News media and citizens

Jamieson and Waldman, The Press Effect.
Pew Report “News Interest and Knowledge” http://people-press.org/report/?pageid=1356
Baumgartner, Jody, and Jonathan Morris. 2006. “The Daily Show Effect
American Politics Research, Vol. 34, No. 3, 341-367 (2006)

The first reading focuses on what key news audiences are, and how much the key audiences know. The truth is that the studies have been surprisingly consistent: Education and socio-economic status (in this report they are referred to as “Those with higher annual incomes”) are the two most important determinants of a person’s knowledge level about politics, both national and international. The second most important characteristic is gender, although this study (and the others) seem to indicate that gender is more about where someone gets their news from than whether they get news at all. Overall, there was nothing surprising in this report. It simply confirmed the prior readings that indicate better educated people with higher socio-economic status follow news, and are more knowledgeable about politics.
In light of the fact that people get their news from the news media – the press – The Press Effect’s conclusions are a little disturbing. The point of the book is to show how the press frames political events, and sometimes ignore the truth and ignores facts in order to “frame” the events in a manner that is consistent with the need to provide coherence to the stories that are being presented. In order to show how the press ignores facts, the authors have analyzed specific news media coverage, and shown how the press has ignored facts in order to provide coherence to a story. One of the instances cited in this book is when the young woman testified that she had seen young babies throw from incubators by Iraqi soldiers – when in fact this never happened. The story was adopted by the President who used it to symbolize the human rights needs of invading Iraq. However, the incident was later proven never to have happened, and the press ignored the falsehood in order to give coherence to the human rights story. The authors of The Press Effect see the main task of journalists as being the watchers of facts, not the reporters of stories. The authors conclude their book with a list of things that journalists should do to return to being fact-based, instead of story based. Is this distinction important for the average news viewer? There is no research about how the viewers and readers react to retractions and corrections in the news. It is possible that once the news reports a story, and it enters into the person’s mind, that something else will not correct it – even if the initial story is false. This type of fact rejection has been shown to be the case in the Kuklinski study where he shows that misinformed people, even when exposed to the facts, don’t change their opinion. Therefore, it would seem, if we are a society that values truth, that the authors of The Press Effect are correct – that the facts need to be presented the first time around, and that the press (since they are the people who give the news to others) need to be more conscious of the facts, and less conscious of telling a story.
However, there has been substantial research done that presentation of the facts in written form leads only to further the information gap between the socio-economic classes. Jerit et al showed that television increases all people’s levels of knowledge, while written information (which tends to be more fact heavy) only increases the knowledge of those with education and higher socio-economic status to begin with. Does this mean that television doesn’t relate facts, or that facts aren’t an effective communication tool across all classes? I hope not. That would be a sad state of commentary on the citizens: That only information in story form is acceptable to all classes, rather than facts. However, it is something to consider when focusing on the drive for facts balanced against the need to tell a story.
The article on The Daily Show seemed to show that, among young college students, watching The Daily Show increased cynicism and that increased cynicism leads to reduced political participation. The authors do not explicitly state the “therefore” of their argument: That watching The Daily Show decreases political participation, but it is a logical conclusion to their research. However, they measured cynicism by asking the participants if “I trust all the news media to cover political events fairly and accurately.” This seems to be too broad of a question, both for the definition of news media and because there is an emphasis on “all.” No one is going to answer yes to this question. This is the question that was used to measure cynicism, and it simply seems like too broad of a question to base an assumption on.

Voter Turnout

Fowler, James (2006) “Altruism and Turnout” Journal of Politics 68 (3) 674-683.
Baldassare, Mark. 2006. “California’s Exclusive Electorate” http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/atissue/AI_906MBAI.pdf
Blais, André. 2006. “What Affects Voter Turnout?”
Annual Review of Political Science. Vol. 9: 111-125
U.S. Elections Project. 2008 Unofficial Turnout. http://elections.gmu.edu/preliminary_vote_2008.html

The idea that people vote out of altruism makes a little bit of sense, there has to be something more than self-interest when people vote or they wouldn’t vote. However, the research doesn’t show that altruism is the variable that makes people turn out. The definition of altruism that was used in the paper, bearing costs so that someone else receives a benefit, seems to be a misnomer. Altruism is doing things selflessly, and unselfishly being concerned for the welfare of others. The definition of altruism used in the paper isn’t the common definition of altruism, and so is a bit misleading. Also, it is not clear from the research that people vote for the benefit of others. It may be that what the author sees as altruism is really a selfish act – people exercising their right to vote because they want to – rather than being unselfish. However, under the author’s definition of altruism, this behavior would fit into being altruistic. Therefore, I think his definition of altruism is too inclusive, and too off-the-charts to be helpful in defining a voting variable.
However, altruism plays no part in places where there is compulsory voting. The Blais article examines the current research on compulsory voting and determines that the research is unclear on the needed punishment to compel turnout. Blais looked at the research in voting patterns and decided that socioeconomic class matters in voting, which translates across nations so that poor nations have lower turnout that rich nations (although he was clear to make the distinction that it is at the ends of the spectrum this matters, and not as a matter of degree). However, he found that there was a large lack in understanding how compulsory voting and competitive systems matter in relation to voter turnout.
If the PEW research and the initial 2008 election turnout results are any indication, not having compulsory voting and not having competition in the U.S. doesn’t help turn out. In effect, we are proving the negative of Blais’ point: a country without competition and without compulsory voting has low turnout. This states the U.S.’ situation clearly. The turnout in the U.S. is very low. It has been put at 61.7% for the 2008 elections. In a year when the sitting President had the lowest approval ratings ever, where the candidate was the first African American candidate for President, and where the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee was so bad that people didn’t want her elected – there was still only 61.7% turnout. There wasn’t much competition. People knew before they went to the polls who would win. People who voted late – like the western states and some of the mid-west states, knew who was winning before they even voted. This could also be a cause of the low turnout: why turnout when you know the winner.
There’s one other point to make about Fowler’s research – he used primary votes, and a primary vote in which there was no Presidential primary. In California, which is where he did his research, primary turnout is notoriously low. This research was conducted before the Democrats opened their primary in California, and so the only people who turned out for a primary election were Republicans and Democrats – but California has a large “decline-to-state” group that votes in Presidential elections and state-wide elections but not in primaries. This is a drastic error in his research, and he didn’t show how to account for it. In effect, he was discounting thousands of votes because they don’t, or weren’t able to, cast a vote in a primary election.

Legislators, Initiatives and Representation

There was an article entitled, “Legislators, Initiatives, and Representation,” written by E. Gerber which we read in preparation for this class. This article looked at the differences between direct legislation and legislation developed through the legislative process. Specifically this article analyzed the effects of the how people respond to measures versus how the legislative body responds to measures.
This article used two different test cases to illustrate the differences between direct legislation and the legislative process. One case was the cigarette tax in Proposition 99, and the other was the transportation bond defeating in Proposition 74.
These two cases were good illustrations of what the difference is. The Proposition 74 case was stronger because the wording of the Proposition and the legislation was the same. Additionally, the vote in the Legislature and the vote by the people occurred relatively close together.
This article made me think of various other measures which have been, or might be, developed by direct legislation and through the legislative process. Two instances which immediately come to mind are the bond packages of 2006 and Proposition 200 (marriage is only between a man and a woman). In both cases legislation was passed – either through the legislative process (the bonds) or through direct legislation (Proposition 200). Then the opposite body was presented with the problem and tried to create a solution.
The solution in the bonds was that the voters agreed and passed them. This presents a situation where both the legislative process and the direct legislation presented the same outcome. This would, according to the article, mean that there were certain factors in alignment. In the legislative process, party leadership, committee membership, lobbyists, and campaign funding would have to align with the votes. However, I worked in the Legislature at this time and know what did and didn’t align. The reason that party leadership aligned was that Asm. Plesica, the minority leader before Villines, gave in to the Democrats. He had stated that the republicans wanted 36 hours to look over the bond proposal – they were given less than 1 hour. Then Plesica came out in support of the bonds, and provided cover for any Republicans who wanted to vote for them. Some did, and some did not. However, this provided enough cover that the bonds passed from the Legislature. Additionally, in the direct legislation process, there was little to no opposition to the bonds. The majority of the opposition was written in the press and based on the amount that these bonds would cost us in the long term. However, people are not interested in that. Therefore, the direct legislation passed without a lot of opposition as well. So it is possible that this series of events is not indicative of the differences or similarities between the legislative process and direct legislation because there were several deviations from the norm in the system.
Proposition 200 is an illustration of where the differences between the legislative process and direct legislation are reaffirmed. If the sole indicator of a legislators vote was the manner in which the majority of his/her district’s constituents voted – then there would not be the difference between Proposition 200 and the legislative process. However, the theory in this article states that there are other things at work in the legislative process. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the Proposition 200 argument.
Proposition 200 was a proposition which was passed to “defend marriage,” or state that marriage is between a man and a woman only. The majority of the citizens of California voted for this. Therefore, since the legislative process routinely delivers something different then what the majority of voters want, there must be other factors at play in the legislative process. The Legislature routinely votes for bills which would allow same-sex marriage. This is because there is strong party leadership among the Democrats – who are the majority needed to pass these bills – as well as a strong and vocal lobby of minority citizens who want this.
However, like the example of the cigarette tax, there are problems with this example. The direct legislation and the legislative process do not turn out bills worded the same – in fact they are opposites. There has also been a significant amount of time between the passage of the two items.
However, the fact that I can take 2 other situations and apply this theory to them, means that there is some truth to the theory. Although the theory may not take into account all factors, it does do a basic job of explaining the differences in outcome among the two manners of legislation.

A review of The Race Card

This book was somewhat of a cross between an easy read and a research book. The main point of the book is that if there is an implicit appeal to race, that type of appeal will be far more effective in activating stereotypes than an explicit appeal to race. As an example, the author uses Willie Horton and the 1998 election. In this example, the image of Willie Horton was talked about simultaneously with issues of crime and poverty. Never was it mentioned that Horton was black, however the pictures were shown and the message was conveyed implicitly.
In truth, Mendelberg is examining political communication. She’s examining what implicit communication about race, by elites to the public, is about. She concludes that implicit racial appeals activate racial stereotypes, resentments and fear. The author declares that these factors shape our decisions when they are least discussed – by implicit appeals. This is a way for the elite to activate norms and beliefs in the voters regarding race, without having the voters recognize or respond negatively.
Mendelberg’s view of political communication is top-down. She sees the communication being done by the elites to the masses. This coincides with the views of Zaller, who also believes that the elites drive communication. However, both of these points of view do not indicate how the racial stereotypes were conceived in the first place. Rather, they assume that the stereotypes are driven from the top down, and will continue to be driven from the top down because it is the elites who benefit from keeping the stereotypes alive so that they can use them in implicit communication appeals.
This also ties neatly with Lakoff. Implicit communications, using key words or images, can be used to activate one family structure or the other, and then depending on which structure is activated, the person responds differently to the message. In Mendelberg’s view, the implicit racial appeals are activating the strict father model – with the attendant fear, resentment and “protect myself and my family from outsiders” feelings that she argues are activated with implicit racial appeals. However, on the flip side, when an explicit racial appeal is made, it seems to activate the nurturing parent model, where equality is key, because people react negatively to the explicit appeals.
Mendelberg sees these appeals as a harm to democracy. She views them as a slippery slope that can be used to argue gender or sexual orientation. Instead, she wants people to recognize the implicit appeal and react as negatively to it as they do to the explicit model. However, this type of implicit appeal almost seems to fall within the realm of heuristics – and there is some (slight) evidence to show that heuristics lead people to the same votes they would’ve made otherwise. What I mean is that an implicit appeal activates certain pathways and ways of thinking (according to Mendelberg). This is what happens in heuristics as well – a message, idea or concept activates a certain pathway of thoughts, that leads to a conclusion without the person ever having to think about it. So in some ways, implicit racial appeals are similar to heuristics. However, this doesn’t make the good, it simply links them to a shortcut.
However, does this really matter? Implicit racial appeals tend to be made on policy areas that the common people have very little, if anything, to do with. Most people do not get to vote on welfare, parole reform, prison spending, and other issues where implicit racial appeals can communicate a message. In fact, Mendelberg found that it is those who are most educated that are least likely to succumb to an implicit appeal. It is also those who are most educated that are likely to be involved in politics to such a degree as to make decisions on matters where race can communicate values, or where racial stereotypes matter. Therefore, if the people involved in the issues are the ones most likely to reject implicit racial appeals, does it matter that they are made?
Additionally, Mendelberg showed a fake newscast of a welfare reform proposal in order to evaluate the feelings about race in different people. The problem is, most people cannot separate their views on poverty and whether people should be self sufficient from race. If we were to examine this experiment using Lakoff’s models, then this experiment wouldn’t show anything about race relations, but would rather show which people on the panel are a strict-father type and which are the nurturing-parent type. I believe Lakoff wouldn’t have anything to say about race, but rather about how a person views the world. Also ,welfare reform is an issue where people have polarized racial opinions because there are very high numbers of African-Americans on welfare compared to all other races. Welfare reform isn’t an implicit racial appeal issue – the appeal is explicit due to the very nature of the subject. This might cause a conflation of opinions in the people who were interviewed and participated in the study.

Beckwith and Morris: Twin Studies of Political Behavior: Untenable Assumptions

Jon Beckwith and Corey A. Morris: Twin Studies of Political Behavior: Untenable Assumptions.

This article focuses on critiquing another article that says political ideologies are highly inheritable. That article was written by John Alford, Carolyn Funk and John Hibbing.

The Alford article relied on using the "twin studies" in order to make their determination. A twin study is when twins are used to study whether concepts are inheritable or influenced by environment. They are able to use this because there is an assumption, using twins, that the environments are equal, and so any differences are based on inheritability of things. This article found that political ideologies are highly inheritable.

The Beckwith article criticizes this approach - deeming it falible. They suggest that the twin environment concepts is wrong, and so it cannot be used to analyze complex human behavior - like political ideologies.

Can you imagine if political ideologies were inheritable? I think that common sense dictates that this isn't true. If it was, the Whig party wouldn't have dies out, and we wouldn't have the current structure of Democrats and Republicans that we have today. Instead our structure would resemble the parties of old - which today's parties do not resemble. Additionally, children wouldn't have different parties from their parents - which they do today. If political ideologies were inheritable, then it would take away some freedom of choice we have - or we feel we have. Doesn't that go against the grain of what American politics is all about?

So I am glad that people are debunking the myth that political characteristics are inheritable. It doesn't make any sense, from a common sense standpoint, and it doesn't make sense to base a political system on inheritable characteristics - that would be more like a monarchy - which Americans don't want.