Page 91 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

84 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

limited to only a few speakers and questioners, not only set the agenda for
what was reported to the public but served as an information gatekeeper.
The third criterion candidates use when they select an issue to prime is
whether the public gives high evaluations to the candidate’s handling of
the issue. Political parties “specialize” in offering “the best solutions” to
particular social and economic problems. This means that, according to
voters, a certain political group is more efficient in solving certain issues
than other groups. Petrocik (1996) describes such a phenomenon, with
reference to American political parties, in his theory of issue ownership.
According to this theory, a party’s “owning” of a certain problem is con-
nected with a relatively stable social background and is also connected
with political conflicts. The results of Petrocik’s analysis suggest that
American voters consider issues connected with general social welfare—
including the homeless, public schools, the elderly, national minorities,
unemployment, health care, and the environment—as owned by the
Democratic Party. The Republican Party is associated with better achieve-
ments in the areas of crime, defense of moral values, running foreign pol-
icy, defense, inflation, taxes, and government spending.
The theory of issue ownership has certain consequences for running a
successful campaign. According to Petrocik (1996), the campaign will
achieve the desired result if the candidate or political party manages to
limit voting decisions to those issues facing the country that the candidate
is better able to solve than the opponent. In other words, to the degree that
candidates or parties enjoy a favorable reputation on some issue, their sup-
port is likely to be boosted by news coverage on this issue. In an experi-
mental study, Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1994) found that news coverage
of crime was an asset to the Republicans. In addition, Republican advertis-
ing on crime was more effective in shaping viewers’ perceptions of the
sponsor as tough on crime, whereas Democratic advertising on unemploy-
ment was more effective in influencing perceptions of the sponsor as a
supporter of jobs programs and in influencing voting preference.
Shah and his collaborators (1999) showed that campaign news cover-
age about the nation’s economic health also provides cues to the public,
and these cues supply the criteria for evaluating presidential candidates
during the course of campaigns. Shah and colleagues used two types of
data. First, they examined daily news media coverage of the principal can-
didates in the 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996 American presidential cam-
paigns for positive and negative appraisals of candidates. Second, they
used a time series of public opinion polls to estimate citizens’ presidential
preferences throughout each campaign. Shah and his colleagues found
that news media appear to respond to recent economic performance by