. Group members appear especially attuned to news that is relevant to their own group’s predicament. Coverage of civil rights is more influential among blacks than whites; stories on unemployment are more compelling for the unemployed than the employed; coverage of the impending bankruptcy of social security makes a deeper impression on the elderly than on the young (Erbring et al 1980, Iyengar & Kinder 1987). In sum, news appears to be most effective in telling people what to think about when the stories it presents reinforce and ratify the experiences of ordinary life. In Lazarsfeld & Merton’s (1948) original formulation, agenda setting should apply not only to issues and problems but to persons. 3 A terrific venue for examining this process is the contemporary American presidential nomination system. Because news coverage of the primary season is preoccupied with winning and losing (Patterson 1980, 1993; Robinson & Sheehan 1983), even 3 3Lazarsfeld & Merton also include political organizations and social movements among those entities that might be singled out for media attention. Surely they’re right, although there is lamentably little research on agenda setting of this variety (Gitlin 1980, McAdam 1996).

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casual observers of the campaign pick up information about how the various candidates are doing, about who has just won and whose chances are fading. Voters’ assessments of which candidates are “serious” and which are not—what Bartels (1988) calls expectations—respond to such reporting, especially for those who are following the campaign carefully (Bartels 1988; see also Ansolabehere & Iyengar 1994, Brady & Johnston 1987, Popkin 1991). These results are important because, for virtually all voters early in the cam paign and for poorly informed voters throughout the campaign, “serious” candidates turn out to be winning candidates. That is, under conditions of high uncertainty, voters are often swayed by signs of a candidate’s electoral viability (Bartels 1988). A spectacular example is Gary Hart’s meteoric rise in the early spring of 1984. Following his upset victory in the New Hampshire primary, Hart’s public profile soared. Showered with attention, he was suddenly transformed from also-ran to front-runner. In psychological terms, agenda setting appears to be one manifestation of the availability heuristic at work. Heuristics are “strategies of simplification that reduce the complexity of judgment tasks to make them tractable for the kind of mind that people happen to have” (Kahneman et al 1982, p. xii). The availability heuristic comes into play when people assess the frequency of a general class of events or judge the plausibility of a particular development. In a series of clever experimental demonstrations, Tversky & Kahneman (1973) showed that people make such judgments according to the ease with which instances or occurrences can be brought to mind. By implication, as editors and reporters bring some aspects of politics into prominence while keeping others in darkness, they thereby influence which bits of political memory can most easily be brought to mind. The evidence on agenda setting strongly vindicates Lippmann’s original conjecture. For their “map” of politics, for their picture of “the mystery off there,” citizens depend mightily, as Lippmann understood, on journalism.

EVALUATING ALTERNATIVES Citizens react to the political alternatives that are put before them. They decide whether to support or reject a candidate; they find policy proposals sensible or terrible; they take the consequences of government action to be successful or disastrous; they judge their president’s performance in office to be inspiring or deplorable; and so on. Democratic theorists disagree over whether this is all that citizens should do (e.g. Barber 1984, Dahl 1989, Schattschneider 1960, Schumpeter 1942), and as this chapter shows, it would be foolish to pretend this is all that citizens do. Still, judgment and choice are prominent aspects of political experience, and consequently research on communication and opinion is occupied largely with describing and explaining how citizens evaluate


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prominent aspects of their political world. First I review evidence relevant to three distinct accounts of how this might happen, then turn in the final section to consider campaigns as instruments of persuasion.

Priming By what standards should presidents be evaluated? By their position on human rights or abortion or affirmative action? By the vitality of the economy? By the quality of their judicial appointments? By their performances at press conferences? By the moral example they set? When citizens are asked for their evaluation of such complex political entities as presidents, the priming model presumes that they do not undertake a comprehensive and exhaustive compilation of everything they know. Instead, their evaluations de pend on a modest sample of what they know, and a sample of convenience at that. Put another way, political evaluation is subject to the availability heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman 1973). Judgment in politics, as in other domains, depends on which pieces of memory happen to come to mind. And which pieces come to mind is a matter of circumstance. When political circumstances change, what will come to citizens’ minds will also change. The circumstantial basis for political evaluation has many sources, but among the most important is news. The standards citizens employ to evaluate a president (or policy, candidate, or other complex political entity) are determined substantially by which stories the news media choose to cover and, consequently, which standards are made available. The more attention news pays to a particular aspect of political life—the more frequently that aspect is primed—the more citizens will incorporate what they know about it into their political evaluations. Defined this way, priming has received strong and consistent support in a series of network television news experiments (Iyengar & Kinder 1987). Primed by television news stories that focus on national defense, viewers judge the president largely by how well he has provided, as they see it, for the nation’s defense; primed by stories about inflation, viewers evaluate the president by how he has managed, in their view, to keep prices down; and so on. In these experiments priming shows up across a variety of problems, for Democratic and Republican presidents alike, and for good news as well as bad. Priming is also apparent in experiments set in the context of elections. For example, during the race for Congress in Connecticut’s third district in 1982, voters who were shown local news coverage that stressed the state of the economy and the president’s economic policies relied heavily on their assessments of economic conditions when deciding which congressional candidate to support. By contrast, voters who watched local broadcasts devoted to the candidates themselves—their personal backgrounds, group endorsements, and positions on

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policy questions—assigned great importance to these qualities in their choices. Thus congressional elections can be primarily a referendum on the incumbent president’s economic performance or primarily a local contest between two distinct candidates, depending on how voters are primed. All this evidence comes from experiments, but priming is demonstrated by other methods and in other settings as well. For example, following revelations in November 1986 that funds from secret arms sales to Iran were being illegally channeled to the Nicaraguan Contras, the public’s evaluations of President Reagan suddenly became preoccupied with matters of foreign policy, just as priming would require (Krosnick & Kinder 1990). Likewise, immediately after public disclosure of Gary Hart’s sexual escapades in the spring of 1987, moral conservatism, which had been utterly unconnected to the public’s evaluations of Hart prior to the revelations, suddenly became very connected (Stoker 1993). Finally, presidential campaigns evidentally prime voters to conceive of their choice as a judgment on the incumbent party’s economic performance. In recent campaigns, the effect of citizens’ assessments of national economic conditions on their vote has roughly doubled between Labor Day and Election Day (LM Bartels, unpublished observation; for other demonstrations of priming in “natural settings,” see Krosnick & Brannon 1993, Pollock 1994, Mutz 1992, Kinder & Sanders 1996). As defined here, priming refers merely to the level of attention news pays to a problem, but news does more than simply draw attention to some problems while ignoring others; it also frames problems in particular ways. Especially important is the extent to which problems are framed in such a way as to suggest that they have political causes or political remedies. Priming is augmented when television coverage implies that the president is responsible either for causing a problem or for failing to solve it (Iyengar & Kinder 1987). More generally, how news media frame problems influences how citizens come to their opinions (Cappella & Jamieson 1997; Iyengar 1991; Kinder & Sanders 1990, 1996; Mendelberg 1997; Stoker 1997)—and even whether they come to an opinion in the first place (Kinder & Nelson 1998). By paying attention to some problems while ignoring others, and by framing problems in particular ways, media define the terms by which political judgments are rendered and political choices made. If this is right, then we might expect that political campaigns would be organized with priming in mind. Various indications are consistent with this ex pectation. For example, Petrocik (1996) has recently shown that candidates deliberately emphasize (prime) issues that, for historical or structural reasons, favor their side. Riker’s (1993b) examination of the public debate over ratification of the Constitution finds ample support for what he calls the Dominance Principle: “[W]hen one side successfully wins an argument on an issue, the other side ceases to discuss it, while the winner continues to exploit it” (1993b,


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pp. 81–82). Thus campaigns are less debates over a common set of issues than they are struggles to define what the election is about. An extensive analysis of party platforms since World War II in 23 democracies finds the same pattern (Budge 1993). As priming would predict, “campaigns are mostly about salience, not confrontation” (Riker 1993a, p. 4; see also Gelman & King 1993, Jacobs & Shapiro 1994, Kinder & Sanders 1996).

Reception, Acceptance, Persuasion For critics of democracy, the contention that citizens don’t know enough to participate sensibly in the decisions of government has been a persistent and powerful weapon. An especially unsettling version of this general line of argument is that electoral change is due largely to the capricious vacillations of the least informed voters. As Converse (1962) put it, “Not only is the electorate as a whole quite uninformed, but it is the least informed members within the electorate who seem to hold the critical balance of power, in the sense that alternations in governing party depend disproportionately on shifts in their sentiments” (p. 578). But a careful look at the stability of partisan attitudes in American national political campaigns led Converse to a different conclusion: that it is the moderately informed who are most likely to be persuaded. Why? Well-informed citizens are heavily exposed to the campaign but committed in advance, so they are hard to persuade. The poorly informed are likewise difficult to convert, not because they are adept at defending their precommitments (insofar as they have them at all), but because they so rarely encounter messages designed to alter their loyalties. This leaves the intermediately informed, who pay sufficient attention to the campaign to bump into messages that challenge their opinions, but who are not so committed to their views as to be immune to persuasion. Meanwhile, working independently, McGuire (1968) was developing a general theory of persuasion. McGuire’s framework depicted opinion change as “the net outcome of a chain of behavioral steps. As a minimum it requires (a) adequate reception (through attention and comprehension) of the persuasive message; and (b) yielding to what is comprehended” (1968, p. 1139). In this respect, McGuire was carrying forward a point of view introduced by Hovland and his Yale associates (e.g. Hovland et al 1953). McGuire argued that conventional theories of attitude change tended to run into trouble because they overlooked reception, concentrating entirely on yielding. He then developed plausible cases wherein individuals most likely to receive a message were least likely to accept it (and vice versa). The general result in such cases is a com plex, nonmonotonic relationship between characteristics of individuals and overall persuasion.

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Taking off from the insights offered by Converse and McGuire, Zaller (1992) devised a general theory of mass communication and opinion change. Zaller’s theory presumes that the essential elements of opinion are “considerations,” broadly defined to include any reasons for favoring one side of a dis pute over another, and that most people possess opposing considerations on most issues. People arrive at their opinions by averaging across the considerations that happen to be accessible at the moment. Accessibility, in turn, de pends upon a memory search that is probabilistic and incomplete. Considerations that have been “in thought” recently are more likely to be sampled (Zaller 1992, Zaller & Feldman 1992; also see Feldman 1995). To apply this conception of opinion to the dynamics of political persuasion, Zaller (1992) introduced two additional assumptions. First, people’s likelihood of receiving a communication is a direct function of their level of general information about politics, where reception involves both exposure to and comprehension of the given communication (the “Reception Axiom”). Second, people resist communications that are inconsistent with their political predispositions only insofar as they possess sufficient information to notice such inconsistency (the “Acceptance Axiom”). Zaller’s model has been applied—with mostly smashing empirical success—to a wide variety of cases: the electoral advantages enjoyed by congressional incumbents (Zaller 1992); shifts in American opinion on school desegregation and on the Vietnam War (Zaller 1991); variations in popular support for Ross Perot during his $73 million presidential adventure of 1992 (Zaller & Hunt 1994, 1995); and the dynamics of presidential primary election cam paigns (Zaller 1989). All these and more can be accommodated within a single theoretical vocabulary. On the first page of The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (1992), Zaller wrote that his aim was “to integrate as much as possible of the dynamics of public opinion within a cohesive theoretical system”—an audacious ambition and, so far at least, an audaciously successful one.

Processing On-Line Availability (or memory-based) models are not the only way to account for communication effects. The strongest alternative model currently in play is supplied by Lodge and his Stony Brook associates. Drawing heavily on ideas originally developed by Hastie (Hastie & Park 1986; Hastie & Pennington 1989), Lodge and his colleagues argue that over the course of a campaign, citizens develop their impressions of the candidates on-line. That is, “each piece of campaign information is immediately evaluated and linked to the candidate node in working memory at the time of exposure, when the information is in the senses, so to speak, and not typically computed at a later date from memory traces” (Lodge 1995, p. 119). Lodge’s story runs this way: Campaigns deliver


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messages; citizens sometimes notice them; when they do, they detect the im plications of the messages for their evaluation of a candidate; thereupon they integrate these implications into their summary evaluation (or “running tally”) of the candidate, transfer their now updated overall evaluation to long-term memory, and quickly forget the details that prompted the updating in the first place (for corroborating experimental evidence, see Lodge et al 1989, Lodge & Steenbergen 1995, Lodge & Stroh 1993, Rahn et al 1994). One important implication of this model is that citizens may know more, perhaps much more, than they can tell. Maybe we shouldn’t worry so much over the repetitious demonstration that ordinary Americans cannot recollect basic political facts or remember the names of candidates. Such demonstrations do not prove that citizens are wandering around in the dark. From the perspective of the on-line model, citizens can be responsive to information—indeed, they can be perfectly responsive to information—without being able to recollect why they feel the way they do. In one experiment, Lodge & Steenbergen (1995) showed that citizens’ evaluations of fictitious candidates can be predicted from the information that had been presented to them earlier, even though they could recall little of it themselves, and what information they could recall was of trifling value in predicting their overall evaluations. Lodge concludes that voters should be judged not by the information they can recollect but by the kinds of information they entertain moment to moment and by how well they integrate such information into their ongoing political evaluations. This argument is well supported by a series of experiments, and it raises a pressing question for future theoretical and empirical work: Assuming both memory-based and on-line models are required to account for important empirical regularities in the relationship between mass communication and public opinion, how are the two models to be reconciled?

Campaigns and Persuasion Systematic empirical research on campaigns as instruments of political persuasion began in a context dominated by apprehensions set off by the emergence of fascism and the rise of commercial advertising. Social scientists of the time worried whether ordinary citizens could maintain their democratic values and economic autonomy in the new and scary world of mass communication. A first and powerful answer was supplied by the The People’s Choice , Lazarsfeld et al’s (1948) landmark examination of the 1940 presidential contest between Wendell Willkie and Franklin Roosevelt. In this remarkable study, citizens of Erie County, Ohio, were questioned seven times during the 1940 campaign, beginning in May, as Hitler’s armies were sweeping through France, and ending just after Election Day. Lazarsfeld et al discovered, to their surprise, that relatively few voters changed their minds over this period. By the

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time of the summer conventions, well before the onset of the formal campaign, roughly 80% of voters had become permanently committed to one candidate or the other. What little change that did occur, moreover, had less to do with the campaign than with the personal influence exercised by family and friends. Such evidence led Lazarsfeld et al to conclude that presidential campaigns are generally ineffective at persuasion; rather their functions are to reassure the early deciders (“reinforcement”) and to mobilize the latent predispositions of the initially uncommitted (“activation”). Despite dramatic changes over the last half century in the technology of campaigning, the rise of television, and the decline of strong partisans in the electorate, Lazarsfeld et al’s conclusions have stood up very well. As largescale, expensive experiments in political persuasion, American presidential campaigns are a bust (e.g. Bartels 1997, Berelson et al 1954, Finkel 1993, Markus 1982, Miller & Shanks 1982, Patterson 1980). This conclusion is buttressed from a different angle by the recent development of aggregate forecasting models that are capable of predicting the outcome of presidential elections based on information that is available before the campaign gets underway (Campbell 1992, Gelman & King 1993, Markus 1988, and especially Rosenstone 1983). Why do presidential campaigns regularly fail as agents of persuasion? One answer is that the campaign of one side is “neutralized” by the campaign of the other (Lazarsfeld & Merton 1948; this account has been rediscovered in recent years by Bartels 1992 and by Gelman & King 1993). Under current arrangements—electoral competition dominated by two well-established parties and presidential campaigns funded primarily by public sources—both sides assemble teams of roughly equal experience and intelligence, who set about spending roughly the same (large) amount of money in roughly the same ways. Another reason presidential campaigns enjoy limited success converting voters from one side to the other is that they run up against the most basic and enduring of political predispositions: voters’ attachment to party. For many strong partisans, the details brought forward by any particular campaign are beside the point. For them, partisanship is a “standing decision,” largely immune to whatever surprises the campaign might bring (Campbell et al 1960, Converse 1966). [Alternative conceptions of partisan identification differ on this point of immunity to the campaign (e.g. Fiorina 1981, Green & Palmquist 1990, MacKuen et al 1989).] Even those less frozen in their partisan loyalties do not come to the cam paign without prejudice. They tend to encounter information that disproportionately favors their own candidate, and more important, they selectively interpret whatever information comes their way in a fashion that supports their political inclinations (Lazarsfeld et al 1948, Sears & Whitney 1973). This point has been made in scores of studies of presidential debates, which show


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how sharply evaluations of debate performance polarize along partisan lines. Debates don’t persuade; they reinforce and strengthen viewers’ prior commitments (Katz & Feldman 1962, Sears & Chaffee 1979). Finally, if strong partisans are essentially unmovable because they are so deeply committed, other potential voters are difficult to persuade because they’re not paying attention. Analyzing the flood of political propaganda unleashed by the 1940 presidential campaign, Lazarsfeld et al (1948, p. 121) noticed that far from being drowned in information, most voters “did not even get their feet wet.” Perhaps the principal obstacle to persuasion is indifference: “The problem for most political propagandists is not that they fail to reach their enemies but that they fail to reach anyone at all” (Sears & Whitney 1973, p. 7; Hyman & Sheatsley 1947). Having said all that, we should keep in mind that if only a little persuasion takes place, the collective consequences can be very great if the race is close. Moreover, even the most successful forecasting models leave some room for campaign effects. A fine example was furnished, quite inadvertently, by George McGovern, who in 1972 offered the United States “‘the worst managed campaign in this century,’ most notably by selecting and then abandoning a vice-presidential nominee who had been treated for depression with shock therapy” (Bartels 1992, p. 266; on McGovern’s troubles in 1972, see Popkin et al 1976). Granting that little persuasion ordinarily takes place from Labor Day to Election Day, it would be a mistake to conclude that the presidential cam paign is generally ineffective. Activation and reinforcement may not be as glamorous as persuasion, but they are important processes nonetheless. Campaigns activate voters by arousing their interest and providing them information, thereby allowing them to choose wisely—or in any case, more wisely than they could have in the absence of a campaign. Campaigns reinforce voters by providing good reasons and reminding them why they are Democrats or Republicans, thereby keeping partisans in line and defections to a minimum. Nor, finally, should we conclude that because presidential campaigns rarely succeed in persuading significant numbers of voters to switch from one side to the other, other kinds of campaigns will fare no better. One clear exam ple to the contrary comes from the systematic study of House campaigns. A principal finding of such studies is the importance of money. In particular, the more money challengers raise, the better the campaign they can mount; the better the campaign, the more voters they can reach, and the better impression they can establish (e.g. Jacobson 1980, Green & Krasno 1988). Candidates who challenge House incumbents generally have a difficult time, but without adequate financing, without a real campaign, they have virtually no chance at all.

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A second case of campaigns as effective instruments of persuasion is provided by the sequence of primaries and open caucuses through which American presidential candidates are selected. The current system is interesting from the perspective of persuasion because, first, the competition naturally takes place within the party. This means that voters’ party attachments are largely nullified as a basis for choice, so voters are less anchored in the primary season than they will be later in the fall. Second, candidates vary in the recognition and resources they command at the start of the process. Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the selection process takes place over time, in a tightly bunched sequence of contests, which would seem to invite dynamic forces. This complex system is splendidly analyzed in Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Bartels 1988). Bartels first develops a theory of choice based on the voters’ expectations, uncertainty, and political predis positions, and then applies the theory to the primary campaigns of 1976, 1980, and 1984. Bartels demonstrates that variation in the outcome of primary elections can be explained by the interplay among differences in voters’ political predispositions from one state to the next; by differences in voters’ expectations, which are shaped by fluctuations in electoral fortunes; and by differences in voters’ uncertainty, which generally diminish over the course of the campaign. To estimate the impact of the primary campaign, Bartels compares what actually happened in particular years with what would have happened under a one-day national primary. This comparison yields some stunning results. For example, in 1976, Carter would have been a far weaker candidate; George Wallace would have been the likely beneficiary of Carter’s decline; and the Democratic convention of that year probably would have had real work to do. Such results suggest that the primary campaign can matter, and in a major way. Especially consequential are early and unanticipated outcomes—surprising victories or shocking defeats—that change voters’ expectations and, in turn, alter their choices. And finally, if we ask not about the short term but about the longer haul, not about individuals but about the public as a whole, and not about campaigns per se but about the general flow of information and debate carried by mass media, then persuasion turns out to be the rule, not the exception. Consider as just one example the findings from research devoted to explaining fluctuations over time in public support for the president. From Truman to Clinton, these performance ratings move up and down, sometimes dramatically. Such twists and turns may seem enigmatic, but they are are in fact quite predictable. Unem ployment, inflation, economic growth, flagrant violations of public trust, the human toll of war, international crises, dramatic displays of presidential authority—all these influence the president’s standing in the general public


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(e.g. Brody 1991, Hibbs et al 1982, Kernell 1978, MacKuen 1983, Mueller 1970, Ostrom & Simon 1985). Thus assessments of presidential performance in the aggregate and over the long haul seem very well informed, highly responsive to developments that most citizens learn about primarily through the mass media. In these investigations as in others (e.g. Fan 1988, MacKuen et al 1989, Page & Shapiro 1992, Stimson 1991), public opinion in the aggregate emerges as responsive to social, economic, and political change—often exquisitely so. If citizens on average know so little, how can the public as a whole choose so wisely? One powerful answer comes from the sheer mechanical process of statistical aggregation, the law of large numbers applied to public opinion. Given sufficient cases, even faint signals can emerge from a “sea of noise” (Converse 1990, p. 382; for a review of the evidence on the dynamics of collective public opinion, see Kinder 1998). The role of the media in these dynamics is not always explicit, but it is always implied. Looked at in a particular way, political persuasion is ubiquitous.

PAST AND FUTURE Klapper’s (1960) famous conclusion of “minimal effects” was faithful to the evidence available at the time. Nearly 40 years later, it seems not so much wrong as incomplete. With more incisive research designs, greater care in measurement, more adept statistical analysis, greater attention to long-term change, and deeper appreciation for the human information processing system, minimal effects have given way to a family of real effects: agenda setting, priming, framing, and even, looking in the right places, ample persuasion. If, as Bartels has recently maintained, the minimal effects verdict should be regarded as “one of the most notable embarrassments of modern social science” (Bartels 1993, p. 267), we are now relieved of that burden. 4 Of course we still have some distance to go. One limitation of the current literature is its preoccupation with individuals. Politics, as Huckfeldt & Sprague (1993) remind us, “involve individuals and groups tied together in com plex relations.” And yet, “when we address citizen politics in the mass, the temptation appears overwhelming to shift the level of understanding and analysis to that of independent individuals—individuals abstracted from time, place, and setting” (p. 281). This temptation is indeed powerful, though the inclination to investigate public opinion within its social context has a long and honorable history (e.g. Katz & Lazarsfeld 1955, Lazarsfeld et al 1948) and 4 4 Not everyone thinks so. Skeptics in the Klapper tradition include McGuire (1986), Mueller (1994), and Schudson (1984). The strongest argument on the other side is advanced by Zaller (1996).

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now appears to be making a comeback, perhaps as design and analysis become more adequate to the task (e.g. Achen & Shively 1994, Huckfeldt & Sprague 1995, King 1997). These results remind us that public opinion is not only an achievement of individual psychology but the product of a complex and multilayered social experience as well. A second defect afflicting contemporary research on communication and opinion has to do with emotion, conspicuous by its absence. Current studies emphasize cognition and the management of information, as in the tussle between on-line and memory-based models of information processing. About the emotional requirements of citizenship, or the emotional foundations of political opinion, little is heard. A generation or two ago things were different. Inspired by psychodynamic theory and impressed with the possibilities of indepth interviewing, analysts of public opinion sought to reveal how, in Lasswell’s (1930) famous formulation, “private affects were displaced onto political objects” (e.g. Adorno et al 1950, Lane 1962, Smith et al 1956). But the scientific reputation of psychodynamic theory soon came under ferocious attack; intensive interviewing as a mode of inquiry went out of fashion; and social psychology, which had contributed so much to the study of public opinion, was overtaken by a cognitive revolution (Tompkins 1981). Now things have taken a different turn. Within psychology, theories of emotion are proliferating and empirical work is booming (Ekman & Davidson 1994). Provoked in part by all this commotion, a modest resurgence of interest has occurred in the political analysis of emotion (e.g. Abelson et al 1982, Conover & Feldman 1986, Esses et al 1993, Kinder 1993, Marcus 1988, Marcus & MacKuen 1993, Sullivan & Masters 1988). These demonstrations suggest that if we are to understand communication and opinion, we must attend to the whole person, to reason and emotion alike. Citizens not only think and feel, they also (at least on occasion) act. But faithful to the field’s inclinations, I have so far ignored the role of mass communication in political action. An example of research running against this tide, one well worth imitating, was prompted by what some observers saw as a new and troubling development in American politics: the emergence of negative campaigns. With the advent of television, campaigns at all levels have supposedly turned “increasingly hostile and ugly. More often than not, candidates criticize, discredit, or belittle their opponents rather than promoting their own ideas and programs” (Ansolabehere et al 1994, Jamieson 1992, West 1993). Is negative campaigning corrosive? A good if not final answer comes from the research of Ansolabehere & Iyengar (1995, Ansolabehere et al 1994), based primarily on a series of well-crafted and ambitious field experiments in which negative advertisements are embedded, more or less seamlessly, within actual ongoing campaigns. The principal result of these experiments is that negative campaigning is demobilizing. Negative advertisements strengthen


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citizens’ impression that government is unresponsive; induced to witness cam paigns that seldom rise above exchanges of snide and petty accusations, citizens withdraw.5 My focus here has been to clarify the effects of mass communication on public opinion in contemporary American society. Complicated and difficult as that task is, it represents just one piece of the story of communication in the broader workings of politics. The larger story involves the dynamic interplay among public officials, interest groups, issue entrepreneurs, and social movements, in addition to the media and the public, all played out against a landscape of turbulent events and changing political opportunities (see Bartels 1991, 1996b; Burstein1985; Carmines & Stimson 1989; Gamson & Modigliani 1987; Hallin 1984; Hilgartner & Bosk 1988; Kingdon 1984; Jones 1994; Lindblom 1977; Page 1996; Protess et al 1991; Riker 1982; Schudson 1978; Stimson et al 1995; Verba & Nie 1972; Verba et al 1995). Lippmann’s Public Opinion emphasized the heavy responsibility borne by the press in a free society, since the press alone describes and interprets the events of public life that few citizens experience directly. The press handles this responsibility poorly, in Lippmann’s view, for it is capricious in what it chooses to disclose, “like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and than another out of the darkness into vision.” Maybe so. Placing the effects documented here in a broader conception of the political process will enable a deeper analysis—and critique—of communication and opinion than Lippmann could manage in his time. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Adam Berinksy, Kathy Cramer, Janet Weiss, and Nicholas Winter for their timely and helpful advice on an earlier draft of this chapter. Visit the Annual Reviews home page at http://www.AnnualReviews.org.

5 5It seems a mistake to tie negative campaigning to the development of television, however; Riker (1996) discovered plenty of it in the storied and often romanticized campaign for the ratification of the US Constitution.

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