How media coverage of fan pages affects public opinion
204433587
From Schiavo to Death Panels: How Media Coverage of End of Life Issues Affects Public Opinion
Sherrie Dulworth
45110951
Front page or "buried" beneath the fold? Media coverage of carbon capture and storage
Media can affect public views and opinions on science, policy and risk issues. This is especially true of a controversial emerging technology that is relatively unknown. The study presented here employs a media content analysis of carbon capture and storage (CCS) one potential strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The authors analyzed all mentions of CCS in two leading Canadian national newspapers and two major western regional newspapers from the first article that discussed CCS in 2004 to the end of 2009 (825 articles) An in depth content analysis was conducted to examine factors relating to risk from CCS, how the technology was portrayed and if coverage was negatively or positively biased. We conclude by discussing the possible impact of media coverage on support or opposition to CCS adoption.
Public understanding of science
Amanda D Boyd Travis B Paveglio
199359223
"Call It What You Want" The Impact of Fan Characteristics on Political Views
In October 2018, Taylor Swift for the first time explicitly engaged in political dialogue by promoting the Tennessee Democratic Senate and House of Representative candidates, Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper, in the midterm elections through an Instagram post. In the post, Swift also condemned racial discrimination, gender inequality, and those who look down on homosexuality, and by doing so, inspired 102,000 people under 30 to register to vote via vote.org within 48 hours after the post. This study attempted to provide insight into whether the level of fans' parasocial interaction with Taylor Swift correlated with their political views by administering a web based survey, regarding perceptions of Taylor Swift and political views, to 913 respondents. Political party largely acted as the most statistically significant correlation for an how an individual felt about a particular topic, but fan strength did correlate more significantly with believing in homosexual acceptance in society and was the second most significant correlation relating to the other two topics, belief in the presence of racial discrimination and belief in gender inequality. Gender and age were statistically significant on most issues (excluding age related to gender equality) but did not have large effect sizes. Political party has long been thought to be a significant predictor, so it is not a surprise that such a result occurred here, but fan strength's significance suggests that Taylor Swift's influence on individuals may sway their political leanings as well. "Call It What You Want" The Impact of Fan Characteristics on Political Views 4 Introduction In 2003, Taylor Swift convinced her family to move from Pennsylvania to Nashville to pursue her dreams as a country artist. In the ensuing 15 years, she has continuously topped charts, won awards, and dominated cultural conversation in a way that few artists have ever managed (Blair, 2017) One of the hallmarks of Swift's career is that she has largely stayed out of the political fray (Smith, 2018) However, in October 2018, Swift for the first time explicitly engaged in political dialogue by promoting the Tennessee Democratic Senate and House of Representative candidates, Phil Bredesen and Jim Cooper, in the midterm elections through an Instagram post (Smith, 2018) In the post, Swift also condemned racial discrimination, gender inequality, and those who look down on homosexuality, and by doing so, inspired 102,000 people under 30 to register to vote via vote.org within 48 hours after the post (Smith, 2018) This adjustment of Swift's public persona to accommodate the political realm is a shift for Swift's career, but the impact that the post had on political activity also exhibits the power over fans that someone in Swift's position holds. Determining the effect she has on her fans, particularly concerning the issues that Swift enumerated in her Instagram post, helps to show how influential celebrities can be in the political realm, even given the other factors that influence political opinions. Literature Review Interpretive Contexts Swift's rise as a musical artist led to a groundswell of popularity around which a rabid fandom coalesced. Swift is the third most popular person on Twitter with over 84 million followers. Many of her Twitter fan pages also have strong support, with upwards of 180,000 "Call It What You Want" The Impact of Fan Characteristics on Political Views 5 followers each. (Swift, 2018; Web, 2018; Joyce, 2016) According to Nielsen, Swift's fanbase is about 59 percent female, with a third of that number being over the age of 50, which is in line with other pop sensations such as Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith (Owsinski, 2015) Even as she has shifted from the country girl next door to a global pop artist, Swift's fandom has grown at every stage and, now, some individuals' full time jobs are devoted to cultivating and sharing news about Swift (Tiffany, 2018) Traditional Fandom Studies Notions of fandom have changed significantly over time. Originally, the term referred to religious membership, but was later conceptualized as the cult like following of a particular person or dogma (Jenkins, 1992) Scholars have often unintentionally characterized fans as either "obsessed individual[s]" or as part of "the hysterical crowd" (Jenson, 1992) Throughout early media research, "fans [were] characterized as deviant," which allowed both researchers and average people to demonize fans as "other" (Jenson, 1992) However, media fan studies have also helped to debunk many of the negative stereotypes previously associated with fandom. It is now understood that audiences of all kinds bring their own interpretive frameworks to popular media and form social and interpretive connections with the work (Sullivan, 2013) Stuart Hall (1973) conceptualized how audiences can have an active role in interpreting media texts by creating a wide range of meanings based upon individual experiences. Hall stated that an intended "authorial (encoded) meaning" for a work exists, but that the meaning could be understood (decoded) by the audience in three ways: "dominant/hegemonic interpretation, negotiated interpretation, and oppositional interpretation" (Hall, 1973) A "dominant/hegemonic interpretation" of a "communicative event" means that the individual accepts the intended "Call It What You Want" The Impact of Fan Characteristics on Political Views 6 authorial meaning of the work without question (Hall, 1973) Generally, this means that the meaning fit into the decoder's previous frameworks of knowledge and the decoder chose to utilize the encoder's intended meaning. An individual who takes a "negotiated interpretation" of a work accepts some of the encoder's meaning, but disagrees with and discards portions of that meaning (Hall, 1973) Therefore, an individual negotiates within themselves and decides what portions of a work to accept. Finally, an individual who takes an "oppositional interpretation" of a work disregards the encoder's meaning (Hall, 1973) The individual conceives of their own interpretation of the work and utilizes this framework to understand what the work is actually saying. Although the encoder's intended meaning does matter because it creates the framework through which the audience chooses its meaning, the audience, and therefore fans, have the power in this type of media relationship (Hall, 1973) The amount and type of understanding that a fan has of a particular work determines the persuasion impact that artists have on these fans. Without the fans' understandings and chosen interpretive meanings, nothing an artist does has any impact, which allows fans to maintain some semblance of power as an interpreter of content. Parasocial Relationships Traditional Parasocial Relationship Literature When fans become enamored with a celebrity, the parasocial relationship developed helps the non famous individual add meaning to their own life through the celebrity (De Backer, 2012) The celebrity becomes a visual representation of experiences that individuals hope to have, and as a result, the fan attributes credibility to the content of the messages coming from the celebrity (De Backer, 2012) However, it is not just the parasocial relationship, but the strength of this relationship that affects how individuals interact with content coming from celebrities. "Call It What You Want" The Impact of Fan Characteristics on Political Views 7 Strong parasocial relationships have been found to be similar to an individual's relationships with friends or good neighbors (Gleich, 1997) Eyal and Dailey (2012) also found that, although these parasocial relationships are weaker than those with close friends, family, and romantic partners, parasocial relationships are particularly desirable because they can be shared and become a common connection with friends and family. In this way, parasocial relationships do not compete with in person relationships, but instead supplement them and help individuals grow (Eyal and Dailey, 2012) Parasocial relationships with and media representations of celebrities create the opportunity for individuals to identify and agree with the positions publicly put forth by celebrities. In advertising, the parasocial relationships that create emotional investment on behalf of the fan can be leveraged to increase the fan's feelings about brands and products (Hung, 2014) The aspirational and playful feelings associated with the celebrity help to create a powerful motivator that creates significant effects (Hung, 2014) These feelings can be extended to political feelings as well. The identification of the individual with the celebrity helps to align their political beliefs with the celebrity's because the fan begins to see issues through the worldview of the celebrity (Soukup, 2006) Instead of expressing their own political opinions and beliefs, a devoted fan may instead use the iconic representation of the celebrity to promote the cultural values aligned with that celebrity (Soukup, 2006) Additionally, celebrities can help to shift political debates beyond the traditional binarisms and create more structured and targeted political discourse (Street, 2012) Beyond that, celebrities have the ability to enhance the political activities of their fans and, by endorsing or espousing a particular position, can alter the opinions of those who identify with them (Street, 2012) "Call It What You Want" The Impact of Fan Characteristics on Political Views 8 Taylor Swift and Parasocial Relationships Fans separate themselves into sections of "real" and "casual" fans within fan communities, creating fan hierarchies who interact with works in unique ways (Sullivan, 2013) This selection and internalization of media materials of all kinds also helps fans to distinguish themselves as a unique subculture that is separate from the mainstream (Jenkins, 1992) Media forms, such as pop musi
Christopher R Fanick
146526879
Framing and the Public Agenda: Media Effects on the Importance of the Federal Budget Deficit
Abstract What explains the shift in public opinion over time on the issue of the 1996 U.S. federal budget? Public opinion polls demonstrate dramatic shifts in the percentage of people considering the budget issue to be the most important problem facing the country from November 1994 through April 1996. In this article, we model Roper Center opinion polls against a prediction of opinion from media content to investigate how media coverage affects the importance assigned to the budget issue. We identify four dominant frames present in media coverage of the budget issue and argue that a model combining the theories of agenda setting and framing provides a better explanation for the shifts in aggregate opinion than either theory on its own. By combining framing with the traditional agenda setting approach, we take into account the nuances of cover age within the issue, in addition to the sheer amount of cover age, for a more complete explanation of media effects on public opinion on the issue of the federal b.
Amy E Jasperson Dhavan V Shah Mark D Watts Ronald J Faber David P Fan
33936090
Media Messages and Perceptions of the Affordable Care Act during the Early Phase of Implementation.
Public opinion about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been polarized since the law's passage. Past research suggests these conditions would make any media influence on the public limited at best. However, during the early phase of implementation, locally broadcast ACA related media messages in the form of paid health insurance and political advertisements and news media stories abounded as advocates, insurance marketers, and politicians sought to shape the public's perceptions of the law. To what extent did message exposure affect ACA perceptions during the first open enrollment period? We merge data on volumes of messaging at the media market level with nationally representative survey data to examine the relationship between estimated exposure to media messaging and the public's perceptions of how informed they were about and favorable toward the ACA in October 2013. We find that higher volumes of insurance advertising and local news coverage are associated with participants' perceptions of being informed about the law. Volumes of insurance advertising and of local news coverage are also associated with participants' favorability toward the law, but the relationship varies with partisanship, supporting the growing body of research describing partisan perceptual bias.
Journal of health politics, policy and law
Erika Franklin Fowler Laura M Baum Colleen L Barry Jeff Niederdeppe Sarah E Gollust
189162814
Exploring how brands create and maintain online relationships through their websites, Facebook and Instagram brand pages
Introduction In the context of online interactions, social media has becoming a crucial part of people"s everyday lives, where they converge to exchange, debate, communicate and participate in any form of social interaction (Ryan Jones, 2009) They post and share new content but also review and rate products/services and/or brands, share experiences and expertise and exchange opinions (Ryan Jones, 2009) As a result, the growing popularity of social media, the competitors" presence on social networking sites and the cost reduction pressure derived from the financial crisis and consequent necessity to find cheaper solutions for brand promotion, motivated companies to use social media as part of their marketing and brand building activities (Tsimonis Dimitriadis, 2014) and to create brand fan pages in different social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, among others. Due to this attractiveness, social media is becoming the media channel of choice across the world (Dong Hun, 2010) However, traditional media still plays an important role for both consumers and marketers, being a central component of brands" communication strategies. Yet, several questions still remain unanswered regarding social media effectiveness and influence on consumer engagement. In the current study we intend that we intend to contribute to fulfil the second. Thus, the objective of the current study is to explore how brands create and maintain online relationships with consumers through their Websites, Facebook and Instagram brand pages Theoretical development The concept of engagement was originally employed in different fields of study including psychology, sociology and organizational behaviour. Now is attracting marketers" attention especially in the field of relationship marketing (e.g. Brodie et al. 2011; Hollebeek, 2011) Accordingly, two central concepts consumer engagement and online brand engagement need to be defined. First, consumer engagement, refers to the intensity of a person"s participation and connection with company"s offerings and activities that can be initiated by the consumer or the organization (Vivek, Beatty, Morgan, 2012) Online brand engagement, on the other hand, can be defined as a consumer"s cognitive and affective commitment to partake in an active relationship 1 luisa.teixeirapinto@gmail.com 2 sandramloureiro@netcabo.pt 3 paulo.rita@iscte iul.pt 4 emoraessarmento@gmail.com 2018 Global Marketing Conference at Tokyo Proceedings 1110 with a brand on a website or other computer mediated platform designed to communicate brand value (Mollen Wilson, 2010) Online brand engagement measures how much and how frequently users interact with a firm"s page and its social media content. When consumers make the effort to like, favourite or comment a brand"s post, they are vigorously engaging with that content. Engagement metrics display audience action, an important feature for social media health and growth (Dunham, 2014) As social media provides numerous ways for users to get involved with organizations (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, Lucas, 2009) marketers must find rightful strategies to nurture relationships with the public. Dialogue has been one of the topics under research by several scholars. Including this two way form of communication is crucial to "understand how organizations can build relationships that serve both organizational and public interests" (Kent Taylor, 2002: 21) thus several studies use dialogic communication to investigate the influence of online strategies for relationship building (Loureiro Gomes, 2016) Three crucial strategies have been used in numerous studies (Waters et al. 2009; Loureiro Gomes, 2016; Men Tsai, 2012) to build and maintain relationships online: disclosure or openness, information dissemination, and interactivity and involvement. First, disclosure or openness refers to the companies" willingness to be transparent in their online communication activities. Waters et al. (2009) suggest that companies must provide information such as company"s full description, its history and mission. Organizations should use hyperlinks connected to their websites and use logos and visual cues to enhance brand recognition. Information dissemination concerns posting photos and videos, announcements about products, as well as answering questions to address stakeholders" needs, concerns and interests (Men Tsai, 2012; Loureiro Gomes, 2016) Posting links to external news content related to the company and its business and including press releases and campaign summaries can maximize the impact of a company"s online presence (Waters et al. 2009) Finally, interactivity and involvement can be seen as the most important strategy, out of the three, since it is essential to foster relationships with the public and represents one of the main advantages of using different social media platforms (Haigh, 2014) This strategy is often analysed as a whole, with no distinction between the two terms (Men Tsai, 2012; Loureiro Gomes, 2016) however, interactivity can be analysed separately from involvement according to research done by Haigh (2014) Involvement regards connecting with consumers. Providing information such as organizational contacts, giving users the ability to stay in touch with the company is one way to involve them. Interactivity, on the other hand, is often defined as "the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of the mediated environment in real time." (Steuer, 1992: 84) When considering computermediated environments, Liu (2003) also studied interactivity, developing a scale to measure interactivity on websites. According to the study, interactivity should be defined as "the degree to which two or more communication parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which such influences are synchronized" (Liu Shrum, 2002: 54) and three dimensions should be included when discussing this topic: active control, two way communication and synchronicity. Active control regards users" capacity to voluntarily participate and usefully influence communications. Two way communication concerns the bifacial flow of information. Synchronicity evaluates the speed of the interaction. This led to the definition of interactive communication: 2018 Global Marketing Conference at Tokyo Proceedings 1111 "communication that offers individuals active control and allows them to communicate both reciprocally and synchronously" (Liu, 2003: 208) Finally, human to content interactivity refers to the ability to contribute to the organizational online content by commenting on organizational posts and to reply to other users" posts. (Loureiro Gomes, 2016; Men Tsai, 2012) Thus, considering the above mentioned, the following research question is proposed: RQ1: What strategies are Portuguese companies incorporating to create and maintain relationships with publics on their Websites, Facebook and Instagram
Luisa Helena Pinto Sandra Maria Correia Loureiro Paulo Rita Eduardo Moraes Sarmento
141998563
Terrorism, Media, and Public Policy: The Oklahoma City Bombing, by James David Ballard
The two chapters that follow, however, paint a more sobering portrait. Examining news coverage on the eve of the first anniversary of 9/11, the authors note that these news pieces were "less contextual, less balanced, and more negative and critical of Muslims and Arabs in the United States than in the immediate post 9/11 period" (p. 28) By the end of the third chapter, devoted specifically to visual representations, it is obvious that the book's ambitious subject matter, to focus on the media's portrayal of American Muslims in particular, cannot be divorced from the larger topic of Islam and the world's 1.3 billion Muslims, especially in the context of the Bush administration's ever expanding "Global War on Terror." Interestingly, the book's widened scope actually serves to temper the authors' argument. By shedding light on public opinion polls that reveal American attitudes toward the Islamic faith, it becomes clear that the media's coverage of global affairs directly affects the public perception of the American Muslim community. In fact, we are told, there is a direct relationship between the level of one's exposure to mainstream news and one's expressions of fear and hostility toward Islam and Muslims. Whether this conduct on the part of the print and broadcast media is a conscious effort or the product of a systemic lack of awareness is addressed in a chapter on changing terminology in the war on terror. The issue of torture is confronted on the editorial pages and the airwaves during discussions on the administration's guidelines and practices. However, once the Abu Ghraib scandal brings home the reality of these policies, a complete restructuring of language is shown to have taken place, as the word "torture" is repeatedly sidelined to soften the blow of the administration's missteps. In spite of the compelling case study in this chapter, however, Fueling Our Fears falls short in exploring the policy implications of media coverage of Muslims, especially the complicity of the press in the recent civil rights abuses affecting Muslims in America, including domestic spying, arbitrary detentions, and episodes of racial profiling. A sixth and final chapter displays the fruits of 25 focus groups conducted among Muslims in New York, so it is unclear how representative they are of the larger American Muslim community. Unsurprisingly, their gripes with the media are many, believing the misrepresentation to be part of a larger political agenda, though they do not elaborate on that thought in full. Nonetheless, Nacos and Torres Reyna have compiled some valuable data in a highly accessible work that should be near the top of a long list of titles that chronicle the failures of the American media in the last decade.
Sean Aday
165458055
CREATING A SPIRAL OF SILENCE? PRINT MEDIA REPORTAGE AND AUDIENCE PERCEPTION OF RAPE IN NIGERIA
Some past studies on rape coverage not only signposted the media reinforcement of negative female stereotypes but also construction of rape myths among receivers, especially the male gender. With few of such studies domesticated in Nigeria and given that media coverage of issues have great potential to shape public opinion, this work employs a mix of survey and content analysis to interrogate the extent the print media rape coverage in Nigeria is laden with myths that reinforce rape culture; And how this representation influence the audience reception. The survey population consists of all male and female citizens from 18 years and above residing in the urban cities of the three south eastern states of Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu. The population for the content analysis also consists of all Nigerian (nationally circulated) daily newspapers published during the period of the study (January August 2014) The study found that 62% of the respondents accept that media rape reports are laden with myths which affect their perception, wherein they mainly blame the victims. an indication that the print media use of rape myths impacts negatively on audience perception of rape victims. It was also realized that the dominant cause of rape is willful act against the victims (40% aside the act of waywardness (30% and indecent Dressing (30% As per the Content Analysis, sample editions of the newspapers studied reported 104 stories on rape, with majority being straight news (87% aside the few other contents: features (1.9% opinion (1.9% interviews (1.9% editorials (3.8% and columns (3.8% Apart from this low frequency of reportage of rape cases, all the 104 issues published by the three newspapers within the period, were all buried inside pages which were mainly centered on victim blame. The three Newspapers each, contained the seven rape myths categorized by Burt, (1980) Therefore, the media should often campaign against myths and stereotypes aassociated with rape and sexual violence, to help dispel myths about rape.
Ifeoma Vivian Dunu Godfrey Ekene Okafor
144291126
Trust meltdown for Business Journalism
The global financial crisis which began in 2008 shows few signs of abating as it enters its fourth year. With Europe in turmoil, the UK in recession and the U.S. recovery faltering, the financial media is still playing a central role in shaping our understanding of the fiscal disaster. As the economic news has increasingly dominated the front pages, the global meltdown has been a real test of the mettle of the financial press. Unfortunately business journalists are failing that test at least according to a large section of the public. A major opinion poll carried out by ICM for City University's Department of Journalism provides a unique insight into public attitudes towards the business media. In our survey, only half the public was satisfied with the media coverage of the economic crisis. Even more disturbing for journalism, many people display a deep level of mistrust in the objectivity of business journalists, their reliance on biased sources, and their lack of understanding of the concerns of ordinary people. It is not that the public is uninterested far from it. Despite the complexity of the euro crisis, 75 per cent of people said they were following news about the state of the economy closely levels that are similar to those observed during the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. There is little evidence of "crisis fatigue" despite the length of time the crisis has gone on. But the opinion poll research suggests that the public wants a different kind of coverage from that it is currently getting. Overall, the audience wants less coverage of how the crisis might affect more affluent Trust meltdown for business journalism
Steve Schifferes
44118
How Citizens Respond to Combat Casualties The Differential Impact of Local Casualties on Support for the War in Afghanistan
scholars have long analyzed the influence of combat casualties on public support for war. however, the mechanisms through which casualties particularly local casualties affect wartime opinion formation have received much less attention. We employ a novel survey experiment to test three mechanisms that might explain previously observed cleavages in war support between residents of highand low casualty communities. We find that subjects who read a news story concerning a casualty from their home state were significantly more likely to oppose the war in afghanistan than were subjects who read an identically worded news story in which the fallen soldier was not identified as being from the respondent's home state. moreover, this difference emerged regardless of whether the story followed the coverage patterns and emphasis typical of national or local media reporting. We conclude that the local connections triggered by learning of a homestate casualty, not the emotionally charged nature of local media reporting, is most responsible for generating opinion cleavages observed in previous research. international relations scholarship, from kant's (1983 [1795] theory of perpetual peace to contemporary analyses of the importance of ballot box constraints in understanding state conflict behavior (see russett 1990; Bueno de mesquita and lalman 1992; reiter and stam 1998; Bueno de mesquita et al. 2003) has long emphasized the political importance of domestic public opinion. most analyses of wartime opinion formation have conceptualized the process by which citizens decide whether or not to support a war as a cost benefit Douglas l. kriner is an associate professor of political science at Boston university, Boston, ma, usa. francis x. shen is an associate professor of law at the university of minnesota, minneapolis, mn, usa. *address correspondence to Douglas kriner, Boston university, Department of political science, 232 Bay state rd. Boston, ma, usa; e mail: dkriner@bu.edu. Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 76, no. 4, Winter 2012, pp. 761 770 (c) The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e mail: journals.permissions@oup.com doi:10.1093/poq/nfs048 advance access publication 19 october 2012 at B oton U niersity L ibaries on A uust 2, 2013 http:/poqrdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from calculation (see page, shapiro, and Dempsey 1987; gartner and segura 1998; gelpi, feaver, and reifler 2009) and, in the low mobilization wars waged since World War ii, casualties have been the primary way in which most americans see a conflict's costs (aldrich et al. 2006; gartner 2008) across a range of military actions, from Vietnam and korea, to more minor missions in panama and the persian gulf, to recent conflicts in afghanistan and iraq, scholars have shown that public support declines as casualties accumulate (e.g. mueller 1973; larson 1996; mueller 1994; eichenberg, stoll, and lebo 2006; Jacobson 2010) however, recent scholarship also finds that casualties are far from uniformly distributed across the country. This unequal exposure to casualties, in turn, has produced significant cleavages in policy opinions and political behaviors between americans who live in communities that have suffered high versus low numbers of casualties. for example, in both the Vietnam and iraq wars, residents of high casualty communities were more likely to believe each war was a mistake and to favor an early withdrawal than demographically identical residents of communities that had experienced substantially lower casualty rates (gartner, segura, and Wilkening 1997; hayes and myers 2009; kriner and shen 2010; althaus, Bramlett, and gimpel 2011) moreover, these cleavages reappeared at the ballot box; state and county casualties strongly influenced both house and senate races during the Vietnam era (gartner, segura, and Barratt 2004; kriner and shen 2010) as well as the 2004 presidential election (karol and miguel 2007) and house and senate races during the 2006 midterms (kriner and shen 2007; grose and oppenheimer 2007; gartner and segura 2008) although these political consequences are well established, existing scholarship tells us significantly less about the mechanisms through which local casualties generate these political effects. how, precisely, do local casualties affect citizens' cost benefit calculations when forming their wartime policy preferences? are residents of high casualty communities simply more aware of the human costs of war than residents of low casualty communities? are local casualties covered differently in the media in ways that disproportionately sway public opinion? or do local casualties cause citizens to update their cost benefit calculations differently than information about national casualties? The answers to these questions may compel us to fundamentally reexamine how citizens respond to war and its human costs. three potential mechanisms most prior analyses of the political effects of local casualties emphasize the greater exposure to the human costs of war that residents of high casualty communities receive versus their peers in low casualty communities. We term this the differential exposure mechanism. given the absence of mass mobilization Kriner and Shen 762 at B oton U niersity L ibaries on A uust 2, 2013 http:/poqrdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from in america's post World War ii conflicts and the widespread lack of information concerning casualty totals observed in the iraq War (Berinsky 2007; myers and hayes 2010) there are at least three reasons that residents of highcasualty communities may be more likely to hear about casualties than other americans. first, gartner, segura, and Wilkening (1997, p. 670) argue that "interpersonal and community based information networks" make local casualties "better known" to citizens. second, residents of high casualty communities may receive significantly more elite cues critical of the war than residents of low casualty communities (kriner and shen 2010) Third, media scholars continue to find that a large percentage of americans rely on local news outlets for their information on international affairs (gilliam and iyengar 2000) and that local news outlets give significantly more attention to local casualties than they do to casualties from other communities (gartner 2004) alternatively, americans may simply respond differently to casualties suffered in their communities than to casualties with whom they share no local connection. We term this the differential processing mechanism, as it implies that citizens may weight information about local casualties differently than nonlocal casualties when forming their policy judgments and preferences. This mechanism is suggested in gartner, segura, and Wilkening's (1997, p. 670) argument that local war deaths are not only "better known" but also more "highly salient" in citizens' decision calculus. in a similar vein, in an analysis of gallup polling data from the iraq War, kriner and shen (2010) found that respondents from high casualty states were significantly more likely to report that they personally knew a soldier killed or wounded in iraq than were respondents from low casualty communities. and those who perceived a personal connection were significantly more likely to oppose the war and support withdrawal than were respondents who did not. a third possibility, a hybrid of the differential exposure and differential processing mechanisms, emphasizes the key role played by the local media. local media outlets do more than simply report on casualties in their coverage areas; they provide a certain type of coverage that may be particularly suited to triggering the personal, emotive connections that influence public opinion. even a cursory comparative review of casualty coverage in national and local news outlets reveals that the two report on casualties in dramatically different ways. With some exceptions, most coverage mentioning casualties in national news outlets does so within the frame of a larger story concerning the battle or incident in which the casualties occurred and what that incident reveals about the overall strategy in the theater. local media coverage of casualties, by contrast, is often intensely personal. it routinely features interviews with surviving family members, friends, neighbors, high school teachers, and athletic coaches. The details emphasized are not of the firefight and what the battle tells us about the larger strategy; rather, the emphasis is on personal details of the fallen soldier and the effects of his or her death on family, friends, and neighbors left behind. in short, local media coverage appears designed to How Citizens Respond to Combat Casualties 763 at B oton U niersity L ibaries on A uust 2, 2013 http:/poqrdjournals.org/ D ow nladed from produce the emotional reaction and sense of connection with a fallen soldier that might lead readers to weight local war deaths disproportionately in their cost benefit calculations. as a result, residents of high casualty communities may become more critical of a war than their peers not because of a shared local connection with fallen soldiers, but because they receive more emotionally charged media coverage that personalizes a war's human costs. We label this the emotional news coverage mechanism.
Douglas L Kriner Francis X Shen