COMMUNICATION AND OPINION

▪ Abstract This chapter reviews the vast and sprawling literature that seeeks to illuminate and explain the effects of mass communication on American public opinion. Klapper's famous verdict of “minimal effects,” delivered some 40 years ago on this subject, was faithful to the evidence available to him at the time, but now seems quite mistaken. With sharp improvements in design, measurement, and analysis, and with keener understanding of human information processing, minimal effects have given way to an entire family of real effects: agenda-setting, priming, framing, and even, looking in the right places, persuasion.

[1]  W. Lippmann.  The Phantom Public , 1925 .

[2]  H. Lasswell.  Psychopathology And Politics , 1987 .

[3]  J. Schumpeter.  Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy , 1943 .

[4]  P. Lazarsfeld,et al.  The people's choice. , 1945 .

[5]  H. Hyman,et al.  Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail , 1947 .

[6]  Paul F. Lazarsfeld,et al.  Mass communication popular taste and organized social action. , 1948 .

[7]  T. Adorno.  The Authoritarian Personality , 1950 .

[8]  H. Kelley,et al.  Communication And Persuasion , 1953 .

[9]  P. Lazarsfeld,et al.  6. Katz, E. Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications , 1956 .

[10]  Jerome S. Bruner,et al.  Opinions and Personality. , 1956 .

[11]  Bernard Cecil Cohen.  Press and Foreign Policy , 1957 .

[12]  A. Downs.  An Economic Theory of Democracy , 1957 .

[13]  P. Converse,et al.  The American voter , 1960 .

[14]  Joseph T. Klapper,et al.  The effects of mass communication , 1960 .

[15]  J. Habermas.  The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere , 1962 .

[16]  Philip E. Converse,et al.  INFORMATION FLOW AND THE STABILITY OF PARTISAN ATTITUDES , 1962 .

[17]  L. Lyons,et al.  The Press and Foreign Policy , 1964 .

[18]  Magda B. Arnold,et al.  The nature of emotion , 1968 .

[19]  Peter Bachrach,et al.  power and Poverty , 1970 .

[20]  J. Mueller,et al.  Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson , 1970, American Political Science Review.

[21]  Richard A. Brody,et al.  Policy Voting and the Electoral Process: The Vietnam War Issue , 1972, American Political Science Review.

[22]  D. Shaw,et al.  Agenda setting function of mass media , 1972 .

[23]  N. Nie,et al.  Participation in America : Political Democracy and Social Equality , 1972 .

[24]  Daniel Kahneman,et al.  Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability , 1973 .

[25]  Allen Newell,et al.  Human Problem Solving. , 1973 .

[26]  G. Ray Funkhouser,et al.  THE ISSUES OF THE SIXTIES: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY IN THE DYNAMICS OF PUBLIC OPINION , 1973 .

[27]  A. Tversky,et al.  Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases , 1974, Science.

[28]  Allan Collins,et al.  A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing , 1975 .

[29]  John W. Gorman,et al.  Comment: What Have You Done for Me Lately? Toward An Investment Theory of Voting , 1976, American Political Science Review.

[30]  R. Jervis.  Perception and misperception in international politics , 1976 .

[31]  S. Kernell.  Explaining Presidential Popularity: How Ad Hoc Theorizing, Misplaced Emphasis, and Insufficient Care in Measuring One's Variables Refuted Common Sense and Led Conventional Wisdom Down the Path of Anomalies , 1978, American Political Science Review.

[32]  Arthur H. Miller,et al.  Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media , 1980 .

[33]  G. Jacobson.  Money in congressional elections , 1980 .

[34]  Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections: Rational Man and Electoral Democracy , 1980 .

[35]  Thomas E. Patterson,et al.  The Mass Media Election: How Americans Choose Their President , 1980 .

[36]  Jane J. Mansbridge.  Beyond Adversary Democracy , 1980 .

[37]  Silvan S. Tomkins,et al.  The quest for primary motives: Biography and autobiography of an idea. , 1981 .

[38]  Morris P. Fiorina,et al.  Retrospective voting in American national elections , 1981 .

[39]  A. Tversky,et al.  The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. , 1981, Science.

[40]  T. Gilovich,et al.  Seeing the past in the present: The effect of associations to familiar events on judgments and decisions. , 1981 .

[41]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  Categories and concepts , 1984 .

[42]  D. Hibbs,et al.  The Dynamics of Political Support for American Presidents Among Occupational and Partisan Groups , 1982 .

[43]  J. Merrill Shanks,et al.  Policy Directions and Presidential Leadership: Alternative Interpretations of the 1980 Presidential Election , 1982, British Journal of Political Science.

[44]  Gregory B. Markus,et al.  Political Attitudes during an Election Year: A Report on the 1980 NES Panel Study , 1982, American Political Science Review.

[45]  Susan T. Fiske,et al.  Affective and semantic components in political person perception. , 1982 .

[46]  W. Riker,et al.  Liberalism Against Populism: A Confrontation Between the Theory of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice , 1982 .

[47]  Steven J. Rosenstone,et al.  Forecasting Presidential Elections , 1983 .

[48]  M. J. Robinson,et al.  Over the wire and on TV , 1983 .

[49]  Michael B. Mackuen.  Political Drama, Economic Conditions, and the Dy- namics Of Presidential Popularity* , 1983 .

[50]  John R. Anderson.  The Architecture of Cognition , 1983 .

[51]  D. Gentner.  Structure‐Mapping: A Theoretical Framework for Analogy* , 1983 .

[52]  M. Schudson.  Advertising, the uneasy persuasion , 1984 .

[53]  D. Graber.  Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide , 1984 .

[54]  John W. Kingdon.  Agendas, alternatives, and public policies , 1984 .

[55]  Michael B. Mackuen.  Exposure to Information, Belief Integration, and Individual Responsiveness to Agenda Change , 1984, American Political Science Review.

[56]  Milton Lodge,et al.  The Breadth, Depth, and Utility of Class, Partisan, and Ideological Schemata * , 1985 .

[57]  Charles W. Ostrom,et al.  Promise and Performance: A Dynamic Model of Presidential Popularity , 1985, American Political Science Review.

[58]  A. Allen.  Discrimination, jobs, and politics , 1985 .

[59]  Daniel C. Hallin,et al.  The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam , 1986 .

[60]  William J. McGuire,et al.  The Myth of Massive Media Impact: Savagings and Salvagings , 1986 .

[61]  Larry M. Bartels.  Issue Voting Under Uncertainty: An Empirical Test , 1986 .

[62]  P. J. Conover,et al.  Emotional Reactions to the Economy: I'm Mad as Hell and I'm not Going to Take it Anymore , 1986 .

[63]  Milton Lodge,et al.  A Partisan Schema for Political Information Processing , 1986, American Political Science Review.

[64]  W. Mcguire.  WITHDRAWN: The Myth of Massive Media Impact: Savagings and Salvagings , 1986 .

[65]  R. Hastie,et al.  The relationship between memory and judgment depends on whether the judgment task is memory-based or on-line , 1986 .

[66]  S. Iyengar,et al.  News That Matters: Television and American Opinion , 1987 .

[67]  W. Gamson,et al.  The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action , 1987 .

[68]  G. Marcus.  The Structure of Emotional Response: 1984 Presidential Candidates , 1988, American Political Science Review.

[69]  M. Brewer.  A dual process model of impression formation. , 1988 .

[70]  Gregory B. Markus,et al.  The Impact of Personal and National Economic Conditions on the Presidential Vote: A Pooled Cross-Sectional Analysis , 1988 .

[71]  S. Hilgartner,et al.  The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[72]  R. Masters,et al.  "Happy Warriors": Leaders' Facial Displays, Viewers' Emotions, and Political Support , 1988 .

[73]  Donald P. Green,et al.  Salvation for the Spendthrift Incumbent: Reestimating the Effects of Campaign Spending in House Elections , 1988 .

[74]  Larry M. Bartels.  Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice , 1988 .

[75]  Kathleen M. McGraw,et al.  An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation , 1989, American Political Science Review.

[76]  J. Zaller.  Bringing Converse Back In: Modeling Information Flow in Political Campaigns , 1989, Political Analysis.

[77]  P. J. Conover,et al.  Candidate Perception in an Ambiguous World: Campaigns, Cues, and Inference Processes , 1989 .

[78]  Vincent Price,et al.  SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION AND PUBLIC OPINION EFFECTS OF COMMUNICATING GROUP CONFLICT , 1989 .

[79]  R. Dahl,et al.  Democracy and Its Critics , 1990 .

[80]  Steven L. Neuberg,et al.  A Continuum of Impression Formation, from Category-Based to Individuating Processes: Influences of Information and Motivation on Attention and Interpretation , 1990 .

[81]  A. Newell.  Unified Theories of Cognition , 1990 .

[82]  D. Kinder,et al.  Mimicking Political Debate with Survey Questions: The Case of White Opinion on Affirmative Action for Blacks , 1990 .

[83]  Jon A. Krosnick,et al.  Altering the Foundations of Support for the President Through Priming , 1990 .

[84]  Donald P. Green,et al.  Of Artifacts and Partisan Instability , 1990 .

[85]  Eliot R. Smith,et al.  Exemplar and Prototype Use in Social Categorization , 1990 .

[86]  Robert C. Luskin,et al.  Where Is the Schema? Going Beyond the “S” Word in Political Psychology , 1991, American Political Science Review.

[87]  James A. Stimson.  Public Opinion in America , 1991 .

[88]  C. Franklin.  Eschewing Obfuscation? Campaigns and the Perception of U.S. Senate Incumbents , 1991, American Political Science Review.

[89]  S. Iyengar.  Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. , 1991 .

[90]  Richard A. Brody,et al.  Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology , 1991 .

[91]  F. Cook,et al.  The Journalism of Outrage : Investigative Reporting and Agenda Building in America , 1991 .

[92]  Stephen L. Elkin.  Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform , 1991 .

[93]  John Zaller,et al.  Information, Values, and Opinion , 1991, American Political Science Review.

[94]  Larry M. Bartels.  Constituency Opinion and Congressional Policy Making: The Reagan Defense Buildup , 1991, American Political Science Review.

[95]  James E. Campbell.  Forecasting the Presidential Vote in the States , 1992 .

[96]  Diana C. Mutz.  Mass Media and the Depoliticization of Personal Experience , 1992 .

[97]  Keith J. Holyoak,et al.  If Saddam is Hitler then who is George Bush? Analogical mapping between systems of social roles , 1992 .

[98]  S. Feldman,et al.  A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences , 1992 .

[99]  Kathleen Hall Jamieson,et al.  Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction, and Democracy , 1992 .

[100]  Jon A. Krosnick,et al.  The Impact of the Gulf War on the Ingredients of Presidential Evaluations: Multidimensional Effects of Political Involvement , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[101]  Gary King,et al.  Why Are American Presidential Election Campaign Polls So Variable When Votes Are So Predictable? , 1993, British Journal of Political Science.

[102]  J. Zaller,et al.  WHO GETS THE NEWS? ALTERNATIVE MEASURES OF NEWS RECEPTION AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH , 1993 .

[103]  Larry M. Bartels.  Messages Received: The Political Impact of Media Exposure , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[104]  Mark P. Zanna,et al.  Values, stereotypes, and emotions as determinants of intergroup attitudes. , 1993 .

[105]  J. R. Kluegel,et al.  Opposition to race-targeting: Self-interest, stratification ideology, or racial attitudes? , 1993 .

[106]  T. E. Patterson.  Out Of Order , 1993 .

[107]  G. Marcus,et al.  Anxiety, Enthusiasm, and the Vote: The Emotional Underpinnings of Learning and Involvement During Presidential Campaigns , 1993, American Political Science Review.

[108]  C. Sunstein.  Democracy and the problem of free speech , 1993 .

[109]  S. Verba.  The Voice of the People , 1993 .

[110]  W. Rahn,et al.  The Role of Partisan Stereotypes in Information Processing about Political Candidates , 1993 .

[111]  L. Stoker.  Judging presidential character: The demise of Gary Hart , 1993 .

[112]  John O. Brehm.  The Phantom Respondents: Opinion Surveys and Political Representation , 1993 .

[113]  Dennis Chong.  How People Think, Reason, and Feel about Rights and Liberties , 1993 .

[114]  Steven E. Finkel,et al.  Reexamining the "Minimal Effects" Model in Recent Presidential Campaigns , 1993, The Journal of Politics.

[115]  A. Lupia.  Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections , 1994, American Political Science Review.

[116]  R. Michael Alvarez,et al.  Uncertainty and Political Perceptions , 1994, The Journal of Politics.

[117]  Stephen Ansolabehere,et al.  Of horseshoes and horse races: Experimental studies of the impact of poll results on electoral behavior , 1994 .

[118]  Charles Stangor,et al.  Mental representations of social groups: advances in understanding stereotypes and stereotyping , 1994 .

[119]  Robert Y. Shapiro,et al.  Issues, Candidate Image, and Priming: The Use of Private Polls in Kennedy's 1960 Presidential Campaign , 1994, American Political Science Review.

[120]  J. Zaller,et al.  The rise and fall of candidate Perot: Unmediated versus mediated politics—Part I , 1994 .

[121]  K. Holyoak,et al.  Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought , 1994 .

[122]  John H. Aldrich,et al.  Individual and Contextual Variations in Political Candidate Appraisal , 1994, American Political Science Review.

[123]  Nicholas A. Valentino,et al.  Does Attack Advertising Demobilize the Electorate? , 1994, American Political Science Review.

[124]  J. Mueller,et al.  Policy and opinion in the Gulf War , 1996 .

[125]  P. Pollock.  Issues, Values, and Critical Moments: Did "Magic" Johnson Transform Public Opinion on AIDS? , 1994 .

[126]  J. Krosnick,et al.  Origins of attitude importance: self-interest, social identification, and value relevance. , 1995, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[127]  M. McCombs,et al.  CAPACITY, DIVERSITY, AND VOLATILITY OF THE PUBLIC AGENDA TRENDS FROM 1954 TO 1994 , 1995 .

[128]  S. Iyengar,et al.  Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate , 1995 .

[129]  Kathleen M. McGraw,et al.  Political judgment : structure and process , 1995 .

[130]  Henry E. Brady,et al.  Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics , 1996 .

[131]  R. Huckfeldt,et al.  Citizens, Politics and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign , 1995 .

[132]  J. Zaller,et al.  The rise and fall of candidate Perot: The outsider versus the political system—part ii , 1995 .

[133]  M. Lodge,et al.  The Responsive Voter: Campaign Information and the Dynamics of Candidate Evaluation , 1995, American Political Science Review.

[134]  Allan L. McCutcheon,et al.  Cross-Level Inference , 1995 .

[135]  The Advent of Polling and Political Representation , 1996 .

[136]  Doug McAdam,et al.  Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: The framing function of movement tactics: Strategic dramaturgy in the American civil rights movement , 1996 .

[137]  Dennis F. Thompson,et al.  Democracy and Disagreement , 1996 .

[138]  Larry M. Bartels.  Uninformed Votes: Information E ects in Presidential Elections , 1996 .

[139]  Thomas E. Nelson,et al.  Issue Frames and Group-Centrism in American Public Opinion , 1996, The Journal of Politics.

[140]  Benjamin I. Page.  Who Deliberates?: Mass Media in Modern Democracy , 1996 .

[141]  S. Keeter,et al.  What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters , 1996 .

[142]  John R. Petrocik.  Issue Ownership in Presidential Elections, with a 1980 Case Study , 1996 .

[143]  S. Tarrow,et al.  Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics , 1997 .

[144]  Tali Mendelberg,et al.  Executing Hortons: Racial Crime in the 1988 Presidential Campaign , 1997 .

[145]  J. Cappella,et al.  Spiral of Cynicism: The Press and the Public Good , 1997 .

[146]  R. Michael Alvarez,et al.  Information and elections , 1997 .

[147]  D. Kinder,et al.  Opinion and action in the realm of politics. , 1998 .

[148]  James A. Stimson.  Public Opinion In America: Moods, Cycles, And Swings, Second Edition , 1999 .