Page 88 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Persuasion in the Political Context 81

heightening the importance of novel considerations, patterns of priming
suggest that media attention accentuates the influence of familiar issues
that are understood across voters. These findings suggest that strategies of
priming economic successes and positive character stories both have the
potential to promote presidential popularity, whereas discussion of policy
issues, even if favorably viewed by the public, will cause less variable influ-
ences on presidential evaluations. Thus, the influence of priming reflects
both the tenor of news coverage and citizen appraisals of the issues.
In the context of Danish politics, Togeby (2007) found evidence that
the priming process also is contingent on the level of the politicization of
the issue. Her data set consisted of 12 smaller surveys using the same
questionnaire conducted every four months from May 1999 to May 2003.
The surveys contained a question concerning the general evaluation of the
Danish government’s performance and a number of diverse questions
about issue attitudes. These issue attitudes covered most of the important
political conflicts in the country, including attitudes toward the European
Union, immigration, the contracting out of welfare services, aid to devel-
oping countries, the military budget, and an evaluation of economic devel-
opment over the last couple of years. In addition to the survey, media
analyses were also conducted covering the same period, making it possible
to compare the development of media coverage and public opinion over
time. Media coverage was measured by tallying the number of articles in
three daily newspapers covering the relevant issues.
The results of Togeby’s (2007) analyses suggest that for priming to oc-
cur, the issue should be politicized and closely related to the key conflicts
between the government and the opposition, or the event should be per-
ceived as the government’s responsibility, such as the success of the
Copenhagen Summit in December 2002. Togeby’s study also documents
the priming effects of strongly politicized issues, even in situations with
relatively modest news coverage, as in the case of the foreign aid issue. The
results show that the political context functions as a moderator for the
presence of priming. The level of politicization (i.e., how strongly the issue
is integrated in the overall conflict between the government and the op-
position) appears to be the most important factor. Strongly politicized
issues—easy as well as hard—seem to be most primed by those who are
the most politically knowledgeable. Easy issues (e.g., privatization, immi-
grants, military spending) are primed by all groups if they are regarded as
the government’s responsibility, even if they are not strongly politicized
(e.g., Copenhagen Summit, unemployment, Kosovo refugees). Togeby
(2007) found only one instance where the least knowledgeable were the
most primed. It concerned the European Union referendum, a topic that