Page 81 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

74 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Moreover, as Sheafer (2007) emphasizes, primed messages are never
neutral; rather, they are positive or (more often) negative. Therefore, prim-
ing has a built-in affective component, and media attributes activate or
prime a specific political judgment. Then, in the process of affective prim-
ing, people use issue attributes (positive or negative) as another informa-
tion shortcut to assist them in making political evaluations and decisions.
Not only does priming influence the standards that people use to make
political evaluations, but it also—via message direction or valence—di-
rects them how to evaluate (see also Stevens, Banducci, Karp, & Vowles,
2011). From this perspective, priming is a subtle form of persuasion (for
an opposing point of view, see Druckman & Holmes, 2004; Miller &
Krosnick, 1996).
Priming is a two-stage process (Miller & Krosnick, 2000; see also
Iyengar, Peters, & Kinder, 1982; Sheafer & Weimann, 2005; Scheufele,
2000). First, by emphasizing certain issues over others, the media influ-
ence the hierarchies of issues that the public recognizes as important. They
set the agenda. The idea of agenda setting is a relational concept, specify-
ing a positive, causal relationship between the key themes of mass com-
munication, and determining what members of the audience come to
regard as important. According to McCombs (1981, p.126), “The salience
of an issue or other topic in the mass media influences its salience among
the audience.” Newspaper and television stories often make explicit state-
ments about the importance of an issue (e.g., global economic crisis, ter-
rorist threat) in order to justify attracting public attention to it. However,
as Miller & Krosnick (2000) emphasize, even when such issue statements
are not made, most readers and viewers recognize that devoting attention
to an issue means that editors and reporters believe the issue is significant
for the country. Consequently, people may infer from the media that an
issue is nationally important. Changes in issue importance are effected by
making certain salient issues more accessible in an individual’s memory. In
the second stage of priming, individuals use those issues, which are most
salient and accessible in their memories, to evaluate the performance of
political actors. That is, by priming a certain issue, the media affect the
criteria that people use to evaluate and judge governments, presidents,
policies, and candidates for public offices (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987).
Sheafer and Weimann (2005) found evidence for priming as a two-stage
process in their analyses of survey and media content, drawing upon the
case of four Israeli parliamentary elections between the years of 1996 and
2003. They focused on two specific issue domains: (1) the security-peace
domain, and (2) domestic issues and the economy. The analyses showed
that in three elections, worsening security conditions were associated with