Page 90 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Persuasion in the Political Context 83

of foreign relations performance or economic performance. Additional
analyses showed that the priming effect was apparent primarily among
low-involvement respondents. That is, Gulf War performance became a
more important determinant of overall evaluations after the war among
low-knowledge, low-exposure, and low-interest respondents. No such
priming effect was apparent among the high-knowledge, high-exposure,
and high-interest respondents. But this pattern of results occurred only
when these three aspects of political involvement were considered indi-
vidually. However, when the three variables were examined simultane-
ously, they turned out to have opposite effects on priming. High levels of
political knowledge enhanced priming, and high levels of exposure and
interest reduced priming. According to Krosnick and Brannon, these con-
tradictory findings are related to the fact that greater knowledge consti-
tutes a greater ability to interpret, encode, store, and retrieve new
information. And higher levels of exposure and interest are associated with
a greater likelihood of forming online political evaluations and a dilution
of priming effects because of a wider range of knowledge being activated
by media coverage.
Allen, O’Loughlin, Jasperson, and Sullivan (1994) also analyzed the
high and sustained levels of popular support for President Bush’s policies
during the Gulf War. They conducted an empirical examination of media
priming and framing effects during the early stages of the Gulf War and
looked at CNN’s and NBC’s depictions of dissenting voices, portrayals of
elite consensus, and uses of technical language in conveying the success of
U.S. policy. Their examination of these broadcasts showed that media cov-
erage primed positive attitudes toward the war effort and negative atti-
tudes toward dissent. In this way, the media affected Americans’
interpretations and support of the Gulf War itself. To determine whether
Americans rallied in support of the president’s policy and to what extent
this rally changed or was sustained, Allen and colleagues also used data
from the University of Connecticut’s Roper Center surveys conducted be-
tween August 1, 1990, and August 1, 1991. During the war, the media
provided the public with ubiquitous, redundant, repetitious messages of
support. More than serving simply as conduits for military information,
the media also framed and primed views of dissent, patriotism, technol-
ogy, and elite consensus to construct a reality that stifled dissent and influ-
enced citizens’ evaluations of military actions and support for President
Bush. Furthermore, the reporting, recounting, and recapping of informa-
tion by the media; the creation of a common language that served as a
barrier to perceiving the war in any way other than as a military-techno-
logical event; and the news briefings, controlled by the military and