Page 246 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

9. POLITICAL COMMUNICATION EFFECTS 235

alistic explanations, whereas active processing of newspaper public
affairs content decreases individualistic explanations. Individualistic
explanations for crime and welfare are also related to support for death
penalty and opposition to public assistance programs.

Climate of Opinion. A crucial assumption in Noelle-Neumann’s
(1984) Spiral of Silence is that people make “quasi-statistical” judgments
about which side is ahead and gaining support on controversial issues.
According to her theory, this diminishes expression of opinion by the los-
ing side, starts a spiral of silence, and ultimately affects change of opinion
and political behavior. Noelle-Neumann claimed that German television
news affected electoral outcomes because of newscasters having por-
trayed the climate of opinion as being unfavorable to the Christian Demo-
cratic party.

Other System Perceptions. Other systemic perceptions could be
explored as criteria of media effects. There is a connection, for example,
between use of public affairs media content and support for the various
aspects of the political system—for authority and trust in government but
also for the need for the press to criticize government. Attentive news
users tend to be more tolerant of political diversity, to have more empathy
with various parts of the society, and to hold distinctive perceptions of the
legitimacy or marginality of various groups and of how the world works
(Amor, McLeod, & Kosicki, 1987).
There is evidence that the horse race coverage of politics, instead of
substantive matters, contributes to a “spiral of cynicism” that leads to
decline of interest in politics (Cappella & Jamieson, 1997). Moy & Pfau
(2000), using content analysis and audience surveys, find that news cover-
age varies in cynicism across years and across political institutions. Use of
network news, entertainment talk shows, and political talk radio is associ-
ated with lower levels of confidence in institutions, whereas newspaper
use is associated with positive evaluations.
Media portrayals are also linked to public attitudes toward racially
charged attitudes such as citizens views on welfare policy. Gilens (1999)
shows through content analysis and survey data that news organiza-
tions have racialized discussions of poverty over decades and that these
racialized discussions are systematically related to public support for
welfare policies. Gilliam, Iyengar, Simon, and Wright (1996) have used
creative experiments manipulating the race of perpetrators on local
news coverage and found that the presence of racial cues activated
stereotypic beliefs about African Americans as antecedents of opinions
about crime.