Page 111 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

100 D. ROSKOS-EWOLDSEN, B. ROSKOS-EWOLDSEN, F. DILLMAN CARPENTIER

Political News Coverage and Priming

As in the media violence literature, tests of political priming require an
appropriate control group. Two representative studies that fit the criteria
are discussed; their results need to be explained by theories of media
priming.
Krosnick and Kinder (1990) measured the priming effect of Iran–Contra
media coverage on public evaluations of President Reagan’s overall per-
formance, using data from the 1986 National Election Study. In 1986, the
Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan conducted
lengthy face-to-face interviews with adult respondents who were chosen
randomly from the national population. Included in the interview of 1,086
citizens was a survey asking for evaluations of President Reagan, both
overall and regarding his performance on foreign affairs, domestic policy,
and other publicized issues. The interviews were conducted both before
and after November 25, 1986, the date on which the Attorney General
publicly confirmed the sale of arms to Iran and the subsequent distribu-
tion of the sale profits to the Contras.
The study focused on people’s opinions regarding Reagan (i.e., overall
performance, competence, and integrity) and his handling of foreign
affairs (i.e., the Contras and Central America, isolationism, and U.S.
strength in foreign affairs) and domestic affairs (i.e., the national economy
and aid to Blacks). Krosnick and Kinder (1990) compared responses
obtained before and after the priming event—the Iran–Contra announce-
ment—to see which foreign or domestic affairs issues contributed most to
the respondents’ overall performance evaluations of President Reagan.
Before the priming event, domestic issues predicted their overall evalua-
tions of Reagan more than foreign affairs issues. After the priming event,
the opposite was true; foreign affairs issues, especially those issues
involving Central America, predicted the respondents’ overall evalua-
tions of Reagan more than domestic issues. This study shows that media
coverage of political events can prime people’s thoughts and judgments.
Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder (1982) addressed the priming issue across
two experiments. In their first experiment, Iyengar et al. exposed partici-
pants to four newscasts over four days. For half of the participants, each
newscast contained a story about the inadequacies of U.S. defense pre-
paredness. For the other half, the control group, the four newscasts were
devoid of defense stories. In the second experiment, there were three
groups, each viewing five newscasts across five days. Embedded in each
newscast was a topical story that differed for each group. The topics were
defense preparedness, pollution, and inflation. Each group received only
one of these topics, and each group served as a control group for the other
groups.