Professional Documents
Culture Documents
DEMOCRACY:
PRESIDENTIAL AND PUBLIC OPINIONS ABOUT, AND MEDIA COVERAGE
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
by
Qingjiang Yao
Master of Arts
Beijing Normal University, 1999
Mass Communications
2008
Major Professor
Chairman, Examining Committee
Committee Member /
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DEDICATION
To my parents, Xinsheng Yao and Taijin Chen; my parents in law, Beichen Liu and
Yanjuan Deng; my wife Josie Zhaoxi Liu, and my daughter Elizabeth Yuanjia Yao.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I owe deep appreciation to many people. First I want to thank Dr. Lowndes F.
tremendously valuable guidance and help during my doctoral study and the dissertating.
responsibilities, which is closely related to media effects research, the main topic of this
dissertation. My quantitative reasearch capability was also well honed in his graduate
great fortune for me. He has led me to be familiar with knowledge from basic research
skills to advanced analytical methods. His knowledgeability and gentleness also show me
enhanced the quality of my work with his marvelous comments, intelligent challenge, and
careful editing. Dr. Sonya Forte Duhe is always a warm-hearted supporter, who also
inspired me to use the environment as a topic to test the media effect model in this
fascination through his remarkable graduate seminar on public opinion and political
I also want to thank my other professors. Dr. Susanna Priest deeply impressed me
with her doctoral seminar of communication theory, which helped to build the theoretical
foundation of this dissertation. Dr. Daniel Stout kindly offered me the opportunity to
conduct my first research project with him. Dr. John Besley gracefully helped me by
iii
lending me books and papers from his selected personal library. Dr. Augie Grant has
made me more engaged in communication research with his passion in his wonderful
doctoral seminars of research methods and teaching in mass communication. Dr. Erik
Collins and Dr. Shirley Carter also generously supported my doctoral study.
I have learned from and worked with many excellent professors on the Columbia
Campus of the University of South Carolina. I want to thank Dr. David Scott, Dr.
Sooyoung Cho, Dr. Tom Klipstine, and Mr. Jeffrey Ranta at the School of Journalism and
Mass Communications, Dr. David Hitchcock, Dr. Brian Habing, Dr. Nancy Glenn, and
Dr. Roumen Vesselinov at the Department of Statistics; Dr. Christine DiStefano at the
Department of Educational Research; and Dr. Christopher Zorn and Dr. Jerel Rosati at
the Department of Political Science. I also want to thank Ms. Sandra Hughes, Manager of
Graduate Student Services at the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, for
Finally, but clearly not least importantly, I want to thank my families in China and
in Columbia, SC. My parents, sister, and brother, who may not understand what I am
doing, tolerated me for being away from them and studying half a world away for such a
long time. My parents in law have been supporting my family here in many ways, with
their gracious love. My deep appreciation goes to my wife, Josie Zhaoxi Liu, for her love
and strong support in both life and research. With her proficient content analysis skills
she helped me to finish most of the coding. My daughter Elizabeth Yuanjia Yao, who
was born when I just began writing the dissertation, I thank her for the bright joy she
iv
ABSTRACT
Exploring the Social Dynamics in the U.S. Democracy: Presidential and Public Opinions
Qingjiang Yao
This study explores the dynamics among the media, the public and the presidents on the
longitudinal context in the U.S. society. Based on a newly proposed media effects model
that integrates agenda-setting, priming, and framing, this study uses data from dozens of
poll questions on and federal outlay for the environment in 43 years (1965-2007), and
presidential documents in 28 years (112 quarters, from 1980 to 2007). The study finds
evidence to support the agenda-setting and framing theories, which hold that the media
are influenced by the social establishment while influencing the public. It also finds that
the media are influenced by the public and that the media influence the presidents. The
study also supports the idea that media effects should be analyzed at different levels, as
proposed in the integrated mass communications process model. Finally, the presidents
and their policies on the environment are found unresponsive to public opinion.
v
PREFACE
When I began my doctoral studies, I did not expect that one day I would write a
world, and the media's role in U.S. society. I am fascinated with the concept of
democracy because, as James Carey put it, "journalism is usually understood as another
unthinkable except in the context of democracy." It was my original plan to study how
dissertation chair, in his nano research and development project provides me the
examine how the major newspapers in the world frame nano science and technology
research and development. These experiences connect me with a large body of literature
in the relationship of nano science and media. In the literature, some scholars propose the
question of whether the public, which has little special knowledge about this new science,
is capable to make any reasonable substantial decisions. The answer to this question is
actually at the heart of democracy, because if it is no, the same rationale can be inferred
to any other topic, even economy, education, and other daily life issues, for which the
1
James Carey, "Afterword: The Culture in Question," in James Carey: A Critical Reader, ed. E. S.
Munson and C. A. Warren (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 332.
VI
public may have a good sense of the short-term interests but may not have a good sense
of the long-term interests. Environmental communication scholars have also asked the
same question, because environmental issues are one of the areas requiring special
knowledge to make reasonable decisions as well, which is why later Habermas believes
that most citizens are "unqualified to participate in."2 This dissertation does not answer
pay attention to environmental issues, especially when I read Ronald Inglehart's works,
societies—postmaterialism. Using the China part of Inglehart's fourth wave World Value
Survey data, I have conducted a study about Chinese environmentalists, which finds that
those Chinese people who became environmentalists are mainly driven by their political
environment and using natural resources in a way different from the traditions. For me, it
Another source of thinking for this dissertation is the media effects theories,
mainly framing, agenda-setting and priming. Decades of media effects research has
2
Frank Fischer, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge (Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2000), 8.
3
See for example, Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmaterialism: Cultural, Economic, and
Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997).
4
Qingjiang Yao, "Media Use, Postmaterialist Values, and Political Interest: The Making of Chinese
Environmentalists and Their Views on Their Social Environment," Asian Journal of Communication 18
(September 2008): 264-279.
vu
encountered several major swings, from hypodermic needle and magic bullet models to
the limited effects model and back to the strong effects models.5 The media have been
now widely viewed as a centerpiece of the democracy, moderating the information flow
between the state and the citizen society. The major question of this dissertation is: what
is the dynamic among political elites, which are represented by the presidents, the media,
and the public in defining a political issue, such as the environmental issues in this
dissertation, and shaping the related public policy? The reason that I choose
environmental issues as the study subject is that, as I will discussed in detail in the first
chapter, environmental issues have changed the international political landscape and
deserve more attention. Meanwhile, environmental issues are also an appropriate topic
for observing the political interactions in a democracy because they involve many daily
life issues but they also require special knowledge to understand their essence and make
reasonable decisions. It is interesting to look at, on this topic, whether the public is the
5
See, for example, Dietram Scheufele and David Tewksbury, "Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The
Evolution of Three Media Effects Models," Journal of Communication 57 (March 2007): 9-20. There is,
however, no total consensus on this statement. Many sociologists still believe that the media essentially
have no effects by its own, if effects of the fact that they cover are also taken into consideration. For a
detail discussion of this viewpoint, see Herbert Gans, "Reopening the Black Box: Toward a Limited Effects
theory," Journal of Communication 43 (December 1993): 29-35.
6
For detailed discussion, see, for example, Juergen Habermas, Political Communication in Media Society-
Does Democracy Still enjoy an Epistemic Dimension? The Impact of Normative Theory on empirical
Research. Paper presented at the Annual Convention of the International Communication Association, May
2006, Dresden, Germany. In two major media-effects theories, framing and agenda-setting, the media are
also sitting in between the social establishment and the public. See, for example, Maxwell McCombs and
Amy Reynolds, "News Influence on Our Pictures of the World," in Media Effects: Advances in Theory and
Research, 2nd ed. ed. J. Bryant and D. Zillmann (Mahwah NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), and
Dietram A. Scheufele, "Framing as a Theory of Media Effects," Journal of Communication 49 (March
1999): 103-122.
viu
Many studies using cross-section design have contributed to the exploration of
media effects. However, only a few studies of media effects adopt a longitudinal
approach, which is a more effective approach to provide evidence for causality.7 This is
collecting original data, and it has many limitations for using secondary data. Fortunately,
all the secondary data from 1980 to 2006 that is needed for this dissertation are available
to this researcher, which makes the dissertation a possible project and is another reason
The dissertation includes five chapters. The first chapter reviews the literature that
puts environmental issues in the U.S. into historic context, which is mainly during 1980-
2006, the period covered in this study. The presidents, the media, and the public are
identified from the literature as three major players in the formulation of environmental
awareness and policy in the U.S. democratic society. They probably should be seen as
major factors that interact during the formation of any significant policies in civil
societies. This literature review provides the foundation for this dissertation to explore
the dynamics among those three political forces in constructing environmental reality in
U.S. society.
agenda-setting, priming, and framing. Based on the discussion, the second chapter
proposes a clearer definition of media-effects that is used by this study. It also reviews
Longitudinal design is more effective to explore causation because it takes the factor of time into
consideration. For detail discussion see, for example, Roger D. Wimmer and Joseph R. Dominick, Mass
Media Research: An Introduction, 8th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2006).
IX
the literature about agenda-setting, priming and framing and the academic debate about
the relationship among the three theories. A suggestion of a more comprehensive media
effects model is proposed, which integrates the theories and analyzes media effects at five
different levels. The integrated model, the model of mass communication, is also
extended to social establishment as media sources and the public policy as receiver of the
influence of public opinion. The chapter also discusses previous empirical studies that
The third chapter addresses the methodological issues in this dissertation project,
analysis method. The major variables in this study would be presidential agenda and
attitude, media agenda and attitude, public agenda and attitude, and policy-making. The
longitudinal research design and the data collection procedures will also be discussed.
The fourth chapter reports the analyses of the data and significant findings. The
hypotheses are tested to see if, as the proposed model of mass communication predict,
presidential agenda and attitude lead media agenda and attitude, media agenda and
attitude lead public agenda and attitude, and public attitude lead policy-making. The
research question is also answered. This chapter also interprets the findings and discussesi
the implications of the findings. In the fifth chapter, conclusion, some major findings
from this study will be reiterated, and the strength and weakness of this study as a
Dedication ii
Acknowledgements iii
Abstract v
Preface vi
Bibliography 206
XI
LIST OF TABLES
Table 4.3 Granger Causality test on the Yearly Data (43-obs) 164
Table 4.5 Granger Causality Test on the Yearly Data (28-obs) 167
Table 5.1 A Summary of the Hypotheses Testing and the Research Question 190
Table Al Poll Questions Measuring the Agenda and the Attitude 230
xu
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 4.7 Causal Relationships among the Media, the Public, the Presidents and Policy-
Making 181
Archive 224
Figure A5 The Second Round of Searching for the Presidential Documents and
Results 226
xin
Figure A6a Reading Data into WCalc 237
Figure A6b Choosing Latent Series Level, Dimension, and Time Points 237
Figure A8 Reliability Indicators for the Latent Public Agenda Series (Annual) 239
Figure A9 Reliability Indicator of the Latent Public Agenda Series (Quarterly) 240
Figure A10 Reliability Indicators for the Latent Public Attitude Series (Annual) 241
xiv
CHAPTER ONE
The impact of human activity on the environment, which basically is about how to
attitudes toward natural resources into three stages.9 The first stage was during the
log-cabin and frontier era, and the second stage was from after the Civil War to the 1960s.
During these two stages, the basic philosophy of most Americans was that the natural
resources are provided for humans to use. In the late 1960s, Americans began to express
the sentiment that "some resources should not be used," a sentiment Hodgson calls
activate and respond to this sentiment when the third stage began. For example, in the
case of the plan to build a jet airport in Florida Everglades National Park, intensive
media coverage about the plan led political elites to adjust their stance abruptly and to
Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1976), 402.
9
Hodgson, America in Our Time, 402.
10
Hodgson, America in Our Time, 402.
1
stand with the "environmentally conscious people." Two years later, in 1971, President
environmentalist parties that emerged in some industrialized countries during the 1980s,
which gained significant support in the 1990s.13 From 1944 to 1959, political parties in
nineteen Western countries mentioned socialist economic policies about five times on
average in their platforms, while environmental policies were mentioned just 0.3 times.
By the 1990s, environmental policies were on average mentioned around eleven times,
while socialist economic polices only 2.5 times.14 Many environmentalists also became
More often, environmental issues are also treated as a health concern. Andrew
Haines and his colleagues, for instance, have modeled the global climate-change's impact
on human health.16 Medical researchers believe that environmental factors, such as the
pollution of workplace, air, water, and food supply, play a significant role in causing
11
Hodgson, America in Our Time, 402.
12
Joachim Radkau, "Environmentalism Worldwide: Between Civic Movements and Bureaucratic
Strategies." China History Geography Forum, 1 (January 2006): 134-141.
13
Ronald Inglehart and Christian Weizel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy: The Human
Development Sequence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 39.
14
Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization, 252-253.
15
See Radkau, "Environmentalism Worldwide"; also see David W Orr, "Death and Resurrection: The
Future of Environmentalism," Conservation Biology, 9 (August 2005): 992-995.
16
Andrew Haines, Anthony McMichael and Paul Epstein, "Environment and Health: 2. Global Climate
Change and Health," Canada Medical Association Journal 163 (fall 2000): 729-734.
2
people to have cancer. In a democracy, how the media portray and the public perceive
as 1899. In that year, two California local newspapers, the Santa Barbara Daily Press and
the San Jose Mercury News, published editorials criticizing the oil development along the
California coast.19 However, scholars commonly agree that the publication of Rachel
Carson's Silent Spring20 in 1962 and the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill marked the
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring clearly described a picture that could become reality
if no action was going to be taken to stop the squander of pesticides. Eric Smith pointed
out that people might have been worrying about environmental pollution for a while at
that time, but neither the public nor their political representatives were aware that this
was a topic that the government should be concerned about. The publication of Silent
Spring changed that situation.21 Forty states passed legislation to restrict pesticides
Frederica Perera, "Environment and Cancer: Who Are Susceptible?" Science 278 (Nov. 7, 1997):
1068-1073.
18
See Paul Slovic, James Flynn and Mark Layman, "Perceived Risk, Trust and the Politics of Nuclear
Waste," Science 254 (December 13, 1991): 1603-1607. They mention a government plan that has been
impeded by the public perception of risk. See also Michael Kamrin, "Environmental Health, Risk
Assessment, and Democracy," Environmental Health Perspectives 106 (May 1998): A216-A217, 216. The
editorial discusses how risk assessment of the environment should be processed in a democratic society.
19
Eric R. A. N. Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2002), 68.
20
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
3
within two years after the book was published, and "no educated American could be
unaware that the wonders of technology might have to be paid for in sinister ways."22
Another great issue that helped to launch the American modern environmental
movement was the 1969 blowout of a Union Oil Company offshore oil-drilling platform
in the Santa Barbara Channel.23 The disaster dumped hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions, of gallons of oil into the channel. Oil slick covered eight hundred square miles
of ocean along the shoreline. Thousands of killed fish and oil-contaminated birds
occupied the TV screen of most American households, and the disaster grabbed the
headlines of the world. Under massive public pressure, President Richard Nixon and
Congress had to pass a wide range of environmental legislation, which further increased
environmental groups, and millions more began to realize the possible dangers of oil
threats."25
Researchers believe that the modern American environmental movement was also
buttressed by the energy crisis after its launching. As Robert Paehlke writes, "the historic
event most central to environmentalism was the energy price shock of 1973 to 1979."26
4
The rapid increase of the gas price and the not rarely seen long lines at the gas stations
put the energy issue always before the American public. To solve the oil problem, The
White House and Congress have made various efforts, including gas rationing,
downsizing cars, and increasing energy production. However, many American people
were upset with those solutions either because the policies limited their freedom to make
decisions on their property or because the policies damaged the environment. The
In addition to energy issues, environmental issues also include air quality, water
quality, solid waste, hazardous or toxic waste, preservation of natural resources, land
management, the availability of alternative energy resources such as wind, solar, water,
and nuclear power28 and global environmental change (global warming, ozone depletion
and species extinction).29 The global warming, or global climate change, is an aftermath
of the greenhouse effect, but it is "more common in analytic literature."30 The American
public did not focus its attention extensively on the phenomenon until "the unusually hot,
dry summer of 1988" when scientists, lawmakers, and the public began to be concerned
with it.31 The U.S. organized an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in that year
Robert C. Paehlke, Environmentalism and the Future of Progressive Politics (New Haven, Conn: Yale
University Press, 1989), 76.
27
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.
28
Renee J. Johnson, "Environment," in Polling America: An Encyclopedia of Public Opinion, ed.
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 194-200.
29
Willett Kempton, James S. Boster, and Jennifer A. Hartley, Environmental Values in American Culture
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999).
30
Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, Environmental Values in American Culture, 33.
31
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 4.
5
to deal with the global warming, and poured scientific funding into the investigation of it.
In 1992, the United Nations held the Conference on Environment and Development,
which was more often called the "Earth Summit."32 Global warming probably is the
most conspicuous topic among environmental issues recently "spanning local, national,
Smith3 has identified two prevailing theories that interpret the causes of the
theory is the culture theory developed by anthropologist Mary Douglas and political
scientist Aaron Wildavskey. 5 The culture theory uses two variables, "group" and "grid,"
to divide social relations into four patterns. "Group" refers to the extent to which people
are incorporated in a community or other social group; "grid" refers to the extent to
which people perceive the external constraints. Among the four patterns identified in
culture theory, Egalitarianism has high group control but low external constraints.
Individualism stems from low group control and low external constraints.
Hierarchicalism is produced by high group control and high external constraints, and
fatalism is produced by low group control and high external constraints. While
Egalitarians are more concerned with potential risks produced by large governments and
6
companies and are more unlikely to trade development with risks, Individualists tend to
see lower risks and are more likely than other people to accept risks for the purpose of
development. The core argument of the culture theory is that deeply held cultural biases
push the Egalitarians toward environmentalism because they can then use Environmental
issues to attack the existing capitalist system. Meanwhile, the cultural biases of
Individualists cause them to defend the system and take more pro-development stands.
proposed by Ronald Inglehart.36 The theory argues that the Postmaterialist worldviews in
the younger generation cause them to value environmental purity more highly than do
older generations who hold Materialist values. The younger generation developed the
Postmaterialist values because they live in a relatively prosperous era, in which they can
take survival as granted. While the old generations, based on their life memory of their
tough eras, still emphasize Materialist values such as economic development and physical
this value emphasize others' autonomy to the same extent as they emphasize their own
autonomy. The rise of Postmaterialist values leads to a second major change in the culture
of human society. While the first cultural change transferred the center of people's belief
36
See Inglehart, The Silent Revolutions: Changing Values and Political Styles among Western Publics
(Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1977); Ronald Inglehart, "Value Change in Industrial
Societies," American Political Science Review 81 (December 1987): 1289-1303; Ronald Inglehart, Culture
Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1990).
37
Inglehart and Weizel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy.
7
from irrationality and religious authority to rationalization, centralization, and
bureaucratization, the second cultural change brings people's belief from the industrial
stage existing after the first change to the Postindustrial stage. The Postmaterialist
societies exalt the values of individual autonomy and self-expression and bring
emancipation from authority. These vales are linked with the emergence of growing
emphasis on environmental protection, the women's movement, and rising demands for
Inglehart uses the 1983 political victory of the West German Green Party as strong
evidence to support his theory. The Green Party surmounted the 5 percent threshold and
entered the parliament in that year, gaining much more visibility and fundamentally
United States and Great Britain, environmental parties may never obtain visibility as did
the German Green Party, but Inglehart believes that even in these countries, the rising
environmental concern has transformed the agendas of their existing parties. Inglehart's
research finds that, in Western countries, class conflict over the distribution of income
and the ownership of industry dominated politics from mid-nineteenth century to the
mid-twentieth century. However, in recent decades, social class voting has declined and
now "shares the stage with newer postmaterialist issues that emphasize life-style issues
8
and environmental protections."
Several previous studies have found that environmental values are closely
involved with traditional American values. Kempton, Boster, and Hartley41 find that
Americans' environmental values derive from three sources. The first source, religion,
mainly refers to Christian teaching that humans should use natural resources responsibly
and that manmade environmental destruction is an intervention in God's plan. The second
utilitarian and are concerned with only those environmental problems that affect human
these researchers conclude, has already become integrated with core American values,
beliefs. It is surprising to them that the biocentric values, values that cherish nature's own
rights, also have many adherents. They also find that other researchers reach conclusions
similar to theirs: Merchant42 and Stern and colleagues43 propose three values—the self,
9
environmentalism is so attention-demanding now. The explanation that human growth at
some point must push against the limits of its context is not solidly standing, they believe,
because "we do not notice our walls until we are literally crammed against them by the
outward push of progress" 5 or because human population is a long way from its upper
limit.46 They speculate that because people have significant leisure time they have
The first dimension of the environmental narrative is consistent with the dispute of
economic growth. This dimension is a continuum, with some believing that growth is
perverse at one extreme, and some believing that growth is the most desirable goal at the
other extreme. The second dimension is consistent with the dispute of "conservation."
While some environmentalists argue for environmental conservation so that people can
use the natural resources later, other environmentalists defend the environment simply
because they think it is worth defending.47 The third dimension is the anthropocentric
dimension, which has been identified as a "new environmental paradigm."48 The old
paradigm is the ideology that emphasizes human domination of nature, while the "new
James Shanahan and Katherine McComas, Nature Stories: Depictions of the Environment and Their
Effects (Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, 1999).
45
Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories, 3.
46
Julian Simon, The State of Humanity, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995).
47
Stephen Fox, The American Conservation Movement (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press,
1985).
48
Riley E. Dunlap and K. Van Liere, "Commitment to the Dominant Social Paradigm and Concern for
Environmental Equality," Social Science Quarterly 65 (1984): 1013-1028.
10
paradigm" rejects the anthropocentricism and claims that human self-interests should be
put aside in favor of the rights or interests of other species. The fourth is the behavioral
characteristic at the liberal end of the political continuum, there is a strong conservative
clubs, and environmental organizations focusing on traditional pursuits of the rich such as
hunting and fishing."49 The conservative environmentalists simply enjoy nature, and are
willing to defend the enjoyment when they find nature threatened. The capability of
incorporating the liberals as well as the conservatives, for Shanahan and McComas,
creates environmentalism's own ideological mass, which organized the Green parties
around the world. It also explains why environmentalism is increasingly occupying the
issue agenda of many people who are otherwise apolitical. Related to this dimension of
political ideology they also identify the dimension of perception of collective versus
societal actions are required to protect the environment effectively, whereas others feel
From the perspective of policy formation, Norman Vig pointed out, U.S.
11
presidents obviously have great potential influence on environmental protection.51 First,
they have a major role in policy agenda setting because they can call public attention to
specific issues, shape and define public debates, and rally public opinion and
constituency support through speeches, press conferences, and other media events. Major
policy initiatives rarely succeed without presidential endorsement. Second, they can lead
mobilizing experts inside or outside the government, and by consulting with interest
groups and Congressmen in developing legislation. If they do not like an act, they can
also stop the legislation by vetoing it. Third, presidents, as chief executives, can shape the
policy implementation. The presidents appoint federal officials, propose federal budgets,
issue executive orders, and oversee the government system. Fourth, as environmental
issues are more and more internationalized, the presidents can shape the resolution of the
Richard Nixon was probably the first U.S. president who really faced
later period of his incumbency in the White House, President Nixon actively responded to
environmental appeals, signing the National Environmental Policy Act which established
the Environmental Protection Agency. 52 He also lifted the quotas on importing oils, and
established wage and oil price control.53 During his brief presidency following President
51
Norman J. Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment: From Reagan to Clinton," in
Environment Policy, 4th ed. ed. M. E. Kraft and N. J. Vig (Washington D. C : CQ Press, 2000), 98-120.
52
See Hodgson, America in Our Time. See also Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.
12
Nixon's resignation, President Gerald Ford, also a Republican, had the opportunity to do
nothing other than cooperate with the Democratic Congress to pass the 1975 Energy
Policy and Conservation Act, which partly met his goal of removing the oil price controls
President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, entered the White House in 1976 with the
goal of reinstalling U.S. oil independence. He created the Department of Energy, and
proposed a set of plans with his Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger, including an
increase in oil prices to control oil consumption and developing alternative energy
resources. Neither the Congress nor the public endorsed the increase in oil prices that was
proposed by President Carter. Only during the 1979-1980 energy crisis was he able to ask
the Department of Defense to create a market for the alternative fuels. His proposal
during the crisis to ease environmental regulations and speed up domestic oil production
was again turned down, although he managed to loosen some burdens on energy
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency in 1980 sharply changed the direction
of U.S. energy policy and the U.S. environmental movement. Vig criticized President
Reagan for abruptly ending the "environmental decade" in the 1970s and called him "the
13
President Reagan, a Republican, saw environmental regulation as a barrier to economic
development and sought to reverse or weaken many of the policies established in the
previous decade. Facing the fact that the politically divided Congress could not lend him
much help in eliminating the environmental regulations, Reagan turned to change federal
The control strategy had four components. First, Reagan carefully selected appointees for
controlled the policy coordination through cabinet councils and the presidential staffs.
Third, he deeply cut the budget of the environmental agencies and the programs. Fourth,
industry. He selected Anne Gorsuch as the head of Environmental Protection Agency, and
James Watt as Secretary of the Interior57. These appointments aroused great controversy
them made it clear that "they intended to rewrite the rules and procedures of their
58
agencies to accommodate industries such as mining, logging, and oil and gas."
energy production over conservation and environmental protection. The only exception to
his free-market approach was that he substantially increased the government's assistance
to the nuclear power industry. President Reagan began his new environmental policy with
57
The Department of Interior plays a key role in U.S. environmental policy, because it is responsible for
the protection of the nation's natural resources, as it states in its mission. Two of its major goals are
resource protection and resource use.
58
Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment," 102.
14
a largely symbolic action: he ended the price controls that otherwise were due to expire
before the end of the year. Although he failed in attempting to abolish the Department of
the oil industry, and increased offshore oil development.59 He also attempted to abolish
the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and dramatically cut its staff; he ignored
its function when the effort of abolishment failed. The EPA also lost almost one-third of
its operating budget and one-fifth of its personnel in the early 1980s. In the Interior
Department and other governmental agencies, funds were shifted from environmental
After 1981, the first year of Reagan's presidency and the highest peak of oil prices
since World War II, a continuous decline of oil prices accompanied his presidency.
Alaska and the outer continental shelf to more oil development and his frequent attacks
15
surge of environmentalism in the 1980s. The national and grassroots environmental
groups were able to organize around this issue. They successfully gained support from
the public that was disturbed by the increasing health and environmental risks of
industrial society and by the threats to the living ecology. Membership of the national
George H. W. Bush
Although he was the vice president to Reagan, George H. W. Bush abandoned the
Reagan free-market energy and environmental policies when succeeding him as president.
With a background in the Texas oil business, President Bush was much more open to
government intervention in the energy market than President Reagan had been. He
dose of deregulation to solve the energy crisis in his tenure.65 Meanwhile, to respond to
the surge of the public's environmental concern during the first half of his tenure, he led
the passage of a new Clean Air Act. However, in the later half of his term, facing
economic recession and business pressures, President Bush retreated to a harsh stance on
the environment.66
6
See Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion. See also Vig, "Presidential Leadership and
the Environment."
64
Michael E. Kraft and Norman J. Vig, "Environmental Policy from the 1970s to 2000: An Overview", in
Environment Policy, 4th ed. ed. M. E. Kraft and N. J. Vig (Washington D. C.: CQ Press), 1-31.
65
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion.
66
Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."
16
Roosevelt and promised to be an "environmental president." He delivered a remarkable
speech at Detroit's Metropark on August 31, 1988, laying out "an ambitious
environmental agenda calling for a new Clean Air Act and other reforms." He proposed a
program of "no net loss" of wetlands and called for strict enforcement of toxic waste laws.
"In my first year in office," he promised, "I will convene a global conference on the
environment at the White House."68 When he took office, he began to solicit advice from
World Wildlife Fund and the Conservative Foundation as the EPA administrator, and
appointed Michael Deland, the former New England EPA director, as the chairperson of
influential institute and to work with the Democratic Congress to pass a new Clean Air
Act69. The Clean Air Act is "arguably the single most important legislative achievement
of his presidency,"70 which aimed to control acid rain, reduce pollution in eighteen urban
areas that had not met 1977 air quality standards, and lower emissions of 200 airborne
toxic chemicals. Richard Cohen has pointed out the president's role in the legislation:
"Ultimately the Clean Air Act showed that presidents matter. Once Bush was elected and
decided to keep his vague clean-air campaign promise, the many constrains of divided
government disappeared."71
17
However, the Bush administration was deeply divided on this issue due to both
72
ideological and economical reasons. Several important figures in the administration
were environmentally conservative. Although President Bush promised to fight with the
global climate change and to confront the greenhouse effect with the "White House
effect," the strong forces within his administration and the energy industry opposed any
policy change to reduce fossil fuel production and consumption. The Bush administration
finally adopted a safe approach: do nothing but research. Furthermore, later in his term,
President Bush appointed a Council led by his vice president, Dan Quayle, whose major
duty was to invite and respond to industry complaints of excessive regulation. The
Quayle Council "operated in secrecy, frequently pressuring the EPA and other agencies to
agreement binding Carbon Dioxide (CO2) reduction. At the conference, he also refused to
sign the biodiversity treaty, although his delegation chief, William Reilly, had sought a
campaign were dismayed by his reelection campaign.74 By this time, he lost much of the
Richard Cohen, Washington at Work: Back Rooms and Clean Air (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 175.
18
Bill Clinton
The environmental debate became a core issue in the 1992 presidential election
campaign. While the incumbent President George H. W. Bush, who was running for
progress, his opponent, Bill Clinton, selected the leading environmentalist in the U.S.
Congress, Al Gore, as his vice presidential candidate.76 During their campaign, Gore
published his best-selling book, Earth in the Balance. Their campaign included many
environmental promises: raise the standards of automobile fuel consumption; increase use
of natural gas and decrease reliance on nuclear power; support alternative energy research
and development; pass a new Clean Water Act; and make "no net loss" of wetlands a
reality. They also argued that environmental cleanup would not decrease jobs but increase
officials, most of whom were Gore's former environmental assistants, earned applause
from the environmental community. Gore shouldered the chief responsibility for
formulating and coordinating environmental polices. Other appointees to the cabinet and
executive offices were also mainly pro-environment. Clinton's government is thus called
first two years by not taking much visible action in improving the environment. In the
19
environmentalists' appeals, even though he faced a Republican-controlled Congress
during six of his eight years as president. Kraft and Vig pointed out that Clinton reversed
many of the Reagan and Bush policies that were widely criticized by environmentalists.
alternative energy and conservation, and international population policy. He earned praise
environmental policy decisions made by the Congress, supported the controversial new
EPA clean air standards for ozone and fine particulates, and strongly backed international
action on climate change.80 With the regained environmental support in the Congress, he
was able to cooperate with the Congress to pass two environmental bills in 1996: the
Food Quality Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments.81
Vig contends that, although the Clinton administration failed several times in its
cabinet rank, it still must be given credit for calling the government's high attention to
environmental issues. The Office of Environmental Policy was contacted by the vice
president's office, cabinet secretaries, and other White House staffs on a daily basis, and
it was eventually folded into the Council for Environmental Quality, in order for it to
order, requiring the administrative staffs to select approaches "that maximize net benefits
(including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other
20
advantages; distributive impacts; and equality)" instead of just focusing on the potential
economic gains.
took over as a result of the 1994 midterm elections, which did not support his
pro-environment programs. In his 1998 State of the Union Address, he proposed a new
Clean Water Action Plan and a program to implement the Kyoto Protocol, a United
Nations treaty on climate change. The Congress funded the first program but not the
second one. In January 1999, he announced a Better American Bonds program. He and
Vice President Gore also endorsed a "smart growth" strategy to control development and
reduce congestion around cities, which became a major theme in Gore's 2000 presidential
campaign.83
George W. Bush
education, abortion, health care, and other standard issues, high oil prices drew more
attention than any other issues, so they had to respond.84 Gore maintained that the way to
cut gasoline prices was to reduce energy use and to pressure major oil-exporting countries,
such as Saudi Arabia, to produce more oil for the world market. He insisted that it would
be a serious mistake to loosen environmental standards and make it easier to drill for oil
in the United States, especially the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Bush, on the other
hand, argued that the best way to lower prices was to produce more oil, and open
82
Executive Order 12866-Regulatory Planning and Review, Federal Register, vol. 58, no. 190, Oct. 4,
1993.
83
Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."
84
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.
21
Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. He also joined congressional
Republicans to push for a lifting of the 4.3-cent federal gas tax.85 The environmental
issues, according to Maurie J. Cohen, became a decisive factor at the final moment of the
approximately 15,000 Floridians, who were nominally Democrats but felt "frustrated
with Clinton administration's languid environmentalism," "marked their ballots for Ralph
Nader and the insurgent Green Party." Had the Green Party not been on the ballot, Cohen
maintains, it is quite possible that Gore would have won Florida and thus the presidential
After the Supreme Court settled the election controversy, when environmentalists
began to worry about President George W. Bush's "financial interest in the oil industry
and his weak environmental record as governor of Texas," he regularly expressed his
fondness for Theodore Roosevelt, who was arguably the most environmentally
Christine Todd Whitman as the head of EPA "was viewed among most environmental
proponents as a shrewd appointment."87 When President Bush actually took office, the
EPA announced several environmentally favorable decisions. These decisions include: (1)
requiring New York City to build a controversial water filtration plant, despite the
tremendous cost; (2) adopting a Clinton era directive that was designed to cut pollution
from trucks and buses by 95% and to lower the sulfur content in diesel fuel by 97%; (3)
85
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.
86
Maurie J. Cohen, "George W. Bush and the Environmental Protection Agency: A Midterm Appraisal,"
Society and Natural Resources, 17 (January 2004): 69-88, 70.
87
Cohen, "George W. Bush and the Environmental Protection Agency." 70.
22
/
change.88
The White House, however, soon reversed the course by withdrawing U.S. support
for the Kyoto Protocol and proposing scientifically unhealthful standards of arsenic in
drinking water. Early evidence of this reversion was shown in the Bush administration's
first draft budget, which cut 4% in the EPA's funding and a similar amount for other
in the campaign had been a "mistake" and that he needed to adjust his position to
accommodate the domestic energy production goals.89 He also criticized the Kyoto
economy"91 and it did not establish mandatory targets for developing countries. Soon
after that, the EPA withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol officials, and declared that the Bush
administration had no interest in the treaty. In early 2002, the Bush administration began
to adopt a new approach of climate policy, which called for a voluntary 18% reduction in
the greenhouse gas from 2002 to 2012. This approach, Blanchard and Perkauus believe,
"will most likely allow near-term emissions to grow."92 Later, President Bush reversed
88
Cohen, "George W. Bush and the Environmental Protection Agency."
89
Cohen, "George W. Bush and the Environmental Protection Agency."
go
Cohen, "George W. Bush and the Environmental Protection Agency."
91
Quoted from Odile Blanchard and James F. Perkauus, "Does the Bush Administration's Climate Policy
Mean Climate Protection?" Energy Policy 32 (December 2004): 1993-1998, 1994.
92
Blanchard and Perkauus, "Does the Bush Administration's Climate Policy Mean Climate Protection?"
1998.
23
substance that may cause bladder and lung cancer as well as other health problems.
Overall, it is clear that President George W. Bush has been actually adopting a
environmentalism. Smith94 cites two examples that show the role of mass media in
raising the public's environmental concern. The first issue was the 1969 Santa Barbara oil
spill, which has been discussed. The second issue was the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster,
which spread 470 miles along the Alaskan coast and again drew a huge amount of media
attention.95 Similar to what happened in the Santa Barbara accident, the vivid images on
television screens and in newspaper pictures about the Exxon Valdez accident scared the
American public, introducing a new generation to the connection of the oil industry with
environmental disaster.96
their review of previous research in this area, Shanahan and McComas divided the studies
into three categories: content research; effects research; and environmental ideology
research.97 Media content research is "trying to find out how the media portray the
93
Cohen, "George W. Bush and the Environmental Protection Agency."
94
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion.
95
The oil spill has such a tremendous consequences that in February 27, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court
decided that Exxon should pay the Alaskans punitive damages, although the Supreme Court reduced the
amount of the damages that ordered by a federal appeal court.
96
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.
97
Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories.
24
environment." These studies usually use content analysis, and most of them focus on
print media, due to the relative ease of collecting data from print media. The broadcast
media have not been content analyzed very much. The second category, media effects
research, concerns the influence of the media on people's environmental attitude. Many
media effect studies focus on the effects of single messages or single environmental
campaigns, looking at whether the media shape people's environmental attitudes, opinion,
and behavior. The third category of research "concerns environmental ideology and its
relationship to the media and culture,"99 primarily based on a critical approach to culture.
These studies tend to focus more on the broadcast media and not to adopt an approach of
data-supported hypothesis testing. Most of the studies about media and environmental
issues fall in the first two categories, on which the present discussion is focused.
Jonela Rae Estes100 looks at how the national elite newspapers (the New York
Times and the Washington Post) and TV networks cover environmental issues, and public
polls on environmental issues and environmental policies. He finds that media coverage
usually focuses on environmental conflicts rather than policies. Previous studies also find
that the amount of media coverage of the environment that focused on the environmental
risks increased through the 1980s and into the 1990s.101 The focus on environmental
25
conflicts and risks is consistent with Michael Nitz and Holly West's finding that
newspapers tend to cover environmental issues with a negative tone. Krimsky and
Plough identified two types of risk communication: conventional and symbolic. While
conventional risk communication informs people about the environmental risks, the
symbolic risk communication portrays risk in a way related to the cultural and social
1995, Shanahan and McComas104 find that politics, disaster, and unusual weather were
the predominant environmental themes. They also coded the sectors (business,
government, science, and the public, among others) and tone of the stories (supportive,
neutral, or critical). The research finds that almost all the news stories focus on either
business or general public, with few stories focused on the government, science, or
environmental activists. However, most of the critical stories focus on either the
government or environmental activists, while all of the supportive or neutral stories focus
Friedman, Carole Gorney, and Brenda Egolf, "Reporting on Radiation: A content Analysis of Chernobyl
Coverage," Journal ofCommunication 37 (fall 1987): 58-69; Robert Gale, "Calculating Risk: Radiation
and Chernobyl," Journal of Communication 37 (fall 1987): 68-79; Carole Gorney, "Numbers versus
Pictures: Did Network Television Sensationalize Chernobyl Coverage?" Journalism Quarterly 69 (summer
1992): 455-465.
102
Michael Nitz and Holly West, "Framing of Newspaper News Stories during a Presidential Campaign
Cycle: The Case of Bush-Gore in Election 2000," in The Environmental Communication Yearbook,
Volume I, ed. S. L. Senecah (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 205-226.
103
Sheldon Krimsky and Alonzo Plough, Environmental Hazards: Communicating Risk as a Social
Process (Dover: MA: Auburn House, 1988).
104
Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories.
26
Studies also explore how journalists cover environmental issues. Singer finds
that many scientific studies are not accurately reported in the news, although newspapers
6
do a better job of reporting science than radio and television. Wilkins and Patterson
also find that journalists, as laypersons, will follow their own perception when they cover
scientific subject matter. They will pay more attention when the scientific stories have
some symbolic significance. In 1987-1988, they find, the greenhouse effect did not reach
the threshold of symbolic significance and was not widely covered by the journalists.
two factors when they cover environmental issues. One is journalists' personal
"schemata" that they usually use to construct stories, the other one is the local political
context. When there is a pluralistic local political context, the local newspaper's coverage
emphasizes conflict; when there is no pluralistic local political context, usually existing
Journalists, researchers find, also tend to look to the lead interest groups to define
the issues that they cover.108 When the mainstream environmental organization Sierra
Club gradually discarded its call for stabilization of American population, which was a
105
Eleanor Singer, "A Question of Accuracy: How Journalists and Scientists Report Research on
Hazards," Journal of Communication 40 (winter 1990): 102-117.
106
Lee Wilkins and Philip Patterson, Risky Business: Communicating Issues of Science, Risk, and Public
Policy (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991).
107
Sharon Dunwoody and R. Griffin, "Journalistic Strategies for Reporting Long-Term Environmental
Issues: A Case Study for Three Superfund Sites", in The Mass Media and Environmental Issues, ed. A.
Hansen (Leicester, UK: University of Leicester Press).
108
Roy Beck and Leon Kolakiewicz, "The Environmental Movement's Retreat from Advocating U.S.
Population Stabilization (1970-1998): A First Draft of History," in Environmental Politics and Policy,
1960s-I990s, ed. O. L. Graham (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000),
122-156.
27
hot debate in the 1970s, the news media also mentioned the population issue less and less.
A study shows that among a random sample of 150 stories addressing urban sprawl, only
one mentioned that stabilization of population might be part of the solution.109 The
journalists told the researcher that "they were uncomfortable raising the population issue
on their own."110
Many studies also find that journalists rely heavily on governmental sources.
Gamson and Modigliani111 and Nimmo112 find that governmental sources dominated
l
news coverage of the Three Mile Island nuclear shutdown. Donnalyn Pompper content
analyzes a sample of environmental stories from the New York Times, USA Today and
another smaller national newspaper from 1983 to 1997, and finds that newspapers
targeting different social blocs rely on different sources. Among the 5,127 New York
Times stories, 52.4% of the total sources are governmental sources, 19.4% industry
sources, 11.8% public sources, 11.6% interest group sources, 3.9% other sources, and
0.9% unattributed sources. USA Today has 1,150 articles in the sample, among which
36.8% of the total sources are from government, 25.4% are from industry, 16.9% are
from the general public, 15.4% are from interest groups, and 3.8% are other sources.
109
T. Michael Maher, "How and Why Journalists Avoid the Population-Environment Connection,"
Population and Environment 18 (March 1997): 339-372.
110
Beck and Kolakiewicz, "The Environmental Movement's Retreat," 127.
111
William. A. Gamson and Andrea. Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power:
A Constructionist Approach," American Journal of Sociology 95 (July 1989): 1-37.
'12 Dan Nimmo, Nightly Horrors: Crisis Coverage by Television Network News (Knoxville, TN:
University of Tennessee Press, 1985).
113
Donnalyn Pompper, "At the 20* Century's Close: Framing the Public Policy Issue of Environmental
Risk," in The Environmental Communication Yearbook, Volume I, ed. S. L. Senecah (Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 99-134.
28
The domination of governmental sources, Mark Miller and Bonnie Parnell
Riechert114 posit, can be due to their availability, credibility, and the lack of alternatives.
When news media cover environmental risks, journalists' dependence on certain sources
will influence their initial framing of the issues. Follow-up stories like to use initial news
framing to help them to define the issue, so the initial framing tends to be amplified. At
the same time, environmental sources ("unorganized residents, ad-hoc citizen groups or
Many media effects studies find that the outcome from audience exposure to
media content is quite weak. A variety of media theories and hypotheses are associated
with these studies. Novic and Sandman's116 study of the relationships between mass
media use and attitudes toward solutions for environmental problems, find that heavy
users of mass media are less informed and worry less about environmental issues. The
authors suggest that people should not take media as either cause or effect. The media
should be treated as a reciprocal cause and effect entwined in a social feedback system.
Audience opinion is generated and reinforced by the media, which recruit new opinion
from previously unconvinced public opinion. Consistent with that view, Ostman and
M. Mark Miller and Bonnie Parnell Riechert, "Interest Group Strategies and Journalistic Norms: News
Media Framing of Environmental Issues," in Environmental Risks and the Media, ed. S. Allan, B. Adam,
and C. Carter (London, UK: Routledge, 2000), 45-54.
113
Miller and Riechert, "Interest Group Strategies and Journalistic Norms," 51.
116
Kenneth Novic and Peter Sandman, "How Use of Mass Media Affects Views of Solutions to
Environmental Problems," Journalism Quarterly 51 (autumn 1974): 448-452.
29
Parker find that television viewing has a negative relationship with environmentalism.
They also find that age has a negative relationship with environmentalism while
education has a positive relationship with it. The negative association between television
viewing and environmental concern, arguably, could be attributed to the fact that most of
environmental information.
information from the media and issue salience but not attitude changing. McLeod, Glynn,
and Griffin118 study the effects of energy information on energy conservation and find
that issue salience is associated with media use, but media use has little influence on
knowledge gain, energy attitude, and behavior. Their data give weak support to the
hypothesis that public affaires programming and energy media content have an effect on
energy conservation, and they make it clear that behavior will not necessarily follow even
audience's perception of the issue importance but not much on their conservation
needed. In another study, Griffin120 finds that education level predicted energy
Ronald Ostman and Jill Parker, "A Public's Environmental Information Sources and Evaluations of
Mass Media," Journal of Environmental Education 18 (winter 1986): 9-17.
118
Jack. McLeod, Carroll Glynn and Robert Griffin, "Communication and Energy Conservation," Journal
of Environmental Education 18 (spring, 1987): 29-37.
119
Robert Griffin, "Communication and the Adoption of Energy Conservation Measures by the Elderly,"
Journal of Environmental Education 20 (summer, 1989): 19-28.
30
knowledge. However, television energy information processing is still found to have a
negative relationship with energy knowledge. Brother, Fortner, and Mayer121 find that
news coverage of Great Lakes issues did increase respondent's knowledge of those issues.
Fortner and Lyon122 also find that a Cousteau television special did have some effect in
changing audience's knowledge and opinions about environmental issues. These effects
diminished over time and it is hard to judge whether individual programs can make a
Only one study reports behavioral change. Using a field experiment, Winett,
Leckliter, Chin, and Stahl123 find that mediated information can successfully induce
change in energy consumption behavior. However, since the media stimulus was
The agenda-setting hypothesis has been tested in the environmental area. Atwater,
Salwen, and Anderson124 find that media agendas on environmental issues seem to
correlate with the public agendas on these issues. They also find that the salience in
Robert Griffin, "Energy in the Eighties: Education, Communication, and the Knowledge Gap,"
Journalism Quarterly 67 (fall 1990): 554-566.
121
Christine Brother, Roseanne Fortner and Victor Mayer, "The Impact of Television News on Public
Environmental Knowledge" Journal of Environmental Education 22 (summer 1991): 22-29.
122
Rosanne Fortner and Anne Lyon, "Effects of a Cousteau Special on Viewer Knowledge and Attitude,"
Journal of Environmental Education 16 (spring 1985): 12-20.
123
Ricahrd A. Winett, Ingrid N. Leckliter, Donna E. Chin and Brian Stahl, "Reducing energy Consumption:
the Long-Term effects of a Single TV program," Journal of Communication 34 (September 1984): 37-51.
124
Tony Atwater, Michael Salwen, and Ronald Anderson, "Media Agenda-Setting with Environmental
Issues," Journalism Quarterly 62 (summer 1985): 393-397.
31
salience of these aspects in public agendas. Ader also finds that media agendas in
environmental issues lead changes in public agendas. Moreover, when she compared
media environmental agendas with real world pollution states, she finds that throughout
the 1970s and the 1980s, pollution decreased while the media coverage about pollution
increased. She also finds no relationship between real-world pollution levels and public
issue salience, which suggests that the change in public agenda is due to the media
agenda.
environmental issues had almost no relationship with the public's environmental concern.
at a certain time. Media coverage cannot cause a major shift in public environmental
Christine Ader, "A Longitudinal Study of Agenda-Setting for the Issue of Environmental Pollution,"
Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 72 (summer 1995): 300-311.
126
Pertti Suhonen, "Environmental Issues, the Finnish Major Press, and Public Opinion," Gazette 51
(1993): 91-112.
127
A Clay Schoenfeld, "The Press andNEPA: the Case of the Missing Agenda." Journalism Quarterly 56
(autumn 1979): 577-585.
128
Lance DeHaven-Smith, "Environmental belief systems," Environment and Behavior 20 (winter 1988):
176-199; Lance DeHaven-Smith, Environmental Concern in Florida and the Nation (Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1991).
32
attitudes are rapidly changing responses to political elites' discourses, while politicians
choose environmental topics based on their own personal considerations and personal
convenience. This argument tends to diminish the importance of mass media because
national media coverage may be overwhelmed by local elite political discussion. Martin
dynamics among politicians, the mass media, and the public. The environmental justice
movement was initiated by the protests of the community residents, which attracted the
attention of the media. Two examples are the network news about the toxic waste
dumping at Love Canal in New York in the summer of 1978 and the Warren County
African-Americans, asked the United Church of Christ's Commission for Racial Justice
(CRJ) for help in resisting the siting of a chemistry-wastes dump in their community.
These issues shaped and established the environmental justice movement. In October
well as somewhat selective media coverage of it puts the issue of environmental justice
Shanahan and McComas131 find that most of the previous media-effects studies
related to the environment focus on cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors. Fewer studies
explore environmental ideology—the social environment. They believe that this is partly
Martin V. Melosi, "Environmental justice, Political Agenda Setting, and the Myths of History," in
Environmental Politics and Policy, 1960s-1990s, ed. O. L. Graham (University Park, PA: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 43-71.
130
Marc Mowrey and Tim Redmond, Not in Our Backyard: The People and Events That Shaped
America's Modern Environment Movement (New York, 1993), 435-436.
131
Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories.
33
because the most often used measures in mass media research are at the individual level.
In his early years, Juergen Habermas shared John Dewey's opinion that every
public discourse. He has shifted away from "his earlier theory of radical democracy" and
adopted "a more pessimist tone," because "unavoidable complexity" makes most citizens
that democracy may not apply to all realms of decision-making."132 Close to Habermas's
idea, some scholars believe that in technically complex areas such as energy and
environment policy, the public ought not to have any impact. To them, such technical
questions should be left to technical experts.133 More passively, some critics of the public
and public opinion think that even in a democracy the voice of the people is rarely
influential. They believe that elections are shows for symbolic reasons, with little effect
on public policy.134 This political thought can be traced back to Walter Lippmann's
critique on public opinion.135 Lippmann and John Dewey disagreed on whether the
34
Public Environmental Concern as a Political Force
Although Frank Fischer137 agrees with Habermas that environmental issues are
one of the areas that require special knowledge to be able to elaborate the problems and
make reasonable decisions, he still holds that common citizens can make scientific
decisions by participating in discourses with the experts. Citizen participation, for Fischer,
is not only the way to fulfill democracy and contribute legitimization to the development
and implementation of environmental policies, but also the way to pursue environmental
support.138
Smith139 totally rejects the idea that public opinion has or should have no
important force in the formulation of public policy. Believing that mapping out the past
trends in public opinion can provide a better prediction about the future, he warned:
of energy to our economy and our environment, and because of the important role public
opinion plays in setting energy policy. If the public demands that Congress enact foolish
Smith's warning is based on theories and facts. Many studies have confirmed that
35
the elected politicians generally follow their constituents' preference on major issues.
the public. In 1966, when the media coverage of the smog crisis in New York City on
Thanksgiving Day and the deteriorating air quality in other cities attracted Americans'
attention, the U.S. federal government immediately changed its past way of leaving the
smog matter to the states and put it on the congressional agenda.142 The following year,
Congress passed the Air Quality Act of 1967, requiring states to establish air-quality and
are politicized and the environmental policy development has been following a model:
the expanded interest groups lobby Congress for new laws; when pollsters find public
opinion supporting the new laws, Congress goes along. The passage of the National
Environmental Policy Act of 1970 and the Clean Air Act of 1970, the establishment of the
issues. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the world price of oils rose and the public wanted it
For example, see Christopher H. Achen, "Measuring Representation," American Journal of Political
Science 22 (August 1978): 475-510; R Douglas Arnold, The Logic of Congressional Action (New Haven,
Conn: Yale University Press, 1990); John Kingdon, Congressmen's Voting Decisions (New York: Harper
and Row, 1981); Warren E Miller and Donald E. Stokes, "Constituency Influence in Congress," in
Elections and the Political Order, ed. Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald
E. Stokes (New York: Wiley, 1966).
142
Harold W. Kennedy and Martin E. Weekes, "Control of Automobile Emissions—California Experience
and the Federal Legislation," in Air Pollution Control, ed, Clark C. Havighurst (Dobbs Ferry, N. Y.:
Oceana, 1969), 101-118.
143
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion.
36
lower. President Nixon responded with wage and price controls despite the opposition to
the move by most big businesses. The wage and price controls actually made the energy
situation worse by encouraging oil consumption during the oil shortage, but the president
wanted to please the voters.145 President Clinton also had experience in gaining support
by responding to the public opinion. The 1994 mid-term election put Republicans in
control of both chambers of the Congress. The executive branch could have little voice in
law-making process. However, when the House passed a drastic revision of the Clean
Water Act, which turned out to be unpopular in the public according to the opinion polls,
vowing to veto the "Dirty Water Act."146 In August, the president again made highly
publicized speeches at Baltimore Harbor and in Yellowstone National Park castigating the
Republican proposal. The proposal finally was dropped before the president vetoed it.147
Public opinion in environmental issues also determines the rapid demise of the
nuclear power as an energy source in the 1970s and the moratorium on offshore oil
drilling business in the 1990s.148 Although driven by environmental and safety concerns,
the trend of American public opinion has slowly been turning away from nuclear power
5
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion.
146
Ann Devroy, "Veto Vowed for Clean Water Rewrites," Washington Post, May 31, 1995.
147
Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."
148
See Thomas Raymond Wellock, Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California,
1958-1978 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998); William R. Freudenburg and Eugene A, Rosa,
eds., Public Reactions to Nuclear Power: Are There Critical Masses? (Boulder, Colo: Westiew, 1984);
Morone and Woodhouse, The Demise of Nuclear Energy? Chap. 5; William R. Freudenburg and Robert
Gramling, Oil in Troubled Waters: Perceptions, Politics, and the Battle over Offshore Oil Drilling (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1994); Robert Gramling, Oil on the Edge (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1996); Robert Jay Wilder, Listening to the Sea: The Politics of Improving Environmental
Protection (Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998).
37
since the late 1960s,149 although until the late 1970s a majority of Americans supported
growth in nuclear power.150 The Three Mile Island disaster dramatically decreased the
public support,151 which dropped from 50 percent in January of 1979 to only 39 percent
in April of that year. Vehement mass protests occurred at the new or proposed sites of
nuclear power plants, and the majority of the public got what it wanted. Congress and
state governments imposed more and more costly regulations and licensing hurdles on
nuclear power plants. Under great public pressure, despite its "wealth and political
muscle... [t]he nuclear industry began to die."152 Meanwhile, as the oil prices fell in the
1980s and 1990s, Americans began to appreciate the coastal beauty more and turned
against offshore oil drilling. Again, "[d]espite the political power of the oil industry, the
Although the evidence suggests that some Americans may hold modern
environmental views and have opposed offshore oil drilling as far back as the late
1800s,154 researchers did not conduct public opinion polls on environmental attitudes
"Power: Sluggish Atom," Newsweek, 23 June 1969, 81-82; Morone and Woodhouse, The Demise of
Nuclear Energy, chap. 5.
150
Eugene A. Rosa and Riley E. Dunlap, "Poll Trends: Nuclear Power: Three Decades of Public Opinion,"
The Public Opinion Quarterly 58 (summer 1994): 295-324.
151
Robert C. Mitchell, "Public Response to a Major Failure of a Controversial Technology," in Accident at
Three Mile Island: The Human Dimensions, ed. David L. Sills et al. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1982),
21-38; Freudenburg and Rosa, Public Reactions to Nuclear Power.
52
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 208.
153
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 208.
154
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.
38
until the 1960s, when the environmental movement attracted national attention.155 In the
late 1970s, polling organizations began to ask their respondents environmental questions
consistently. Although environmental issues cover a broad range, including air quality,
water quality, solid waste, hazardous or toxic waster, preservation of natural sources,
some researchers believe that people's attitudes toward the sub-issues are highly
mind."156
Most of the time, only around two percent of the people choose environment when
being asked in the polls what is the most important issue facing the country. However,
many people report that they are concerned about the environment.157 Examining the poll
trends of public opinion on environmental problems and protection, Dunlap and Scarce15
find that public concern with environmental problems climbed to its highest point around
the first Earth Day in 1970. After that, first rapidly and then slowly, the public concern
decreased through the 1970s. The trend changed dramatically in the 1980s with a
substantial increase shown in the public concern with the environment, partly due to the
Reagan pro-development policies.159 The trend continued to increase when Bush took
office. By the spring of 1990, public concern with the environment "had reached an
39
unprecedented proportion." Meanwhile, the public had increasingly perceived the
rapidly by about 15 percent from 1987 to 1989. Correspondingly, people more and more
thought that the government is "spending too little" on the environment. More and more
people also had shown their willingness to pay higher prices to protect the
environment.161
The American public was eager in support of finding new energy sources during
the oil crisis in the 1970s. After the 1980 gas price peaked in the second oil crisis,16
public support for all three types of energy production declined. Nuclear power continued
its decrease. Both offshore oil drilling and strip-mining coal became less and less popular
as time went by.163 However, Eugene Rosa and Riley Dunlap's review of the poll trends
in public opinion in the last three decades and find that the public takes a pragmatic
attitude toward nuclear power. On one hand, the American people strongly oppose this
highly hazardous energy source; on the other hand, a substantial proportion of people still
think of nuclear power as a solution to the energy shortage. However, these people cross
164
it out as a near future option.
Yet public opinion about environmental issues is seemingly not solidly based on
necessary knowledge. Local and national polls also show that the American public is
40
somewhat ignorant of the environmental and energy issues in spite of their enthusiasm
for discussing them. Smith's public opinion poll data collected in California shows that
Getting the public to learn even simple facts about the energy industry—such
as the fact that the United States needs to import oil in order to meet its energy
needs—is a difficult task. As a consequence, the public demanded cleaner air
without recognizing how it would affect the energy supply. In this area, as in
most, the public focused on one issue at a time.166
Another example is that, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, polls report that many
people who claimed to know something about global warming confused it with pollution
or ozone depletion. A1997 national poll finds that more people believed that ozone
depletion can cause global warming (it cannot) than driving automobiles or heating and
cooling homes (they can).167 Nisbet and Myers also point out that few Americans are
confident that they have a good mastery of the global warming issues. Only 11 percent of
the public felt that they understood global warming issues very well in 1992. The figure
increased to 15 percent and 18 percent in 2001 and 2005, respectively, and to 22 percent
in 2007. In 1994, when asked by the General Social Survey, 57 percent of the public still
confused global warming with ozone depletion. In 2000, this erroneous belief remained at
54 percent. 168
Some public opinion analysts also question whether issue salience is closely
Nisbet and Myers, "Twenty Years of Public Opinion about Global Warming.'
41
researchers also raise. William Mayer agrees that the salience of environmental issues
increased enormously in the last half of the 1960s. Nevertheless, he does not believe that
transformation during that time. Little evidence is available to discuss this question, and
Previous studies have attempted to identify what variables can make differences in
those studies, among which are the demographical and social characteristics (such as age,
education, and political partisanship), environmental events and media coverage of them,
Johnson reports that political ideology has been seen as a factor that influences people's
environmental concern. People tend to believe that the Democratic Party can handle
environmental issues much better than the Republican Party. For example, in responding
to the 1998 American National Election Studies poll questions, 41.3% of respondents
thought the Democrats would do a better job, 47.2% thought there would be no
differences in the two parties, and only 8.2% thought the Republicans would do better.
169
William G. Mayer, The Changing American Mind: How and Why American Public Opinion Changed
between I960 and 1988 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 102.
42
environmental protection has become a universal goal.
From the perspective of demographic factors, researchers also find that women are
more likely to express pro-environmental attitudes than men, younger people show more
environmental concern than the older people, and those who have higher education are
more pro-environment than those who have lower education. Income, however, has a
negative correlation with pro-environmental attitude. People who have higher incomes
tend to show less environmental concern. Researchers speculate that this is probably
However, Smith finds that compared to most other political issues, "demographic
variables such as education, income, age, and race only poorly explain what people think
about environmental issues," although he also agrees that the young and the
well-educated tend to be more pro-environment than persons who are older or poorly
educated.172 His data show that the generational replacement is so slow that it has little
influence on the total public support for energy development. He believes that the
environmentalists will not win their fight with the anti-environment movement simply by
waiting long enough. He is, nevertheless, aware that this conclusion may not be
applicable to other environmental issues, because Mayer has found that general
replacement, together with the change in economic situations, had some influence on the
Johnson, "Environment."
43
Environmental events and media coverage. Many previous studies show that
historical events seem to be able to explain changes in public opinion trends. For example,
it is unsurprising to observe that the OPEC oil boycotts caused public support for
offshore oil-drilling to rise, or the Three Mile Island disaster and Chernobyl accident
caused public support for nuclear power to fall. Public opinion poll data also show that
oil prices can dramatically change the public's support of all types of energy production,
especially striping-mining coal. When gas prices drove inflation up, public support of
coal rose sharply. When inflation began falling in 1981, public support of strip-mining
spending all moved roughly following energy prices, becoming more conservative and
pro-development in the 1970s and more liberal and pro-environment in the 1980s.174
The Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents drastically changed public
opinion about nuclear power. Although public support for nuclear power continuously fell
during the 1970s,175 by January 1979, still 50% of the American people supported
building more nuclear power plants as late as January 1979. The Three Mile Island
accident in March 1979 sharply dropped this figure. By April of that year, only 39%
reported that more nuclear power was a good idea. The public support, however,
rebounded to 46% by July 1970 and to 49% by July 1980, the peak of the second energy
crisis. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster further decreased public support. In 1986, one of
the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power generator melted down, releasing nearly 100
million curies of radioactivity into the atmosphere and killing thousands of people.
"Power: Sluggish Atom"; Morone and Woodhouse, The Demise of Nuclear Energy.
44
Although American experts declared that the Chernobyl reactors and American reactors
were designed in fundamentally different ways, critics of nuclear power plants became
convinced that the experts had lied. Responding to the disaster, public support of nuclear
public opinion. Global warming began to be a topic of scientific inquiry in the 1960s, but
it was not well recognized until the 1980s, "the warmest decade on record," when serious
journalistic and political interests were attracted to it.177 Journalists' reporting on global
warming and related issues cultivated the growth of public awareness. In 1990 and 1992,
two groups of scientists, around 2,000 of them in total, received news coverage when
they petitioned President Bush to take action to prevent global warming.178 Craig
Trumbo finds that in 1981, only 38% of the American public claimed to have heard of
global warming. The number edged up to 41% by 1987 and jumped to 86% by 1990 due
to the amount of media attention.179 In their study about the poll trend in global warming
from 1986 to 2006, Nisbet and Myers also find "strong connections between patterns in
media attention to global warming and shifts in poll trends," and the connection is
clearest between media attention and the public's awareness of global warming as a
problem.180
45
Information sources. Americans' preferences for policies to resolve
environmental problems also depend upon their views of the mediating institutions that
may help cause, detect, or prevent global warming. The institutions most related to these
three aspects of global environmental change are science, industry, and government.
Previous studies show that on environmental matters the public trusts scientists most,
government secondarily, and industry the least.181 The public trusts scientists most,
seemingly because it assumes that scientists do not release findings without evidence and
deliberation, the media do not cover sloppy and insignificant scientific findings, and
independent scientists have no reason to lie.182 However, prior studies show that
local risks.
Industry has very little credibility in the public's mind on environmental issues
because it is seen as the "major source of pollution and as financially motivated to resist
environmental protection." Given the skepticism on the industry, the public see the
shows a large majority of the American public believes that the government does not do a
See for example, Lester W. Milbrath, "Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1984); Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, Environmental
Values in American Culture.
182
Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, Environmental Values in American Culture.
183
H. M. Collins, "Certainty and the Public Understanding of Science." Social Studies of Science 17
(November 1987): 689-713; Brain Wynne, "Misunderstood Misunderstanding: Social Identities and Public
Uptake of Science," Public Understanding of Science (January 1991): 281-304.
184
Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, Environmental Values in American Culture, 155.
185
Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, Environmental Values in American Culture, 156.
46
good job in regulating industry.186
Summary
The presidents, the media, and the public, as identified from the literature, are
traditional American values such as equalitarianism, individual rights, and even religious
president since it conspicuously appeared before the Americans in early 1970s. Media
studies also show environmentalism is more often defined by political elites, since
governmental officials are the most used media sources. These environmental stories,
studies suggest, may have some cognitive and attitudinal influences on the audience. The
last factor, public opinion about environmentalism, many scholars believe, has significant
influence on the governmental environmental polices. The dynamics among those three
major factors that define environmentalism in the U.S. society can also be analyzed in a
47
CHAPTER TWO
In one of their book chapters, Steven Chaffee and Debra Lieberman argue for the
merit of synthesized literature review.188 These synthesized literature reviews, which sort
out a large number of previous studies with a coherent interpretation, are more likely to
move the understanding of the whole field forward. The landmark examples are Joseph T.
Klapper's study of The Effects of Mass Communication189, published in 1960 and Everett
urge graduate programs to train students to conduct synthesized literature review studies,
their argument, tries to synthesize the existing recent literature about mass media effects,
especially studies about framing, agenda-setting, and priming, aiming to provide a clearer
understanding about media effects and to build the theoretical foundation for the
dissertation.
188
Steven Chaffee and Debra Lieberman, "The Challenge of Writing the Literature Review: Synthesizing
Research for Theory and Practice," in How to Publish Your Communications Research: An Insider's Guide,
ed. A. Alexander and W. J. Potter (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2001), 23-46.
189
Joseph T. Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication (New York: The Free Press, 1960)
190
Eveverett Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation (New York: Free Times, 1962).
48
the limited effects model, which dominated communication studies and discouraged
studies of political communications for decades.191 The model grew out of research
initially designed to find evidence that supports campaign materials' function in changing
voters' decisions, but the voters reported that they were influenced not by the campaign
but by people they knew.192 This finding in 1940 led to the theory of the "two-step flow
model. With a failure of finding evidence to support "the figure of the pen as mightier
than the sword" and its modern version that "the mass media are more powerful than the
atom bomb," 194 Klapper concludes in The Effects of Mass Communication that "mass
communication ordinarily does not serve as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience
effects, but rather functions among and through a nexus of mediating factors and
existing opinion most of the time, to minor attitude changes some of the time, and to
conversion rarely. This "seems to be due, at least in part, to the way in which the
191
Chaffee and Lieberman, "The Challenge of Writing the Literature Review."
192
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes up
His Mind in a Presidential Campaign (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1944).
193
Bernard Berelson, Paul Lazarsfeld, & William McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a
Presidential Campaign (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1954).
194
Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication, 13.
195
Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication, 8.
49
selective retention, group and society norms, and interpersonal communications. Mass
communication has direct effects when the mediating factors are inoperative or impelling
toward change as well as in certain residual situations, and its effects are influenced by its
characteristics such as textual organization, source and media credibility, and the existing
climate of public opinion. Klapper's generalizations were "often cited as evidence (rather
than hypothesis), primarily by network executives, that the media do not have substantial
harmful effects on children." 197 Even Klapper himself, as director of social research for
the Columbia Broadcasting System, "has since testified frequently in that capacity before
Klapper's generalizations were echoed later by others influential in the field of mass
communication research. Herbert Gans, for example, still strongly questions the existence
of strong and direct media effects, and proposes several points that he believes limit
media effects.199 For him, the media are an objective, passive, and massively diversified
information container that faces independent active audience in a changing society, not a
cause for effects. If the media cover rising employment, "the effects they produce stem
from the unemployment, not of their reporting it."200 The correlation found by previous
studies, he also argues, should not be used as evidence of media effects. On the contrary,
50
they may show that the media contents are affected by real-world life. Gaye Tuchman
also believes that "people make their own uses of media" and they tend to resist the
media hegemony. Media offer preferred readings, but "even relatively uneducated
individuals and groups of working people have their own thematic understandings of the
social and political world."201 This viewpoint also deconstructs the idea of a strong and
However, with the accumulation of new evidence that supports direct media
effects,202 the limited effects model began to decline in the 1960s, leaving a legacy of
One of the studies that contributed to the decline, a 1960 study, concludes that most
people receive important news stories directly from mass media, especially television and
radio and the opinion leaders' "relay function is supplemental in nature." Suggesting
direct effects of media content, the study warns that the two-stage flow hypothesis should
"be applied to mass communication with caution and qualification." Rogers's Diffusion
of Innovation research also holds that the initial awareness of innovations often comes
from mass media, which will lead innovation adoption among the early adopters.205 For
201
Gaye Tuchman, "Realism and Romance: The Study of Media Effects," Journal of Communication 43
(December 1993): 36-41, 40.
202
For example, see Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton, "Mass Communication and Political Socialization"; Paul J.
Deutschmann and Wayne A. Danielson, "Diffusion of the Major News Story," Journalism Quarterly 37
(summer 1960): 37, 345-355; Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, "The Agenda-Setting Function of
Mass Media," Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (summer 1972): 176-187.
203
Chaffee and Lieberman, "The Challenge of Writing the Literature Review."
204
Deutschmann and Danielson, "Diffusion of Knowledge of the Major News Story," 355.
51
those early adopters, Rogers's conclusion clearly holds a media effect that can lead to
behavior. Chaffee and his colleagues challenged the limited effects model in a
cross-lagged correlation analysis of two sets of data collected within half years, at the
beginning and the end of the 1968 presidential election. Their study shows evidence that
is concerned, but its influence does not extend to overt behavior such as campaign
activity." The data strongly support an "association between media public affairs use and
political knowledge" and "high media use during the campaign predicts high knowledge
(relative to the student's age-peers) after the campaign."206 Unlike previous media effects
cognition rather than attitude, and hence find strong media effects. Most of the media
violence studies support for direct effects of the media. Those studies often show that
viewing violent visual media content can lead to increased aggression in children.207
The increasing evidence for direct media effects urges some later scholars to
re-interpret the conclusion of the Paul Lazarsfeld and his associates, such as Joseph
Klapper. In their reading of Larzarsfeld's works, Peter Simonson and Gabriel Weimann
find that "[fjar from arguing that the media have little or no effect on the formation of
public opinion, as critics of the limited effects paradigm sometimes assert, Lazarsfeld and
5
Rogers, Diffusion of Innovation.
52
Merton identify the specific conditions under which media could have powerful
effects."208 "Limited effects" does not mean "no effects" or "weak effects" but that "there
are limited conditions under which 'propaganda for social objects' might actually have
quite powerful persuasive effects."209 This new interpretation, however, does not help too
much. According to Simonson and Weimann, The Columbia School identified three
conditions under which media have powerful effects. The first is monopolization, which
refers to situations in which "there is little or no opposition in the mass media to the
involves the situations in which media messages channel predispositions and avoid
creating significantly new behavior patterns or bringing about radical conversations. The
third is supplement, which means that media messages operate in conjunction with
satisfied conjointly in propaganda for social objectives," Lazarsfeld and Merton conclude
that "media do not exhibit the degree of social power commonly attributed to them." 21 '
Researchers have been suggesting three reasons why Lazarsfeld and associates did
not find direct media effects. First, as McCombs and Reynolds point out, Lazarsfeld just
focused on mass communication's ability to persuade voters and change their attitudes in
208
Peter Simonson and Gabriel Weimann, "Critical Research at Columbia: Lazarsfeld's and Merton's
'Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action'," in Canonic Text in Media Research:
Are There Any? Should There Be? How About these? Ed. E. Katz, J. D. Peters, T. Liebes, and A. Orloff
(Cambridge UK: Polity, 2003), 25.
53
his 1940 study, whereas the most likely media effects are in other aspects such as the
acquisition of political knowledge and the building of political interests.213 In the 1940
election study, several months' political campaign propaganda was found to reinforce the
original pre-campaign intention of 53% of their 600 panel members, change 26% of the
members from being decided to being undecided or from being undecided to being
decided, and convert 5% to cross the party lines. In a similar study in 1948, after being
maintained their partisanship, 17% switched between a given partisanship and neutral,
and 8% were converted to different parties.214 In both cases, the researchers mainly
looked at the amount of conversions and almost disregarded the amount of ambivalence,
concluding a minimum media effects. They did not measure political awareness or
knowledge and look at the respondents' relationship with the media use.
Second, as Chaffee and colleagues point out, the inability of previous research to
find mass communication effects may be due to their lack of accurate measurement, since
most researchers "look for media influences in one attitudinal direction, rather than ask
the more fundamental question of whether the person forms any opinion." They speculate
that it is very possible that most individuals form their opinions mainly based on mass
media reports. Since these reports have "two-sides" on most issues, however, "one person
may form an opinion in one direction while a second person forms a directly contrary
Maxwell McCombs and Amy Reynolds, "News Influence on Our Pictures of the World," in Media
Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, 2 nd ed. ed. J. Bryant and D. Zillmann (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 1-18.
213
Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton, "Mass Communication and Political Socialization."
214
Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication.
54
opinion based on the same information." When aggregate data on opinion direction are
summed across many people, these important individual changes tend to cancel out one
another so that it appears that "nothing" has happened. If previous researchers analyzed
opinion formation irrespective of direction, they would be likely to "uncover more effects
of mass communication."215
suggesting that even a single person may have not only one, but several some times
contradictory opinions toward a particular issue, both favorable and unfavorable. When a
recent media message increases the previously weaker side to make the two sides almost
equivalent and the person difficult to provide an either favorable or unfavorable answer,
the person tends to fall in ambivalence and not answer the question. A little more media
stimulus may drive the person from ambivalence to give an answer on the other side.216
This theory explains why 26% participants switched between decided and undecided in
Lazarsfeld and associates' 1940 study and 17% participants did that in their 1948
study.217 Even for the majority who still hold the same opinion after exposure to media
messages, the strength of their existing opinion may be decreased and the strength of
their opinion on the other side may be increased. The opposite opinion just has not
reached the threshold to drive those people in the majority to ambivalence or change their
opinion. Without a delicate measure to catch these subtle attitude changes, it is quite
possible for the researchers to fail to capture the direct media effects. Later, a study
215
Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton, "Mass Communication and Political Socialization," 659, 666.
2
For detail discussion, please see John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge
University Press, 1992).
217
Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication.
55
conducted by Chaffee and a colleague shows that the traditional measurement of the
independent variable, media usage, is also not very effective. They find that, compared to
media exposure, media attention is significantly associated with the increase of political
adequately reflects the person's use of television news."218 This may also have
Third, direct media effects usually are easy to be found in the laboratories. The
Columbia studies, however, were conducted in the natural settings, and they are usually
19
about "opinions on controversial issues." Information about both sides of these
controversial issues usually intensively flows. The effects brought by a media message on
one side that aims to an attitude change will be quickly canceled out by information from
the other side that fits a person's predisposition, which may not have a greater effect but
may be more attractive to the person. When researchers are frustrated with failure to find
direct media effects, they are probably facing the effects of two sides of media messages
that have been working to reach equilibrium. This explains why the limited effects model
has been there for many years but no political candidates dare to take the risk not to
In a mass society, individuals interact with the world outside immediate experience
through mass media. It is, then, reasonable to build the hypothesis that the media have a
218
Steven H. Chaffee and Joan Schleuder, "Measurement and Effects of Attention to Media News,"
Human Communication Research 13 (September 1986): 76-107, 104.
219
Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton., "Mass Communication and Political Socialization," 648.
56
great influence in forming individuals' predisposition, particular thought, opinion, and
values, as they become part of the individuals' living environment.220 The idea was first
proposed by Walter Lippmann, who treats the mass media, primarily newspapers in his
day, as the principle conduit between the world outside and the images of that world
people hold in their minds. The idea is pictured in Figure 1. While every individual
lives in the mass society, each individual only obtains a little part of information about
individual can get information about most part of the society only through consuming
mass communications. For the individuals, the world beyond personal experiences and
interpersonal communications is just the world in the mass media. A good example is the
story in the beginning chapter of Lippmann's Public Opinion.122 In the first six weeks,
the world for those Englishmen and the Frenchmen who lived in that island was that they
were still neighbors of those Germans living in that island until they got the news that
Britain and French had been fighting with Germany for six weeks.
Figure 2.1 also shows that, in order to understand media effects thoroughly, a clear
definition of media effects is needed. The author argues that media effects should be
defined as all the results, such as attention, perceived importance, cognitive knowledge,
attitudes, and behaviors, which result from the exposure and usage of the mass media and
For detail discussion, see Diana C. Mutz, Impersonal Influence: How Perceptions of Mass Collections
Affect Political Attitudes (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
221
See Lippmann, Public Opinion.
In the beginning of his Public Opinion, Lippmann mentioned several Englishmen, Frenchmen, and
Germans who lived in a remote island before the First World War. They got along very well with each other,
and they knew the outside world only through the newspapers brought to the island once per week by a
British ship. The newspaper that carried the break-out of the World War I, however, did not reach the
islanders until six weeks later.
57
which will not be possible without the mass communication. In this definition, the whole
mass media is treated as one thing. If the effects of a single mass medium are studied, the
off-set function of other mass media should be taken into consideration. A fact that is not
reported or "the most accurate, complete, and beautiful presented news report" that "no
one pays any attention" has no effects to the mass society. 223
TheSdcfotv Individual
toflpfnoml
Cttnuiuttttioii ^ \
Ltformation
Procin in
IndWdial'i
Mind
Urn
Cmmtmmimi
Author's note: For individuals, (he woiid bevoimd personal expeiiewex and inleipei sonal
communications is the woifd in the mass couununicatioiK. it k also possible that pait of the woiid in the
mass cflffliniHiicatwus overlaps # h thf mild minteiproonal communications andpmona] experiences.
223
Maxwell McCombs, Edna Einsiedel, and David Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion: Issues and the
News (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991), 6.
58
Researchers have been interested why media agenda, rather than the real-world
indicators, leads the public agenda.224 For example, the issue of drug abuse appeared
more in the media and thus stayed high in the U.S. agenda from 1986 to 1989, while the
long-term trend of the number of drug-related deaths in the U.S. has slowly and linearly
25
declined. One reason is that the public is ignorant of the facts unless they are covered
by the media. Some scholars argue that "to claim that media truly set the agenda, one
driving both audience interest and news coverage, "then it is not meaningful to attribute
the cause to media," and "media would be merely reflecting large real-world
concerns." The argument, however, neglects the possibility that real-world indicators
sometimes drive media coverage, and media coverage leads public opinion, but the public
will be ignorant about the real-world situation without media coverage. For example, if
the media do not cover the rising unemployment rate, although some people may feel it
because it is hard for them to find or switch a job, the unemployment rate will not be a
society-wide issue. Lippmann's story about the islanders is also a good example about the
mass media's mediation function. On the other hand, many studies reported that the mass
7
media create issues by their own and lead the public to solve them.
Everett Rogers, James Dearing, and Dorine Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research,"
Journal of Communication 43 (June 1993): 68-84.
225
Lucig Danielian and Stephen Reese, "A Closer Look at Intermedia Influence on Agenda-Setting: The
Cocaine Issue of 1986," in Communication Campaigns about Drugs: Government, Media and the Public,
ed. P. Shoemaker (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), 47-66.
226
Gerald M. Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," Journal of
Communication 43 (June 1993): 108.
227
For Example, see Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly
News, Newsweek and Time (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979). The study notes that child abuse and wife
59
Agenda-Setting, Priming, and Framing
unconvinced by the limited effects model during its domination. They sought new models
and framing are results of these endeavors. As Everett Rogers and colleagues put it,
"many of the agenda-setting researchers stated that the main justification for their work
was an attempt to overcome the limited-effects findings of past research," and one major
"alternative to the scholarly search for direct media effects on attitude change and overt
Agenda-Setting
agenda-setting theory is inspired and summarized, at least in the early stage, by Bernard
Cohen's statement: "Even though the media may not be very successful at telling us what
opinions to hold, they are often quite influential in telling us what to have opinions
beating existed without social notice until journalists created the news category of Family and began to
report them. See also Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press,
1980). Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980). The study
finds that when a major "crime wave" hit the media in New York City, the statistics of the crime had
actually already decreased. The intensive media coverage of the media-produced "crime wave" made the
mayor, the state legislature, and the local communities act in a responding manner, and spread a nationwide
fear of this type of crime.
2
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
2
Rogers , Dearing, and Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research," p. 73.
230
Scheufele and Tewksbury, "Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Priming," 10.
60
r
yi i
popularity of the theory is partly due to academia's dissatisfaction with the dominant
limited effects model. The "initial empirical exploration" of the theory "was fortuitously
timed," and " [i]t came at that time in the history of mass communication research when
disenchantment both with attitudes and opinions as dependent variables, and with the
important effect of the media, which "seemed to override selective exposure, perception,
and retention—forces that contribute to reinforcement rather than change of attitudes and
As the founders of the agenda-setting theory, McCombs and Shaw, have noted,
literature in this area is steadily increasing, and the theory continuously generates new
In the first phase, the basic agenda-setting hypothesis was proposed, which predicts
231
Bernard Cohen, The Press andforeign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 12.
232
Maxwell McCombs, 'The Agenda-Setting approach," in Handbook of Political Communication, Ed. D.
Nimmo and K. R. Sanders (Newbur Park, CA: Sage, 1981), 121. See also Kosicki, "Problems and
Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research." Kosicki noted that, for much of the 20 century, the American
media research concentrated on media effects, trying to detect "some form of attitude change, or
persuasion" (p. 103). However, "decades of research into persuasive effect on attitudes and behaviors had
left many scholars frustrated. Attitudes were not clearly connected to behavior, and media were not clearly
and consistently connected to either" (p. 103). One reason that agenda-setting became popular is that, by
emphasizing media's function of not telling voters what to think but what it think about, it "clearly rejected
persuasion as the central organization paradigm" (p. 103).
2
McCombs, Einsiedel, and Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion, 14.
234
Maxwell E McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five
Years in the Marketplace ofIdeas," Journal of Communication 43 (June 1993): 58-67.
235
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research."
61
that the media agenda leads the public agenda.236 In the second phase, Shaw and
McCombs began to explore the contingent conditions that influence the media
cannot only reinforce pre-existing beliefs, but also can make long-term attitude changes
among those who have a high need for orientation about politics.238
In the third phase, Weaver, Graber, McCombs, and Eyal extended the idea of agenda
to attributes, i.e., candidate characteristics and all perspectives of politics, initiating the
focused on the source of the media agenda. Synthesizing the vast literature on the media
that media routines, organizational sociology, ideology, issue interest groups, news
sources, and journalists' individual differences all influence journalists' daily construction
of news agenda. The intermedia agenda-setting and gatekeeper research, for them, also
236
McCombs and Shaw, "The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media."
2 7
Donald Shaw and Maxwell McCombs, The Emergence of American Political Issues: The
Agenda-Setting Function of The Press (St. Paul, MN: West, 1977); David Swanson, "Feeling the Elephant:
Some Observations on Agenda-Setting Research," in Communication Yearbook 11, ed. J. Anderson
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988), 603-619.
238
David Weaver, Maxwell McCombs, and Charles Spellman, "Watergate and the Media: A Case Study of
Agenda-Setting," American Politics Quarterly 3 (October 1975): 458-472, 471.
239
David Weaver, Doris Graber, Maxwell McCombs, and Chaim Eyal, Media Agenda Setting in a
Presidential Elections: Issues, Images and Interest (New York: Praeger, 1981). While the first level of
agenda setting studies how media's emphasis on different objects influence audience's perception of these
objects' importance, the second level of agenda setting explores how media's portrayal of different
attributes of one object leads in audience's perceived importance in these attributes.
240
Pamela Shoemaker and Stephen Reese, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influence on Mass Media
Content (New York: Longman, 1991).
62
answers the question about who sets the media agenda.
dimension.242 Under the umbrella of agenda-setting process, they believe, there are three
Media agenda setting includes studies that use media news agenda as the dependent
variable, and look at what factors influence news media's agenda. Fifteen of the 223
articles that they reviewed (from 1922 to 1992) are in this category. Public agenda setting
includes studies that use public agenda as the dependent variable, exploring how media
coverage influences the public's perception of the issue importance. They coded 131
articles into this category. Policy agenda setting includes studies that use the political
officials, as the dependent variables. They find 65 articles in this category.243 The three
subareas consist of what is considered the agenda-setting process. Kosicki argues that
they need to be dealt with at the same time, "reflecting the view that each part of the
process is incomplete and somewhat unsatisfying by itself, but by combining all the three
perspectives, the field can come closer to what a solid contemporary model of media
influence ought to be." The combined model helps "researchers and students see
41
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research"; Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman,
The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
42
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
43
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, 'The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
44
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 101.
63
tradition of public agenda setting is closely defined as a specific research design, the
combination of mass media content analysis and public opinion surveys.245 The content
analysis examines how the media coverage provides the public "with significant cues
about what are the important issues of the day," which can be found from the pattern of
how the media choose some topics for the daily news report and reject others, how they
select some stories for prominent headlines, display on the front page or the lead of a
newscast, and how they bury others deep in the news report.246 This media agenda, the
which the statement was mentioned in the messages."247 In the public opinion survey, the
the most important problem facing the U.S. today?"248 The agenda-setting theory
basically holds that "[i]n any event, issues prominent on the news agenda are perceived
by the public to be important, and, over time, frequently become the priority issues on the
public agenda."249
245
Rogers, Dealing, and Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
249
McCombs, Einsiedel, and Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion, 7. See also McCombs and Shaw,
"The Agenda-Setting Function of the Mass Media." In this founding study of agenda-setting, the authors
declare: "Readers lean not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue
from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying
during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues—that is, the media may set the
'agenda' of the campaign" (p. 176). For the latest discussion see McCombs and Reynolds, "News Influence
64
The essence of the variables in classic agenda-setting is salience, salience of issues,
overall salience of politics, and the salience of particular perspectives on the topics of the
day.250 Most agenda-setting studies have operationalized salience as "the importance that
media and audience accord to an event, and the causal relationship that exists between
media and audience judgments about that importance."251 For agenda-setting research,
the importance or salience of public issues "seems to be the heart of the enterprise."252
The importance is measured with the hierarchy, or rank, of the issues, and agenda-setting
holds that the hierarchy of the issues in the media has influence on the hierarchy of the
issues in public opinion.253 The hierarchy is usually built by looking at the "the amount of
space or time devoted to particular issues" by the media and either "the amount of
attention people pay to issues" or "their judgments of the issues' importance," namely,
their rank-ordered list of issues or the rise and fall of their perceived importance of a
single issue.254 By reviewing thirty studies, essays, and reviews about agenda-setting,
on Our Pictures of the World." In this book chapter McCombs and Reynolds state: "after decades of
exploring the cognitive, long-term implications of daily journalism, researchers have discovered that media
audiences not only learn factual information from exposure to news, but that people also learn about the
importance of topics in the news based on how the news media emphasize those topics" (p. 2).
250
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the
Marketplace of Ideas."
51
Edelstein, "Thinking about the Criterion Variable in Agenda-Setting Research," 85.
252
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research."
Tamir Sheafer and Gabriel Weimann, "Agenda Building, Agenda Setting, Priming, Individual voting
Intentions, and the Aggregate Results: An Analysis of Four Israel elections," Journal of Communication 55
(summer 2005): 347-365.
254
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 105. See also Shanto Iyengar and
Donald R. Kinder, News That Matters (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). They
conducted a famous study to test the agenda-setting hypothesis: "those problems that receive prominent
attention on the national news become the problems the viewing public regards as the nation's most
important" (p. 16). In those studies, the perception of importance was measured by both the rank of
importance of a particular issue and the proportion of respondents rank a particular issue as important.
65
Edelstein finds that the most accepted criterion variable is salience discrimination.
However, he also finds that some later studies substituted the perceived importance as
attention, awareness, and concern.255 This leads to Becker's complaint that the
variable (the presumed cause in the hypothesis) or of the criterion, or audience response
variable,"256 and that agenda-setting research has cared about "whether an agenda-setting
effect was produced rather than how well the measures actually indexed the concept of
interest."257
In addition to the traditional variables, media agenda and public agenda, McCombs
and Reynolds identify another variable based on previous research: political agenda.
They cite several studies showing that political elites can influence the media agenda.
One study shows that President Nixon's 1970 State of the Union address set the agenda
for the subsequent media coverage of 15 issues. No evidence suggests that the president
was influenced by the media. Another study finds that, in a 20-year period, nearly half of
the stories in The New York Times and the Washington Post "were substantially based on
In the second-level agenda-setting, media agenda and public agenda are no longer
conceptualized as the salience of issues, but rather they are the attributes of an issue.
66
Second-level agenda-setting explores "audience responses to specific aspects of media
global or topical measures of media content (e.g. news on the front page or news about
news media."260 In the case of political elections, McCombs and Reynolds explain, "[t]he
slate of candidates vying for an office are the agenda of objects," whereas "[t]he
description of each candidate in the news media and the images of the candidates in
several moderator variables in the media agenda-setting process.26 The vividness of the
news stories (whether stories illustrate and personalize the national issues) was not found
to have an influence on the agenda-setting process, which the researchers speculate might
prominence of the news stories (whether the news stories appear at the top of the
prominence is taken into account, "it is hard to find any effects due to news stories that
appear elsewhere." Iyengar and Kinder thus conclude that "virtually all of the change in
the public's concern over energy, inflation, and unemployment that is produced by
R. Hofstetter, Bias in the News (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1976).
0
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research," 61.
1
McCombs and Reynolds, "News Influence on Our Pictures of the World," 10.
2
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 16.
67
alterations in television coverage can be traced to lead story coverage."263 They also find
that people take a problem as more important if they have encountered such problem in
their everyday life, "conferring social reinforcement and political legitimacy on the
its criticism. The foremost criticism is that the theory refrains from exploring the media
content and predicting the direction of the public opinion. Edelstein points out that the
propose that it is not enough to examine only the times focal objects were displayed.
Instead, the diversity and the content of the media as agenda-setters should also be
studied.266 Lang and Lang also point out that the measurement of agenda-setting research
informedness, and concern, and cover the cognitive structuring of the issues that would
be actively transferred to the audience.267 This criticism was echoed by other scholars,
who hold that a more adequate conceptualization and measurement for agenda-setting
68
research should include a set of content indicators.268 Swanson and Weiss argue that the
issues topics in agenda-setting research have so little information about content that it is
difficult to make a thorough inquiry into the controversial issues covered by media.269
Agenda-setting, he speculates, was proposed at the time when academia was dissatisfied
with attitude research, "and thus specifically rejects attitude research in favor of a more
called for a higher order of cognitive analysis and a recognition that problems as well as
Partly responding to this criticism, McCombs and Shaw try to merge their
second-level agenda-setting with framing effects studies, and argue that "[n]ew research
exploring the consequences of agenda setting and media framing suggest that the media
not only tell us what to think about, but also how to think about it, and, consequently,
what to think."272 This argument initiates another hot debate, which will be discussed
268
Jack McLeod, Lee. B. Becker, and James E. Byrnes, "Another Look at the Agenda-Setting function of
the Press," Communication Research 1 (April 1974): 131-166; James P. Winter, "Contingent Conditions in
the Agenda-Setting Process," in Mass Communication Review Yearbook 2, ed. G. C. Wilhoit and H.
DeBock (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1981), 235-244.
69
Secondly, critics, some of whom are actually agenda-setting researchers, also
believe that the variables of agenda-setting research are not well conceptualized and
operationalized. Becker, for example, proposes that the variables must be equivalently
and operationalize media agenda as the frequency, while the audience agenda is
agenda-setting study results unclear. For example, while most agenda-setting research
reports try to describe the active and constructive process of agenda-setting, they usually
74
just study the static situation of the issue agenda.
Another criticism focuses on whether enough evidence has been collected to support
the causality between the media agenda and the public agenda.275 Kosicki points out that
many agenda-setting studies use cross-section designs, and "causal direction must remain
an open question for now, at least in terms of most survey studies." He even finds
some studies showing that media agenda responds to public agenda on issues such as cost
77
of living, energy, dissatisfaction with government, and some local issues such as
273
Becker, "The Mass Media and Citizen Assessment of Issue Importance."
274
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research."
275
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research."
276
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 106.
277
David Pearce Demers, Dennis Craff, Yang-Ho. Choi, and Beth M. Pessin, "Issue Obtrusiveness and the
Agenda-Setting Effects of National Network News," Communication Research 16 (December 1989):
793-812.
70
education, economic development, crime, local government, and public recreation.
Priming
extensive experimental studies of agenda-setting, which holds that media coverage will
prime an issue and put it as a criterion for the public to evaluate the president's overall
performance.279 In the early 1980s, Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder conducted
fourteen experiments at New Haven, Connecticut and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In those
experiments, participants are exposed to television news that were edited by the
researchers and that emphasize issues such as defense, environment, inflation, and
agriculture. The control groups were exposed to television news stories that address other
issues. The researchers compared the perception of the importance of these issues and
post-evaluation of the incumbent president in the experiment groups and the control
groups after the participants viewed the news. The initial goal of this group of
experiments was also to break the limited effects model, and "to establish that television
news is in fact an educator virtually without peer, that it shapes the American public's
conception of political life in pervasive ways; that television news is news that
Kim A. Smith, "Newspaper Coverage and Public Concern about Community Issues," Journalism
Monographs 101 (1987).
279
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters; Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible: How Television
Frames Political Issues (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1991). See also Joanne M. Miller
and Jon A. Krosnick, "News Media Impact on the Ingredients of Presidential Evaluations: Politically
Knowledgeable Citizens Are Guided by a Trusted Source," American Journal of Political Science 44 (April
2000): 301-315. They synthesized that "since its inception, the notion of news media priming has been
described explicitly in these terms: news coverage of an issue presumably makes information about it
particularly available in people's memories. As a consequence, this information presumably comes to mind
automatically when people search for criteria with which to evaluate the President" (p. 302).
71
agenda-setting process.
In their group experiments, after gaining supporting evidence for the agenda-setting
hypothesis that television news powerfully influences the problems viewers regarded as
the nation's most serious, Iyengar and Kinder further analyze the data and find that when
a particular problem was covered more by the television, the more heavily viewers
weight their ratings of the president's performance on that problem. They name it priming,
and define it as "[b]y calling attention to some matters while ignoring others, television
news influences the standards by which governments, presidents, policies, and candidates
for public office are judged." 282 In the tests of the priming hypothesis, while the
independent variables are viewing the news stories about the issues or not, the dependent
variables are how much the participants weight the viewed issue in their overall
evaluation of the president. Iyengar and Kinder argue that priming effects happen because
"problems covered by television news become more accessible and therefore more
presidential contender, Iyengar and Kinder argue, citizens do not take into account all that
they know. What they do consider is those issues that come to mind and become
accessible. When television news emphasizes some issues in national life and makes
280
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 1-2.
281
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters. See also Scheufele and Tewksbury, "Framing, Agenda-Setting,
and Priming"; Sheafer and Weimann, "Agenda Building, Agenda Setting, Priming, Individual Voting
Intentions, and the Aggregate Results."
282
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 63.
283
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 70.
284
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters.
72
these issues as important in the audience' minds, they also set the standard "by which
Priming effects also have some moderating factors. Iyengar and Kinder find that
whether the news stories attribute the issue responsibility to the president has influence
on the. The more the news stories interpret the events as though they were the results of
the president's actions, the more influential these stories will be in priming the public's
assessment of the president's performance.286 When the issues are new to the public,
priming effects also tend to be stronger. Priming effects can be triggered by both good
787
Connecting priming with behaviors. Although Iyengar and Kinder notice that media
emphasis on some issues not only changes the standard by which viewers evaluate the
president (priming effects), but also changes viewers' evaluation of the presidents'
competence and integrity. Following the agenda-setting research rationale, they still avoid
exploring the persuasion function of the media, because they believe that "political
pervasive." Based on the measure of attitude change used by the Columbia School,
Iyengar and Kinder note that, if they had tried to find evidence to support the hypothesis
pro-life advocates," they strongly suspect that they would have found no more evidence
73
than what the Columbia scholars found. "As a general matter," they write, "the power of
Sheafer and Weimann extend the priming research to electoral behavior.290 They
provide two reasons for their extension. First, previous research suggests a high positive
correlation between evaluation of the presidents and voting for or against them. Second,
different political parties own different issues (for example, the Republicans own crime
and foreign affairs and the Democrats own the issue of poverty). When the issues of a
political party are emphasized, that party will be inevitably helped in election. Sheafer
and Weimann also mentioned several priming studies that found that media salience has
influence on individuals' voting intention. The study also provides some evidence to
support the hypothesis that priming effects also influence voting decisions.291
When psychologists study priming effects, they also tend to use behaviors or
people's memories (i.e., the ease with which it comes to mind), and this is presumed to
92
enhance the impact of the construct on relevant judgments made subsequently." A
74
number of previous studies about media and psychology show that viewing violent
television programs will increase latent aggressive intentions and behaviors, and that
exposure to music videos that portray stereotypical images of men and women leads
people to have more stereotypical impressions of men and women. After a synthesis
review of these studies, Roskos-Ewoldsen and colleagues define priming as "the effect of
some preceding stimulus or event on how we react, broadly defined, to some subsequent
stimulus," and media priming as "the effects of the content of the media on people's later
behavior or judgments related to the content."294 This definition formally put behavior as
Framing
Among the three media effects theories discussed here, framing is probably the most
popular one. An analysis of 4067 articles that have been cited by articles in the
Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly from 2001 to 2003 shows that the most
cited works are those about framing. Framing research includes three basic questions:
293
David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen, Beverly Roskos-Ewoldsen, and Francesca R. Dillman Carpentier, "Media
Priming: A Synthesis," in Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, 2 n ed. ed. J. Bryant and D.
Zillmann (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 97-120.
294
Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen, and Carpentier, "Media Priming," 97.
295
David Weaver, "Thoughts on Agenda-Setting, Framing, and Priming," Journal of Communication 57
(March 2007): 142-147.
296
Tsan-Kuo Chang and Zixue Tai, "Mass Communication Research and the Invisible College Revisited:
The Changing Landscape and Emerging Fronts in Journalism-Related Studies", Journalism and Mass
Communication Quarterly 82 (autumn 2005), 672-694. The three most cited works are, in order: Gans,
Deciding What's News; Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Media in the Making and Unmaking of
the New Left (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980); Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study
in the Construction of Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978). Other most cited works about framing
include: Robert M. Entman, "Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm," Journal of
Communication 43 (December 1993): 51-58; Shoemaker and Reese, Mediating the Message; Iyengar, Is
Anyone Responsible?; and Zhongdang Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki, "Framing Analysis: An Approach to
News Discourse," Political Communication 19 (1993): 55-76.
75
(1) How news media set frames for their audiences; (2) How political elites and
established social groups influence the formation of media's frames; and (3) How the
public as audience consume the media frames.297 The majority of framing research pieces
generally focuses on how to make sense of the news stories and the reality, which is the
the process of making sense of the news stories. This approach may be more suitably
called "frame studies," although the most important work in this approach actually
Erving Goffman is probably the first person to attract much academic attention to
the term "framing."299 His framing, however, can be traced back to William James's
that "it is in Bateson's paper that the term 'frame' was proposed in roughly the sense in
7
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis."
298
Erving Goffman, Framing Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Boston, MA:
Northeastern University Press, 1974/1986).
299
Scheufele and Tewksbury, "Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Priming."
300
See Goffman, Framing Analysis. According to Goffman, the "world" is not the world but "a particular
person's current world—and, in fact, as will be argued, not even that" (p. 3). William James argues that the
world is real because of our sense of realness, which is essentially our selective attention to some
subworlds such as "the world of the senses, the world of scientific objects, the world of abstract
philosophical truths, the worlds of myth and supernatural beliefs, the madman's world, etc." (p. 2).
Following James' argument, Alfred Schutz noted that "we experience a special kind of 'shock' when
suddenly thrust from one 'world,' say, that of dreams, to another, such as that of the theater" (p.4).
301
Also see Goffman, Framing Analysis. The "framing" is close to James' "world." Following the
James-Schutz line of thought, Gregory Bateson argues that "individuals can intentionally produce framing
confusion in those with whom they are dealing" (p. 7).
76
which I want to employ it."302
Frames are the "basic elements" that are used to define a "situation." People live in
different situations that are often created by their societies, but they themselves do not
create these situations. Normally, "all they do is to assess correctly what the situation
ought to be for them and then act accordingly."303 Some of the frames are primary,
framework "is one that is seen as rendering what would otherwise be a meaningless
description, some of the primary frames "are neatly presentable as a system of entities,
postulates, and rules," but most others "appear to have no apparent articulated shape,
formation, "each primary framework allows its user to locate, perceive, identify, and label
a seemingly infinite number of concrete occurrences defined in its terms." Users are
very unlikely to be aware of the existence of these frames, but they can unconsciously use
Goffman also divides primary frames into two categories: natural and social. Natural
302
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 7.
03
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 11.
304
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 21.
77
physical'," and are often found in the areas such as physical and biological sciences.
incorporate the will, aim, and controlling effort of an intelligence, a live agency, the chief
one being the human being."308 It usually involves motive and intent. "In sum," Goffman
writes, "we tend to perceive events in terms of primary frameworks, and the type of
In any given society or social group, its primary frameworks "constitute a central element
of its culture,"310 and "it seems that we can hardly glance at anything without applying a
Due to various reasons, errors can happen when frames are transferred from
examples: In one, a bilingual listener hears a sound from his bilingual friend and he takes
it as the English number "nine," whereas actually his friend expressed a negation in
German. In another one, an old lady climbs down from a stalled cable car and begins to
give artificial respiration to a person, who is lying face down on the street with traffic
backed up for blocks. The person, however, swivels his head and says that he is trying to
78
Although Herbert Gans mentioned Goffman only once in his book Deciding What is
News, Gans work is a vivid example of media framing.314 Based on his field
observation of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time, Gans finds
that, like newspapers, the television news programs and the news magazines are also
structured in order of importance, with the most important stories as the lead. The
importance is judged by the journalists. The most conspicuous news of all the news
stories, Gans says, "are nation and society—their persistence, cohesion, and the conflicts
and divisions threatening their cohesion," and even local issues are "'nationalized' by the
news."315 Journalists, Gans finds, are always organizing and interpreting news stories.
The civil-rights marches and the ghetto disturbances, for instance, were generalized and
symbolized into black-white relations, while women's liberation was news about the
sexes. The Cities and the Urban Crisis were other news categories316 produced in the
sixties. The combination of hippies, the anti-war protesters, the increasing use of
marijuana, and changing sexual practices among the young created a news category of
Youth, "while campus protests nationalized the University." Child abuse and wife beating
did not receive media coverage until they were related to the maintenance of the Family.
Similarly, "a wide variety of once unrelated stories are now connected" since the creation
79
of the news category of Environment. When journalists find that some facts do not fit
their frames or the social norms, they tend to bury the stories.
For Gans, news stories "contains values, or preference statements," which in turn
make it possible to suggest that there is, underlying the news, a picture of nation and
society as it ought to be." 319 Although journalists try hard to be objective, neither they nor
the audience can "proceed without values," and "reality judgments are never altogether
divorced from values." For example, Gans says, one can find from journalists'
coverage that those journalists think that the presidents and other leading public officials
represent the nation; otherwise, the journalists would query this point. Some of the values
go with news categories, others go with "the ways actors and activities are described, the
tones in which stories are written, told, or filmed, and the connotations that accrue to
commonly used nouns and adjectives, especially if neutral terms are available but not
used."321 The audience can easily find the values when reporters say that controversial
Black Panther Party leader "Stokely Carmichael had 'turned up' somewhere, a phrase
which carries a very negative meaning, while the president had, on the same day,
'arrived' somewhere else," or that "a city was 'plagued by labor problems'." The ways
17
Gans, Deciding What's News, 19.
318
Gans gives an example. Media coverage of the July 4, 1976, Bicentennial ceremonies of the U.S. was a
great indicator of the "symbolic complex" that "the nation remains a unit" (p. 20). Normally, objective
media outlets explicitly and enthusiastically expressed their patriotism that day. Only after four days The
New York Times carried a story headlined "Few Blacks Inspired by Bicentennial," and it placed the stories
on page 62, "amidst the shipping and weather news of the day" (p. 21).
319
Gans, Deciding What's News, 39.
320
Gans, Deciding What's News, 39.
1
Gans, Deciding What's News, 42.
80
that news stories show their values is similar to Goffman's "framing."323
Another field study conducted in news organizations finds that journalists use
themes "to sort through and to select a few stories from the masses of copy they receive
each day."324 Journalists share their senses of the themes within the community of media
organizations, and those "who are not yet reporting a theme learn to use it by watching
their competition."325 When the journalists who first report a theme see others begin to
use it, they obtain confirmation of their creation of the original theme. How news stories
are categorized influences people's consequential behavior because "[n]ews organizes our
perception of a world outside our firsthand experience" and "the media construct
Gamson and Modigliani developed a "signature matrix" to analyze the frames in the
news coverage. Frame, "a central organizing idea," is at the core of the "interpretative
packages," "making sense of relevant events, suggesting what is at issue."328 All events
are interpreted and attributed meanings with "interpretative packages" that "catalog the
metaphors, catchphrases, visual images, normal appeals, and other symbolic devices."
When individuals encounter these interpretative packages, they "bring their own life
322
Gans, Deciding What's News, 41.
81
constructing meaning; they approach an issue with some anticipatory schema, albeit
sometimes with a very tentative one." 329 In news coverage, frames can be suggested by
eight signature elements, i.e., five framing devices and three reasoning devices. The five
framing devices are "(1) metaphors, (2) exemplars (i.e., historical examples from which
lessons are drawn), (3) catchphrases, (4) depictions, and (5) visual images (e.g.,
icons)."330 The three reasoning devices are "(1) roots (i.e., a causal analysis), (2)
consequences (i.e., particular type of effects), and (3) appeals to principle (i.e., a set of
moral claims)."331
which was later extended to political science studies.333 This approach focuses more on
how the frames from the communicators influence the message receiver's consequent
that, when the problems are framed in different ways, experiment participants make
significantly different decisions. The most famous in their following studies is the one
Gamson and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power," 2.
330
Gamson and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power," 3.
331
Gamson and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power," 3-4.
332
For example, see Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology
of Choice," Science 211 (Jan 30, 1981): 453-458. See also Daniel Kahneman and Amos. Tversky, "Choice,
Values, and Frames," American Psychologist, 39 (1984): 341-350.
333
For example, see Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? James N. Druckman, "On the Limits of Framing
Effects: Who Can Frame?" The Journal of Politics 63 (November 2001): 1041-1066.
82
about a hypothesized disease that would kill 600 people. In the first stage of the
experiment, participants were exposed to Program A, which the participants were told
would surely save 200 people, and Program B, which would have a one-third probability
of saving all 600 people but a two-third probability of saving none. Seventy-two percent
of the participants chose Program A, while 28% chose Program B. In the next stage,
participants were exposed to Program C, whose adoption would leave 400 killed, and
Program D, whose adoption would have a one-third probability to leave nobody killed
but a two-third probability to leave all 600 killed. Twenty-two percent participants chose
Program C and 78% chose D. 335 Their experiments set the foundation of framing effects
audience."336
Iyengar, from the perspective of political science studies, introduced the media as a
"episodic frames" (frames that depict concrete events that illustrate issues) and "thematic
frames" (frames that present collective or general evidence). While episodic reports tend
to provide on-the-scene coverage and is often visually gripping, thematic stories usually
require more background materials and in-depth and interpretative analysis. His study
finds that frame has influence on the audience's attribution of both causal responsibility
Tversky and Kahneman, "The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice."
83
("the creation of problems or situations") and treatment responsibilities ("the resolution
responsibility to government and society," whereas episodic reports have "the opposite
James Druckman and associates have also done a series of studies to examine
framing effects and its moderating factors.340 They adopt the definition that "a framing
effect occurs when two 'logically equivalent (but not transparently equivalent) statements
of a problem lead decision makers to choose different options'." 341 They follow the
when constructing their opinions."342 Their studies generally support the hypothesis that
political elites' choice of frames influences public opinion. For instance, "citizens'
opinions about a Ku Klux Klan rally may depend on whether elites frame it as a free
84
Framing research in mass communication studies. Media researchers integrated
these two basic approaches, frame studies and framing effects studies, into media framing
studies. Yet the body of literature on framing in different disciplines is so massive that
few media studies can cover all of them and obtain a clear global picture about the
fundamental concept, frame, has not been reached. In one issue of Journal of
Communication, Weaver finds that researchers use the term of "frame" to refer to
Consistent with the sociologists, media researchers believe that the function of
framing is largely shown in their initial definition of an issue. Through their work ways,
norms, and rules of thumb, journalists "actively construct news out of the available raw
materials" rather than "merely mirror the reality," and journalists' construction of the
meaning of an issue helps the audience to understand that particular issue.346 One of the
and to package it for efficient relay to their audiences."347 The media, Hall and colleagues
85
point out, are the "primary definers" and set "the limit for all subsequent discussion by
framing what the problems is." 348 Hall and colleagues also point out that the journalists'
definition of problems usually reproduce those "who have power" due to their social and
economic positions.349 Different journalists viewing the world with different frameworks,
and "even the actual physical event of the Senate hearing (which might be called the
criterion event) is reported by two reporters in two different perceptual frameworks and
that the two men bring to the 'story' different sets of experiences, attitudes and
expectations."350
of "media frame." Todd Gitlin, for example, describes media frames as "professional
visual."351 Pan and Kosicki conceptualize frames into four framing devices: syntactical
structure (the wording patterns, i.e., what is in the headline, lead, background and
closure?), script structure (activity sequences), thematic structure (the story presents a
hypothesis and attribute causal responsibility), and rhetorical structure (stylistic choice
Stuart Hall, Charles Crither, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke, and Brain Robert, Policing the Crisis:
Mugging, the State, and Law and Order (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1978), 59.
Hall, Crither, Jefferson, Clarke, and Robert, Policing the Crisis, 57.
350
David Manning White, "The 'Gate Keeper': A Case Study in the Selection of News," Journalism
Quarterly 27 (fall 1950): 383-390, 384. Note in the parenthesis is original. The conclusion of this case
study of a wire editor shows "how highly subjective, how reliant upon value-judgment based on die
'gate-keeper's' own set of experiences, attitudes and expectations the communication of'news' really is" (p.
86).
351
Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching, 7'. Although he teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism at
Columbia University, he actually is a sociologist.
86
and word or image choosing). In the process of communication, the four dimensions
organize a whole frame in the stories, which at last aim to bring some policy options in
among framing researchers to narrow frame as selection. Pan and Kosicki believe that
Entman provides a most oft-cited definition: "To frame is to select some aspects of a
perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as
and/or treatment recommendation for the item described."355 Perhaps it is this inclination
that helps to raise the dispute about framing and second-level agenda-setting.356
research, which includes four processes. In the first process, frame building, elites,
influence their building of the media frame. In the second process, frame setting, media
frames lead audiences' individual frames. In the third process, individual-level effect of
352
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing analysis."
353
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing analysis."
354
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing analysis," 57.
355
Entman "Framing," 52. Emphases are original.
356
We will discuss the dispute in the next section.
357
Dietram A. Scheufele, "Framing as a Theory of Media Effects," Journal of Communication 49 (March 1999):
103-122.
87
framing, audiences' individual frames influence their relevant attitude. In the fourth
and social ideology, influences the formation of media frames. Many data-driven studies
have also tested the process model, especially the framing setting process. Price,
Tewksbury, and Powers find that different frames (human interest, conflict, personal
story about reduction of university funding) subtly affected audience decision making
about public policy issues. Shen and colleagues conducted a series of studies, in which
they find media frames have significant influence on the experiment participants' issue
perception and consequent attitudes toward stem cells, the environment,359 and
welfare.360 There are also studies that do not support the hypotheses in the process model.
A study about media framing of religion in China finds that media frames have influence
on audiences' individual framing of religion, but not on their attitude toward religion.361
A study about the media coverage of Afghanistan shows that the frames in the media
coverage have no relationship with the frames of the war in the public's mind.362 Another
Vincent Price, David Tewksbury, and Elizabeth Powers, "Switching Trains of Thought: The Impact of
News Frames on Reader's Cognitive Responses," Communication Research 24 (October 1997): 481-506.
359
Fuyuan Shen, "Effects of News Frames and Schemas on Individuals' Issue Interpretations and
Attitudes," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 81 (summer 2004): 400-416.
360
Fuyuan Shen and Heidi Hatfield Edwards, "Economic Individualism, Humanitarianism, and Welfare
Reform: A Value-Based Account of Framing Effects," Journal of Communication 55 (December 2005):
795-809.
361
Qingjiang Yao, "China's Official Framing of Religion and Its Influence on Young Chinese Students: A
Partial Testing of the Process Model of Framing in a Special Media Environment," Asian Journal of
Communication 17 (December 2007): 416-432.
88
study finds that frames on issues from interest groups, such as the Sierra Club in terms of
environmental issues, are associated with the frames of these issues in the media.363
which the agendas become a set of sub-objects or attributes of a single object. In both
levels, "[a]genda setting is a theory about the transfer of salience, both the salience of
objects and the salience of their attributes."364 In so doing, they find great overlap
between research of agenda-setting and framing. "Both the selection of objects for
attention and the selection of frames for thinking about these objects," they argue, "are
agenda-setting and framing are not identical, they still believe they are very similar.366
Both "focus on how objects are depicted in the media rather than which objects are more
frequently covered by the media," "focus on the most salient aspect of an object," and
"are concerned with ways of thinking rather objects of thinking."367 The only difference
for them is that second-level agenda-setting studies how media coverage influences the
audience while framing research concentrates on "how media cover and present various
362
Jill A. Edy and Patrick C. Meirick, "Wanted, Dead or Alive: Media Frames, Frame Adoption, and
Support for the War in Afghanistan," Journal of Communication 57 (2007): 119-141.
363
Bryan H. Reber and Bruce K. Berger, "Framing Analysis of Activist Rhetoric: How the Sierra Club
Succeeds or Fails at creating Salient Messages," Public Relations Review 31 (2005): 185-195.
364
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research," 62.
365
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research," 62.
3
David Weaver, Maxwell McCombs, and Donald Shaw, "Agenda-Setting Research: Issues, Attributes,
and Influences," in Handbook of Political Communication Research, ed. L. L. Kaid (Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004), 257-282.
367
Weaver, McCombs, and Shaw, "Agenda-Setting Research," 264.
89
subjects." Some agenda-setting researchers still believe that the second level of
This argument, however, is not accepted by framing researchers. Pan and Kosicki
acknowledge that framing research "shares with agenda-setting research a focus on the
public policy issues in the news and in voter's minds." However, they hold that framing
research, framing research "pays close attention to the systematic study of political
language," which is often ignored or only dealt with in a highly abstract manner" in
-5-7 1
agenda-setting studies.
Pan and Kosicki propose four dimension of framing devices that the media use to
vary their frames, but only the syntactical dimension is "truly structural in that its
often used in agenda-setting research. Kosicki also points out that, while framing focuses
attention to the language and the "definition of the issue under consideration,"
agenda-setting "tends to take issues as givens." Frames, for him, are "a type of schema,
368
Weaver, McCombs, and Shaw, "Agenda-Setting Research," 264.
369
Stephanie Craft and Wayne Wanta, "U.S. Public Concerns in the Aftermath of 9-11: A Test of Second
Level Agenda-Setting," International Journal of Public Opinion Research 16 (winter 2003): 456-463, 456.
370
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis," 70.
371
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis," 70.
372
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis," 63.
373
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 113.
90
"accommodate new information into our existing frames." He holds that "agenda
setting is one small part of a larger process of understanding the very complex
policy-making," and priming and framing are not its extensions.375 Edy and Meirick
argue that framing and agenda-setting measure different dependent variables. While
agenda-setting research measures effects "by seeing how closely the media agenda
matches the public agenda," framing research "measures frame adoption indirectly by
observing how exposure to a media frame shifts public opinion on a relevant policy
issue."376
Sorting out the differences. It is easy to differentiate framing research from the
basic agenda-setting research, because most of the time, the subject of framing research is
one issue, while the basic agenda-setting research examines the media ranking of several
issues and the influence of this media ranking. It is not easy to differentiate framing
research from second-level agenda-setting, which also focuses attention to the ranking of
the attributes of one issue. However, framing and second-level agenda-setting are still
First, contrary to the argument that agenda-setting research has integrated other
media effects theories along its development,377 framing research is actually the basic
assumption for all media effects research, including agenda-setting. Framing research as
91
an assumption of media effects is clearer especially when Goffman's research is taken
into consideration. When agenda-setting hypothesizes that the rank of the objects or
attributes in media coverage influences the rank of the objects or attributes in the
audience's mind, it assumes that journalists and the audience have the same
understanding of the objects or the attributes. Entman proposes that frames have four
locations in the communication process: the communicator, the text, the receiver, and the
culture. Culture "might be defined as the empirically demonstrable set of common frames
exhibited in the discourse and thinking of most people in a social grouping." Usually
when communication take places in the same society or culture, communicators and
receivers will use the same frames to interpret the message. But Goffman's examples of
misframing shows that under certain circumstances the communicator and the message
receivers will have totally different understandings of the fact,37 which they do not take
as the same object or the same attribute. Bernard Cohen, who inspired McCombs to
initiate the agenda-setting research tradition, believes "the world looks different to
mentioned that, if the communicators share the same pre-existing frames, "even a single
unillustrated appearance of a notion in an obscure part of the text can be highly salient."
Otherwise, "an idea emphasized in a text can be difficult for the receivers to notice,
interpret, or remember."381 For example, in White's gate keeper case study, as a message
92
receiver, the wire editor treated news stories that did not share the same frames with him
as "propaganda."382 Here the media (the wire messages) agenda will not lead the agenda
change in this newspaper wire editor as a member of the audience. While framing
analysis considers the process of creating frames and the phenomena of misframing,
agenda-setting research does not. From this perspective, it is fair for Kosicki to say that
agenda-setting (including the second-level) is one small part of the large process of
understanding media effects, functioning only when the communicator and the message
processes, measure different independent variables. While attributes are measured with
the amount of media coverage contributed to a certain aspect of an issue, frames look
more like different ways of constructing the meaning of the issue. Scholars describe
frames as "clusters of messages"384 and "organized symbolic devices that will interact
with individual agents' memory for meaning construction."385 As Weaver has mentioned,
in previous studies, some frames, such as the amount of conflict, "seems to fit the
dictionary definition of an attribute," while other frames, such as "guns deter crime"
and "guns do not kill, people do," seem to "go beyond the commonly held definition of
381
Entman, "Framing," 53.
382
White, "The 'Gate Keeper'," 387.
383
Goffman's concept of misframing may be useful in international mass communication or intercultural
mass communication studies. However, even framing researchers do not pay too much attention to this
concept, largely because most of the mass communication studies focus in one society.
384
Entman, "Framing," 52, 57.
385
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis," 58.
386
Weaver, "Thoughts on Agenda-Setting, Framing, and Priming," 144.
93
attribute." jS/ Until now, second-level agenda-setting researchers, who like to use the
traditional way of the combination of content analysis and public opinion poll, usually
vary their independent variables with the ranking of the coverage amount. Framing
effects researchers, on the other hand, more often vary their independent variables by
changing the frames. The difference in the independent variables of the two theories,
however, is hard to make absolutely clear, largely because "attributes" of an object can be
classified from many perspectives, and even the different ways of constructing meaning
dependent variables. While framing effects research examines the correlation between the
similar frames in media and the audience's mind, second-level agenda-setting research
coverage and public opinion. Both the media and the public agree that an attribute is
important, but this does not mean that both of them agree that the particular attribute is
positive or negative. That is why agenda-setting researchers are aware that "it is likely
that increased salience of an issue will result in more public knowledge and stronger
public opinions, but it is less certain what direction that opinion will take."388 Its
extension, priming, predicts that the media-emphasized issue will be more important for
people to make political evaluations, but it limits itself from predicting what influence the
issue has on the evaluation itself. As Edy and Merrick put it, agenda-setting holds that
387
Weaver, "Thoughts on Agenda-Setting, Framing, and Priming," 145.
388
McCombs, Einsiedel, and Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion, 19. The authors express the same
idea in another place of this book. They write, "In considering this agenda-setting role of the news media, it
is important to note that the influence of newspapers and broadcasters is limited primarily to influencing
the salience of an issue. The play of an issue on the news agenda influences the perceived prominence of an
issue. The play of an issue does not necessarily influence the distribution of opinions on an issue" (p. 9).
94
media influence public opinion "by altering the relative accessibility of considerations in
people's minds." Framing, however, posits that how the media interpret an issue will
The last two differences can be illustrated with two studies on media coverage of
and public opinion about the Afghanistan war. Along the second-level agenda-setting
approach, Craft and Wanta identified and ranked several attributes about the war in media:
air traffic safety, Israel-Palestine Conflict, future terrorist attacks in the U.S., the threat of
biological and chemical warfare, and so on. They then looked at how people ranked their
concerns on these perspectives of the war, and examined the correlation between these
two rankings.390 Edy and Meirick, on the other hand, coded news stories about the war as
having two frames: war frame (framing the dead in the 9-11 tragedy as casualties and the
perpetrators as enemies that "should be killed on the battlefield") and crime frame
(framing the dead as murder victims and the perpetrators as criminals that "should be
tried in a court of law").391 A survey on a national sample asked the respondents if they
would like the perpetrators to be killed in the battlefield (individual war frame) or tried in
court (individual crime frame). The researchers finally looked at the relationship between
38
Edy and Meirick, "Wanted, Dead or Alive," Journal of Communication 57 (2007): 119-141,122.
390
See Craft and Wanta, "U.S. Public Concerns in the Aftermath of 9-11." The spearman's rho between the
rank of the attributes in the local media and the rank of the local survey participants is significant when one
attributes is excluded from the data.
391
Edy and Meirick, "Wanted, Dead or Alive," 123.
392
Their chi-square goodness of fit test shows that the patterns of the two frequencies are significantly
different, suggesting a failure to find the influence of the media frames on the individual frames in this
case.
95
Finding the associations. Although agenda-setting and framing have significant
differences,393 they are also quite similar,394 "interconnected" and "involving some
similar, although not identical, cognitive processes and effects."395 First, both framing
effects research and agenda-setting research study media content's influence on the public.
Some scholars even treat framing effects research as agenda-setting research at the
%
individual level. Second, both theories try to expand themselves to become a model. In
a recent book chapter, McCombs and colleagues have integrated agenda-setting and
priming to organize a media effects model that goes from media content to public
perception to public attitude and opinion. With exploration of the agenda-setters of the
media, the sources of the media influence are further extended to political elites and
social ideology. Framing research has built a similar model, holding that media frames of
issues start from the political elites and organizational norms, and that media frames will
finally lead changes in their attitudes and behaviors.398 The processing and consequences
of information in the two models are almost identical. Third, although the original
definition of "frames" proposed by Goffman is quite different from the term "agenda,"
later explication has made the two terms less easy to be differentiated. Both terms
393
Scheufele and Tewksbury, "Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Priming."
Weaver, McCombs, and Shaw, "Agenda-Setting Research: Issues, Attributes, and Influences.'
395
Weaver, "Thoughts on Agenda-Setting, Framing, And Priming," 142.
396
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
397
McCombs and Reynolds, "News Influence on Our Pictures of the World."
398
Scheufele, "Framing as a Theory of Media Effect."
96
agenda-setting research explores how media's selection of salience of issues and
attributes influence the salience of these issues and attributes in public's mind.399
Framing researchers also declare "framing essentially involves selection and salience,"400
and an important consequence of framing "is that the selected elements become important
audiences," and an increase in salience "enhances the probability that receivers will
perceive the information, discern meaning and thus process it, and store it in memory."402
These definitions and explanations make it difficult to distinguish the two terms by just
looking at them.
Framing research and agenda-setting research can complement each other. Just like
in content analysis exploration of the meaning of the content and the intercoder reliability
are a pair of trade-offs, so are the exploration of the content meaning and the
public concern, agenda-setting studies easily achieve consistent and valid results.
However, as Kosicki criticized, "the notion of agenda may be one of the most flawed in
the agenda-setting model, largely because it tells little about the content of issues."403
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research: Twenty-Five Years in the
Marketplace of Ideas." See also Stuart N. Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada (Vancouver,
Canada: UBC Press, 2002)
400
Entman, "Framing," 52.
401
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis," 57.
402
Entman, "Framing," 53.
97
Meanwhile, while it sounds appropriate to apply the metaphor of agenda on a list of
objects, it sounds odd to apply it to a list of attributes, given that the dictionary definition
of "agenda" is "a list or outline of things to be considered or done." 404 Although it seems
logical to extend the rationale of basic agenda-setting to the second-level, the term of
scholars therefore are calling for a media effects model that integrates agenda-setting,
priming, and framing. They believe that an integrated model will provide a broader and
that it involves too little about textual information, which is at the heart of
communication, even agenda-setting researchers call for "a higher order" model and
propose some concepts to explore the news content.4 Entman argues that one unique
disparate uses, showing how they invariably involve communication, and constructing a
403
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 115.
404
See Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. (1999). Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.
405
Weaver, "Thoughts on Agenda-Setting, Framing, And Priming;" Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis."
406
Scheufele and Tewksbury, "Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Priming."
407
Robert M. Entman, "Framing Bias: Media in the Distribution of Power," Journal oj'Communication 57
(2007): 163-173.
408
Edelstein, "Thinking about the Criterion Variable in Agenda-Setting Research."
98
coherent theory from them." He has also proposed a concept, "bias," to integrate "the
systematic effort to conceptualize and understand their implications for political power."
The "parsimonious integration" of the three theories into one, he argues, has at least two
benefits: first, it advances "understanding of the media's role in distributing power," and
second, it can provide normative guidance for those who produce, consume, and study
the media content.410 Although his analysis of "bias" focuses too much on the interaction
between the White House and the press, the idea of integrating the three media effects
theories is inspiring. Some other scholars also call for a convergence of framing and
agenda-setting research.411
Synthesizing previous research and based on previous analysis in this chapter, the
present author is going to propose a new media effects model, which will be the
theoretical foundation of this study (see Figure 2.2). The model will describe three
media (sources of media effects), the process of media effects (merging agenda-setting,
framing, and other media effects research and analyzing media effects at five levels), and
the process of influencing the public policy (consequences of media effects). First, the
process of media effects will be discussed. Media effects at five levels, attention;
following section.
409
Entman, "Framing," 51.
410
Entman, "Framing Bias," 163.
41
' For a discussion, see Sean Aday, "the Frame Setting Effects of News: An Experimental Test of
Advocacy versus Objectivist Frames," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 83 (winter 2006),
767-784.
99
Five Levels of Media Effects
Some media effect scholars have demonstrated that media effects can be analyzed at
different levels. Johnson-Cartee, for example, argues that media effects can be analyzed
at both the micro level (with the focus on the individual) and the macro level (with the
focus on society). At the micro level, media effects have three sublevels: cognitive effects
("influences on how an individual acts on what is known and felt"). On the macro level,
media effects can reinforce the status quo or serve as catalyst, which has "influences that
textbook provides a model that is a little more complicated.414 In that book, Leckenby
and Wedding suggest that advertising effects can be evaluated at three levels: cognitive
(knowing); affective (feeling); and Conative (doing). Advertising effects linearly go from
the cognitive level to the Conative level. The three levels, however, also contain several
sublevels. The cognitive level, for example, has six sublevels: attention, exposure,
awareness, recognition, comprehension, and recall. The affective level includes attitude
change, liking or disliking, and involvement. The conative level has two sublevels:
intention to buy, and the purchase behavior. It is not easy to differentiate and measure
Karen S. Johnson-Cartee, News Narratives and News Framing: Constructing Political Reality (Lanham,
MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 8.
413
A large body of agenda-setting research shows that at least two sublevels need to be added to the micro
level: attention and perceived importance.
John Leckenby and Nugent Wedding, Advertising Management (Columbus, OH: Grid Publishing,
1982).
100
media effects at so many sublevels.
research, the present researcher proposes five levels to analyze media effects. The five
levels, however, do not just appear in the audience; they can also be used to analyze
media content. Media content at one level usually is more powerful in producing effects
at the same level in the audience. For example, media agenda, compared to other factors,
is a stronger predictor of public agenda, whereas media attitude will strongly lead public
attitude more than media attention or media knowledge (cognitive recognition). In the
media and the audience, strength of media stimulus (from media attention to media
behavior) and media effects (from audience attention to audience behavior) increase from
the level of attention to the level of behavior, generally following a linear track. The five
levels of media effects are so closely interlocked that many times people just treated
(media and audience) attention and (media and audience) agenda. If only one flow of
information exists, such as in the cases of advertising or other uncontroversial topics, the
exist, as in the case of controversial topics, the linear relationship should also be held, but
it will be difficult to observe since two opposite flows of information offset the effects of
101
Figure 2.2 The Integrated Model of Mass Communication Processes
Agenda-setting
Attention f Attention
X i
Perceived importance
Perceived importance (agenda)
(agenda) Individual
Media :-±i--^-- Audience
Cognitive recognition Cognitive recognition
i I Member
Attitudes -i,
LAttitudes
I
Behavior
t 1
• > Behavior
I F r a m i n g effects
Notes: Irfonaaftoa jxocessktg within each subject (Le., the media, or the aadieace) can be analyzed at five levels: attention, ageada, cognitive recogaMoa, atttade,
airi behavior. Media effects thus can be analyzed at five levels. Ageada-settatg research tisnaly studies the first two levels, priming research studies She process
from audience ageada to audience attitude, and framing research studies media effects at the latter three levels.
each other.
In the following part, the five-level model of media effects with support of previous
Attention. Attention is the first level media effects and the starting point for media
effects at other levels. No other levels of media effects will be possible without the
audience's attention to the media message. As Bernard Cohen put it, when the editor is
printing (or producing) something for people to read (or watch or listen), "he is thereby
putting a claim on their attention," which is also "powerfully determining what they will
be thinking about, and talking about (agenda), until the next wave laps their shore."415 In
his Diffusion of Innovation theory, Rogers divided the process of adopting an innovation
into five steps. "The mass media channels," he holds, "are often the most rapid and
innovation, that is, to create awareness-knowledge."416 His first step, knowledge, largely
refers to exposure, although it also covers the meaning of in-depth understanding. With
confirmation (checking the behavioral results). The attention of the media coverage
usually is measured by the amount of the coverage, and the attention of the audience
should be measured with the amount of exposure to the information. Media effects at the
attention level predict that the greater the media coverage of an issue, the more
5
Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy, 13. Bracketed explanation is this author's.
6
Rogers, Diffusion ofInnovations, 18.
103
Perceived importance (agenda). Media messages are always ranked in the order of
importance. In his field observation of CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, Gans
finds that a television "news program is structured like a newspaper," with "the day's
most important story" being the lead and "other important hard news of the day" being
7
filled in the first two sections. For the news magazines, Newsweek and Time, the most
important stories are in the weekly cover story section, followed by the "front of the
book," which includes national and international news sections and a business section.418
The perceived importance in the media is the traditional concept of media agenda that is
studied by the media agenda-setting researchers. Media agenda (the hierarchy of the
importance of the issues) does not equal media attention (the amount of coverage),
although the two are often closely related. Many agenda-setting researchers mistake
media attention with media agenda, which leads to the criticism that agenda-setting
research does not measure media agenda and the public agenda at the same level.419
The perceived importance of the issues in the audience is the traditional dependent
has distinguished audience agenda and audience attention. Their distinction, however, is
not hard to imagine. The amount of attention has been paid to the entertainment
information, for instance, does not necessarily lead to change in the perceived importance
of the objects. Stories from Washington are viewed as more important not because they
417
Gans, Deciding What's News, 3.
18
Gans, Deciding What's News, 4.
419
Becker, "The Mass Media and Citizen Assessment of Issue Importance."
420
The independent variable, as discussed before, is the media agenda, which is usually measured as the
frequency of coverage.
104
are given more space or time, but because they are put in the sections that are perceived
as important.421 Some scholars also seem to be confused about the audience agenda and
audience cognitive knowledge, probably because the word "cognition" is not clearly
defined. McCombs, for example, praised Cohen for making "an important distinction
between what we think about (cognitions) and what we think (opinions or feeling)."422
Kosicki has also mentioned that, eagerly seeking to "break through the domination of the
knowledge (how much the audience knows about the issue) but audience agenda (how
Although media attention and media agenda are different variables, they are
nevertheless closely related. That is why many studies replace media agenda with media
attention but can still find agenda-setting effects. Iyengar and Kinder, for instance, find
substantial agenda-setting effects even though they measure their independent variables
5
with "the sheer quantity of coverage that network news devotes to national problems."
However, when they test whether stories that appear at the top of the broadcast are more
influential in setting the public's agenda than stories that appear later in the newscast,
1
Gans, Deciding What's News.
2
McCombs, Einsiedel, and Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion: Issues and the News, 13.
3
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 103.
4
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 106.
5
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 34.
105
they find a significant lead-story effect. Moreover, once the lead-story effect is taken into
account, it is hard to find any effects due to news stories that appear elsewhere. They thus
conclude that "virtually all of the change in the public's concern over energy, inflation,
lead story coverage."426 The special effectiveness of the lead stories may be due to that,
they speculate, viewers endorse the network's editorial judgment or just that lead stories
The traditional agenda-setting theory holds the media effects at this level.
Cognitive knowledge. In the dictionary, the word "knowledge" has at least two
meanings: the first is "the fact or condition of being aware of something," and the second
is "the range of one's information or understanding." While Rogers probably used the
first meaning in his Diffusion of Innovation theory,428 the second meaning will be used
here. Attention and agenda (importance) are the format for media to transfer information.
Knowledge is the information that the media transfer. Most of the news stories and part of
the opinion pieces in the media convey knowledge, and lead stories usually contain more
information. Although "a good news item, whether in the newspaper or on the television,
The fact that the public perceives some issues as important does not mean that the
McCombs, Einsiedel, and Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion: Issues and the News, 34.
106
public has more knowledge on those issues, as can be seen from the discussion about
Global Warming in the first chapter. While most people in the U.S. think that global
warming is an important issue and they think that they know something about global
warming, they give wrong answers to knowledge test in the public opinion polls.430 The
public's perceived importance of an issue, however, is also closely associated with the
public's attention, cognitive knowledge, and even behavior. Based on his analysis of the
1988-1992 Senate Election Study, Hutchings finds that when citizens perceive a political
issue as important, they will give more attention to it, gain more information about it
from the media, and are more likely to attend legislative activities to solve the
problems. Further analysis shows that a citizen's voting decision also "often relies on
The greatest part of the media coverage is cognitive knowledge, and the foremost
rather than change their attitude. Chaffee and colleagues, for example, argue one reason
Klapper's generalization is inappropriate is that the most likely effects of the media in
political socialization are in the acquisition of political knowledge, but Klapper looks at
• • 433
opinions.
Attitudes. Since most people are familiar with the saying that "facts are sacred;
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion. See also Nisbet and Myers, "Twenty Years of
Public Opinion About Global Warming."
431
Vincent L. Hutchings, Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Learn About
Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).
4 2
Hutchings, Public Opinion and Democratic Accountability, 87.
433
Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton, "Mass Communication and Political Socialization," 648.
107
opinion is free," there is probably no difficulty in thinking about the difference between
information and attitudes in media coverage. Not only framing researchers insist that
researchers also hold that agenda-setting research studies "the affective attributes," which
"plays an important role in the agenda-setting and priming processes, and consequently
affects the political judgment of voters."435 The difference between their cognitive
attributes and affective attributes is that "cognitive attributes deal with the definition of
the issues (or objects in general) in the media, whereas affective attributes deal with the
neutral)."436 Framing researchers have also cautioned that, when studying media attitude,
just looking at the appearing frequency of the attitude factors (positive or negative) and
neglecting media agenda (importance) associated with these factors will distort the media
It might not be very easy to sort out public attitude from public cognitive knowledge,
because public attitude toward an issue is usually based on its knowledge of an issue.
Few studies have contributed in differentiating these two concepts. Some previous studies,
however, do suggest the difference. John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, for
example, find that media exposure has no association with American people's cognitive
Pan and Kosicki, "Framing Analysis"; Gamson and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion
on Nuclear Power."
435
Tamir Sheafer, "How to Evaluate It: The Role of Story-Evaluative Tone in Agenda Setting and
Framing," Journal of Communication 57 (2007): 21-39, 21.
436
Sheafer, "How to Evaluate It," 23.
437
Entman, "Framing."
108
evaluation of the Congress (public support), but it has significant association with the
emotional reaction toward the Congress (public confidence).438 When people make a
cognitive judgment, Hibbing and Theiss-Morse argue, they "are more likely to be
thoughtful and deliberative trying to determine the reasons for their judgment." When
they make an emotional judgment, however, "they react from their gut, which means they
often react instinctively."439 Yao also finds that reading an official newspaper's coverage
issues but not in their political attitudes toward the issues.440 Individual attitudes, of
innovation. Priming largely predicts the media influence along the route from media
illustrates that "media emphasis on particular issues not only confers status (or increase
salience), but also activates in people's memories previously acquired information about
these issues," which "thus is then used in forming opinions about persons, groups, or
Media effects at the attitude level predict that media attitude leads to changes in
John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, "The Media's role in Public Negativity toward Congress:
Distinguishing emotional Reactions and Cognitive Evaluations," American Journal of Political Science 42
(April 1998): 475-498.
439
Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, "The Media's role in Public Negativity toward Congress," 479.
440
Yao, "China's Official Framing of Religion and Its Influence on Young Chinese Students."
441
Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations.
442
McCombs, Einsiedel, and Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion: Issues and the News, 19.
109
audience attitudes. Several empirical studies have supported this prediction. Looking at
the aggregate public opinion on several issues in the U.S. from 1935 to 1990, Benjamin
Page and Robert Shapiro declare that "we now have much more evidence than ever
before about how messages communicated through the media influence public
opinion."443 In the period of 1969-1983, they chose eighty survey questions about public
policy and find that public opinion changed significantly on half of the topics and it did
not change on the other half. A regression analysis shows that "what appears on TV news
accounts in large part for the relatively short-term (neither instantaneous nor glacial)
changes in public opinion."444 Among all the news factors, attitudes of news commentary
and reporting of expert opinion are significantly positively associated with the public
opinion change after that time. In a study about media coverage of and public opinion
about China, Chang also finds that, among four topics, the news stories showed a positive
correlation in attitude with public opinion six months later on two of them, while on one
topic the news stories showed a correlation with public opinion both six months before
and six months later. Editorials, on the other hand, positively correlated with public
opinion six months before on two topics, and positively correlated with public opinion
both six months before and later on one topic.445 One agenda-setting study shows that
positive attributes decrease the importance of an object in the public agenda, which may
110
John Zaller's RAS model, a well-cited model in political science studies, can also
shed some light on the process that media attitude leads attitude change in the
audience.447 In this model, "coverage of public affairs information in the mass media,"
"dynamic element."448 The model assumes that each audience member has many
considerations (containing both "cognitive elements" and "affect," i.e., the favorable or
unfavorable attitudes) in the mind, some of which are contrary to others.449 Exposure to
the media attitudes make the relevant considerations in the audience's mind more
accessible and easier to be expressed when the audience is asked to given an opinion or
long-term response probabilities, results from change in the mix of ideas to which
individuals are exposed." He also notes that this will be a gradual transformation but
Behavior. Media frames convey behavioral elements. Visual media contents are
indispensable from various behaviors. Print media also portray actions of the subjects.
Even news stories in print media convey behavioral information. Entman's definition of
frame holds that frames "define problems," "diagnose causes," "make moral judgment,"
John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Ill
and "suggest remedies." While defining problems and diagnosing causes are at the
cognitive knowledge level and making moral judgment involves attitudes, suggesting
knowledge and attitudes, as can be seen from Rogers' five-step adoption model.452
behavior."453 This influence may come from media agenda to media behavior to audience
behavior. It may also come from media agenda to audience agenda to audience behavior.
The most intensive evidence of media effects at the behavioral level appears in the
media violence studies. Many studies report that viewing media violence increases
subsequent aggressive behavior. Bandura, Ross, and Ross find that their experiment
subjects imitated aggressive acts they have seen in the television program as treatment.4
Berkowitz and Rawlings also reported that the subjects in their experiments showed more
violence after they saw a violent film in which a boxer was beaten for his previous
television viewing on subsequent aggressive acts from 1957 to 1990 concludes that "all
types of aggressive behavior, including criminal violence and other illegal activities, have
highly significant, albeit, in some case, small magnitudes of effect size associated with
Weaver, McCombs, and Shaw, "Agenda-Setting Research: Issues, Attributes, and Influences," 266.
4
Bandura, Ross, and Ross, "Imitation of Film-Mediated Aggressive Models."
5
Berkowitz and Rawlings, "Effects of Film Violence on Inhibitions against Subsequent Aggression.'
112
exposure to television."45 The amount of violent television viewing is positively
In addition to the process of media effects, the complete picture of the processes of
mass communication should also include the process of influencing the media (sources of
the content of the media) and the process of influencing the public policy (consequences
of the media effects on the audience). The process of influencing the media goes from
social establishment to the media, and the process of influencing the public policy goes
from the public to their political representatives and the public policy.
From social establishment to media. Media researchers paid attention for a long
time to the question "[h]ow is the media agenda set?"458 According to Rogers and
1980.459 Since then, many studies in the media agenda-setting approach find political
elites as the major agenda-setter of the media.460 This finding is supported by framing
researchers. In his process model of framing research, based on evidence from many
empirical studies, Scheufele also proposes that political elites and social norms form the
media's frame building.461 In the political science field, Zaller's RAS model also holds
456
Paik and Comstock, "The Effects of Television on Antisocial Behavior," 538.
457
Paik and Comstock, "The Effects of Television on Antisocial Behavior."
458
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research," 79.
459
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, 'The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
460
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, "The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research."
113
that political elites dominate public opinion through the media. On environmental
issues, as can be seen from the discussion in the first chapter, government sources
From the public to social establishment and public policy. Although it may not be
certainly the only exploratory structure capable of incorporating mass media studies,
public opinion research, and public policy analysis into a single framework," it is true
that media effects studies usually want to include public opinion's influence on
policy-making into their analysis. In so doing, they can find the implications of the media
effects in real life. Many empirical studies find that the changes in public opinion, usually
resulting from median effects, have influence on public policy production. Thomas H.
Hartley, for example, finds that, during the last twenty-three years of the Cold War, public
opinion was responsive to the news coverage of the strength of Soviet military (in the
three TV networks), and it had significant influence on the US military budget.465 One
study also finds that the policymakers were unresponsive to the change of the public
mood. Moreover, the public mood was actually found to follow the change of the House's
ideology.466
461
Scheufele, "Framing as a Theory of Media Effects."
462
Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
463
See, for example, Garrison and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power";
Nimmo, Nightly Horrors; Pompper, "At the 20th Century's Close."
114
Robert S. Erikson, Michael B. Mackuen and James A. Stimson, based on then-
extensive empirical analysis, hold that public opinion has influence on policy-making.
They argue that, although at first glance people tend to believe that public opinion does
not influence public policy because "most voters are inattentive to the details of public
policy,"467 in-depth analysis will provide evidence for a positive answer to this question.
For them, public opinion influences policy through two channels. First, professional
politicians always managed to be informed about the public opinion and cater to the
public's preference so that they can be re-elected. This mechanism allows public opinion
to influence public policy on a daily basis. Second, public opinion can influence the result
of the election. "In its liberal phase, the public elects more Democrats; when conservative,
They used the degree of liberalism of the decisions made by the three braches of the
federal government (Congress, The President, and the Supreme Court) to measure the
governmental policy activity, and used the policy mood (an index combined with several
similar public opinion poll questions on the same topic) to measure the public opinion.
Their analysis shows that lagged public opinion significantly influences the governmental
policy activities, and they fail to find any meaningful response of the public opinion to
466
Philip D Habel, "The Dynamics of Democracy: Politicians, People and the Press" (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, 2006).
467
Robert S. Erikson, Michael B. Mackuen and James A. Stimson, The Macro Polity (Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 284.
468
Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity, 284.
115
Research Hypotheses and Question
Based on the mass communication model (media effects model and sources and
consequences of the media effects) discussed above, with the available data on the topic
of the environment, this dissertation is going to test six hypotheses and answer one
research question.
predicts that:
supports. The linearity being hypothesized among the five levels of media effects
should be easy to find. Based on the assumed linear relationship among the five levels of
Based on media effects at the attitude level, the third hypothesis states:
The process of sources of media effects hypothesizes that the presidents, as the
469
Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity.
470
Johnson, "Environment."
116
coverage:
The process of media effects consequences suggests that after taking influences from
the media, the public should hold the politicians responsible and influence the public
policy.
RQ1: What are the multi-way interactions among the media, the public,
117
CHAPTER THREE
METHODOLOGY
This dissertation is designed, as are many media effects studies in both agenda-
analysis and public opinion analysis.471 The rationale behind this research design is that,
when the major information channels are analyzed, the correlation on topics and attitudes
between public opinion and media content should be evidence of media influence,
especially when media content goes ahead of the change of public opinion.472 The
combination of media content analysis and public opinion analysis allows researchers to
examine media effects in natural settings, making their conclusions more generalizable
than those drawn from the laboratory studies. Some laboratory researchers, for example,
Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder, use the combination of media content analysis and
public opinion data analysis to verify their laboratory findings of agenda-setting and
priming effects.473
Some recent media effects researchers began to adopt longitudinal research design,
especially time series, believing that longitudinal design can provide stronger evidence
471
For example, see McCombs and Shaw, "The Agenda Setting Function of the Mass Media"; Shaw and
McCombs, The Emergence of American Political Issues; Craft and Wanta, "U.S. Public Concerns in the
Aftermath of 9-11"; Edy and Meirick, "Wanted, Dead or Alive."
472
Shaw and McCombs, The Emergence of American Political Issues.
473
For example, see Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters.
118
of causation than cross-section research design does, and it is "better suited for testing
dynamic process." For example, Stuart N. Soroka content analyzes media coverage of
eight issues in Canada in ten years, from 1985 to 1995, and finds that the media coverage
influences the rise and fall of those eight issues' perceived importance in public
opinion.475 Paul M. Kellstedt analyzes media coverage of and public opinion about racial
issues from 1950 to 1996, and finds that when racial issues are framed from the
racial policy preference.476 Iyengar and Kinder, after confirming the agenda-setting
hypothesis with their laboratory experiments, analyze the trend in "CBS Evening News"
and public opinion from 1960 to 1970, and again confirm the hypothesis that media
agenda leads public agenda over time.477 Benjamin Page and colleagues analyze the
television networks' coverage of and public opinion about eighty issues from 1969 to
1983, and find that news commentary and news stories that use experts or the courts as
sources have influences on the direction of public opinion.478 Time series design has also
been used in studies examining media effects on foreign policy issues,479 civil rights
480 j • • 481
issues, and economic issues.
474
Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada, 121.
75
Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada.
476
Paul M. Kellstedt, The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003).
477
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters.
478
Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public. Also see Benjamin Page, Robert Shapiro, and Glenn Dempsey,
"What Moves Public Opinion," The American Political Science Review 81 (March 1987): 23-43.
119
As stated in chapter two, this study aims at identifying the causation of the
review of previous studies, time series design seems an appropriate tool for the purpose
of this research project. In this study, the quarterly data obtained from the content
analysis cover from the first quarter of 1980 to the fourth quarter of 2007, and provide
measures for media coverage, media attitude, presidential agenda, and presidential
attitude. The yearly public opinion poll data cover from 1965 to 2007, and provide
measure for public agenda and public opinion. Policy-making is also yearly data and is
Data Sources
Presidential Documents
issues. The U.S. president has significant influence on environmental issues, and his
speeches and attitudes are taken as important political symbols.482 The presidential
documents are selected from the Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, "a
See, for example, B. Dan Wood and Jeffery S. Peake, "The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Agenda
Setting," The American Political Science Review 92 (March 1998): 173-184.
480
See, for example, James P. Winter and Chaim H. Eyal, "Agenda Setting for the Civil Rights Issue,"
Public Opinion Quarterly 45 (autumn 1981): 376-383.
481
H. Denis Wu, Robert L. Stevenson, Hsiap-Chi Chen and Z. Nuray Guner, "The Conditioned Impact of
Recession News: A Time-Series Analysis of Economic Communication in the United States, 1987-1996,"
International Journal of Public Opinion Research 14 (spring 2002): 19-36.
120
Compilation of Presidential Documents, published by the Office of the Federal Register
(OFR), is issued every Monday and is the official publication of presidential statements,
messages, remarks, and other materials released by the White House Press Secretary.484
Many studies use it as the source for drawing data to measure presidential opinion.485
The Weekly Compilation can be obtained from several channels, including the website of
the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO). Since the GPO website only provides the
archive from 1993 up to now, this study collected all the sampled documents from the
HeinOnline database, which has all the issues of the Weekly Compilation, in electronic
version and with in-text search function. Environment-related documents can be located
"environmentalism." From January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2007, totally 1359 issues of
the Weekly Compilation contain documents that have those keywords. Removing from
the pool documents in which these keywords' meaning is not related to the purpose of
Kevin Coe, David Domke, Erica S. Graham, Sue Lockett John, and Victor W. Pickard. "No Shades of
Gray: The Binary Discourse of George W. Bush and an Echoing Press," Journal of Communication 54
(summer 2004): 238.
485
See, for example, Coe et al. "No Shades of Gray". Wayne Wanta, "Presidential Approval Ratings as a
Variable in the Agenda Building Process," Journalism Quarterly 68 (winter 1991): 672-679. Wayne Wanta
and Joe Foote, "The President-New Media Relationship: A Time Series Analysis of Agenda-Setting,"
Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 38 (fall 1994): 437-448. Thomas. J. Johnson and Wayne
Wanta, "Influence Dealers: A Path Analysis Model of Agenda Building during Richard Nixon"s War on
Drugs," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (spring 1996): 181-194. See also Larry. L.
Burriss. "Changes in Presidential Press Conferences,'" Journalism Quarterly 66 (summer 1989): 468-470.
David Domke, Erica Graham, Kevin Coe, Sue Lockett John, and Ted Coopman. "Going Public as Political
Strategy: The Bush Administration, An echoing Press, And Passage of the Patriot Act," Political
Communication 23 (2006): 291-312. William Jacoby. "Issue Framing and Pubic Opinion on Government
Spending," American Journal of Political Science 44 (October 2000): 750-767.
121
this study and using a systematic sampling method with an interval of seven, finally 476
articles and programs from several major newspapers and television networks.487 The
New York Times is the most often chosen newspaper because it "ends up influencing the
content" of other mass media488 and "may not be a bad indicator of the general thrust of
news" that reaches the American people.489 Yet to reconstruct the information
opinion in the United States is not that simple, because the U.S. citizens are not living on
an island that Lippmann described in the beginning of his Public Opinion. When
conducting their study on media agenda-setting, Shaw and McCombs chose Charlotte,
North Carolina, as their research site. At that time, there were only two newspapers and
three TV networks in Charlotte, so the scope of the content analysis was manageable.
Their study covered most of the major informational channels.491 For this dissertation, to
monitor the national news information flow, the author analyzes news articles in two
486
See the appendix for detailed description of the data collection.
487
For example, see Chang, The Press and China Policy; Habel, "The Dynamics of Democracy"; Hartley,
"What Determines Defense Spending"; Eric Jon Ostermier, "Crime Views Without the Ballyhoo: Public
Opinion on Crime In a New Era Of Influential Media Elites and Unresponsive Policymakers" (Ph.D diss.,
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, 2006).
488
Gitlin. The Whole World Is Watching, 299.
489
Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, "Presidents as Opinion Leaders: Some New Evidence," Policy
Studies Journal 12 (1984): 651
490
Lippmann, Public Opinion.
491
See Shaw and McCombs, The Emerging of American Political Issues.
122
national newspapers (the New York Times and the Washington Post), and news program
summaries of three television networks (NBC, CBS, and ABC). Given that this list
contains almost all the mainstream national news outlets, it is reasonable to say that
content analyzing these news media can provide a good grasp of the American
because cable news channels actually reach a small group of American adults.492
The New York Times and the Washington Post are often treated by researchers as
the representatives of the U.S. national newspapers.493 Most of the articles in these two
newspapers from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2007 can be retrieved from
articles in the A-section of the New York Times and 2010 articles in all the sections of the
Washington Post. A-section articles are manually chosen from the 2010 articles in the
Washington Post and then systematically sampled. Totally this study sampled 541
For detail discussion, see, for example, Jill A. Edy, Scott L. Althaus, and Patricia F. Phalen, "Using
News Abstracts to Represent News Agendas," Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 82
(summer 2005): 434-446. Edy and Meirick have provided three reasons to argue that cable networks have
played a much less role in building the American adult's information environment. At their highest peak,
the total audiences of the top three cable networks were still less than the 2% of all American adults. The
Center for Media and Public Affairs continuously excludes the cable news from their studies of TV news
because they believe that the highest rated cable TV news program could only attract one-tenth of the
audience that the nightly news program at the three traditional networks attract. Even if it may have some
influences on the general public, the influences can be represented by the three networks' news.
See, for example, Chang, "The Press and China Policy". Sheldon Gilberg, Chaim Eyal, and Maxwell
McCombs, "The State of the Union Address and the Press Agenda," Journalism Quarterly 57 (winter
1980): 584-588. Leon Sigal, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics ofNewsmaking
(Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1973). Some studies even just use the New York Times as the representative
of the U.S. media. For instance, see Winter and Eyal, "Agenda Setting for the Civil Issue." See also
Ostermier, "Crime Views without the Ballyhoo".
4
Just articles of the New York Times published in the first half of 1980 are not available from LexisNexis,
but they are accessed from the ProQuest newspaper archive.
123
articles from the two mainstream newspapers, with 284 from the New York Times and
257 from the Washington Post. After taking out the articles in which the keywords mean
something other than the natural environment, the researcher selected 531 articles for the
content analysis.495
To content analyze news on the three television networks, many scholars use news
abstracts retrieved from the Vanderbilt Television News Archive.496 For example, Wanta
and Foote use the summaries in this archive to analyze the news on the three networks,
identifying the issues and news sources.497 A previous study uses the summaries in this
archive to analyze the topics and frames of the news about breast cancer that are
broadcast on the three major television networks. Studies that consult news summaries
in the Vanderbilt archive usually need longitudinal data with a time range not covered by
LexisNexis also cannot cover the whole study period.500 Although previous studies show
495
See the appendix for more information about the data collection about the media articles, television
news summaries, presidential documents, and the public opinion poll questions, which will be discussed
later this chapter.
The Archive contains tapes of TV news programs from the three major networks from 1968 up to the
present. It also has an official summary for every news programs that it archived. See:
http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/.
497
Wanta and Foote, "The President-News Media Relationship".
498
Sooyoung Cho, "Network News Coverage of Breast Cancer, 1974 to 2003," Journalism and Mass
Communication Quarterly 83 (spring 2006): 116-130.
499
See, for example, Demers et al, "Issue Obtrusiveness and the Agenda-Setting Effects of National
Network News." Michael Greenberg and Daniel Wartenberg. "Network Television Evening News
Coverage of Infectious Disease Events," Journalism Quarterly 67 (spring 1990): 142-146. Lana. F. Rakow
and Kimberlie. Kranich, "Woman as Sign in Television news," Journal of Communication 41 (winter
1991): 8-23. Wood and Peake, "The Dynamics of Foreign Policy Agenda Setting."
124
that using the Vanderbilt Archive news summaries is effective to analyze topical
content501 but may not be very adequate in tone evaluation,502 the present author argues
that it is better to use the summaries to keep the method of collecting the television news
data consistent within the time range of this dissertation study. Meanwhile, there are
studies that code tones from the Vanderbilt Archive and provide reliable results.503
Since the archive only provides title and summary of the nightly news programs,
summaries that contain the keyword "environment" can be treated as the counterpart of
the A-section stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post that have the
similar keywords.504 For television news, all summaries of the evening news or nightly
special news programs505 with the keyword "environment" in title or abstract are taken
as the population, which consists of 1,427 pieces.506 A sample of 361 news summaries is
obtained with systematic sampling method. After taking off the articles unrelated to the
For the content analyses, the analysis unit is a whole document or article/summary.
500
This study plans to cover from 1980 to 2007. While the LexisNexis provides transcripts of ABC from
around 1979 through current, it only provides transcripts of CBS from February 01, 1990 through current
and transcripts of NBC from January 01, 1997 through current.
Edy, Althaus, and Phalen, "Using News Abstracts to Represent News Agendas."
502
Scott L. Althaus, Jill A. Edy, and Patricia F. Phalen, "Using the Vanderbilt Abstracts to Track
Broadcast News Content: Possibilities and Pitfalls," Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 46
(September 2003): 473-92.
503
For example, see Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public.
5
The archive does not facilitate multiple keywords searching, so only one keyword can be used.
505
Only the category of "commercial" is excluded in the searching.
506
Up to December 8, 2007, ABC has 607 stories; CBS has 405 stories; and NBC has 416 stories.
125
Public Opinion Polls
One advantage of using public opinion poll data in studies is that the Hawthorne
effects commonly seen in the experiments or surveys can be avoided, because the
researchers' research goal cannot be identified by the subjects in advance. Also, a series
of public opinion polls enables the researchers to test their models in the natural social
especially those in the political science area, are conducted based on public opinion poll
data. For example, Zaller built his Receive-Accept-Sample model in his dissertation
study and tested it mostly on the 1986 National Election Survey (NES) and the 1987
NES pilot study.5 7 Using data mainly drawn from the Roper Center archive, which is
the most extensive collection of public opinion poll, Carpini and Keeter find that the
American people do not have more political knowledge now than they had in the
1940s.508 Adopting large sample survey data, Gillroy and Shapiro identify a consistent
increase of public support for environmental protection during the 1980s.509 Rosa and
Dunlap find that the American people have been holding a contradictory attitude toward
nuclear powers in three decades: while they oppose building nuclear plants, especially
close to their residencies, they also think of nuclear power as an important energy
source.510
126
There are, of course, drawbacks of using public opinion poll data. Previous
research has found that public opinion surveys are subject to errors, which are sometimes
quite substantial.51' The measurement errors, however, can partly be corrected by using
multiple polls. For example, on the two days of November 5 and November 6 in 2000,
some 16 public opinion polls reported different proportions of the public that supported
the presidential candidates.512 When the accuracy of polls cannot be determined, the
average proportion of the 16 poll results is a much more reliable measure of the
projected election results. Partly based on this consideration, James Stimson, political
measure the latent public opinion,514 which in his study is the "policy mood."515 The
latent opinion can be treated as the net public opinion that has taken out the errors in
See Rosa and Dunlap, "Nuclear Power." Their data were obtained from Bruskin and Goldring,
Cambridge Reprots, Frederick/Schneiders, Gallup, Harris, AP/MG, NBC, ORC, Roper, and Yankelovich.
5
'' For example, see Philip Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics," in Ideology and
Discontent, ed. D. E. Apter (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1964), 206-261. The study finds a substantial
irrelevance of public opinion on a particular issue in several consecutive years. See also Philip Converse,
"Popular Representation and the Distribution of Information," in Information and Democratic Processes,
ed. J. A. Ferejohn and J. H. Kuklinski (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1990), 369-387.
Christopher H. Achen, "Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response," The American Political
Science Review 69 (December 1975), 1218-1231. The latter two studies attribute the substantial irrelevance
that Converse finds in his 1964 study to the measurement errors of public opinion surveys.
512
See the poll data and actual results shown in Earl Babbie, The Practice of Social Research, 10th ed.
(Belmont, CA: Wads worth, 2004), 179.
513
For example, the proportion supporting Gore in the polls goes from 43% to 48%, and that supporting
Bush goes from 47% to 52%. The average proportion that supports Gore in the 16 polls is 45.9%, and the
average proportion that supports Bush is 48.6%. When we do not know which individual poll is more
reliable, the average should be a safer measure.
See James Stimson, Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles, and Swings (Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1991). James Stimson, "Domestic Policy Mood: An Update," The Political Methodologist 6 (1994),
20-22. Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity.
515
Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity, 208.
127
group of the different observed specific series questions. Roughly, the latent series is
close to the average of the observed series. It can only explain part of the total variance
(the more the better); the rest can be explained by the errors wordings, sampling
errors.516
To ensure that different poll questions from different poll houses contribute
substantially to the measure of the latent public opinion, based on principle component
solution, Stimson developed software WCalc to calculate the loading values of the
individual series on the latent public opinion value and the correlation between them.517
Individual series that have higher correlations should be treated as good items. Using the
WCalc software, a latent series can be drawn from a group of series at monthly level,
quarterly level, annually level, and even multiple-year level. The method has been
adopted by several previous studies. For example, Paul Kellstedt uses 19 questions from
several poll houses to measure Americans' "racial policy preferences."518 Among the 19
questions, some have been asked as many as 46 times; some have been asked as few as
three times.5 Durr, Martin and Wolbrecht also use 17 survey questions collected from
516
Erikson, Mackuen, and Stimson, The Macro Polity, chapter 6. See also Erik Voeten and Paul R. Brewer,
"Public Opinion, the War in Iraq, and Presidential Accountability," Journal of Conflict Resolution 50
(October 2006), 809-830.
517
See, for example, Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity, 212. The software, Weak, is
available on Stimson's personal website: http://www.unc.edu/~istimson/
5
See Paul Kellstedt, "Media Framing and the Dynamics of Racial Policy Preferences," American Journal
of Political Science 44 (April 2000): 249. Or see Kellstedt, The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American
Racial Attitudes, 69.
See Kellstedt, The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes, 69.
128
the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research archives to build an index of "court
support."520 The software WCalc has also been adopted by some recent studies.521
The present study also relies on the multiple poll resources to measure the
variables of public agenda and public attitude on the environment. The public opinion
data are accessed from the "Public Opinion Location Library or Public Opinion Online"
that is published by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of
Connecticut. This public opinion online database contains data from the polls conducted
by Gallup, Harris, Roper, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Los Angeles Times, New York Times,
USA Today and Wall Street Journal since 1935. The database is accessible from
for Political and Social Research also provides some useful questions. Totally 47 series
poll questions are found asking respondents how they rate the importance of the
environment and whether they think more financial support should be granted to
environmental protection. The sample sizes of these questions range from 2 to 150
during 1965-2007. Based on these observed series, two latent series are drawn at the
quarterly level.523
520
See Robert Durr, Andrew Martin, and Christian Wolbrecht, "Ideology Divergence and Public Support
for the Supreme Court," American Journal of Political Science 44 (October 2000): 168-776, 769.
521
For example, See Frank R. Baumgartner, Suzanna L De Boef., and Ambert E. Boydstun, The Decline of
the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Voeten
and Brewer, "Public Opinion, the War in Iraq, and Presidential Accountability"; and Jennifer Jerit, "Issue
Framing and Engagement: Rhetorical Strategy in Public Policy Debates," Political Behavior 30 (March
2008): 1-24.
522
After December 31 2007, LexisNexis withdrew this service. The public opinion data used in this study,
however, should be still available in the Roper Center's database.
The two latent series measure public agenda and public attitude, respectively. See the discussion in the
variables section below for detail. In analysis, however, for the purpose to connect the yearly data and the
129
Variables and Measures
Content Analysis
Presidential agenda and media agenda. Following the tradition of classic agenda-
setting research that has been discussed, the current research uses valence, which is
operationalized as the frequency, to measure the presidential agenda and media agenda.
a period524 is calculated as the measure of presidential agenda and media agenda for
that particular time. One may argue that the concept of media attention that is proposed
in the second chapter of this dissertation should also be measured by the frequency of
media articles/summaries. For the newspaper articles and television news program
evening news programs, which has already taken into consideration the importance of
the news pieces. Therefore, the measure here should be closer to media agenda than
For example, in the first quarter of 1980, the value of media agenda is seven and
presidential agenda, four. That is because in that quarter seven A-section articles and
nightly news stories covered the environment, four New York Times articles, one
Washington Post article, and two television news summaries. In the same quarter, the
president and his press secretary released four pieces of statements, remakes, messages,
quarterly data, public agenda series were drawn in two forms: both yearly and quarterly. See also the
appendix for more information.
524
The period is a unit of analysis in time, which is a quarter for the content analysis in this study.
130
Presidential attitude and media attitude. In the present study, presidential attitude
environmental issues. The sum tone of the news pieces or presidential documents in a
particular quarter is taken as the value of the media attitude or presidential attitude for
that quarter.
environmental issues during the 2000 presidential election, Nitz and West use four
categories for tone: positive, negative, mixed, and neutral. They find that, compared
with positive tone, news articles tend to adopt a negative predominant tone.525 Iyengar
has stated that tone of coverage can be significant in shaping public opinion. Sheafer
finds that, on economic issues and in 16 election years in Israel, news coverage tone has
a negative association with public perception of the importance of the state of the
economy as a national issue.527 Page and Shapiro code television news summaries into
a five-point pro-con continuum (ranging from -2 to 2, with 0 for neutral), and find that
news commentary and stories with sources of expert and courts lead the direction of
Nitz and West, "Framing of Newspaper News Stories during a Residential Campaign Cycle.
131
To assess the tone toward environmental protection expressed in presidential
documents and media coverage, the present study uses a five-point scale, in which 2 =
highly unsupportive. To decide the tone of news stories, the quantity of both pro- and
anti-environment quotes were counted. Title, lead and narrative wording of the news
stories were also taken into account when counting quotes alone could not determine
the tone.529 In the case of opinion pieces, including editorials, letters to the editor, and
presidential documents (particularly presidential speeches and remarks), the tone was
decided by assessing the overall attitude of the writer or the speaker toward
environmental protection.
The code 2, highly supportive, was assigned to articles that only quote from
pro-environment sources such as environmental group and not from any anti-
protection along side with other interests. For opinion pieces, the overall attitude
with other interests. A news story published on August 1, 2003 in the Washington
Post, for example, was coded as 2, because this story, reporting an international
529
The neutral or balanced stories judged with the coding criteria of this research does not necessarily equal
to the journalistic standard of objectivity. A story balanced in the journalistic standard could be coded as
supportive or even highly supportive with the standard in this research, in the case when both sides of the
dispute cite environmental protection to promote its interest. When the social consensus inclines more and
more to environmental protection, it is not rarely seen that a news story is coded as 1 or 2, though most of
the news articles are coded as 2 are opinion pieces.
132
continuous monitoring of Earth eco-system, only quoted sources that supported such a
plan and praised its benefits for global environmental protection. Similarly, the
document recording President George W. Bush's exchange with reporters on June 13,
2002 was coded as 2 because there was one section, under the subtitle of "New
few documents of President George W. Bush's remarks, for instance, the president
told the audience on different occasions that environmental protection and economic
development could go hand in hand, and that protecting the environment did not have
to hurt jobs. Such documents were coded as 1. Presidential documents that have only
also coded as 1.
Articles with equal quantity of quotes from both pro- and anti-environment
balanced or neutral. A news abstract of ABC Evening News on Apr 15, 1990, for
133
The code -1, unsupportive, was assigned to articles in which anti-environment
suggesting put other interests first, such as protecting jobs, and environmental
Bureau of Mines in the early 1990s, for example. This article, published on March 29,
1991 in the Washington Post, was coded as -1 because it devoted most of its space to
opinions of Mr. Ary, a coal miner's son, who tirelessly promoted the mining
industry's interests, sometimes at the price of the wellbeing of the environment. This
story was not coded as highly unsupportive, however, because it had one quote from
such criteria, a New York Times story, also about T. S. Ary, published on March 23, 1991,
was coded as -2. This piece was full of Mr. Ary's anti-environment remarks, such as "I
don't believe in endangered species" and that environmentalists were "a bunch of nuts,"
For the 858 media articles/summaries, only 0.8 percent (7 items) are coded as -2;
3 percent (26 items) are coded as -1; 27 percent (232 items) are coded as 0; 43.8 percent
(376 items) are coded as 1; and 25.3 percent (217 items) are coded as 2. For the 476
presidential documents, none is coded as -2; 1.3 percent (6 documents) are coded as -1;
134
25 percent (120 documents) are coded as 0, 63.9 percent (304 documents) are coded as 1,
Value of tone for a particular quarter is the sum of the tone of the news articles and
summaries or presidential documents that appeared in that quarter. For example, in the
first quarter of 1980, value of media attitude is three and that for presidential attitude is
four. In that quarter seven news stories appeared in the media, with a sum tone of
three. Four pieces of presidential documents were sampled for that quarter, whose
tones were coded as 1, 1, 0, and 2. The sum tone of presidential documents for the first
quarter of 1980 is thus four. To analyze the relationship between media attitude and
public attitude, media attitude is also aggregated on an annual level with the same
calculating method. For the year of 1980, for instance, there is a total of 19 media pieces
sampled and the sum tone of these pieces is 9. Therefore, the value of media attitude of
1980 is 9.
Publications. All the materials for the content analysis are only differentiated into
Date. The year and quarter un which the news pieces and the presidential
documents were published, broadcast, or released are recorded for the time series
analysis.
531
The total percent may not equal to 100 because of the rounding up error.
All the four New York Times articles have a tone of zero. The only Washington Post article has a tone of
two. The two television news summaries have a tone of zero and one, respectively.
135
Public Opinion Polls
traditional measure of public agenda that used by the agenda setting researchers is the
proportion of respondents that think the environmental issues as important in the polls.533
This study also uses this approach. Instead of using just one series of poll questions, this
study uses a latent series drawn from a group of poll questions, which deals with the
missing values better and can help to partial out the sampling errors in a single poll
series. From 1965 to 2007, the Gallup poll has asked the respondent 150 times: "What do
you think is the most important problem facing the country today?" Similar questions
have also been asked consecutively in many years by other poll houses such as Harris
and the Pew Center. From 1993 up to present, Harris has asked its respondents 106 times:
"What do you think are the two most important issues for the government to address?"
Environment is always a choice in these questions. The Pew Center's "News Interest
Index" conducted in January each year has also been asking the respondents to identify
Roper also have similar questions in a series of years. The researcher totally found 31
questions inquiring how respondents rate the importance of the environment, covering
from 1965 to 2007. Some of the 31 series questions have a correlation with the latent
See the discussion in the second chapter of this dissertation and, for example, McCombs and Reynolds,
"News Influences."
534
This survey is conducted by Princeton Survey Center. The question wording in 2007 is: "I'd like to ask
you some questions about priorities for President Bush and Congress this year. As I read from a list, tell me
if you think the item that I read should be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too important or
should it not be done?" "Protecting the environment" is one of the items.
535
See Dunlap and Scarce, "Environmental Problems and Protection." They also provide the data available
from 1980 to 1990 in the appendix.
136
series lower than 0.50 and are deleted, and the rest are used to draw the latent series of
public agenda.
For each observed series, the percentage of respondents who rank the environment
as important are taken as the value for that observed series of public agenda. The yearly
latent series of public agenda is drawn from twenty five such observed series with the
software tool of WCalc developed by Professor James Stimson. In the latent series, a
single value (similar to factor scores in the time series context) is generated to represent
the opinion clustering around the respective issue for that time unit (e.g. the first quarter
of 1980). The values for this latent series are more like an interval measure rather than a
ratio one, and the values can still be intuitively interpreted as the proportion of
respondents that rank the environment as important. To analyze the relationship between
public agenda and media agenda or presidential agenda, a quarterly latent series of
public agenda (from 1980 to 2007) is also drawn from 24 observed series. The quarterly
public agenda time series consists of a total of 112 time points from the first quarter of
Public attitudes toward environmental issues. Scholars argue that, although the
usually high, this does not necessarily mean an attitude of support. The measure of
support for environmental protection should include trade-offs and relate to special
environmental issues.537 The National Opinion Research Center has asked the
See the methodological appendix for more information. As stated, the public agenda latent series is
drawn in both yearly and quarterly forms.
537
See Johnson, "Environment".
137
respondents the same specific question 21 times from 1980 to 2006: "We are faced with
many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm
going to name some of these problems, and for each one I'd like you to tell me whether
you think we're spending too much money on it, too little money, or about the right
amount. Are we spending too much, too little, or about the right amount on... improving
and protecting the environment?" Since 1984, the American National Election Studies
has asked the respondents whether the federal government should increase, decrease or
keep stable federal outlays for the environment.538 The General Social Survey, Roper,
Cambridge and some other survey houses ask a similar question. These questions are
used to draw the latent series of public attitude (support) toward the environment. The
same way that the latent series of public agenda is drawn, which can also be intuitively
interpreted as the proportion of people that support increasing spending for the
environment.
Governmental Statistics
538
Original questionnaire is not available at this moment. The wording on the variable list is "would you
increase/decrease spending in environmental protection?"
339
See Dunlap and Scarce, "Environmental Problems and Protection." They also provide the data available
from 1980 to 1990 in the appendix. The question wording for the GSS, for example, is: "We are faced with
many problems in this country, none of which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm going to name
some of these problems, and for each one I'd like you to tell me whether you think we're spending too
much money on it, too little money, or about the right amount. First. . . Are we spending too much, too
little, or about the right amount on . . . improving and protecting the environment?"
540
See the methodological appendix for more information about the 16 questions.
138
"[government spending is the most obvious and easily accessible empirical measure of
the policy agenda."541 Although previous research points out that governmental budgets
are incremental, there are also studies showing that "measures of government spending
can show considerably more variation than incrementalist theories suggest." The data
of U.S. governmental spending for natural sources and the environment from 1965 to
2007 are available from Table 3.1 in the historical table at the end of the 2009 federal
budget. For example, in 1980 the federal outlay for the natural sources and the
environment is $13,858 millions, this number is therefore taken as the measure of the
For the content analysis, a randomly drawn sub-sample of 150 from the sampled
articles/transcripts and documents is coded by two trained coders, one of whom is the
researcher. The Holsti's formula provides a reliability of 0.9, and the Scott's/?/ is 0.836,
For the measures drawn from the public opinion polls, Stimson's WCalc reports
the correlation of the single item to the latent series, which can be used as a reliability
indicator. Two formats of the public agenda latent series are drawn, one at quarterly level,
and the other at yearly level. In so doing, the researcher can examine the relationships
between the public agenda and the variables at both quarterly and the yearly levels. The
yearly public agenda data (1965-2007) used 26 of the 31 series poll questions. The
139
overall reliability of the yearly public agenda latent series is above 0.97, and the
individual correlations of the observed series to the latent series are above 0.56. The
quarterly public agenda data (from the first quarter of 1980 to the fourth quarter of 2007)
used 24 questions. The overall reliability of the quarterly data is also above 0.72, and the
individual correlations are above 0.54. The public attitude data (yearly, 1966-2007) used
15 of the 16 questions. The overall reliabilities are above 0.93, and the individual
Analysis
Many statistical analysis methods have been used in time-series design studies.
Winter and Eyal use lagged zero and partial order correlation to see if media agenda lead
public agenda.545 Page and colleagues use ordinary least regression to analyze television
news' influence on the direction of public opinion.5 Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson use
correlation and ordinary regression to examine the influence of public opinion on public
policy.547 Iyengar and Kinder use ordinary least regression and two-stage regression to
analyze how CBS Evening News influences public opinion.548 Kellstedt,549 and Wood
and Peake use Granger causality test to check the hypothesized causation between their
independent and dependent variables. Considering that time-series data usually contain
544
See the methodological appendix for more information.
545
Winter and Eyal, "Agenda Setting for the Civil Rights Issue."
546
See Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public. Benjamin Page, Robert Shapiro, and Glenn Dempsey,
"What Moves Public Opinion," The American Political Science Review 81 (March 1987): 23-43.
547
Erikson, Mackuen, and Stimson, The Macro Polity.
5
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters.
549
Kellstedt, The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes.
140
auto-correlation, which violates the assumption of OLS regression that data should be
to Soroka, scholars can use ARBVIA models to pre-whiten each series first, and then
conduct OLS regression or other regular analysis. He also suggests using the Direct
(SUR) to analyze more complicated time-series data. Wu and colleagues use trivariate
VAR to model how media coverage of economic recession influences public evaluation
of economy.551
This dissertation uses two statistical techniques to analyze the longitudinal data
and test the hypotheses: Vector Autoregressive (VAR) modeling552 and Direct Granger
Causality553 test. Broadly speaking, Granger Causality test can also be traded as a
552
For a detail discussion of VAR models, see P. J. Brockwell and R. A. Davis, Introduction to time
series and forecasting, 2 nd ed (New York: Springer, 2002). They noted that, when building a Vector
Autoregressive model with MLE estimations, it is important to begin with preliminary estimations that are
reasonably close to the maximum. They recommended Whittle's algorithm and Burg's algorithm as two of
the preliminary estimations. The model can be written as:
xt = </>iXt_x +... + &pxt + z, \zt} ~ White noise (0,<x)
where the x s, the <f) s, and the z are all n*l vectors. ITSM2000 is a software package developed by
Brockwell and Davis, which exclusively serves for time series analysis. It can handle VAR models with
n<6, and p up to 20 (in our case, n = 2). Also, the preliminary Yule-Walker or Burg estimation can help to
find the p with the minimum AICC. The cross-correlation graph also tells us which lags of those series are
significantly correlated.
For a detail discussion of how to conduct a Granger Causality test, see Jeff B. Cromwell, Michael J.
Hannan, Walter C. Labys, and Michel T. Terraza,. Multivariate Tests for Time series Models (Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994). They proposed six stages: 1). specify the null and alternative
hypotheses. 2). Assure that the data series are stationary. 3). Choose the number of lags to be used in the
restricted and unrestricted equations. A restricted equation is the equation that only has the past values of
00
the dependent variable as the independent variables, and can be written as yt = y , aiyt-i + c
i + v
u • An
unrestricted equation is the equation that has both the past values of the dependent variable and past values
141
bivariate VAR model.554 Both the Granger Causality test and the Vector Autoregressive
model are used to analyze the data in the current study, testing the hypotheses and
the unrestricted equation contributes more information to predicting the dependent variable. In this study,
maybe it is appropriate for us to adopt the lags up to 3, because it is reasonable to assume that the political
leader's opinion influences media coverage, and media coverage influences public attitude, in no longer
than three years if there are such influences. 4). Estimate the relevant restricted and unrestricted equations,
usually using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimation. 5). Conducting an F test, and calculate the test
statistic using the formula:
r_(ESSR-ESSm)lq
ESSURl{n-k)
where ESSR and ESSUR are the error sum of squares for the restricted and unrestricted equations, q is the
number of the restrictions applied, n is the total number of observations, and k is the total number of
parameters in the unrestricted equations, including the constant. The statistic has an F (q, n-k) distribution.
6). Accept the alternative hypothesis that x has an causality function to y if the calculated F statistic is
greater than the critical value of F(q, n-k), or accept the null if the test statistic is less than the critical value.
554
A Granger Causality test can also be conducted based on the VAR estimations, which test whether or
not adding the past values of a particular variable in the VAR model make a significant difference in
predicting the current value of the dependent variable in a specific equation of the VAR model. This
Granger causality test is usually called "multivariate Granger Causality test", while the aforementioned
bivariate Granger causality test is called direct Granger Causality test. For a comparison of the multivariate
Granger Causality test, see John R. Freeman, "Granger Causality and the Times Series Analysis of Political
Relationships," American Journal of Political Science 27 (May 1983), 327-358. for more information
about the multivariate Granger Causality test after the VAR modeling, see for example John Freeman, John
Williams, and Tse-min Lin, "Vector Autoregression and the Study of Politics," American Journal of
Political Science 33 (November 1989), 842-877. Therese McCarty and Stephen Schmidt, "A Vector-
Autoregression Analysis of State-Government Expenditure," The American Economic Review 87 (May
1997), 278-282. Jianbang Gan, "Causality among Wildfire, EN SO, Timber Harvest, and Urban Sprawl:
The Vector Autoregression Approach," Ecological Modeling 191 (2006), 304-314.
142
CHAPTER FOUR
As shown in the third chapter, this study originally collects two sets of data: yearly
data ranging from 1965 to 2007 (43 observations), and quarterly data ranging from the
first quarter of 1980 to the fourth quarter of 2007 (112 observations). The 43-observation
yearly dataset includes variables such as public agenda, public attitude, and policy-
making on the environment. The quarterly dataset includes media agenda and attitude,
presidential agenda and attitude and public agenda555 on the environment. To examine
the relationship between media attitude and public attitude, the researcher also converts
media attitude into yearly data ranging from 1980 to 2007, and merges it with the public
attitude data ranging from 1980 to 2007, making the third 28-observation dataset.556
The 43-observation yearly dataset, which includes public agenda, public attitude,
and policy making, will be used to test the relationship between public agenda and public
attitude and their relationship with policy making. The 28-observation dataset, as said, is
created for the testing of the relationship between media attitude and public attitude. The
112-observattion quarterly dataset is used to test the relationship among media agenda,
The purpose of drawing public agenda data in two forms, yearly and quarterly, is to connect the two sets
of data. When testing the relationship between public agenda and public attitude or policy making, the
yearly data are used. When testing the relationship between public agenda and media agenda or presidential
agenda, the quarterly data are used.
556
The creation of the 28-observation yearly dataset also helps to connect the two original datasets.
143
media attitude, presidential agenda, presidential attitude, and the quarterly public agenda.
The graph of the series shows that the pro-environmental sentiment among the
American public has experienced four peaks from 1965 to 2007, which can be clearly
seen from the trend of the yearly latent series of public agenda (Ssee Figure 4.1a). The
latent series of public agenda, in this study, is operationalized as the principle component
of the series percentages of people that rank the environment as important in twenty-five
series poll questions. The first peak appears in the early 1970s, which could be attributed
to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and the establishment of Earth Day in 1970. The
second peak occurs during George H. W. Bush's presidency. As Dunlap and Scarce
notice, the pro-environmental sentiment among the American public reached its
unprecedented height around 1990.557 According to Vig, this is part of the result of
1989 also contributes to the sharp increase of environmental awareness in public. Public
agenda on the environment also shows a crest around 2000. This was the time when Al
environmental polices in their campaigns. After 2004, public agenda to the environment
moves toward another high point, which at the time of this study is still unfolding. The
See Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment: From Reagan to Clinton."
144
Figure 4.1 a
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145
latter three peaks can also be identified from the Quarterly latent series of public agenda
(Figure 4.1b), which covers from the first quarter of 1980 to the fourth quarter of 2007.
environmental spending in fifteen series polls questions, also confirms the four peaks (see
Figure 4.2). When more people rank the environment as important in the polls, more
people also support the federal government in spending more money for the
environmental protection, or they want to spend more of their own money to improve the
environment.559 The yearly data of media attitude toward environmental issues, which is
operationalized as the sum tone of the news pieces in a time unit, also provides a clearer
picture of the three peaks of environmental awareness in the U.S. from 1980 to 2007 (see
Figure 4.2). When more people think the environment is important and are willing to
spend money for it, the overall tone of the media coverage of the environment is also
more supportive.
from the 1965 to 2007 (See Figure 4.3a), although there are some occasional decreases.
When President Reagan first took office, the federal spending for the environment was
lower than that during the Carter administration. The Reagan administration's
environmental outlay did not reach that of the Carter administration until 1986. During
spending grew robustly, except in 1996 and 1997 when the federal government spent less
than in the previous years. The biggest fluctuation appears in the most recent years. The
See the appendix for the wording of fifteen series questions from which the latent series is drawn.
146
federal outlay for environment protection decreased from $30,725 million in 2004 to
$28,023 million in 2005. It went up to $33,055 million in 2006, and then decreased to
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It needs to be noted that the incremental trend of the federal environmental
spending is complicated. The inflation rate should be taken into consideration when the
expenditure increase is examined. When analyzing the data, data transformation and
differencing are conducted to take the trend off and make the series stationary. Therefore,
the federal outlay for the natural resources and the environment is still considered as a
real dollars560 from 1965 to 2007 is also shown in the figure 4.3a, which is calculated by
Professor Lowndes Stephens.561 It is clear that the incremental trend of the environmental
the total federal outlays and annual percentage change in spending on the environment
versus overall federal spending562 and obtaining a ratio (see Figure 4.3b). The percentage
of environmental outlay clearly has a big peak, which is in around 1977. After that the
percentage consistently drops down. For the percentage change ratio, a ratio greater than
1.0 indicates the annual percentage change in spending on the environment during those
time periods were greater than annual percentage change in overall federal spending.
Overall, the compound annualized growth rates computed for the two time-series (federal
outlay for the environment and overall federal outlays) by Professor Stephens show that
148
Figure 4.4 Media Agenda and Presidential Agenda
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149
the federal outlays increase 7.6 percent from 1965 to 2007 and the outlay for the natural
resources and the environment only increase 6.2 percent in this period.
As stated in chapter three, both media agenda and presidential agenda are measured
(or a year for the yearly series). The media attitude and presidential attitude are measured
The 1990 and 2000 peaks of environmental attention are also clearly shown in the
trends of media and presidential agendas, ranging from 1980 to 2007 (See Figure 4.4).
Interestingly, the media and the presidents have different emphases. The amount of media
coverage of the environmental issues peaks the most around 1990, when George H. W.
Bush was in the White House. That was also not long after Reagan's presidency, with
whose environmental policy people had been angry for a long time, as discussed in the
first chapter. It was also the time when people experienced "the unusually hot, dry
summer of 1988"5 and began to be dramatically aware about the global climate change
(See Figure 4.1a and 4.1b). The president, however, addressed environmental issues to
the highest amount in 2000. When Al Gore was campaigning for president, President
Clinton backed him and greatly emphasized Al Gore's green credential as his political
strength. The media coverage, however, does not seem to confirm the Democratic
campaign's frenzy on environmental issues at that time, since the amount of media
The trend pattern of media attitude (quarterly) closely follow the trend pattern of
media agenda, and the trend pattern of presidential agenda also closely follow that of
150
presidential attitude (see Figure 4.5, compared with Figure 4.4). When the media and the
presidents cover or address the environment more during a period, their overall tone
toward the environment also tend to be more supportive. Given the social consensus on
the environmental issues by the people, most of the time when the media and the
presidents address the environment, their overall tone will be supportive. However,
occasionally the media and the presidential attitude will be negative in a time, which
means that the media or the presidents issued more pieces that supported other projects
(e.g., offshore drilling) rather than the environmental protection during the period. For
example, in the first quarter of 1981, the media have six pieces in total addressing the
environment, two from the New York Times, two from the Washington Post, and two
from the television networks. The New York Times and the Washington Post each has a
neutral story. CBS has a supportive story which cites environmentalists more than their
opponents. However, the opinion pieces from the New York Times and the news story
from NBC both have highly negative tones. An editorial from the Washington Post is
also negative. The letter to the editor published in the New York Times on March 31,
1981, for example, was coded as -2, highly unsupportive to environmental protection.
The authors, who were staff of National Security studies at the Hudson Institute,
even though they acknowledged that the land-based system would be damaging to the
local environment. The authors highlighted the importance of such as missile system to
national security and urged the public not to place local environmental concerns above
national and international security. As for television news, a story aired on March 9, 1981
on NBC, was coded as -2 because it only reported EPA and Interior Secretary's call for
151
easing environmental protection laws, including the Clean Air Act, without quoting any
opposing opinions from sources such as environmentalists. So the overall media attitude
for this quarter is valued as -4, quite unsupportive to the environment. There are other
four quarters in which the media or the presidents show a negative attitude toward the
environment.
Generally speaking, some associations among the series can be identified from the
trend graphs. However, stronger inferential evidence should be provided with statistical
tests. As discussed in the third chapter, Vector Autoregression and Granger Causality test
Modeling the Effects of the Public, Media and Presidential Agendas and Attitudes
dynamics and represent the causality among several variables. Compared to other
linear regression models, VAR has at least two advantages. First, as a member of the
family of time series techniques,565 it takes the autocorrelations along the time points into
consideration. This avoid the violation of the assumption of the regular linear regression,
which requires identical and independent (IID) observations. Failure to meet this
estimate the effects of a group of variables without differentiating the exogenous and
For a discussion of the application of this model in social science research, see Wu, Stevenson, Chen
and Guner, "The Conditional Impact of Recession News." See also Freeman, Williams, and Lin, "Vector
Autoregression and the Study of Politics."
565
VAR is actually a multivariate time series analysis. Since multivariate ARIMA (VARIMA) model is too
complicated to be estimated, statisticians usually transform VARIMA into VAR.
566
For a discussion, see for example, Chihwa Kao, "Spurious Regression and Residual-Based Tests for
Cointergration in Panel Data," Journal of Economics 90 (1999): 1-44.
152
endogenous variables, thus avoiding researchers' assumptive bias and approximating the
real relationships among the variables better than other models.567 To capture the
autocorrelations in time series, VAR requires that the series entering the model need to be
stationary (no unit roots). The stationary series can be obtained by taking the residuals
from a univariate AMRIMA model, or taking the series that has been transformed and/or
Several methods can help researchers to identify whether the series to be examined
has unit roots. The most often used methods are Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) test
and Phillips-Perron test. However, those two tests sometimes have less power to identify
the unit roots.569 Meanwhile, the ADF test is very sensitive to lag lengths and whether the
test contains intercept and trend. Test with over long lag length loses many degrees of
freedom and reduce the test power, while test with over short lag length may not garner
enough information to catch the unit roots. The common standards researchers use to
solve this dilemma are Akaike's information criterion (AIC), Schwarz's Bayesian
Freeman, Williams, and Lin, "Vector Autoregression and the Study of Politics."
568
A series contains a unit root is an unstationary series, which means that the variation of the series
depends much on the change of time. With a stationary series, on the contrary, one can predict the future of
a series with its present and past. For more discussion see, for example, Lowndes F. Stephens, Press
Freedom Matters Too: A Longitudinal, Econometric Time-Series Analysis of Cross-National Data on
Freedoms (Economic, Political and Press) and Economic Weil-Being. Paper presented at the Annual
Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, August 12, 2007,
Washington, DC.
569
See Christopher Baum's lecture notes on unit root test, available at http://fmwww.bc.edu/ec-
c/s2008/327/EC327.S2008.php.
153
information criteria. Since Stata does not provide those information criteria in its ADF
test procedure, the process of finding the appropriate model for an ADF test in Stata
could be very complicated. Christopher Baum hence wrote a procedure based on the
Fuller test that is more effective and thus preferred by the Stata users.571 In this study, the
researcher also uses the DFGLS procedure, and chooses the lag length based on
To find the appropriate lag length for the DFGLS test, a maximum lag length must
be chosen first. The DFGLS procedure in Stata provides an option that lets the researcher
choose a maximum lag length when conducting the test. The default setting is the
Schwert. Since no literature has been found to suggest other better maximum lag
length in this scenario, this researcher chose the default setting. Each time in the test,
Stata provides three criteria to help to choose the appropriate lag to compare the test
statistic with the critical value. In this study, the null hypothesis that at least one unit root
exists in the series is rejected as long as the test statistic for a particular lag recommended
by one of the three criteria is less than the critical value for that lag. The default also
A popular statistical software tool that is mainly used by economists and political scientists. Stata has
strong analytical functions in time series analysis, which is why this study chooses it.
571
Christopher Baum, "Stata: The Language of Choice for Time Series Analysis?" The Stata Journal 1
(March 2005): 46-63.
572
See the help file of dfgls in Stata. See also Steven Cook and Neil Manning, "Lag Optimisation and
Finite-Sample Size Distortion of Unit Root Tests," Economics Letter 84 (2004): 267-274. The formula was
initially proposed in G. William Schwert, "Tests for Unit Roots: A Monte Carlo Investigation." Journal of
Economic and Business Statistics 7 (1989): 147-159. It determins the maximum lag length based on the
sample size and other information.
154
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The reason for adopting this strategy is to make sure that the series are stationary
and they also retain enough information at the same time. While conventional wisdom in
time series analysis states that it is critical to transfer the series into stationary before
modeling them,573 many scholars also argue that there is no need to difference the series
when looking at the relationships among several series.574 Some studies have found that
detrending has significant influence on whether causality can be identified by the Granger
Causality test.575 This study adopt the conventional wisdom that a model need to be built
on stationary series, but it also controls the times of differencing to keep enough
Yearly series. This study has four yearly series: public agenda and public attitude
from the public opinion polls, policy making from the federal budget archive, and media
attitude converted from the quarterly data provided by content analysis of newspaper
articles and television news summaries. As mentioned, the former three have 43
Public agenda, without difference, is already a stationary series, since the DFGLS
test on the original public agenda series comes out with a test statistic of-3.922 at lag one,
a lag that has the minimum MAIC value. This test statistic is less than the 0.05 level of
critical value at this lag (-3.293), and hence warrants rejection of the null hypothesis of
57
As has been discussed, stationary series can ensure that the found relationship will not be spurious. See,
for example, Kao, "Spurious Regression and Residual-Based Tests for Cointergration in Panel Data." See
also McCarty and Schmidt, "A Vector-Autoregression Analysis of Stata-Government Expenditure."
574
See, for example, Wu, Stevenson, Chen, and Guner, "The Conditional Impact of Recession News."
575
See, for example, Heejoon Kang, "The Effects of Detrending in Granger Causality Tests," Journal of
Business & Economics Statistics 3 (October4 1985): 344-349.
156
Public attitude is a 1(1) series. The DFGLS test cannot reject the null hypothesis at
any lag that is recommended by the criteria of Minimum MAIC, Minimum SBIC, or Opt
Lag. The test shows, nevertheless, that the public attitude series became stationary after
the first difference. The yearly media attitude series is also stationary after the first
difference.
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The situation of the series of policy making is a bit complicated. At lag four, which
is recommended by both Opt Lag and Min SBIC, the DFGLS test suggests a rejection of
the null hypothesis that the series is not stationary. However, a closer look at the graphs
of the series itself (Figure 4.3), its autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation (Figure 4. 6)
157
prevents the researcher from accepting this conclusion. The original series apparently has
a trend, and unlike stationary series, its autocorrelation does not decay fast and its partial
autocorrelation does not disappear after the first several lags. Furthermore, the DFGLS
test failed to reject the null hypothesis at any recommended lags after the policy-making
series was differenced for the first time. Therefore, the researcher took a logarithm
transformation on the series. The series then became stationary after the first-order
Quarterly series. Five series are included in this set of data: media agenda, media
attitude, presidential agenda, presidential attitude, and public agenda. Media agenda is
stationary after taking a seasonal difference.576 Although the media attitude series is
stationary without any difference at lag one, a lag has minimum SBIC, the researcher still
takes a seasonal difference on it because this series goes closely with the media agenda
series (See Figure 4.4 and 4.5).577 Stronger evidence is obtained to show that this series is
stationary after the seasonal differencing (See Table 4.1). DFGLS test on the presidential
agenda series shows that the series is stationary after a seasonal difference. The series of
presidential attitude, which goes hand in hand with presidential agenda (See Figure 4.5),
is stationary only after taking a seasonal differencing and four times of one-lag difference.
The quarterly series of public agenda also rejects the null hypothesis at two lags
A regular difference has only one lag. The differenced series D.y = y(t) - y(t-l). A seasonal difference
has four lags. The differenced series S4.y = y(t) - y (t-4).
577
When the researcher differences the series, to obtain a well-fit model is also taken into consideration.
Since VAR modeling is essentially data-driven, this practice is allowable as long as the series are stationary.
158
VAR Modeling, Granger Causality Tests and Hypothesis Testing
compared to the bivariate analyses that hold other variables constant or just ignore the
influences from other variables. However, one drawback of VAR modeling is that it is
difficult to interpret the coefficients of the model. While the first lag coefficients in a
single equation can be understood as the direct influence of the exogenous variable on the
endogenous variable, the coefficients of the lags greater than one can only be interpreted
as a mixture of the direct and indirect effects produced in the previous lags.579
Partly because of this, VAR modelers do not conduct hypothesis tests directly
based on the estimations of the model or the model fit. Instead, they assess the joint
being a cause of the endogenous variable in the equation. Although this hypothesis
testing method is not exactly identical to the bivariate Granger Causality test, it is so
similar in theoretical mechanism that many scholars just call it "multivariate Granger
Gan, "Causality among Wildfire, ENSO, Timber Harvest, and Urban Sprawl."
579
See McCarty and Schmidt, "A Vector-Autoregression Analysis of State-Government Expenditure." See
also Gan, "Causality among Wildfire, ENSO, Timber Harvest, and Urban Sprawl."
580
See Freeman, Williams, and Lin, "Vector Autoregression and the Study of Politics." See also Gan,
"Causality among Wildfire, ENSO, Timber Harvest, and Urban Sprawl," and McCarty and Schmidt, "A
Vector-Autoregression Analysis of State-Government Expenditure."
581
McCarty and Schmidt, "A Vector-Autoregression Analysis of State-Government Expenditure."
159
Causality test." Among Stata users, this technique is also well known as the Granger
Causality test based on the VAR model. This study will test the hypotheses by looking at
both the multivariate and the bivariate Granger Causality tests. The testing follows not
Yearly (43-obs) data VAR. One important decision that needs to be made in fitting
a VAR model is the choice of proper lags. On one hand, the model should have enough
lags to make sure that the residual will be independently and identically distributed and
that the linear relationships among the variables can be captured. On the other hand, the
model should not include unnecessary lags, which will reduce the degree of freedom and
the precision of the estimation.583 For the 43-observation yearly dataset, which includes
the variables of public agenda, public attitude, and policy making, both the pretest and
the posttest estimation suggest three lags to be used in the model after the variables are
CO A
582
Gan, "Causality among Wildfire, ENSO, Timber Harvest, and Urban Sprawl," 307.
583
For a discussion, see McCarty and Schemidt, "A Vector-Autoregreesion Analysis of Stat-Government
Expenditure."
584
The pretest needs a number of maximum lag-length to estimate the proper lag-length for building the
model. It is reasonable to set four year as the maximum lag-length in this case. This is the lag length some
similar studies use to explore the interactions among the media, the public and the U.S. Congress on several
topics, including the environment. See, for example, Yue Tan and David Weaver, "Agenda-Setting Effects
Among The Media, The Public, and Congress, 1946-2004," Journalism and Mass Communication
Quarterly 84 (winter 2007), 729-744. The post-estimation of the proper lag length is made based on the
lags chosen in the model.
160
VAR(l) model585, the VAR(l) model turned out to be not very well fitted, since its
Once the VAR model is built, the researchers have to check the model-fit to find
out if the model approximates the reality of the data closely. Stata provides three
techniques to check the fitness of the VAR model: estimation stability, residual normality
and residual autocorrelation. The idea is that, if the VAR model is well-fitted, the
eigenvalues of the parameters should be within the unit circle and should be stable, and
the residuals of the series should have no autocorrelations. The VAR (3) for the public
agenda, public attitude and the policy making turned out to be a good model. The
parameter estimations are stable, and there is no autocorrelation left in the residual, which
is normally distributed. The sample loses four observations in differencing, and finally 38
observations from 1970 to 2007 are analyzed.587 The model has an AIC of 7.24, HQIC,
7.70, and SBIC, 8.54. It explains 69.1 percent of the variation in the public agenda
equation, 39.4 percent of the differenced public attitude equation, and 23.5 percent of the
585
A VAR(l) model is a VAR model with one lag. This model looks at the relationship between the current
value of each variable in the model and the values of all the variables in the model at the previous time unit
(i.e., day, week, quarter, or year, etc.). Same way, a VAR(3) model is a model with three lags.
586
Stata use five criteria to choose the proper lag length for the VAR modeling: the likelihood-ratio (LR)
test statistics for the models with lags less than or equal to the maximum lag length in the test, final
prediction error (FPE) test, Akaike's information criterion (AIC), Schwarz's Bayesian information criterion
(SBIC), and the Hannan and Quinn information criterion (HQIC). See the help file for Stata command
"varsoc." In the current test, three of the five criteria recommend the VAR(3) model.
587
The model also loses one observation because the value for public attitude in 1965 is missing.
161
Table 4.2 VAR(3) with the Yearly Data (43-obs)
162
Usually, coefficients of the VAR model are used for prediction rather than
interpretation, as has been discussed previously. The coefficients, however, can also
provide knowledge about the interaction among the variables. Public agenda is strongly
influenced by its own past, and the influence is complicated. While the public agenda on
the environment of the previous year (coef. = 0.857, p < .001) and the previous third year
(coef. = 0.356,/? = .013) have positive influences on the current public agenda, the
previous second year has a negative influence on the current year (coef. = -0.672, p
< .001). At the third lag, policy making also show a negative influence on the current
public agenda (coef. = -8.089,/? = .034). The Federal environment expenditure also has a
negative influence on public attitude at lag three (coef. = -18.230, p = .035). The results
indicate that when the federal government's environmental expenditure goes down, the
public tends to view the environment issues as more important. While the federal
spending goes up, the public feels relieved and view environmental issues as less
important. Just as shown by a study about the public response and the media coverage on
the economic situations, the public pays less attention to the economy when it is doing
con
Yearly (43-obs) data Granger Causality test. As discussed before, the VAR
Granger Causality test works better for the purpose of hypothesis testing. The 43-
observation yearly dataset is related to the variables in Hypothesis 2, which thus will be
tested first.
When we look at the coefficients, we should keep in mind that the first lag coefficient stands for a direct
influence, while coefficients after that represent a mixture of the direct influences and indirect influences
within the model. See McCarty and Schmidt, "A Vector-Autoregression Analysis of State-Government
Expenditure" for a discussion.
589
See Sheafer, "How to Evaluate It."
163
H2 predicts that public agenda on environmental issues Granger causes public
attitude on it. The Granger Causality test based on VAR (3) model (see Table 4.3) shows
that public agenda, as stated in Hypothesis 2, is the Granger Cause of public attitude (%2(3)
= 14.65, p = .002). This is confirmed by the two bivariate Granger Causality tests, the
bivariate Granger Causality Chi-square test (x2(3) = 13.97,/? = .003) and the bivariate
Granger Causality F test (F(3, 36) = 3.90, p = .016). Therefore H2 is fully supported.
590
See, for example, McCarty and Schmidt, "A Vector-Autoregression Analysis of State-Government
Expenditure."
164
Meanwhile, the bivariate tests suggest that public attitude is also a Granger Cause
of the public agenda (^(3) = 14.28,p = .003; F(3, 36) = 3.98, p = .015). Although the
multivariate test can not lead to this conclusion, this relationship still has partially
supportive evidence. Hence, media agenda and media attitude have a feedback
H6, which states that public attitude is a Granger Cause of the policy making on
environmental issues, can also be tested with the 43-observation yearly dataset. This
hypothesis, however, is not supported by any one of the three Granger Causality tests.
Actually, the/? value for the multivariate test is quite high (x2(3) = 0.72,/? = .869), which
That doesn't mean that the federal government is not at all responsive to public
concerns on environmental issues. The bivariate Granger tests show that public agenda
can Granger cause policy making (x2(3) = 16.63,/? < .001; F(3, 36) = 4.64,/? = .008).
Since there is not much controversy about whether or not humans should protect the
environment, and the disagreement mainly lies in the degree of priority that people
should put on the environmental issues, public agenda in environmental issues is a strong
hint of positive public attitude toward environmental issues. This is likely why the
pollsters ask more about how important people think the environment is but less about
how much money people think the federal government should spend for the environment.
591
Granger's conception is used here. Another scholar in the same field, Christopher Sims, considers only
the situation that X causes Y but not vice versa as the real Granger Causality. For more discussion, see John
R. Freeman, "Granger Causality and the Time Series Analysis of Political Relationships," American
Journal of Political Science 27 (May 1983): 327-358.
165
Decision makers in the federal government may pay attention to the public agenda and
figure out the public attitude, but no attention has been paid to the public attitude itself, as
Yearly (28-obs) data VAR. All the three criteria, AIC, SBIC and HQIC, suggest a
VAR(l) model for this 28-observation yearly dataset. The model turned out to be fine.
VAR diagnostics tests show that the estimations are stable. The residual is normally
distributed and has no autocorrelation. For the VAR(l) model, AIC = 13.69, SBIC =
13.98, HQIC = 13.77. It explains 11.7 percent of the variation of the differenced public
attitude equation and 16.4 percent of the differenced media attitude equation. Because of
the differencing and the one lag in the model, the sample loses two observations, and
only covers from 1982 to 2007, with 26 observations. The model does not support the
hypothesized effect of media attitude on public attitude (see Table 4.4). On the contrary,
it shows a significant positive effect of public attitude on the media attitude (coef. = 2.07,
p - .024). The previous year's public attitude, as the model suggests, has a significant
Yearly (28-obs) data Granger Causality test. H3 predicts that media attitude on the
environment Granger causes public attitude on the environment. The Granger Causality
tests, nevertheless, provide a mixed result (see Table 4.5). While the multivariate Granger
Causality test supports that public attitude Granger causes media attitude (x2( 1) = 5.10, p
= .024), only the bivariate Chi-square test supports the hypothesis that media attitude is a
Granger Cause of the public attitude (x 2 (l) - 5.49,/? = .019). Therefore, H3 is only
166
Table 4.4 VAR(l) with the Yearly Data (28-obs)
167
Quarterly data VAR. In the pretest to find appropriate lag length for this quarterly
dataset, the maximum lag length is set as twelve, which covers three years, the time
period set as lag length in the 43-observation yearly dataset. SBIC suggests a VAR(2)
model, HQIC recommends a VAR(8) model, while AIC recommends a twelve-lag model.
The AIC of the VAR (8) model (23.87) is slightly higher than the VAR(12) model (22.94)
but less than the VAR(2) model (25.93). The SBIC of the VAR(8) (29.35), on the
contrary, is higher than the VAR(2) model (27.34) but less than the VAR(12) model
(31.30). Meanwhile, it has the least HQIC (26.09, compared to that of the VAR(2) (26.50)
and the VAR(12) (26.31). The researcher ran the three models and compared them. The
VAR(2) model, though the most parsimonious one, left a residual that was not normally
distributed and still had autocorrelation (Jarque-Bera normality test for the residual of
media agenda, % (2) = 22.40, p < .001; the test for the residual of presidential agenda, x (2)
= 8.01, p = .018; for the joint residual, x2(10) = 33.48,/? < .001). The VAR(8) model thus
seemed to be the best one and was chosen by the researcher (See Table 4.6). 592
The VAR(8) model covers from the first quarter of 1984 to the fourth quarter of
equation of the seasonally differenced media agenda equation, 61.7 percent of the
seasonally differenced media attitude equation, 65.9 percent of the seasonally differenced
presidential agenda equation, 98.9 percent of the equation of presidential attitude that has
To warrant the choice of the best model, the researcher also tried VAR(14) and VAR(16).Both of them
violate the assumption that the residual of a VAR model should be normally distributed.
593
The original dataset have 120 observations. With differencing and set lags in the VAR model, we lose
some data.
168
Table 4.6 VAR(8) with the Quarterly Data
169
Endogenous Variable Exogenous Variable Coefficient SE Z p
S4.Media-Attitude
Media-Agenda L1S4 0.766 0.281 2.72 .006*
L2S4 -1.185 0.295 -4.02 <.001*
L3S4 0.600 0.292 2.06 .040*
L4S4 0.520 0.283 1.84 .066
L5S4 0.447 0.295 1.51 .130
L6S4 -0.664 0.303 -2.19 .029*
L7S4 0.273 0.296 0.92 .356
L8S4 -0.446 0.242 -1.85 .065
Media-Attitude L1S4 -0.211 0.208 -1.01 .310
L2S4 0.875 0.209 4.18 <.001*
L3S4 0.065 0.204 0.32 .751
L4S4 -1.277 0.211 -6.05 <.001*
L5S4 -0.056 0.215 -0.26 .795
L6S4 0.257 0.221 1.16 .245
L7S4 0.258 0.226 1.14 .254
L8S4 -0.240 0.204 -1.18 .238
Presidential-Agenda L1S4 -0.415 0.303 -1.37 .172
L2S4 -0.050 0.343 -0.15 .884
L3S4 0.220 0.359 0.61 .541
L4S4 0.805 0.353 2.28 .023*
L5S4 -0.482 0.382 -1.26 .208
L6S4 -0.523 0.382 -1.37 .171
L7S4 -0.560 0.327 -1.71 .087
L8S4 1.348 0.332 4.06 <.001
Presidential-Attitude L1D4S4 -0.146 0.173 -0.84 .399
L2D4S4 -0.170 0.463 -0.37 .713
L3D4S4 -0.031 0.738 -0.04 .966
L4D4S4 0.111 0.857 0.13 .897
L5D4S4 -0.015 0.826 -0.02 .985
L6D4S4 -0.043 0.673 -0.06 .949
L7D4S4 0.157 0.406 0.39 .699
L8D4S4 0.144 0.147 0.99 .324
Public-Agenda LIS4 1.671 0.541 3.09 .002*
L2S4 -1.300 0.728 -1.79 .074
L3S4 -0.926 0.723 -1.28 .200
L4S4 2.085 0.721 2.89 .004*
L5S4 -0.767 0.684 -1.12 .262
L6S4 -0.398 0.689 -0.58 .564
L7S4 -0.055 0.649 -0.09 .932
L8S4 0.666 0.419 1.59 .112
Constant 0.217 0.440 0.49 .622
DS4 .Presidential-Agenda
Media-Agenda L1S4 -0.013 0.111 -0.12 .908
L2S4 -0.210 0.117 -1.8 .072
170
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Endogenous Variable Exogenous Variable Coefficieri it SE Z P
L6S4 0.403 0.180 2.24 .025*
L7S4 -0.331 0.175 -1.89 .059
L8S4 -0.247 0.143 -1.73 .084
Media-Attitude L1S4 -0.158 0.123 -1.29 .198
L2S4 -0.020 0.124 -0.16 .875
L3S4 0.287 0.121 2.37 .018*
L4S4 0.288 0.125 2.31 .021*
L5S4 -0.264 0.128 -2.07 .038*
L6S4 -0.259 0.131 -1.98 .048*
L7S4 0.160 0.134 1.20 .232
L8S4 0.142 0.121 1.18 .239
Presidential-Agenda L1S4 -0.761 0.180 -4.24 <.001*
L2S4 -0.430 0.203 -2.12 .034*
L3S4 0.157 0.213 0.74 .461
L4S4 0.240 0.209 1.15 .251
L5S4 0.333 0.226 1.47 .142
L6S4 0.077 0.226 0.34 .733
L7S4 0.117 0.194 0.61 .545
L8S4 -0.289 0.197 -1.47 .142
Presidential-Attitude L1D4S4 -2.898 0.103 -28.26 <.001*
L2D4S4 -4.915 0.274 -17.92 <.001*
L3D4S4 -5.984 0.437 -13.69 <.001*
L4D4S4 -6.077 0.507 -11.98 <.001*
L5D4S4 -5.226 0.489 -10.68 <.001*
L6D4S4 -3.664 0.398 -9.20 <.001*
L7D4S4 -1.809 0.241 -7.52 <.001*
L8D4S4 -0.498 0.087 -5.74 <.001*
Public-Agenda LIS4 0.594 0.320 1.85 .064
L2S4 0.034 0.431 0.08 .938
L3S4 0.220 0.428 0.51 .607
L4S4 -0.868 0.427 -2.03 .042*
L5S4 -0.116 0.405 -0.29 .774
L6S4 0.241 0.408 0.59 .555
L7S4 0.147 0.384 0.38 .702
L8S4 0.229 0.248 0.92 .357
Constant -0.086 0.260 -0.33 .742
S4.Public-Agenda
Media-Agenda L1S4 0.123 0.054 2.30 .021*
L2S4 -0.092 0.056 -1.63 .102
L3S4 -0.104 0.056 -1.87 .062
L4S4 0.038 0.054 0.71 .480
L5S4 0.013 0.056 0.24 .813
L6S4 -0.090 0.058 -1.55 .120
L7S4 -0.008 0.056 -0.14 .888
L8S4 -0.184 0.046 -3.99 <.001*
172
iable
Endogenous Variable Exogenous Variable Coefficient SE Z P
Media-Attitude L1S4 -0.067 0.040 -1.69 .090
L2S4 0.056 0.040 1.41 .159
L3S4 0.146 0.039 3.75 <.001*
L4S4 -0.035 0.040 -0.87 .385
L5S4 -0.003 0.041 -0.07 .943
L6S4 0.055 0.042 1.32 .188
L7S4 0.107 0.043 2.48 .013*
L8S4 0.062 0.039 1.59 .111
Presidential-Agenda L1S4 -0.033 0.058 -0.57 .566
L2S4 -0.162 0.065 -2.48 .013*
L3S4 0.025 0.068 0.36 .717
L4S4 0.100 0.067 1.49 .135
L5S4 0.091 0.073 1.25 .211
L6S4 -0.141 0.073 -1.94 .052
L7S4 -0.163 0.062 -2.62 .009*
L8S4 0.265 0.063 4.19 <.001*
Presidential-Attitude L1D4S4 -0.087 0.033 -2.63 .008*
L2D4S4 -0.207 0.088 -2.35 .019*
L3D4S4 -0.308 0.141 -2.19 .029*
L4D4S4 -0.315 0.163 -1.93 .053
L5D4S4 -0.295 0.157 -1.88 .061
L6D4S4 -0.272 0.128 -2.13 .034*
L7D4S4 -0.152 0.077 -1.97 .049*
L8D4S4 -0.058 0.028 -2.08 .037*
Public-Agenda LIS4 1.130 0.103 10.97 <.001*
L2S4 -0.400 0.139 -2.89 .004*
L3S4 -0.187 0.138 -1.36 .175
L4S4 0.081 0.137 0.59 .557
L5S4 0.097 0.130 0.74 .458
L6S4 -0.200 0.131 -1.53 .127
L7S4 0.057 0.124 0.46 .645
L8S4 -0.099 0.080 -1.23 .217
Constant 0.067 0.084 0.80 .422
Notes: 1. In the table, D stands for the first one-lag difference, and S4 stands for the first seasonal
difference. * means significant at the 0.05 level.
2. With the one-order differences and the seasonal differences on some of the variables and the four
lags in the model, the dataset lose twelve quarters of observations and covers from the first quarter of
1984 to the fourth quarter of 2007 with 96 observations. AIC = 23.87, SBIC = 29.35, HQIC = 26.09. For
the equation of the seasonally differenced media agenda series, R-square = 0.681; for the equation of the
seasonally differenced media attitude series, R-square = 0.617; for the equation of the seasonally
differenced presidential agenda series, R-square = 0.659; for the series of presidential attitude that has
been seasonally differenced once and one-lag differenced for four times, the R-square = 0.989; for the
seasonally differenced public agenda series, R-square = 0.864. The lag length of the VAR model is
selected based both on the minimum AIC and the HQIC. Posttests show that the estimation of the VAR(8)
model is stable. The residual has no autocorrelation and is normally distributed. The model also has the
least HQIC compared to other models with a maximum lag-length of twelve.
173
been seasonally differenced and first-order differenced for four times, and 86.4 percent of
The model pictures a complicated interaction among the five variables included in
the analysis (see Table 4.6). When media agenda is the endogenous variable of an
equation, the VAR(8) model shows that the past values of media agenda have mixed
effects on the current value of media agenda. While the previous quarter (coef. = 0.781, /?
<.001) and the previous fifth quarter (coef. = 0.646,/? = .002) positively predict the
current quarter, the previous second (coef. = -0.845,/? < .001) and sixth (coef. = -0.614,/?
= .005) quarter have a negative influence on the current quarter. These self-predictions
suggest that media agenda has its own developing pattern and inertia. Media attitude
positively predicts media agenda at lag two (coef. = 0.593,/? < .001) and lag seven (coef.
= 0.343,/? = .034), but negatively predicts it at lag four (coef. = -0.599,/? < .001).
Presidential agenda has a negative influence on media agenda at lag five (coef. = -0.699,
p = .010), but a positive one at lag eight (coef. = 0.790,/? = .001). Public agenda has a
positive influence on media agenda at both lag four (coef. = 1.012,/? = .049) and lag eight
Media attitude is predicted by media agenda both negatively and positively, with
lag one (coef. = 0.766,/? = .006) and lag three (coef. = 0.600,/? = .040) having positive
influence and lag two (coef. = -1.185,/? < .001) and lag six (coef. = -0.664,/? = .029)
having negative influence. Media attitude is also predicted by its past values both
positively (at lag two, coef. = 0.875,/? < .001) and negatively (at lag four, coef. = -1.277,
p < .001). Presidential agenda at previous two quarters (at lag four, coef. = 0.805,/?
= .023; at lag eight, coef. = 1.348,/? < .001) have positive influence on the current value
174
of media attitude, which indicates that when the presidents address environmental issues
more, the media coverage of the environmental protection tends to be more supportive.
The influence from the presidents to the media, however, usually needs a one-year or
two-year lag to have an observable result. Public agenda also positively predicts media
attitude at lag one (coef. = 1.671,/? = .002) and lag four (coef. = 2.085, /? = .004), which
shows that media respond to the public agenda faster than they respond to the presidents.
0.174, p = .036). When the media covers the environment with a more supportive tone,
in two quarters, the presidents will also address more about the environmental issues.
Three previous lags of presidential agenda mixedly predict its current value (At lag two,
coef. = 0.583,/? < .001; at lag four, coef. = -0.768,/? < .001; at lag six, coef. = 0.355,/?
= .019).
Presidential attitude is mixedly predicted by media agenda (at lag three, coef. = -
0.381,/? = .027; at lag six, coef. = 0.403,/? = .025). Interestingly, when the presidents find
that the media cover more environmental stories, they tend to play down on this topic in
three quarters and become more supportive to the environment in six quarters.
Presidential attitude is influenced by media attitude earlier positively (at lag three, coef. =
0.287,/? = .018; at lag four, coef. = 0.288,/? = .021) and later negatively (at lag five, coef.
= -0.264,/? = .038; at lag six, coef. = -0.259,/? = .048). Presidential agenda of previous
two quarters negatively influence the current presidential attitude (at lag one, coef. = -
0.761,/? < .001; at lag two, coef. = -0.430,/? = .034). The reason for this pattern still
needs more exploration. Presidential attitude clearly has its own trend, because it is
strongly and negatively predicted by its past values (At lag one, coef. = -2.898,/? < .001;
175
lag two, coef. = -4.915,/? < .001; lag three, coef. = -5.984,p < .001; lag four, coef. = -
6.077, p< .001; lag five, coef. = -5.226, p < .001; lag six, coef. = -3.664, p < .001; lag
seven, coef. = -1.809,/? < .001; lag eight, coef. = -0.498,/? < .001). It is also negatively
predicted by public agenda one year ago (lag four, coef. = -0.868, p = .042).
Public agenda can be predicted by media agenda positively at lag one (coef. =
0.123,/? = .021) but negatively at lag eight (coef. = -0.184,/? < .001). This is a sign that
the public is influenced by the media, because coefficient at lag one stands for a direct
short-term influence. In the long-term, probably because the fluctuation of the developing
trend of the series, the public agenda on the environment goes down if the media more
intensively cover the topic four quarters ago or goes up if the media cover the
environment less then. Media attitude is a positive predictor of public agenda at both lag
three (coef. = 0.146,/? < .001) and lag seven (coef. = 0.107,/? = .013). Presidential
agenda negatively influence public agenda in a short term (at lag two, coef. = -0.162,/?
= .013) but mixedly in a long term (at lag seven, coef. = -0.163,/? = .009; lag eight, coef.
= 0.265,/? < .001). Presidential attitude, interestingly, has a strong but negative influence
on the public agenda (at lag one, coef. = -0.087,/? = .008; lag two, coef. = -0.207,/?
= .019; lag three, coef. = -0.307,/? = .029; lag six, coef. = -0.272,/? = .034; lag seven,
coef. = -0.152,/? = .049; lag eight, coef. = -0.058,/? = .037). This suggests that generally
the public is on guard against the presidents' attitude on the environment. The public will
rate the environment as more important if they feel that the president is negligent on the
topic, and they will be relieved when the president becomes supportive. Public agenda is
also positively predicted by its own previous values at lag one (coef. = 1.130,/? < .001)
176
but negatively at lag two (coef. = -0.400, p = .004), which shows that the series goes up
Quarterly data Granger Causality test. As has been discussed, although the
estimations in the VAR models can provide some understanding of the relationships
among the variables, it is better to use them for the purpose of prediction rather than
hypothesis testing, because the later lags always merge all the shocks produced in the
previous lags and thus are hard to be interpreted. The remaining hypotheses will also be
tested with the Granger Causality tests, using the quarterly dataset.
HI states that media agenda Granger causes public agenda, which is partly
supported. While the multivariate Granger Causality test (x2(8) = 39.67, p < .001) and the
bivariate F test (F(8, 95) = 3.03,p = .005) significantly support the hypothesis, the
bivariate Chi-square test fails to reject the null (see Table 4.7). Considering that the
multivariate test approximates the real dynamic better, the evidence to support HI is still
strong.
Evidence shows that public agenda also Granger causes media agenda, which is
supported by both of the bivariate tests (for the Chi-square test, % (8) = 27.95, p < .001;
F(8, 95) = 7.90, p < .001). Given that in the VAR model both of the significant
parameters are positive, this causality is a sign that the media speak for the public on the
environmental issues. Since the multivariate test does not support this causality, the
causality from public agenda to media agenda might be intervened by some other factors.
177
Table 4.7 Granger Causality Tests on the Quarterly Data
178
H4 hypothesizes that presidential agenda Granger causes media agenda, which is
also partially supported (for the multivariate test, %2(8) = 18.94,/? = .015; for the bivariate
F test, F(8, 95) = 3.34, p = .002). The bivariate Chi-square test only obtains a/? value
of .159 (x (8) = 11.18). Again, the evidence is still considered as strong since the
multivariate test provides a supportive result. The bivariate F test suggests that media
agenda also Granger causes presidential agenda (F(S, 95) = 3.69, p < .001).
evidence is also mixed. The multivariate test supports the hypothesis (%2(8) = 17.51, p
= .025), which is concurred by the bivariate F test (F(8, 95) = 2.08,/? = .045). The
bivariate Chi-square test, however, fails to reject the null hypothesis. This suggests that
the causality from presidential attitude to media attitude may be influenced by other
variables in the model, which shadow that causal relation and prevent the bivariate Chi-
square test from capturing the causality. A multivariate test can find the causality because
the multivariate test considers all the variables in the model. Evidence also suggests that
media attitude Granger causes presidential attitude (for the multivariate Chi-square test,
5^(8) = 19.56,/? = .012; for the bivariate F test, F(8, 95) = 2.80,/? = .008).
The research question asks if there is any other interactions among the variables. In
addition to the aforementioned relationships, the Granger Causality tests also show some
other interesting causations among the variables. Media agenda and media attitude seem
to have a feedback relationship. While all three tests support that media agenda is a
Granger Cause of media attitude (for the multivariate test, x2(8) = 36.59,/? < .001; for the
bivariate tests, x2(8) = 17.08,/? = .029, andF(8, 95) = 4.83,/? < .001), the causation from
media attitude to media agenda is just partly supported (for the multivariate test, x2(8) =
179
40.01,/?< .001; for the bivariate F test, F(8, 95) = 4.17,/? < .001). There is also evidence
that presidential agenda and presidential attitude have a feedback relationship. All three
tests support that presidential agenda Granger causes presidential attitude (for the
multivariate test, ^(8) = 99.39, p < .001; for the bivariate tests, x2(8) = 17.08,/* = .029,
and F(8, 95) = 4.83, p < .001), and both of the bivariate tests suggest that presidential
attitude also Granger causes presidential agenda (%2(8) = 59.95, p < .001, and F(8, 95) =
16.95,/>< .001).
model594 based on agenda setting, framing, and priming theories are tested with the data
from dozens of public opinion polls, statistics of federal government outlays for the
summaries, and presidential documents. The study finds evidence for all of the causalities
hypothesized based on the integrated mass communication model except one (See Figure
4.7).
In the integrated model, five levels are proposed to examine the media effects:
attention, agenda, cognitive recognition, attitude, and behavior. Limited by the data and
the scope of this dissertation research, the hypothesis testing is conducted at only two
levels: agenda and attitude. Consistent with what agenda setting researchers hold, this
study provides evidence to support the agenda setting process from social establishments,
which are represented by the presidents in this study, to the media, and from the media to
the public. Moderate evidence suggests that changes in presidential agendas lead to
For detail discussion about the integrated model, see chapter three.
180
Figure 4,7 Causal Relationships among the Media, the Public, the Presidents and Policy-Making
Agenda
The
Policy
Presidents
Attitude
1 ^V
H4
H6
H5
"SJ
•v
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HI •-—*--? Agenaa
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-Attitud
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Note; In additiontothe six unidirectional hypotheses, otter relationships explored in the research questions are also shown in the figure. Black fee stands for
a causality supported by al three tests. Red line standsfora causality supported by the multivariate Granger Causaity test. Bluefeestands for a causality
supported by the two bivaoate Granger Causaity tests, Green ine stands for a causality supported by only one of the two bivamtetests.Yellow ine stands
for a hypothetic causaitytfsatno test supports.
changes in media agendas, and that media agenda change brings changes in public
agenda.595 Also consistent with what framing researchers hold, the study finds evidence
to support the process model in which framing596 of the environment issues by the
presidents causes changes in framing by the media, and media framing causes changes in
public framing.
This study also reveals the other side to which agenda setting and framing
researchers have not paid much attention. The agenda setting and framing processes are
not unidirectional but recursive. Evidence as strong as, or even stronger than, that for the
agenda setting and framing processes also shows that media agenda and attitude lead to
changes in the presidential agenda and attitudes, and the media are responsive to the
public at both agenda and attitude levels. The causal relationships from the public to the
media are actually clearer, since all the significant coefficients in those relationships are
positive. Changes in public agenda and attitude lead media agenda and attitude to change
The causal relationships from the public to the media and from the media to the
presidents are omitted by scholars but they coexist with the agenda setting and framing
processes. They echo the "mirror function" theory.597 The theory holds that all relevant
actions and events within a society are mirrored in the mass media. While research
The evidence, however, is not simple and easily interpreted. Although the Granger Causality tests
suggest the existence of a causal relationship, the V AR models show that the lagged effect can be mixed,
not simply positive or negative.
596
In the current study, frames are operationalized as the tone whether environment protection should be
put at a higher priority, namely, the attitudes of the presidents, the media and the public.
597
For more discussion see, for example, Peter Mohler, "Cycles of Value Change," European Journal of
Political Research 15 (1987), 155-165.
182
confirms that the media have influences on the public, it should not be ignored that the
media also reflect the community. When the public agenda and attitude on the
Overall, although the media effects hypotheses are all supported, the causal
relationships from the public to the media, at least on environmental issues, appear to
have evidence as strong as that for the causal relationships from the media to the public.
The causal relationships from the presidents to the media also have evidence as strong as
that supporting the causalities from the media to the presidents. Therefore, on one hand,
this study confirms that the media have influence on the public and that the media
themselves are influenced by the social establishments. On the other hand, it also
provides strong evidence that the media are a recipient of the influences of the social
establishment and the public. The media, which serve as an informant to the public, at the
same time work as a mirror to reflect the society as far as the environmental issues are
concerned. These results provide a picture that scholars usually do not see when focusing
The internal relationships among the five levels of media effects within one
subject also find supportive evidence from the analysis. Within each of the three subjects,
the president, the media, and the public, the hypotheses that agenda is a Granger Cause of
attitude are all fully supported (see Figure 4.7). Again, in the dynamic model,
relationships tend to be recursive. For each subject, while the agenda is found to be a
Granger Cause of the attitude, the attitude also Granger causes the agenda. The causal
relationships from the attitudes to the agendas, nevertheless, are only partly supported.
Meanwhile, causations are also found to connect the agendas and attitudes among
183
different subjects. For instance, changes in presidential attitude can cause changes in the
media agenda, while changes in the presidential attitude lead to changes in the media
attitude.
making, measured as the federal outlay for the environment in this study. One reason that
some previous studies find evidence of such an influence but this study does not is
probably due to the different operationalizations of the policy making. For example,
Erikson, Mackuen, and Stimson operationalize policy as the degree of liberalism of the
decisions made by the three branches of the federal government— Congress, the president,
and the Supreme Court.598 While broad decisions, including the unbinding solutions, are
sometimes easy to make, federal expenditure should be a more conservative, and thus
reliable, measurement of the policy, because it is always easier to talk than to financially
Meanwhile, this study provides evidence suggesting that the political authorities
are less responsive to the public on the environmental issues. Although the bivariate
Granger tests show that the environmental policy making is responsive to the public
agenda, this causality is not supported by the multivariate Granger test. Other than this
relationship, no evidence is found from the Granger tests to support the interactions
between policy-making and public agenda as well as pubic attitude on the environment.
The VAR(3) model fitted for the 43-obs yearly dataset in this study shows that policy
Johnson, "Environment."
184
making has statistically significant influence on both public agenda and public attitudes at
lag three. The coefficients are both negative, which reflects that the public are closely
Consistent with the relationship between the public and the policy making, Granger
tests show that the presidential agenda causes changes in the public agenda, while the
other way around does hold. 600 The VAR(8) model also shows that the presidential
agenda has influences on the public agenda, first negative and later positive, whereas
public agenda has no input in the presidential agenda. The presidents, at least on the
environmental issues, probably enjoy more independence and are not very much
restricted by the concerns from both the media and the public.
600
Due to the limitation of the data, the relationship between presidential attitude and public attitude is not
examined in this study.
185
CHAPTER FIVE
Aiming at examining media effects at different levels, this study collects two
longitudinal datasets and tests how, in the U.S. society, the presidents, the public, and the
media influence each other on environmental issues in two time periods: 1965-2007 and
1980-2007. In particular, two levels of media effects, namely, agenda and attitude, are
explored in this study. The level of agenda is derived from the agenda setting theory and
documents addressing environmental issues, and the proportion of people viewing the
environment as important. The level of attitude is derived from the framing theory and
measured as the sum tone expressed in the materials (news articles, television news
summaries, and presidential documents), i.e., whether they voice support for
environmental protection, and the proportion of people who think the federal government
and the public should spend more to protect the environment.601 Data used in this study
are drawn from answers to 47 poll questions ranging from 1965 to 2007 and content
601
Five levels of media effects, attention, agenda, cognitive recognition, attitude, and behavior, are
identified from the literature. This study chooses attention and attitude because the limitation of the
research scope, and also because the two media effect theories, agenda setting and framing, have also been
the focus of media effect research for a three decades.
186
What Have Been Found
In his popular textbook, Denis McQuail divides media effects into four phases: the
all-powerful-effect phase from the turning of the 20th century to the late 1930s, limited-
effects phase from the late 1930s to the 1960s, the powerful-effects-rediscovered phase
beginning from the 1960s, and the negotiated-effects phase beginning in the late
bullet theory, the limited-effects phase, also called the minimum-effects phase, is sealed
by Joseph Klapper, as discussed in detail in chapter two. 603 In phase three, scholars
challenge the limited-effects theory, arguing that research supporting the theory just
focuses on short-term effects and during special times such as an election campaign. In
the fourth phase, scholars believe that audience constructs meaning from the media text
and actively receive the influence. McQuail calls the approach of seeking a linear
transformation effect from the media to the audience the "bias of the paradigm towards
Results of this study show that the relationship between the media and the public is
much more complicated than just a linear transformation. Media effects may not be a
linear transformation but a mixed process with positive and negative effects exchanging
in different time periods. First, although evidence is found to support influence of the
media on the public, the influence is by no means a linear one. For example, on
See Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory, 4' ed (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000), 417-422.
See chapter two of this dissertation. See also Klapper, The effects of Mass Communication.
187
environmental issues, while the previous quarter's media agenda leads to a positive
change in the public agenda in the following the first quarter, it leads to a negative
change in the public agenda in the following eighth quarter. Other than those two quarters,
the media agenda even shows no significant influence on the public agenda. Second,
evidence can be found that the media agenda on environmental issues changes when the
public agenda changes, following the direction led by the public agenda. Media effects
exist, but they are mixed, and seeking the evidence for media effects should not block
researchers' view of the picture that the media both initiate and reflect public concerns
study because evidence is found that the presidents influence the media and the media
influence the public, evidence for the influence in the other way around is also strong.
The public also influence the media, and the media also influence the presidents. Such
relationships, although very important, are often ignored by media researchers. The fact
that the media are a recipient of influence from the public and the presidents confirms the
idea of media's "mirror function", which holds that one major function of the media is to
This study also supports the theoretical hypothesis that media effects have different
levels. The causal relationships from agenda, a lower level, to attitude, a higher level, are
all fully supported, but the causal relationships from attitude to agenda are just partly
supported. Causal relationships between the agendas and between the attitudes are also
188
supported. This shows that information processing levels of one subject will cause
changes at the counterpart levels of the other subject, and that within one subject, changes
The recursive causal relationships between the agendas and the attitudes that have
been identified are also not simply linear. This is an indication that different levels of
media effects605 do have relationships among each other, but such relationships vary
along with changes of time and situations. Increases of communication effects at lower
levels, such as attention, may not necessarily lead to increases of communication effects
at higher levels, such as attitude, at least in the case of environmental issues. The nature
The relationship between the presidents and the media identified in this study
provides stronger evidence for the idea that the presidents influence the media rather than
the other way around. The influence of the presidential agenda on media, however,
appears as negative first and positive later, which confirms the media's claimed role as
the "watchdog." As discussed in the previous chapters, if the presidents pay sufficient
attention to the environment, the media may lower their voice on this topic. When the
presidents, and thus the administration, fall short of addressing environmental issues, the
media step up their coverage to generate attention. In the long term, however, the media
Those communication effects are specified as media effects when they appear as the causalities from the
media to the public.
189
The influence of the presidents and policy making on the public shows that the
public is also vigilant against the presidents and their environmental policy making, since
attitude in the equation of public agenda in the VAR(8) model are negative. The public
tends to view the environment as more important and deserving more protection once
they feel that the president does not think so. The public's concern, however, has little
190
Hypotheses Test Results Conclusion
Public Attitude -> _ X2(l) = 5.10 ,/? = .024 Partly
Media Attitude Multivariate % test X2(l) = 3.09,/? = .079 supported
2
Bivariate x test F( 1,25) = 0.92,/? = .347
Media Agenda -> Bivariate F test2 X2(8) = 9.37,/? = .312 Partly
Presidential Agenda Multivariate x test 5?(8)= 13.04, p = .111 supported
Bivariate x2 test F(8,95) = 3.69,/?<.001
Media Attitude -> Bivariate F test2 X2(8)= 19.56, p = .012 Partly
Presidential Attitude Multivariate % test X2(8) = 9.89, /? = . Ill supported
Bivariate x2 test F(8, 95) = 2.80,/? = .008
Policy-making-^ Bivariate F test 2
X2(3) = 7.72, /? = . 052 Not
Public Attitude Multivariate2 x test X2(3) = 4.58, /? = . 205 supported
Bivariate % test F(3,36)= 1.28,/? = .296
Media agenda -> Bivariate F test X2(8) = 36.59, p<.001 Fully
Media Attitude Multivariate x2 test X2(8) = 17.08, p = .029 supported
2
Bivariate x test F(8,95) = 4.83,/?<.001
Media Attitude -> Bivariate F test X2(8) = 40.01, j9<001 Partly
Media Agenda Multivariate x2 test X2(8)= 14.74,/; = .065 supported
2
Bivariate x test F(8,95) = 4.17,/?<.001
Presidential Agenda -> Bivariate F test X2(8) = 99.39, /?<.001 Fully
Presidential Attitude Multivariate x2 test X2(8)= 17.08, /? = . 029 supported
Bivariate x2 test F(8,95) = 4.83,/? = .001
Presidential Attitude -> Bivariate F test
Multivariate x test x (8) = 5.87,p = .661 Partly
Presidential Agenda Bivariate x test Xz(8) = 59.95,/? <.001 supported
Bivariate F test J F(8,95)=16.95,/?<.001
Public-Agenda -> Multivariate x2 test X2(8) = 5.87,/; = .661 Not
Presidential-Agenda Bivariate x2 test X2(8) = 3.93,/? = .863 supported
Bivariate F test F(8,95)= 1.11,/? = .363
Presidential-Agenda -> Multivariate x test x (8) = 31.60, /? <.001 Partly
Public-Agenda Bivariate x test Xz(8) = 8.87,/? = .354 supported
Bivariate F test F(8,95) = 2.51,/? = .016
Public Agenda -> Multivariate x2 test X2(3)= 1.47,/? = .689 Partly
Policy-making Bivariate x2 test X2(3)= 16.63,/?<.001 supported
Bivariate F test F(3,36) = 4.64,/? = .008
Policy-making-^ Multivariate x2 test X2(3) = 6.28,/? = .099 Not
Public Agenda Bivariate x2 test X2(3) = 3.61,/? = .307 supported
Bivariate F test F(3,36)= 1.01, p = .401
Notes: Media agenda is measured by the number of news articles and news summaries about the
environment that appear in the particular quarter; media attitude is measured by the sum of the tone of
the news articles and summaries in that quarter; presidential agenda is measured by the number of the
presidential documents released in the particular quarter; presidential attitude is measured by the sum of
the tone of the presidential documents released in that quarter; public agenda is measured by a latent
series that is generated from 25 series poll questions that ask respondents to rate the importance of the
environment (the percentage of those who rate the environment as important); the public attitude is
measured by a latent series that is generated from 15 series poll questions that ask respondents if
spending for the environment should increase (the percentage of those who support a increase); the
policy-making is measured by the actual federal outlays in the natural resources and the environment.
191
Implications for U.S. Democracy
This researcher is not intending to generalize the pattern of the dynamics among
the media, the presidents and the public found in this study beyond environmental issues.
A recent study, using Granger Causality test to analyze the agenda setting effects among
the media, the public and the U.S. Congress, shows that the causal relationship from
media to public agenda is issue specific.606 For example, that study finds causality from
the media agenda to public agenda on defense issues, but not on crime and law issues. An
agenda-setting research conducted in Canada also finds that different issues display
different agenda-setting dynamics, which shows that agenda-setting effects varies, with
contribute to enhance the understanding of the interaction among the three major political
As shown by the study, the relationships are not linear but contain plenty of
interactions. Media's watch-dog role is evident, although the political elites are not
always swung by media coverage. The media also seem to follow the environmental
sentiment of the public more closely. In other words, media agenda and attitude are more
likely to be led by public agenda and attitude, compared to other relationships. Policy
makers who are elected by the public and supposed to be responsive to the public, on the
other hand, seem to listen to the pubic only through the media. The president, for
example, apparently does not respond directly to pubic concerns on the environment. The
Tan and Weaver, "Agenda-Setting Effects Among the Media, The Public and Congress."
Soroka, "Issue Attributes and Agenda-Setting by Media, the Public, and Policymakers in Canada."
192
willingness. However, literature shows that things are a little different when it comes to
elections, like in 1988, 1996, and 2000, when the presidents tent to adjust their tones to
be in accordance with the public and the media. To attract votes, political elites are
willing to set aside complicated interests conflicts for a while and show their respect of
public opinion, which a lot of times are voiced by the media. This is when the public and
the media see their power in the democratic system. Such power is not ephemeral,
because the winning candidate is supposed to hold on to his promises to the public. As a
result, more and more environmental protection laws were passed over the years and
Such dynamics confirm Juergen Habermas' idea of "media society." While the
mediated. The media system is at the center of Habermas' public sphere. The media
system receives inputs from political elites, release published opinions to the audience,
and receive polled opinions as feedbacks. Such a function grants the media professionals
a "media power" just second to the "political power." The requirement for such a
media society to function well is the self-regulation of the media system, which
determines that the media system follows its own normative codes.
Such dynamics identified by this study are also consistent with research on political
deliberation in mass society.610 Due to the size of modern mass society, it is not possible
193
for political elites to master public opinion through personal communication. The public,
for whose political willingness the elites represent, becomes impersonalized to the
presidents and their environmental calls are not directly responded by the presidents.
While the public can understand the presidential agenda on the environment and respond
to it directly, it seems that the president can only catch the public environmental concerns
The domination of the mediated communication in political arena will not pose a
warranted. However, heavy reliance on the media in political communication still leaves
leeway for distortion of information. As Habermas notes, this mechanism allows the
political and social elites, who have more access to speak to the media than the general
public, to be able to join the construction of "public opinion."61' This is also why Page
warns that even readers of elite newspapers, such as the New York Times, need to
consume the information cautiously. This teaching is also useful to the presidents. If
the presidents try to capture public opinion only through the media, they could be
environmental progress, the media system is a necessary and important tool. Compared to
public opinion, the media are much more powerful in pushing the president to catch the
See, for example, Mutz, Impersonal Influence. See also Benjamin Page, Who deliberates? Mass Media
in Modern Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
611
Habermas, Political Communication in Media Society.
612
Page, Who Deliberates.
194
Implications for Other Political Systems
The findings of this study also have significant implications for political systems
that are not democratic. In democracies, political officials are elected by the voters, and
whether or not they can be reelected is also absolutely decided by the voters. Previous
research suggests that voters direct public policy through two channels: voting and public
opinion poll. Nevertheless, the president and his policy-making could be relatively
unresponsive to public concerns on some topics such as the environment, partly because
it is not possible to capture public opinion through ways more effective than the mediated
communications. In democracies, on the other hand, given that the media are independent
society," the presidents can still receive feedbacks from the public through the media.
Although the media apparently do not present public concerns exactly, due to the
distortion of social elites or other factors, public concerns are not entirely buried. On
some other topics, previous research shows that the presidents and Congress do respond
In a political system where the media are under political control, such as in
Mainland China, the situation could be much worse. Since the media are not independent
from the government and therefore not able to reflect sentiment of the public in the
Chinese society, the tension between government officials and the general public often
accumulates without being reported or noticed until violence erupts, as what happen
613
Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity.
614
Erikson et al, The Macro Polity.
195
Because of a rumor that the relative of a senior local official raped and killed a
teenager girl, which was later made clear to be untrue, thousands of residents of Weng'an,
Guizhou615 attacked and burned the official building of the local government. 616 As the
top officials of Guizhou Province said, the death of the teenager girl was only the trigger.
The main reason for this large-scale violent protest was citizens' long-time dissent
against local officials, who were used to benefiting themselves at the expense of public
interests and using their official power to protect themselves rather than the general
f\\ 7
public. People of Weng'an had been very angry with the local officials. Their anger,
however, had no way to be voiced or noticed by higher officials because the local media
did not have the freedom to cover what was really happening.
Ruan also mentioned some other issues that are similar to the Weng'an incident.
They share the common characteristic that local citizens have no way to express their
dissatisfactoriness with the local officials until one day they reached the breaking point
upon things like a rumor and they attacked the local government. Ruan suggests that the
Chinese government should loosen the control on the media and let the media participate
in reflecting public concerns. This study confirms the value of his suggestion. If in a
democracy as mature and as open as it is in the U.S., the top political leaders still need to
196
capture public concerns on some issues through the media, Chinese top political leaders
are in greater needs of an independent media in order to really grasp public opinion.
As has been discussed in the third chapter, Methodology, the strengths of the
present study are that the data are collected from the real life situation and in a
longitudinal context. For example, the public opinion poll is not designed and executed
by this researcher. Although the researcher set the coding scheme for the content analysis
of media and presidential documents and participated in the intercoder reliability test, the
majority of the research materials were coded by another trained coder who did not know
much of the research. The unobtrusiveness of the data collection warrants the objectivity
Meanwhile, with the time order being taken into consideration, the causal
relationships identified from the present study should be much more reliable than those
identified from the cross-section studies. Furthermore, the VAR model used in this
research can reveal the change in the essence of the causalities at different time points. As
put in the previous discussion, many causal relationships are not just positive or negative,
but could be positive at some time points and negative at others. Regular linear regression
models have no power to find such patterns. Also, as Stuart Soroka notes, the
relationships among the media, public, and politicians can vary in direction. Sometimes
they are bi-directional, as identified from this study. A flaw of past works is that the
619
Hawthorne effect means the phenomenon that the researchers' intention can influence the experiment or
survey participants' performance toward the direction pursued by the researchers. For a discussion see J.
Campbell, V. Maxey ,and W. WatsonJ, "Hawthorne Effect: Implications for Prehospital Research," Annals
of Emergency Medicine 26 (November 1995): 590-594.
197
statistical procedures used are unable to capture the bi-direction relationships. The
The VAR model also has its drawbacks, however. Although it is an excellent tool
to model social dynamics just as is the structural equation modeling, the difficulty in
interpreting its coefficients makes it less preferred in hypothesis testing. Its following
hypothesis testing tool. While the multivariate Granger Causality test, like its bivariate
reveal whether the relationship is positive or negative. The present researcher thus relies
on the Granger Causality tests to test the hypothesis and examine other interactions
among the social factors within the model, and at the same time adopts the VAR
reiterated that the complication of the formation of the VAR coefficients622 reduces the
response function analysis, the researcher can introduce a random shock into the VAR
model and observe the changes in the variables of interest.623 Researchers then look at the
Soroka, "Issue Attributes and Agenda-Setting by Media, the Public, and Policymakers in Canada.
621
See Freeman, Williams, and Lin, "Vector Autoregression and the Study of Politics."
622
As we discussed before, the VAR coefficients at the later lags are formed by mixing the direct
influences and all the indirect effects that are formed in the previous lags.
198
impulse response graph. If the curve of the impulse response function goes to zero, one
can conclude that the short-term change in one variable has no influence on the other
concluded that the short-term change in one variable has a long-term influence on the
other variables, which is positive if the impulse response function is above the x-axis
(greater than zero) and negative if the function is below the x-axis.624 This is a tool that
further research based on this dissertation may consider to use, which may better capture
Previous studies also suggest that time series can have structure changes, which
means that trends of the series before a point are dramatically different from the trends of
the series after that point.625 The change in the trends could be because of breakthrough
of some influential issues or the social movements. For example, Wu et al identified that,
in their series of the media coverage of and public perception about the economy in the
United States from 1987 to 1996, January 1991 is a turning point. The series before
January 1991 represent a downturn period, while the series after it represent a rebound
period. The researchers thus cut the series into two and examined them in two periods:
the downturn period and the recovering period. Further exploration of the public and
For more discussion about the function of impulse response analysis see Christopher. A. Sims,
"Macroeconomics and Reality," Econometrica 48 (1980), 1-48. Impulse response function analysis and
variance decomposition are two methods usually used to examine the direction of influences among the
variables after VAR modeling.
624
See, for example, Gan, "Causality among Wildfire, ENSO, Timber Harvest, and Urban Sprawl." David
Backus, "The Canadian-U.S. Exchange Rate: Evidence from a Vector Autoregression," The Review of
Economics and Statistics 68 (1986), 628-637.
625
For an example, see Wu, Stevenson, Chen, and Guner, "The Conditioned Impact of Recession News."
626
See Wu , Stevenson, Chen, and Guner, "The Conditioned Impact of Recession News."
199
media sentiment on the environment from the 1970s up to now can also adopt this two-
period analysis strategy, for 1990 appears to be the peak in both public and media agenda
and attitudes on environmental protection in the present study. Statistical tests can be
applied to see if there is a structural change during the period before and after 1990.627 If
such a structural change is identified, then two-period analysis may provide richer
information.
Meanwhile, as pointed out by the literature and supported by the current study,
media effects can be analyzed at different levels. Although this study shows that
recursive causal relationships exist among the different media effects levels, how changes
in one level lead to changes in another is still not clear. McQuail points out that one
reason that strong media effects were rediscovered in the middle of last century was that
researchers moved their attention from the changes in attitudes to the changes in
cognitive knowledge.628 Research on different levels of media effects may reveal some
patterns that scholars cannot find when they treat all levels of media effects as the whole
media effect. This study also shows that the media are influenced more than they
The relationships among the media, the public and the political authorities deserve
more attention, not only because the recursive influences are interesting but also because
One statistical test that can identify structural changes is the chow test. See for example Wu , Stevenson,
Chen, and Guner, "The Conditioned Impact of Recession News."
628
McQuail, Mass Communication Theory.
200
Finally, as Stuart Soroka notes, policy-making has been measured with many ways
such as committee meetings and bill introductions.629 Further research can also examine
the dynamics with other operationalization of the policy-making, such as the real dollars
629
Soproka, "Issue Attributes and Agenda-Setting by Media, the Public, and Policymakers in Canada.''
201
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APPENDIX
This study is primarily based on two groups of data. The first group contains media
content and presidential documents, and the second group contains public opinion polls.
Values for the variables in the first group are obtained by content analysis, and values for
the variables in the second group are obtained by using a software tool: WCalc.
Data of media coverage on environmental issues are colleted from articles in two
newspapers: the New York Times and the Washington Post, as well as three television
networks: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Most of these documents are accessible from the
not available in LexiaNexis. Presidential documents are collected from The Weekly
Media Data
The New York Times. LexisNexis provides full-text New York Times articles
published from June 1, 1980 up to date. Most of this study's New York Times sample
articles are drawn from this database. Searching by key words: "environment,"
on Section A (weekday) or Section 1 (Sunday), from June 1, 1980 to December 31, 2007,
the researcher found 1,112 articles (See Figure Ala and Alb).
To select the content analysis sample, the researcher picked a starting number
randomly and systematically drew every fourth article. There are 279 articles selected.
220
Figure Ala Seaching New York Times Articles in LexisNexis
«*»; M r »«& *w«u m t i •«*•
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t 3 * * * SSSS ^
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221
To find the New York Times articles published between Jan 1, 1980 and May 31,
1980, the researcher used the ProQuest. Searching by the same key words in "document
title" (ProQuest does not provide headline search), the researcher found 30 articles, 20 of
which in Section A (See Figure A2a and A2b). The researcher then systematically
selected every fourth article and had five more New York Times articles to add to the
content analysis sample. A total of 284 New York Times articles are in the sample pool.
• • -.*
ProQuest
•v«.
•a-j-sc. «.
. « „ . , . i.
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s
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"
tin *<,iii
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222
The Washington Post. The researcher used the same key words to search the
Washington Post articles published between 1980 and 2007 from LexisNexis, regardless
of sections, and a total of 2,010 articles came up. Not all articles published in Section A in
this newspaper could be searched in the "Section A" category. For example, some
"Section A" articles were put in the category of "Editorial Copy" instead of "Section A."
Therefore the researcher had to look at the actual page number of each of the 2,010
articles to find those published in Section A (See Figure A3a and A3b). Again, by
randomly picking a starting number and then selecting every fourth article, the researcher
F i g u r e A 3 to T h e S e a r c h i n g R e s u l t s
1 • m :\
-'tfllK* <^«
LesxtstNlexKS" ACiatf&sm/tr
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r .MsmtgfftSKf 42l-t»tx*»£ *
•V* •* " Si««JM:«
|HiilJHi^WMH||^^^^^
223
Television news abstracts. This set of data was collected from the Vanderbilt
Television Archive, an online database, which provides the summaries, including news
abstracts, of the evening news programs of the major networks. This database, however,
does not facilitate multiple keywords search, and the researcher could use only one key
word, "environment," in the search (See Figure A4). Search result is 1,427 news program
summaries. By selecting with an interval of four, the researcher drew a sample of 361 for
& s m •- .&&&££&
£>«s^f««S info
T\ N**»\S# tiff*
MH C*dE«J>^> < I t h y V * i 1 fr t t * » i t l i K * tus-^g Nfc«w* A t v , , . i **
tih f> u t, w
i 3 Ec / 1 r ^r(
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Presidential Documents
All the presidential documents in this study are collected from the online database
Hein, which provides advanced search functions for the Weekly Compilation of
224
Presidential Documents through its online Federal Register Library.
The first round of sampling. The researcher first used the key word "environment"
to search the weekly compilation from 1980 to 2007. A total of 1,256 issues of the weekly
(one issue per week) turned out, and each issue contained dozens of presidential
kinds. In most cases, the word "environment" appearing in those presidential documents
means the ecological system or natural environment (for example, "being a steward of the
environment"), but in some of the documents it has other meanings, such as international
environment, or business environment, and therefore is not relevant to the present study.
After getting rid of the documents in which "environment" only means things other than
The second round of sampling. After obtaining the 1,256 issues of the weekly, the
researcher found out that this result had some faults. The Hein database could only
display 1000 results at one time, but it did not warn the user that it had automatically
dropped several issues from each year to reduce the number of issues from 1,256 to 1,000,
and therefore some useful issues were missing. Meanwhile, the researcher discovered that
this database could facilitate multi-keywords search, which meant that the search should
The researcher had to go back to find the missing documents and search the Hein
presidential documents in two time periods: 1980-1995, 1996-2007, in order to avoid the
database to automatically drop results to meet the 1000 display limit and therefore
225
tii tiv lis fsu ;si « t
•S3
t w»v ««t m Mt TH m
«y mt ft
».i
" l l ^ '' ** ' ' * *'$ hi*A)***Jf a l * s ; t * •' * • * * * ' * ' * t *ii' BM«l««vilf«S»lU'e*lHtStl.,ji*MsBJ«i((*t ' ^ ^ S * <£, *
'• llmUM!'
fe#
ft**, ** »n *(•«» W * r t JtMl »W *n- * rf,W»*itt *> »•* fr.
i H< ** m l U « it
i 5 i
)1?
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HH 1111
226
obtained a more complete population, hence representative samples (See Figure A5).
After repairing the population, the researcher selected every fourth matching document
Despite the researcher's effort, there are still in the sample some presidential
documents in which the word "environment" means things other than the ecological
system in which humans live, and these documents are coded as 99, missing data. The
same code is assigned to newspaper articles and television news summaries of the
same kind. After taking out the items coded as 99, the exact numbers of pieces used
for content analysis are as follows: newspaper articles, 531; television news abstracts,
Coding Scheme
Publication. The material is from the news media or the presidential documents.
Time. Year and quarter are coded based on the publishing and broadcasting time.
To decide the tone of news stories, quantity of both pro- and anti-environment
quotes are counted. Title, lead and narrative wording of the news stories are also taken
into account when counting quotes alone could not determine the tone. In the case of
opinion pieces, including editorials, letters to the editor, and presidential documents,
630
Tone is similar to the pro-con direction in Benjamin Page and colleagues' study. Instead of coding the
pro-con direction based on each news sources, this study codes tone based on each piece. For more
discussion about the pro-con direction, see Page, Shapiro, and Dempsey, "What Moves Public Opinion?"
Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public, chapter 8.
227
particularly presidential speeches and remarks, the tone is decided by assessing the
protection is not depicted along side with other interests such as economic
development. For opinion pieces, the overall attitude expressed in the article is highly
outnumber anti-environment ones or other interests noted. For opinion pieces, the
author expresses support for environmental protection but supports other interests, too.
For television news summaries, the piece mostly quotes pro-environment sources,
experts, but also quotes a couple of anti-environment sources, or noted other interests.
228
pro- and anti-environment sides is equal, or no attitude toward environmental
protection is shown. For television news summaries, equal number of both pro- and
coded as 0. Presidential speeches and opinion pieces usually are not coded as 0.
protecting the environment, the story favors the side that puts other interests over
anti-environment but still voices a little support, or promotes other interests over, but
president expresses the view of putting other interests first, such as economical
pro-environment quotes; for opinion piece, the author is clearly anti-environment; for
document, other interests are pit against environmental protection and that the president
Except the variable of time, three variables are obtained from public opinion polls
and the federal budget. The variables are public agenda, public attitude, and policy
229
making.
Totally 47 poll questions concerning the environment, ranging from 1965 to 2007,
are collected from the public opinion online database provided by the Roper Center. The
database can be accessed from the LexisNexis before December 31, 2007, but now can
only be accessed from the Roper Center Database. Thirty one of the questions ask people
what they rank as important, with environment as a choice. Answers to these questions
are used to measure the public agenda. Sixteen questions ask people if they think the
federal government or themselves want to pay more to protect the environment, whose
answers are used to measure public attitude toward the environment. The questions are
230
What do you think is the most important issue for the Fox 11
federal government to address today?(Environment)
What do you think is the most important problem facing Gallup 150
this country today? (Environment/pollution)
Looking ahead, what do you think will be the most Gallup 8
important problem facing our nation 25 years from now?
(Environment/Pollution)
Looking ahead, what do you think will be the most Gallup 4
important problem facing our nation 25 years from now?
(Environment/Pollution)
How important is it to you that the president and Congress Gallup 3
deal with each of the following issues in the next year —is it
-extremely important, very important, moderately
important, or not that important?) How about...the
environment? (Extremely important + Very important)
In your view, what one or two issues should be the top Gallup 12
priorities for the president and Congress to deal with at this
time?(Environment/Pollution)
Looking ahead to next year's presidential election, what will Gallup 4
be the most important issues that you will take into account
when deciding whom to vote for? (Environmental issues)
What do you think are the two most important issues for the Harris 81
government to address? (environment)
What would you say are the two or three most important Hart & Teeter 10
issues or problems facing the nation today that you
personally would like to see the federal government in
Washington do something about?(Environment, pollution,
toxic wastes)
What do you think are the two most important issues for the ICR 7
government to address? (Environment)
In your opinion, what is the most important problem facing IPSOS 12
the US (United States) today? (Environment)
What do you think is the most important problem facing Los Angeles 3
this country today? (Environment) Times
What do you think is the most important problem for the Princeton 6
government to address? (Environmental
issues/Pollution/Global warming)
What do you think is the most important problem facing the Princeton 20
country today? (Environment/Pollution/Global)
Right now, which one of the following do you think should Princeton 7
be a more important priority for this country...protecting the
environment or developing new sources of energy?
231
I'd like to ask you some questions about priorities for Princeton 10
President Bush and Congress this year. As I read from a list,
tell me if you think the item that I read should be a top
priority, important but lower priority, not too important or
should it not be done? Should...protecting the environment
be a top priority, important but lower priority, not too
important, or should it not be done? (Top priority)
Here is a list of things people have told us they are Roper 11
concerned about today. Would you read over that list and
then tell me which 2 or 3 you personally are most
concerned about today? (Pollution of air and water)
(Source: Dunlap & Scarce, 1991)
What do you think is the most important problem facing Stony 3
this country today? (Environment)
(I am going to read you a list of possible international TNS 4
threats to the United States in the next 10 years. Please tell
me if you think each one on the list is an extremely
important threat, an important threat, or not an important
threat at all.)...The effects of global warming (Extremely
important threat to the United States in the next 10 years +
Important threat)
As for their effect on your way of life in the next few years, Trendex 14
say within 10 years, how would you rate the importance of
each of the following topics...very important, of some
importance, or not particularly important? Air pollution
control measures (very important + of some importance)
As for their effect on your way of life in the next few years, Trendex 12
say within 10 years, how would you rate the importance of
each of the following topics.. .very important, of some
importance, or not particularly important? Water pollution
control measures (very important + of some importance)
As for their effect on your way of life in the next few years, Trendex 8
say within 10 years, how would you rate the importance of
each of the following topics...very important, of some
importance, or not particularly important? Controlling how
land is used by developers (very important + of some
importance)
Which of the following issues would you say is most Winston 43
important to you in deciding how to vote for Congress?
(Environment)
What would you say is the single most important problem Wirthlin 4
facing the United States today, that is, the one that you,
yourself, are most concerned about?(Environment)
Public Attitude
232
Should federal spending on improving and protecting the ANES 9
environment be increased, decreased, or kept about the
same? (Increased)
How important is it that Congress do each of the following? Gallup 3
Is it a top priority, high priority, low priority, or not a
priority at all?)... Increase spending on the environment
(Top priority + High priority)
Increased efforts by business and industry to improve Cambridge 4
environmental quality could lead to higher consumer prices.
Would you be willing to pay higher consumer prices so that
industry could be better preserve and protect the
environment, or not? (Source: Dunlap & Scarce, 1991)
Do you agree or disagree with the following CBS/ New York 16
statement?...Protecting the environment is so important that Times
requirements and standards cannot be too high and
continuing environmental improvements must be made
regardless of cost.(Agree)
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: We CBS/ New York 2
must protect the environment even if it means increased Times
government spending and higher taxes? (Agree)
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Wirthlin 8
Protecting the environment is so important that
requirements and standards cannot be too high, and
continuing environmental improvements must be made
regardless of cost. Strongly agree, somewhat agree,
somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree. (Strongly agree +
Somewhat agree)
We are faced with many problems in this country, none of General Social 28
which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm going to Survey
name some of these problems, and for each one I'd like you
to tell me whether you think we're spending too much
money on it, too little money, or about the right amount.)
Are we spending too much, too little, or about the right
amount on... improving and protecting the environment?
(Too little)
Listed below are various areas of government spending. General Social 3
Please indicate whether you would like to see more or less Survey
government spending in each area. Remember that if you
say 'much more,' it might require a tax increase to pay for
it....Spend much more, spend more, spend the same as now,
spend less, spend much less...The environment. (Spend
much more + Spend more)
Sometimes the laws that are designed to protect the NBC/Wall Street 4
environment causes industries to spend more money and Journal
raise their prices. Which do you think is more important:
protecting the environment or keeping prices down?
233
(We are faced with many problems in this country. I'm National Science 8
going to name some of these problems, and for each one, I'd Foundation
like you to tell me if you think that the government is
spending too little money on it, about the right amount, or
too much.)...Next, reducing pollution...Is the government
spending too little, about the right amount, or too much on
reducing pollution? (Too little)
If you were making up the budget for the federal Princeton 5
government this year, would you increase spending
for...environmental protection, de-crease spending
for ...environmental protection, or keep spending the same
for this?. (Increase spending)
We are faced with many problems in this country, none of Roper 14
which can be solved easily or inexpensively. I'm going to
name some of these problems, and for each one I'd like you
to tell me whether you think we're spending too much
money on it, too little money, or about the right
amount.)...improving and protecting the environment. (Too
little)
Would you like to see something done in your community Trendex 12
or part of the country on the following issues:.. .If "yes": If
such action were to result in higher costs to you through
taxes, utility rates or other prices, how much would you be
willing to pay for...$5, $50, or $500? Controlling air
pollution($5+$50+$500)
Would you like to see something done in your community Trendex 16
or part of the country on the following issues:.. .If "yes": If
such action were to result in higher costs to you through
taxes, utility rates or other prices, how much would you be
willing to pay for...$5, $50, or $500? Controlling water
poUution($5+$50+$500)
Would you like to see something done in your community Trendex 16
or part of the country on the following issues:.. .If "yes": If
such action were to result in higher costs to you through
taxes, utility rates or other prices, how much would you be
willing to pay for...$5, $50, or $500? Increase national
parks and wilderness areas($5+$50+$500)
I would like be willing to pay as much as 10 percent more a YCS 5
week for grocery items if I could be sure that they would
not harm the environment. (Agree)
Note: 1. The proportion of respondents choose the included choices are taken as the values of public agenda
or public attitude.
2. Some of the questions are deleted when drawing the latent series because their correlation to the
latent series is below 0.5.
234
Drawing the Latent Series
The latent series of public agenda and public attitude are drawn from answers to
the 31 questions and the 16 questions respectively. The strategy of drawing one latent
Stimson.631 This researcher uses WCalc, a software tool developed by Stimson for this
purpose, to draw the latent series of the public agenda and public attitude. WCalc is
Then open the software and read the observed series data, and choose the options based
on the research goal. WCalc allows researchers to choose different time period and
different data level (daily, monthly, quarterly, annual, or multiple year). It also allows
There is no clear rule what kind of observed series is good or bad. This researcher
decided to delete the series that have a correlation with the latent series lower than 0.5, on
which Stimson also agreed.633 The reliability of the total analysis is also a reference to
make decisions. In the next section, the yearly data of public agenda is used as an
example to show how the latent series are drawn with WCalc.
Public agenda. Since there is enough information for the researcher to draw both
annual and quarterly latent series of the public agenda, the researcher decided to do so
because this will help to examine public agenda's relation with variables in both yearly
See, for example, Erikson, Mackuen, and Stimson, The Macro Polity.
235
and quarterly format. Some series questions were deleted after running the analysis
This study collected 31 series poll questions asking people to rate the importance
of the environment (see Appendix Table 1). The proportion of respondents who rate the
environment. Using WCalc, one latent series can be drawn from the 31 observed series.
To use WCalc, first transfer the data in the format required by WCalc. That is, the
first item is the name of the poll. For example, ABCWASHINTONG. The second item is
time, in the form of mm/dd/yyyy. The third item is the value, in this case the proportion
of respondents that rated the environment as important. The fourth item is the sample size,
used to weight the contribution of observed series to the latent series. The data should be
in ASCII format.
When open the WCalc, and read the ACSII data, WCalc will pop up a dialogue box.
Click the "Aggregation Interval" on the dialogue box will bring another dialogue box,
which let the analyst to choose the level of the latent series to be drawn. Wcalc provides
five levels: Daily, Monthly, Quarterly, Annual, and Multi Years, for which the analyst
should fill in a number of year also. For the yearly public agenda latent series, the level of
"annual" is chosen.
Finish this dialogue and click "OK," another dialogue box will appear, allowing the
analyst to choose the time period and how many dimensions to be drawn. The 31 series
poll questions used to measure public agenda starts from 1965 and ends at 2007, so the
starting year and ending year automatically appear in the cells, which of course can be
changed upon special needs. For the purpose of this study, one dimension is chosen. For
236
the option of "Smoothing on Raw Series," the default is checked. With smoothing before
the extraction of the latent series, random fluctuation will be taken off and the latent
series will be closer to the common move of the overall public opinion. In this analysis
237
Not every item in the 31 series is a good measure of public agenda. Based on
the .50 level rule, five series are deleted. One series, although stayed in the pool, was
excluded from the extraction because it has only one time point. So totally 26 series are
in the pool but only 25 series are actually used. Below is the graph of the latent and
From the following outputs of both yearly (Figure A8) and quarterly data (Figure
A9), it is easy to tell the overall reliability, and the individual correlation of the observed
238
Fig u r e A 8 Reliability Indicators for ttte L a t e n t P u b l i c J^Fe»<ia S e r i e s CAnamalJ
I t e r a t l e a History: Dimension 1
I t e r Csaveigeaoe C r i t e r i o n I t e s a R e l i a b i l i t y AlphaF AlphaB
1 ,7487 001 2S . 96^ 1.000 1.000
2 ,0052 001 25 .972 1.000 1.000
3 .0018 001 25 . 372 1.000 1.000
4 .0007 001 25 .972 1,000 1.000
i "RBcmaniss"
N - 11 Correlation •m .933 Mean; 1.9 STD: 1.3
2 -ABCWASSIHS-
H « 2 Correlation m 1.000 Hean: 53.0 STB; 1.0
3 "Canst: r i d g e "
H = 4 Correlation = .974 Mean; 9 . 9 Saiiy* 5. 8
4 -CBSNYI" N = is Correlation = .574 Mean: 1.7 STB; 1.3
S "CBSHYTEVE"
Ef = 5 Correlation = . 725 Kean: SO.S STB; 6.0
6 "CBSHYTCY- W - 3 Correlation = .610 Keen: 2.2 STB; , 8
7 "Sallup" IT - 33 Correlation - .373 X&s^ii 1.6 STB; .8
8 "SalluplS" N = 4 Correlation = .99* Xean: 10. S STO; 3.6
S "Sallup2S** M = 4 Ccrrelatico = ,35« Mean; 10.S STS; 3. €
10 "3a H u p C F " N - 3 Correlation * t
.340 Hesa: €4. 7 STD; 3.1
11 "SallupTIPC"
8 = 2 Correlation = 1.000 Mean; 3.0 STS;
12 "SatllupVoti"
N » 3 Correlation » . 736 Xeaa: 1.7 STB: . 5
13 "Harris" H = 14 Correlation = .882 Mean; 2.2 STB; ,9
14 "SARTsTEETE"
H «r ? Correlation • .932 Maati; 4.4 •STD; 2.8
15 "ICR" II « 2 Correlation s I.000 Xean; 2.7 •STB; .3
16 "tfSGS" H = S Correlation = ,S3§ Mean; 2. s STB; 1.4
17 "1AT" H «• 3 Correlation - . SS3 Keani 7.9 STD: 2.8
18 "Princeton"
M = 3 Correlation, = ,32 5 Mean; i.e STS: 1.1
13 "PRINCETON™
H - 13 Correlation • ,S38 Mesn: 1.7 STD: 1. 9
20 "FRIHCEIOHT*
H - 10 Correlation m. ^ • t l Mean: 5 2 . 7 STD: €. 0
21 "ROPERS" H - 11 Correlation m ! i i 9 Mean: 1 3 . 7 STD; 3.S
22 "THS" 8 = 2 Correlation = 1.000 Hean: SO.O STD: 1,0
23 "TRENSEXAIR-
H - 11 Cerrslsticn m- .778 Vgaa; S3.€ STD: 2. 6
24 "TRETOEXSSO"'
H = 11 Correlation = .3€S Mean: 33.8 STS; 1. 8
25 "KIHSIOH" H « 4 Correlation m . 5 5 7 Means 2.S SID: . 5
The quarterly latent series of public agenda was drawn from 24 series poll
questions that cover from the first quarter of 1980 to the fourth quarter of 2007. All the
239
Figure A9
Reliability I n d i c a t o r of t h e Uatent Public Agenda Series {Quarterly}
E s t i m a t i o n R e p o r t f o r F i l e : C : \ 3 c c u x e a t s and, S e t c i a g s \ Y a c \ 3 e s ) r c o p
VDK<tnuscrlpc\pui;lxc agenda , t x t
S19 r e e o r s l s A f t e r d a t e s c a a
F e r i o d ! 1SSO . 1 s e 2 0 0 ? . 4 112 Iiss Eoiata
Humber of S e r i e s : 24
Expssaertti s i S a o o t h i a g : O n
I t « r a t i » a H i s t o r y : Dimension 1
I t e r C o n v e r g e n c e C r i t e r x c s I-ew.s R e l i a b i l i t y AlphaF Alphas
1 . 5 323 . 0G1 24 .724 . 529 .4C3
2 .0024 .001 24 .722 .529 .401
3 .0004 .001 24 .722 .529 .401
1 "A8CWA5HIMS"
H = 23 C o n elation = .S2& Xeara: 2.4 S T I]?. 2-6
2 "owsUbridge"
H = 13 Correlation = .904 Keanr 10.3 5X3: 6.3
3 "CBSHYI™' K - 34 Correlation m .822 Kasnr 1.9 SID: 2.1
4 "CBSMVTEVE"
K - 7 Cora-elation w . &S 5 Kean: 53-1 ST3: 5.S
5 "CSSNTtCt" H - 5 Correlation. • .€93> i£e&»; 2.2 SIS: 1.0
€ ~&sliup" H = 65 CojrTelRticij = . 90S Me«n.; i.e STI>: *> - i&
E i g e n E s t i m a t e 1 . 9 7 c£ p o ssible 2.71
Pet Variance Explained: 72-74
pJeiglbtesi A v e r a g e X e t r i c s K e i n : 2 9 . 0 8 S t . Dev: 2.40
Public attitude. For public attitude, 15 items are used to draw the latent series. See
240
Figure A10
Bciia4»iI4.t/ Indicators for t i n s Lafcemi P u b l i c A t t i t u d e Saxiea fAnmial!
E a t l a t a s i c . n R e p s r t J s r F i l e s CJ \ I * f r « m e n c . 3 a n d
3 e t £ i a g s V f a o \ Desktop'-. C M a n u a c n p c v p u I s l l c a t t j . t u . d - , t x t
14*5 r e c o r d s * : E t e r ^Saee s u i t
F e r i i i ; 13fi£ t o 20(37 42 I n s fsiatj
SDffiEtoer' o * S e r i e s : 15
Policy Making
environment" (in millions of dollars) which is drawn from Table 3.1 attached at the end
241