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EXPLORING THE SOCIAL DYNAMICS IN THE U.S.

DEMOCRACY:
PRESIDENTIAL AND PUBLIC OPINIONS ABOUT, AND MEDIA COVERAGE
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES

by

Qingjiang Yao

Master of Arts
Beijing Normal University, 1999

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in

Mass Communications

School of Journalism and Mass Communications

University of South Carolina

2008

Major Professor
Chairman, Examining Committee

Committee Member /

Dean of The Graduate School


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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.

Stephens, my major professor and chair of my dissertation committee, for his

tremendously valuable guidance and help during my doctoral study and the dissertating.

His doctoral seminar of media ethics effectively deepened my thinking of journalistic

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

course of media economics. My three years' experience as a research assistant of his is a

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

an exemplar of a senior and fruitful scholar.

Special thanks also go to my committee members. Dr. Kenneth Campbell greatly

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

dissertation. Dr. David Darmofal transformed my interest in public opinion into

fascination through his remarkable graduate seminar on public opinion and political

attitude. He also helped me to solidify my dissertation with his suggestion of using

quarterly data in the content analysis.

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

her patient help throughout the past three years.

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

brought to me and my wife.

iv
ABSTRACT

Exploring the Social Dynamics in the U.S. Democracy: Presidential and Public Opinions

about, and Media Coverage of, Environmental Issues

Qingjiang Yao

This study explores the dynamics among the media, the public and the presidents on the

environment, an increasingly prominent topic in post-industrial societies, in a

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

content analysis of newspaper articles, television news program summaries 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.

Major Professor: Dr. Lowndes F. Stephens

v
PREFACE

When I began my doctoral studies, I did not expect that one day I would write a

dissertation on the topic of environmental issues. Having been a journalist, I am very

interested in studying American democracy, which is widely viewed as an example in the

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

name for democracy." In other words, he believes that "journalism as a practice is

unthinkable except in the context of democracy." It was my original plan to study how

democracy works and, if possible, how it can work in other societies.

I gradually realized, during my doctoral studies, that the process of science

communication is also an intriguing subject to explore from the perspective of political

communication. Working with Dr. Lowndes F. Stephens, my major professor and

dissertation chair, in his nano research and development project provides me the

opportunity to be exposed to science communication research. In that project, we

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

this big question, but it provides evidence to find the answer.

As I was gradually attracted to the process of science communication, I began to

pay attention to environmental issues, especially when I read Ronald Inglehart's works,

which treat environmentalism as a sign of an emerging political thought in the industrial

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

interests and even confirms Inglehart's argument in a developing society.4

Environmentalism is essentially a political appeal of dealing with the ecologic

environment and using natural resources in a way different from the traditions. For me, it

may be better understood from the perspective of political communication.

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

real decision-maker over time.

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

probably because longitudinal design is very time-consuming and expensive for

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

that environmental issues are chosen as the research topic.

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.

The second chapter provides a thorough discussion of the three mass

communication theories, on which the theoretical framework of this study is based—

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

support such a theoretical integration. Based on the integrated model of mass

communication, hypotheses of the present study are posited.

The third chapter addresses the methodological issues in this dissertation project,

discussing in detail conceptualization, operationalization, variables, data sources, and

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

longitudinal design will also be evaluated.


TABLE OF CONTENT

Dedication ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract v

Preface vi

List of Tables xii

List of Figures xiii

Chapter One Environment as a Political Topic in the U.S 1

Chapter Two A New Approach to Understanding Media Effects 48

Chapter Three Methodology 118

Chapter Four Results: Social Dynamics on the Environment 143

Chapter Five Conclusions, Limitation, and Suggestions 186

Bibliography 206

Appendix Data Collection and Measurement 224

XI
LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1 The DFGLS Unit Roots Test 155

Table 4.2 VAR(3) with the Yearly Data (43-obs) 162

Table 4.3 Granger Causality test on the Yearly Data (43-obs) 164

Table 4.4 VAR(1) with the Yearly Data (18-obs) 167

Table 4.5 Granger Causality Test on the Yearly Data (28-obs) 167

Table 4.6 VAR(8) with the Quarterly Data 169

Table 4.7 Granger Causality Test on the Quarterly Data 178

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 2.1 Effects of the Mass Communications on the Individuals 58

Figure 2.2 The Integrated Model of Mass Communication Process 102

Figure 4. la Yearly Latent Series of Public Agenda 145

Figure 4. lb Quarterly Latent Series of Public Agenda 145

Figure 4.2 Public Attitude and Media Attitude 145

Figure 4.3a The Environmental Policy-Making 147

Figure 4.3b Percentage and Ratio 147

Figure 4.4 Media agenda and Presidential agenda 149

Figure 4.5 Media Attitude and Presidential Attitude 149

Figure 4.6 Autocorrelation and Partial Autocorrelation of Policy-Making. 157

Figure 4.7 Causal Relationships among the Media, the Public, the Presidents and Policy-

Making 181

Figure Ala Searching New York Times Articles in LexisNexis.» 221

Figure Alb Searching Results 221

Figure A2a Searching New York Times Articles in ProQuest 222

Figure A2b ProQuest Searching Results 222

Figure A3a Searching Washington Post Articles in LexisNexis 223

Figure A3b The Searching Results 223

Figure A4 Searching Television News Summaries in the Vanderbilt Television News

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 A7 The Latent Series Generated by WCalc 238

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

ENVIRONMENT AS A POLITICAL TOPIC IN THE U.S.

The impact of human activity on the environment, which basically is about how to

treat natural resources, is nothing new as a topic in American politics.8 In a classic

review of U.S. contemporary social history, Godfrey Hodgson divides Americans'

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

"environmentalism," which is the third-stage of opinion formation about Americans'

utilization of natural sources.10

Media and political elites, represented by the president, closely interacted to

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

Nixon set up the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Political scientists also believe that environmentalism is a political topic that

sometimes involves other political movements.12 A good example is the

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

political participants and governmental officials in Western countries.15

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

environmental risks matters to the policy-making process.18

Environmental Concern and American Social Values

Previous research indicates Americans' environmental concern appeared as early

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

initiation of the American modern environmental movement.

The Modern American Environmentalism

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

the U.S. dependence on foreign oil.24 Meanwhile, "thousands of people joined

environmental groups, and millions more began to realize the possible dangers of oil

production and of insufficient regulation of industries with a potential for environmental

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

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 21.


22
Hodgson, America in Our Time, 402.
23
Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.
24
See Harvey Molotch, "Oil in Santa Barbara and Power in America," Sociological Inquiry 40 (Winter
1970): 131-44; Tom Wicker, One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (New York: Random
House, 1991), 507-518.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 3.

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

controversy helped to focus the public's attention on the environmental issues.27

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,

and international politics."

Two Explanations of the Causes ofEnvironmentalist Values

Smith3 has identified two prevailing theories that interpret the causes of the

environmentalism from the perspective of ideology or cultural worldviews. The first

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

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.


33
Matthew C. Nisbet and Teresa Myers, "The Polls-Trends: Twenty Years of Public Opinion about Global
Warming," The Public Opinion Quarterly 71 (fall 2007): 1-27, 1.
34
Nisbet and Myers, "Twenty Years of Public Opinion about Global Warming."
35
Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavaskey, Risk and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1982); Aaron Wildavskey, The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (Washington, D. C.: American University
Press, 1991).

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.

An alternative to the culture theory is the Postmaterialist worldview theory that is

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

security, the younger generation is more comfortable with values emphasizing

self-expression, subjective well-being, and the quality of life.

The core value in Postmaterialism, Inglehart and colleagues argue,37 is

self-expression. The self-expression value is not egocentric but humanistic: holders of

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

participation in decision making in economic and political life.38

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

changed German politics. In societies without proportional representation,39 such as the

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

Inglehart and Weizel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy.


39
Proportional representation, also called full presentation, is a political system that allocates legislative
seats to a particular party in proportion with the share of votes this party obtained. But some nation, like the
West German, set a minimum bottom-line. Only those parties that gain more than 5% of the total votes will
be allocated seats in the parliamentary. The proportion representative system is contrasted to the plurality
system, which only allows the candidates with the most votes win the election. The U.S. adopts the
single-member district plurality system. For more discussion about the election system, see, for example:
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/polit/damy/prlib.htm

8
and environmental protections."

Environmental Values and Traditional American Values

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

source is the anthropocentric (human-centered) values, which are predominately

utilitarian and are concerned with only those environmental problems that affect human

welfare. The third source, biocentric (living-thing-centered) values, attributes to nature

intrinsic rights, especially the rights of species to exist continually. Environmentalism,

these researchers conclude, has already become integrated with core American values,

such as parental responsibility and obligation to descendants, and traditional Christian

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,

other people, and the biosphere—just omitting the value of religion.

Shanahan and McComas examine several explanations of causes why

Inglehart and Weizel, Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy, 104.


41
Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, Environmental Values in American Culture.
42
Carolyn Merchant, Radical Ecology (New York: Routledge, 1992).
43
Paul Stern, Thomas Dietz and Linda Kalof, "Value Orientations, Gender, and Environmental Concern,"
Environment and Behavior 25 (September 1993): 322-348.

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

opportunity for a finer pursuit such as environmental protection, which is close to

Inglehart's theory. By summarizing the ways of people's narrative of environmental

issues, they identify several underlying dimensions.

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

dimension, which requires activism, or the willingness to perform behaviors typically

associated with environmentalism.

Shanahan and McComas also identify the dimension of political ideology in

environmentalism narratives. While people normally think that environmentalism is a

characteristic at the liberal end of the political continuum, there is a strong conservative

branch of environmentalism, "embodied by patrician land conservation groups, outdoors

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

individual action. Some environmentalists believe that collective governmental and

societal actions are required to protect the environment effectively, whereas others feel

that individually motivated action is required in true environmental protection.50

The Presidents and Their Environmental Policies

From the perspective of policy formation, Norman Vig pointed out, U.S.

Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories, 11.

Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories.

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

the policy formulation by devoting presidential resources to a specific issue, by

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

issues with the presidential international influence.

The Presidents in the 1970s

Richard Nixon was probably the first U.S. president who really faced

environmental problems as a political issue. Although under industrial pressure in the

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

to improve domestic production.54

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

producers who opened some new oil fields.55

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

first president to come to office with an avowedly antienvironmental agenda."56

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment," 101.

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

policies by maximizing control of policy implementation within the executive branch.

The control strategy had four components. First, Reagan carefully selected appointees for

environment-related agencies to work for his environmental agenda. Second, he tightly

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,

through oversight, he eliminated or revised regulations that were seen as burdens by

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

because both of the appointees were notoriously anti-environment. Meanwhile, both of

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."

With a strong belief in free-market principles, President Reagan aggressively

sought to reduce or eliminate government regulation of the energy market to support

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

Energy, he successfully cut governmental funding for research and development of

alternative energy, canceled various energy conservation programs, decreased taxes on

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

programs to development programs.

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.

Environmental news stories began to address environmental dangers or outright

disasters.61 However, in those stories regularly appeared Reagan's "flagrantly

anti-environmental secretary of the interior, James Watt, and the Environmental

Protection Agency administrator, Anne Gorsuch Burford."62 Watt's efforts to open up

Alaska and the outer continental shelf to more oil development and his frequent attacks

on environmentalists antagonized a good deal of the public. These pro-development

policies, efforts and speeches during Reagan's presidency paradoxically resulted in a

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 32.

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

environmental groups and the number of newly developed grassroots environmental

organizations soared, creating a new powerful political force.64

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

embraced a range of government regulation and intervention in the economy, as well as a

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

In his campaign, George Bush declared himself a conservationist similar to Teddy

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

environmentalists. He appointed William Reilly, the highly respected president of the

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

the Council on Environmental Quality. He also promised to install the CEQ as an

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

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment," 104.


68
See, for example, John Holusha, "Bush Pledges Aid for Environment," New York Times, September 1,
1988; Bill Peterson, "Bush Vows to fight Pollution, Install 'Conservative Ethic', Washington Post,
September 1, 1988.
69
Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."
70
Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment," 105.

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

ease regulations."73 In 1992, President Bush even threatened to boycott the UN

conference on Environment and Development if the historic summit would sign an

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

last-minute compromise. Many environmentalists who supported Bush's first presidential

campaign were dismayed by his reelection campaign.74 By this time, he lost much of the

support of the environmentalists he had gained in 1989 and 1990.75

Richard Cohen, Washington at Work: Back Rooms and Clean Air (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 175.

Kraft and Vig, "Environmental Policy from the 1970s to 2000."

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment," 107.

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."

Kraft and Vig, "Environmental Policy from the 1970s to 2000."

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

re-election, criticized environmentalists as extremists that impede the Americans'

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

jobs. Consequently, most of the environmentalists cast their votes to them.77

Entering the White House, President Clinton's appointments of key environmental

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

"the green administration." However, he disappointed the environmentalists during his

first two years by not taking much visible action in improving the environment. In the

long run, though, his administration was very efficient in responding to

Kraft and Vig, "Environmental Policy from the 1970s to 2000."

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment," 108.

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.

He also favored increased spending on environmental programs, research about

alternative energy and conservation, and international population policy. He earned praise

from environmentalists when he spoke out forcefully against the unpopular

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

promotion of environmental protection policy, including the failure of elevating EPA to

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

function more effectively. On September 30,1993, the President issued an executive

order, requiring the administrative staffs to select approaches "that maximize net benefits

(including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."

Kraft and Vig, "Environmental Policy from the 1970s to 2000."

Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment."

20
advantages; distributive impacts; and equality)" instead of just focusing on the potential

economic gains.

After his re-election, Clinton still faced a Republican-controlled Congress that

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

In the 2000 presidential campaign, although both candidates tried to focus on

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

campaign. Since Al Gore downplayed his environmental credential in his campaign,

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

election "without a challenge."86

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

progressive president in U.S. history. Meanwhile, Bush's decision of nominating

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
/

proclaiming the U.S. support for an internationally coordinated response to climate

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

environment-related departments. Subsequently, in his response to a letter from four

Republican Senators, President Bush acknowledged that his pro-environment statement

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

Protocol as "fatally flawed"90 because it "would cause serious harm to the US

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

President Clinton's decision to make a strict standard of arsenic in drinking water, a

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

pro-development environmental policy.

The Mass Media and the Environmental Issues

The mass media are a major force in the development of American

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

A number of scholars have studied media coverage of environmental issues. In

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.

Media Content Studies

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

Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories, 26.


99
Shanahan and McComas, Nature Stories, 27.
100
Jonela Rae Estes, "Public Opinion, the Media, and Environmental Policy: Agenda-Setting, Framing and
Maintaining the Status Quo" (Ph.D diss., Portland State University, 2005).
101
For an example of the study about press coverage of an inappropriate food irradiation proposal, see D.
Sullivan, "Comprehensiveness of Press Coverage of a Food Radiation Proposal," Journalism Quarterly, 62
(winter 1985): 832-837. For examples of media coverage of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, see Sharon

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

roles of the actors involved in the risk events.

In their content analysis of TV news stories about environmentalism from 1991 to

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

on either business or the general public.

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.

Dunwoody and Griffin107 find that newspaper journalists tend to be influenced by

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

in the smaller, more homogeneous community, the coverage emphasizes consensus.

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

representative of environmental groups based in distance locations"115) are not likely to

be familiar to journalists or perceived as credible to them.

Media Effects Studies

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

the media content, especially television programs, is entertainment rather than

environmental information.

Some studies find the association between the consumption of environmental

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

if people's general conservation knowledge, salience, or attitudes are changed.

Griffin119 also finds that environmental media content has influence on an

audience's perception of the issue importance but not much on their conservation

behavior. To make behavioral change, more specific information such as pamphlets is

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

broader ideological change.

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

accompanied by intensive personal contact, they acknowledge that it is unclear how

powerful the media effect is.

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

media coverage on individual aspects of environmental problems correlates with the

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.

Contrary evidence also appears. Suhonen126 examines the agenda-setting

hypothesis in Finland and finds that major Finnish newspaper's coverage of

environmental issues had almost no relationship with the public's environmental concern.

He concludes that various social factors cooperate to shape environmentalism in a society

at a certain time. Media coverage cannot cause a major shift in public environmental

concern except in the case of disaster events.

Political forces are an often-mentioned confounding variable in the media

agenda-setting process. Schoenfeld127 finds that, in the 1970s, the agenda of

environmentalism is set not by the media but by Congress. DeHaven-Smith128 provided

another view about environmentalism as public opinion. He argues that 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

V. Melosi provides the environmental justice movement as an example to illustrate the

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

protest in North Carolina in 1982, when residents of that county, mainly

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

1991, a National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit and intensive as

well as somewhat selective media coverage of it puts the issue of environmental justice

"on the political map."130

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.

The American Public's Environmental Concern

In his early years, Juergen Habermas shared John Dewey's opinion that every

public decision-making should be based on thorough, complete, and equal-accessed

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

unqualified to participate in some important decision-making processes. He "suggested

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

public is capable to make decisions on significant public polices.136

Fischer, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment, 8.


133
For example, see Joseph G. Morone and Edward J. Woodhouse, The Demise of Nuclear Energy?
Lessons for Democratic Control of Technology (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1989), 132-38.
134
For example, see Benjamin Ginsburg and Alan Stone, eds. Do Elections Matter? 3d ed. (Armonk, N. Y.:
Sharpe, 1996).
135
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Free Press, 1922/1997).
136
For more discussion about their debate, see, for example, Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro, The
Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in American's Poliy Preferences (Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 1992).

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

sustainability, because any substantial environmental change needs the public's

support.138

Smith139 totally rejects the idea that public opinion has or should have no

influence on policy-making processes, and strongly believes that public opinion is an

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:

"[understanding public opinion about energy issues is crucial—because of the importance

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

policies, we may all be in trouble."140

Smith's warning is based on theories and facts. Many studies have confirmed that

Fischer, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment.


138
See, for example, Martin Jaenicke, "The Environment and the Civil society," in Democracy and the
Environment: Problems and Prospects, ed. W. M. Lafferty and J. Meadowcroft (London: Edward Elgar,
1996); Paul H. Selman, Local Sustainability: Managing and Planning Ecologically Sound Places (New
York: St. Martin's Press, 1997).
139
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion.
140
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion,!.

35
the elected politicians generally follow their constituents' preference on major issues.

The development of environmental protection policies is also an evidence of the role of

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

automobile-emissions standards.143 Then, according to Smith, the environmental issues

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

Council on Environmental Quality in White House, and the creation of the

"environmental impact statement" (EIS) process all followed this model.144

Presidents are also responsive to the public demand in regard to environmental

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.

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,

the president delivered an aggressive speech on May 30, 1994, in Washington, D. C,

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

oil fields were denied to them."153

Trends in Public Environmental Concern

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

correlated. It is reasonable to "think of environment as a single issue in the public's

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

Johnson, "Environment," 195.


156
Johnson, "Environment."
157
Johnson, "Environment."
158
Riley E. Dunlap and Rik Scarce, "Poll Trends: Environmental Problems and Protection," The Public
Opinion Quarterly 55 (winter 1991): 651-672.
159
Dunlap and Scarce, "Environmental Problems and Protection." John M. Gilllroy and Robert Y. Shapiro,
"The Polls: Environmental Protection," The Public Opinion Quarterly 50 (summer 1986): 270-279.

39
unprecedented proportion." Meanwhile, the public had increasingly perceived the

environmental problems as a threat to human well-being. The perception increased

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

Dunlap and Scarce, "Environmental Problems and Protection," 652.


161
Dunlap and Scarce, "Environmental Problems and Protection," 652.
162
The first oil crisis occurred during 1973-1974, and the second occurred during 1979-1980.
163
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion.
164
Rosa and Dunlap, "Nuclear Power."

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

the public is not well informed about energy issues.165 He writes:

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

associated with political attitude change, which is a question that media-effects

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 21.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

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

the public's views about environmental policies underwent a similarly rapid

transformation during that time. Little evidence is available to discuss this question, and

his data does not support a policy preference change.'69

Variables Influencing the Public Environmental Concern

Previous studies have attempted to identify what variables can make differences in

the formation of public opinion on environmental issues. Several variables appear 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,

and the public's information sources.

Demographic and social characteristics. In his review of previous studies,

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.

However, many respondents who self-identified as Republicans or conservatives also

express environmental concern. Therefore, some researchers suggested that

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

because "greater environmental regulation imposes financial costs on the economy."171

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

public's attitude toward environmental spending.173

Johnson, "Environment."

Johnson, "Environment," 199.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 7.

Mayer, The Changing American Mind, 76-78.

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

faded. Public attitudes toward environment-versus-economy trade-offs and environmental

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.

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion.

"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

power drastically decreased and opposition increased.176

Global warming is a good example to show whether media coverage influence

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

Rosa and Dunlap, "Nuclear Power."


177
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion, 33.
178
Smith, Energy, The Environment, and Public Opinion.
179
Craig Trumbo, "Longitudinal Modeling of Public Issues: An Application of Agenda-Setting Process to
the Issue of Global Warming," Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs 152 (August 1995).
180
Nisbet and Myers, "The Polls-Trends: Twenty Years of Public opinion About Global Warming," 2.

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

scientists may be mistrusted in environmental controversies, especially those involving

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

government as a "necessary evil" capable of controlling industry.185 However, research

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

three major players in the formulation of environmental awareness and policy in a

democratic society.187 Environmentalism, as a political movement, is associated with

traditional American values such as equalitarianism, individual rights, and even religious

beliefs. It also always proposes a significant political challenge or opportunity to the

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

broader theoretical picture of mass communication.

Kempton, Boster, and Hartley, Environmental Values in American Culture.


187
For more discussion, see 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 conference of International Communication Association, June 20, 2006,
Dresden, Germany.

47
CHAPTER TWO

A NEW APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING MEDIA EFFECTS

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

Rogers's study of Diffusion of Innovation, published in 1962.190 Chaffee and Lieberman

urge graduate programs to train students to conduct synthesized literature review studies,

instead of exclusively focusing on original data-driven studies. This chapter, guided by

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.

Understanding Media Effects

Understanding current media effects research is not possible without knowledge of

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

of communication" which suggested minimum mass communication effects.

The Limited Effects Model

Klapper's synthesis of thousands of effects studies established the limited effects

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

influences."195 Mass communication, the review finds, leads to reinforcement of the

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

influence of mass communication is mediated by certain extra-communication factors

and conditions" such as predispositions, selective exposure, selective perception,

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

governmental bodies concerned about possible detrimental effects of television on

children,." arguing that television has little influence.198

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,

Klapper, The Effects of Mass Communication, 50.


1
Steven H. Chaffee, L. Scott Ward, and Leonard P. Tipton, "Mass Communication and Political
Socialization," Journalism Quarterly 41 (winter 1970): 647-659, 666, 648.
198
Chaffee, Ward, and Tipton, "Mass Communication and Political Socialization."
199
Herbert Gans, "Reopening the Black Box: Toward a Limited Effects Theory," Journal of
Communication 43 (December 1993): 29-35.
200
Gans, "Reopening the Black Box," 32.

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

direct media effect.

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

merging interposal communication process into mass communication effects research.

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

"mass communication plays a role in political socialization insofar as political knowledge

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

research, Chaffee and colleagues' study explores media influences on changes in

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.

Chaffee, et al., "Mass Communication and Political Socialization," 658.


7
See, for example, Albert Bandura, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila. A. Ross, "Imitation of Film-Mediated
Aggressive Models," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 66 (January 1963): 3-11; Leonard
Berkowitz and Edna Rawlings, "Effects of Film Violence on Inhibitions against Subsequent Aggression,"
Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 66 (may 1963): 405-412. For a meta-analysis, see Haejung
Paik and George Comstock, "The Effects of Television on Antisocial Behavior: A Meta-analysis,"
Communication Research 21 (august 1994): 516-546. The research reviews 217 media violence studies
from 1957 to 1990 and 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 exposure to television" (p. 538).

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

diffusion of values, policies, or public images."210 The second is canalization, which

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

interpersonal communications. However, because "these three conditions are rarely

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 '

Why did Lazarsfeld not Find the Effects?

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.

Simonson and Weimann, "Critical Research at Columbia," 29.


210
Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert. K. Merton, "Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social
Action," in The Communication of Ideas, ed. L. Bryson (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1948), 113.
211
Lazarsfeld and Merton, "Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action," 117.

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

exposed to one month's presidential campaign, 66% of a 760-respondent panel

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

Recent political communication studies provide a more complicated picture,

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

knowledge. Hence, "measurement of attention in addition to simple exposure more

adequately reflects the person's use of television news."218 This may also have

contributed to the Columbia School's failure of finding the media effects.

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

invest in campaigns. The opponents' campaign effects will immediately be conspicuous if

the effects equilibrium disappears.

A Definition of Media Effects

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

the society through personal experiences and interpersonal communications. An

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

Epic 2.1 Meets of the Mass Commnnkfttioiis on tie Iadfviduib

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

certainly must eliminate real-world indicators of problems." If real-world problems are

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

Unlike the sociologists, scholars with mass media experiences tended to be

unconvinced by the limited effects model during its domination. They sought new models

that can enhance people's understanding of media effects.228 Agenda-setting, priming,

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

reason for them to be interested in the agenda-setting research is that it offers an

"alternative to the scholarly search for direct media effects on attitude change and overt

behavioral change." The emerging body of research on agenda-setting, priming, and

framing "has signaled the latest paradigm shift in political-communication research."230

Agenda-Setting

Development of the agenda-setting research. It is almost commonsense that

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

about." As mentioned above, agenda-setting researchers acknowledge that the

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

limited-effects models as an adequate intellectual summary, was leading scholars to look

elsewhere."232 Decades of agenda-setting research found evidence to support an

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

opinions in earlier studies of media effects."233

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

research questions.234 Longitudinally, McCombs and Shaw divide the development of

agenda-setting into four phases.235

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

agenda-setting, which introduced the concept of need for orientation as a psychological

mechanism to explain the phenomenon of media agenda-setting.237 Mass communication

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

research on second-level agenda-setting.239 In the fourth phase, agenda-setting research

focused on the source of the media agenda. Synthesizing the vast literature on the media

sociology, such as Shoemaker and Reese's work,240 agenda-setting researchers suggest

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.

Rogers, Dealing, and Bregman categorize agenda-setting research along another

dimension.242 Under the umbrella of agenda-setting process, they believe, there are three

types of research: media agenda-setting, public agenda-setting, and policy agenda-setting.

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

agenda, conceptualized as the issue importance of the governmental bodies or elected

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

connections more clearly among sources, journalists, public and policy."244

Variables of agenda-setting. Some agenda-setting researchers believe that the

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

independent variable of agenda-setting, is usually "measured by the frequency with

which the statement was mentioned in the messages."247 In the public opinion survey, the

dependent variable, the public agenda, is usually operationalized as a question: "What is

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."

McCombs, Einsiedel, and Weaver, Contemporary Public Opinion, 7.


247
Alex S. Edelstein, "Thinking about the Criterion Variable in Agenda-Setting Research," Journal of
Communication 43 (June 1993): 85-99, 86.
248
Rogers, Dearing, and Bregman, 'The Anatomy of Agenda-Setting Research," 80. See also Jian-Hua
Zhu, James H. Watt, Leslie B. Snyder, Jingtao Yan, and Yansong Jiang, "Public Issue Priority Formation:
Media Agenda-Setting and Social Interaction," Journal of Communication, 43 (winter 1993): 8-29. They
mention that the public issue priority (public agenda) is operationally defined as the public's responses to
the standard opinion poll question: "What is the most important problem facing this country?" (p. 9).

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

agenda-setting research did not have a "conceptualization definition of the message

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

press release and other direct information subsidies."

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.

Edelstein, "Thinking about the Criterion Variable in Agenda-Setting Research."


256
Lee. B. Becker, "The Mass Media and Citizen Assessment of Issue Importance: A Reflection on
Agenda-Setting Research," in Mass Communication Review Yearbook 3, ed. D. C. Whitney and E. Wartella
(Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1982), 521-536, 525.
257
Becker, "The Mass Media and Citizen Assessment of Issue Importance," 526.
258
McCombs and Reynolds, "News Influence on Our Pictures of the World," 13.

66
Second-level agenda-setting explores "audience responses to specific aspects of media

content—what Hofstetter called the structural biases of journalism —rather than to

global or topical measures of media content (e.g. news on the front page or news about

the presidential campaign) or simply broad measures of frequency of exposure to various

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

voter's minds are the agendas of attributes."

In a group of extensive experiments, the researchers also examine the function of

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

be due to the confounding influences of the demographical characteristics. The

prominence of the news stories (whether the news stories appear at the top of the

broadcast) has a significant influence on agenda-setting. Actually, once the factor of

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

problems and struggles of ordinary life."264

Criticism of agenda-setting. Since its initiation, agenda-setting research always has

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

conceptualization and the operationalization of the variables keep agenda-setting research


5
from making "more reliable and content-orientated observations." Chaffee and Wilson

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

is too simple and should go beyond the correspondence at level of awareness,

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

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 45.


264
Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 114.
265
Edelstein, "Thinking about the Criterion Variable in Agenda-Setting Research," 86.
266
Steven Chaffee and Donna Wilson, "Media Rich, Media Poor: Two Studies of Diversity in
Agenda-holding," Journalism Quarterly 54 (fall 1977): 466-476.
267
Gladys Engel Lang and Kurt Lang, "Watergate: An exploration of the Agenda-Building Process," in
Mass Communication Review Yearbook 3, ed. D. C. Whitney and E. Wartella (Newbury Park, CA: Sage,
1982), 272-290.

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

Kosicki provides an explanation why "content is insufficiently theorized and accounted

for, or measured in a relatively superficial manner" in agenda-setting studies.

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

information-based, or cognitive, approach."270 "In summary," Edelstein notes, "scholars

called for a higher order of cognitive analysis and a recognition that problems as well as

issues could become the focus of agenda-setting research."271

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

later in this chapter.

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.

David L. Swanson, "Feeling the Elephant: Some Observations on Agenda-Setting Research," in


Communication Yearbook 11, ed. J. A. Anderson (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1988), 603-619; Hans-Jurgen
Weiss, "Public Issues and Augmentation Structures: An Approach to the Study of the Contents of Media:
Agenda-Setting," in Communication Yearbook 15, ed. S. A. Deetz (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992),
374-396.
270
Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 106.
271
Edelstein, "Thinking about the Criterion Variable in Agenda-Setting Research," 93.
272
McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research," 65.

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

conceptualized for both media and audiences. It is probably problematic to conceptualize

and operationalize media agenda as the frequency, while the audience agenda is

conceptualized and operationalized as the perceived importance.2 Kosicki believes that

a major problem of agenda-setting research is that often there is a disconnection between

the conceptualization and the operationalization, making the meaning of many

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

Traditional priming variables. Priming is an additional finding of a group of

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

matters."280 Priming is commonly seen as a temporal extension of the media

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

important in the viewer's political calculus."283 When evaluating complex political

objects, such as the performance of an incumbent president, or the promises of a

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

political judgments are rendered and political choices made."285

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

news and bad news.

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

persuasion is difficult to achieve, but agenda-setting and priming are apparently

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

that television news can "convert Democrats to Republicans, or pro-choice advocates to

pro-life advocates," they strongly suspect that they would have found no more evidence

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 4.

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters.

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters.

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 117.

73
than what the Columbia scholars found. "As a general matter," they write, "the power of

television news—and mass communication in general—appears to rest not on persuasion

but on commanding the public's attention (agenda-setting) and defining criteria

underlying the public's judgment (priming)."289

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

behavioral intentions as the independent variable of priming effects. Psychologists refer

to priming as "occasions when an event increases the accessibility of a construct in

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

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters, 117.


290
Sheafer and Weimann, "Agenda Building, Agenda Setting, Priming, Individual Voting Intentions, and
the Aggregate Results."
291
Sheafer and Weimann, "Agenda Building, Agenda Setting, Priming, Individual Voting Intentions, and
the Aggregate Results."
292
Miller and Krosnick, "News Media Impact on the Ingredients of Presidential Evaluations," 302.

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

the criterion variable of priming effects.

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

explores the first one.

Framing research in sociology. The sociologist approach of framing research

generally focuses on how to make sense of the news stories and the reality, which is the

assumption of communication research. Sociologists also explore what factors function in

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

includes analysis of the framing process.

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

"world"300 (or "reality") and Gregory Bateson's "framing."301 Goffman acknowledged

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,

because "application of such a framework or perspective is seen by those who apply it as

not depending on or harking back to some prior or 'original' interpretation."304 A primary

framework "is one that is seen as rendering what would otherwise be a meaningless

aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful."305 According to Goffman's

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,

providing only a lore of understanding, and approach, a perspective." No matter in what

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

them with great ease.

Goffman also divides primary frames into two categories: natural and social. Natural

frameworks identify "occurrences seen as undirected, unanimated, unguided, 'purely

302
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 7.
03
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 11.
304
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 21.

Goffman, Framing Analysis, 21.


306
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 21.

77
physical'," and are often found in the areas such as physical and biological sciences.

Social frameworks, nevertheless, "provide background understanding for events that

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

frameworks we employ provides a way of describing the event to which it is applied."309

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

primary framework, thereby forming conjectures as to what occurred before and

expectations of what is likely to happen now." 31 '

Due to various reasons, errors can happen when frames are transferred from

communicators to the receivers. Goffman provides many interesting misframing

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

fix the cable underneath the road.312

Goffman, Framing Analysis, 23.


308
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 23.
309
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 24.
310
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 27.
1
Goffman, Framing Analysis, 38.

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

Goffman, Framing Analysis.


313
Gans, Deciding What's News.
314
Chang and Tai, "Mass Communication Research and the Invisible College Revisited."
315
Gans, Deciding What's News, 19.
316
Gans' term for the news categories is "symbolic complex", which is similar to Goffman's primary
frameworks in the context of media studies.

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

something in the society as well as in our people's head."326

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

histories, social interactions, and psychological predispositions to the process of

322
Gans, Deciding What's News, 41.

Gans, Deciding What's News, 41.


24
Fishman, Manufacturing the News, 6.
5
Fishman, Manufacturing the News, 8.

Fishman, Manufacturing the News, 11.


327
See, for example, Gamson and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power."
328
Gamson and Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power," 3.

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

Framing effects research in psychology, economics, and political science. Another

approach of framing research originated from psychology and economics studies,332

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

decision, and is more appropriately called "framing effects studies."

In a series of studies conducted by Tversky and Kahneman, a consistent finding is

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

research and the tradition of conceptualizing framing as choosing between different

aspects of "potential problem definitions, explanations, evaluations, and

recommendations" of issues, which "may be as critical as the inclusions in guiding the

audience."336

Iyengar, from the perspective of political science studies, introduced the media as a

subject of framing effects studies.337 He conceptualizes frame into two categories:

"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."

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "Choice, Values, and Frames."


336
Entman, "Framing."
337
Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?

83
("the creation of problems or situations") and treatment responsibilities ("the resolution

of these problems or situations"). Thematic reports increased "attributions of

responsibility to government and society," whereas episodic reports have "the opposite

effect."338 This research also suggests that "policy preferences, assessments of

presidential performance, and evaluations of public institutions are all powerfully

influenced by attributions causal and treatment responsibility."339

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

Tversky-Kahneman tradition that to frame is to select among "a subset of potentially

relevant considerations," which will "cause individuals to focus on these considerations

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

speech issue or a public safety issue."343

Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?, 3.


339
Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?, 127.
340
Druckman, "On the Limits of Framing Effects." James N. Druckman, "Political Preference Formation:
Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects," American Political Science Review
98 (November 2004): 671-686. James N. Druckman and Kjersten R. Nelson, "Framing and Deliberation:
How Citizens' Conversion Limit Elite Influence," American Journal of Political Science 47 (October 2003):
729-745.
341
Druckman, "On the Limits of Framing Effects," 1042.
342
Druckman, "On the Limits of Framing Effects," 1042.

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

framing process. Even a consensus of the conceptualization and operationalization of 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

"problem definition, causal interpretations, moral evaluations, and treatment

recommendations, as well as key themes, phrases, and words."344 Scheufele and

Tewksbury also calls for "clarifying concepts"345

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

functions of the frames is to "enable journalists to process large amounts of information

quickly and routinely: to recognize it as information, to assign it to cognitive categories,

and to package it for efficient relay to their audiences."347 The media, Hall and colleagues

Druckman, "On the Limits of Framing Effects," 1041.

Weaver, "Thoughts on Agenda-Setting, Framing, And Priming," 143.

Scheufele and Tewksbury, "Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Priming," 17.

Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 112.

Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching, 7.

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

With a heritage from sociologists, media researchers have comprehensive definitions

of "media frame." Todd Gitlin, for example, describes media frames as "professional

patterns of cognition, interpretation and presentation, of selection, emphasis and

exclusion, by which symbol handlers routinely organize discourses, whether verbal or

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

the audience through the mechanism of causal reasoning (causal attributions,

responsibility inferences, appealing to principles).353 However, there is also an inclination

among framing researchers to narrow frame as selection. Pan and Kosicki believe that

"framing is viewed as placing information in a unique context so that certain elements of

the issue get a greater allocation of an individual's cognitive resources."354 Robert

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

to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation,

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

Synthesizing previous research, Scheufele has proposed a process model of framing

research, which includes four processes. In the first process, frame building, elites,

social ideology, news organizational norms, and journalists' individual preferences

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

process, journalists as audience, audiences' attitude, when aggregated as public opinion

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

consequences, or no frame—just the information) of the same information (a fictitious

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

Framing and Agenda-Setting

The dispute between second-level agenda-setting and framing. It is significant

progress for agenda-setting researchers to extend their studies to the second-level, at

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

powerful agenda-setting roles."365 Although they recently declared that second-level

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

agenda-setting "merged [the] first level of agenda-setting with framing research."369

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 "goes beyond the agenda-setting literature, characterized by collections of

empirical generalizations without theories."370 Furthermore, compared to agenda-setting

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

categories may be identified without semantic analysis of a news story," an approach

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,

similar to scripts, prototypes, categories, and so on," and people continually

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

interrelationships among media organizations, public opinion, and public

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

theories at different cognitive levels.

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

Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 115.

Kosicki, "Problems and Opportunities in Agenda-Setting Research," 117.

Edy and Meirick, "Wanted, Dead or Alive," 121.

McCombs and Shaw, "The Evolution of Agenda-Setting Research."

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

different people," depending on the predispositions in their mind. Entman also

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

Entman, "Framing," 52-53.

Goffman, Framing Analysis.

Cohen, The Press and Foreign Policy, 13

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

receiver share the same frames.383

Second, framing effects research and second-level agenda-setting, two similar

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

of an issue can be called attributes of that issue.

Third, framing research and second-level agenda-setting research measure different

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

studies the correspondence between the perceived importance of attributes in media

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

influence the public's interpretation.389

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

the media frames and the individual frames.392

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

influence the formation of audiences' individual frames. Audiences' individual frames

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

emphasize "selection" and "salience." Agenda-setting researchers believe that classic

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

in influencing individuals'judgment or inference making."401 They further define

salience as "making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to

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

operationalization of concepts in media effects research. By simply conceptualizing

agenda as salience and operationalizing it as the rank of amount of media coverage or

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

"agenda of attributes" betrays the outdatedness of the theory title. Compared to

agenda-setting, framing is more concerned with content information.405 However, it

suffers from clear and succinct conceptualization and operationalization. Some

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

in-depth understanding of the media effects.407

Toward an Integrated Media Effects Model

Due to the apparent limits of agenda-setting research, especially the shortcoming

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

contribution of the discipline of communication is "synthesizing a key concept's

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

insights generated by framing, priming, and agenda-setting research through a new,

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

processes of mass communications in a society: the process of influencing the mass

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;

perceived importance; knowledge; attitude; and behavior, will be elaborated in the

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 what an individual knows or is aware o f ) ; affective effects ("influences

on how an individual emotionally responds to what is known"); and behavioral 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

allow society to change or evolve."412

While Johnson-Cartee's classification is a little simple,413 a classic advertising

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.

In a media effects model that integrates agenda-setting, priming and framing

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

some of them as one, as agenda-setting researchers usually do not distinguish between

(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

linearity from attention to behavior is easier to be captured. If two flows of information

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

Social Political and


economical elites, _• Public Policy
Establish interest groups, social
ment norms, etc.

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

empirical studies will be elaborated upon.

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

efficient means to inform an audience of potential adopters about the existence of an

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

the accumulation of mass media massages, knowledge leads to persuasion (cognitive

knowledge and attitude), decision (behavioral intention), implementation (behavior), and

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

information about the issue the audience will consume.

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

variable of agenda-setting research: public agenda (audience agenda).420 Little research

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

limited-effects paradigm,"423 agenda-setting research "specifically rejects attitude


4
research in favor of a more information-based, or cognitive, approach." Actually, the

dependent variable of agenda-setting research is clearly not audience cognitive

knowledge (how much the audience knows about the issue) but audience agenda (how

important the audience perceives the issue is).

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,

and unemployment that is produced by alterations in television coverage can be traced to

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

"appear before the viewers' mind begins to wander."427

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,

maximizes both information and drama,"429 it is important to differentiate the information

and the drama, which usually contain opinion ingredients.

The fact that the public perceives some issues as important does not mean that the

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters,, 45.

Iyengar and Kinder, News That Matters,, 46.

Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations.

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

both perception of issue importance and an amenable campaign context."432

The greatest part of the media coverage is cognitive knowledge, and the foremost

effect of the media information should be increasing an audience's cognitive knowledge

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

frames are constructed with value or attitude components,434 but agenda-setting

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

tone of media presentation, with evaluation of issues (i.e., positive, negative, or

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

attitude in the original texts.437

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

of religion issues leads to change in Chinese students' cognitive knowledge of religion

issues but not in their political attitudes toward the issues.440 Individual attitudes, of

course can be developed with the accumulation of individual cognitive knowledge. In

Roger's five-step adoption of innovation, individuals form a favorable or unfavorable

attitude toward an innovation based on their accumulated knowledge about the

innovation. Priming largely predicts the media influence along the route from media

agenda to audience agenda, then to audience cognitive knowledge and attitude. It

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

institutions linked to these issues."442

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

largely be due to the study's distortion of the media attitude.446

Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public, 341.


444
Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public, 344.
445
Tsan-Kuo Chang, The Press and China Policy: The Illusion of Sino-American Relations, 1950-1984
(Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1992), 223-224.

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,"

which may consist of "ostensibly objective news reports, partisan argumentation,

televised news conference, or even paid advertisements, as in election campaigns," is the

"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

attitude. "Attitude change," Zaller concludes, "understood as a change in people's

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

not a sudden shift.

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,"

Sheafer, "How to Evaluate It."

John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge University Press, 1992).

Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, 1.

Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, 59.

Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion, 266.

Ill
and "suggest remedies." While defining problems and diagnosing causes are at the

cognitive knowledge level and making moral judgment involves attitudes, suggesting

remedies is apparently at the behavioral level. Audience behavior will be influenced by

media behavior, and it will also be developed by the accumulation of audience

knowledge and attitudes, as can be seen from Rogers' five-step adoption model.452

Agenda-setting researchers have noticed that "media agenda-setting can affect

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

anti-social behaviors.455 A meta-analysis of 217 studies about the influence of violent

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

' Entman, "Framing," 52.

Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations.

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

associated with the degree of subsequent aggressive behaviors.457

Sources and Consequences of Media Effects

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

colleagues, Chaffee asked this question to agenda-setting researchers as early as in

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

dominate the discourse on environmental issues in the media.4

From the public to social establishment and public policy. Although it may not be

appropriate for some agenda-setting researchers to declare that "agenda-setting is

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."

Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada, 5.


465
Thomas H. Hartley, "What Determines Defense Spending? Public Opinion, Mass Media, and the Soviet
Threat" (Ph.D diss., Yale University, 1995)

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,

it elects more Republicans."468 Different governmental officials, of course, have different

ideology and policy preferences.

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

the policy activities.

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.

At the level of perceived importance (agenda), the traditional agenda-setting theory

predicts that:

H I : Media agenda on environmental issues Granger causes public

agenda on environmental issues.

Environment is not a very controversial topic, as discussed in Chapter 1. Although

there are differences in people's degree of supporting environmental issues,

environmentalism is more and more becoming a universal value that everyone

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

media effects under the condition of uncontroversial topics:

H2: Public agenda on environmental issues Granger causes public

attitude on the environmental issues.

Based on media effects at the attitude level, the third hypothesis states:

H3: Media attitude on environmental issues Granger causes public

attitude on environmental issues.

The process of sources of media effects hypothesizes that the presidents, as the

representative of social establishment, have influences on the media's formation of their

469
Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity.
470
Johnson, "Environment."

116
coverage:

H4: Presidential agenda on environmental issues Granger causes the

media agenda on environmental issues.

H5: Presidential attitude on environmental issues Granger causes the

media attitude on environmental issues.

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.

H6: Public attitude on environmental issues Granger causes

policy-making on environmental issues.

This study also explores a question:

RQ1: What are the multi-way interactions among the media, the public,

and the presidents on environmental issues?

117
CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

This dissertation is designed, as are many media effects studies in both agenda-

setting and framing effects approaches at aggregate level, as a combination of content

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

perspective of egalitarianism, media content has significant influence on the public's

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

changes among presidential opinion, public opinion, and media coverage on

environmental issues, as well as environmental policy-making results. Based on 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

measured by the governmental spending on environmental protection.

Data Sources

Presidential Documents

Presidential opinion is obtained from presidential documents on environmental

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

comprehensive collection of presidential public communications."483 The Weekly

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.

Hodgson, America in Our Time.

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

with the index keywords "environment," "environmental," "environmentalist," or

"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.

See the official website of the U.S. Government Printing Office:


http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wcomp/index.html

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

individual presidential documents were selected.486

Media Coverage: Newspaper Articles and Television Program Summaries

Media coverage in research studies of this nature is usually obtained by sampling

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

environment, namely Lippmann's "pseudo-environment,"490 for the general public

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

mainstream media coverage of environmental issues. Cable TV news is not included

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

LexisNexis. Searching by keywords "environment," "environmental,"

"environmentalist" or "environmentalism" in headlines, the researcher found 1112

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

other databases such as LexisNexis. For this dissertation, television transcripts in

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

natural environment, 327 are used in the analysis.

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

settings with a longitudinal approach. Many significant studies in social science,

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

Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.


5
Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters
(New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press).
509
See Gillroy and Shapiro, "Environmental Protection." Gillroy and Shapiro used data obtained from
Cambridge Reports, Inc., Harris, NBC, NYT/CBS, NORC-GSS, Roper, SRC/CPS, Trendex, and
Yankelovich as poll data sources.

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

science professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, proposes a method to

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

specific series poll questions, or as the principle component (common dimension) of a

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

LexisNexis before December 31, 2007.522 The database of Inter-University Consortium

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.

The amount of presidential documents and media articles/summaries appearing during

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

summaries, the researcher just considers those appearing in the A sections or on

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

mere media attention.

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,

and/or other materials.

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

is operationalized as the tone of the presidential documents on environmental issues,

and media attitude is operationalized as the tone of the media coverage of

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.

Tone is a frequently used variable in content analysis studies. It usually ranges

from three categories to six categories. In their study of newspaper framing of

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

public attitude change.528

Nitz and West, "Framing of Newspaper News Stories during a Residential Campaign Cycle.

Iyengar, News That Matters.

Sheafer, "How to Evaluate It."

Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public.

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 supportive, 1 = supportive, 0 = neutral or balanced, -1 = unsupportive, and -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-

environmental source such as industrial polluters, and do not depict environmental

protection along side with other interests. For opinion pieces, the overall attitude

expressed in the article is highly supportive toward environmental protection. In the

case of presidential documents, there has to be at least one section, marked by

subtitles, devoted to address supporting environmental protection, without binding it

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

initiative of sharing environmental data worldwide and creating methods for

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

Resource Review," in that document addressing environmental issues and the

president's remarks on that particular topic—reforms of New Recourse Review

rules—simply stressed his administration's commitment to clean air.

The code 1, supportive, was assigned to articles in which pro-environment

quotes outnumbered anti-environment ones, usually by a margin of at least two. Or, in

addition to supporting environmental protection, the article also mentioned other

interests, such as economic development, protecting jobs and energy security. In a

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

brief mention, rather than a whole-section discussion, of environmental protection are

also coded as 1.

Articles with equal quantity of quotes from both pro- and anti-environment

sides, or showing no attitude toward environmental protection are coded as 0,

balanced or neutral. A news abstract of ABC Evening News on Apr 15, 1990, for

example, was considered as 0 because in featuring the debate on global warming, it

quoted sources that offered different opinions rather than one-sided.

133
The code -1, unsupportive, was assigned to articles in which anti-environment

quotes outnumbered pro-environment ones, by the margin of at least two, or articles

suggesting put other interests first, such as protecting jobs, and environmental

protection next. Taking a profile of T. S. Ary, head of the Interior Department's

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

an environmental group criticizing Mr. Ary's anti-environmentalist comments.

Articles having only anti-environment and no pro-environment quotes or clearly

showing anti-environment attitude were coded as -2, highly unsupportive. Following

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,"

while quoting no one opposing him.

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;

See the appendix for the detail of the coding scheme.

134
25 percent (120 documents) are coded as 0, 63.9 percent (304 documents) are coded as 1,

and nine percent (45 documents) are coded as 2. 531

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

two groups: media materials and presidential documents.

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

Public agenda of environmental issues. As discussed in the chapter two, the

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

the importance of environmental protection since 1997.534 Cambridge, Gallup, and

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

1980 to the fourth quarter of 2007.

Public attitudes toward environmental issues. Scholars argue that, although the

percentage of American people who perceive the environmental issues as important is

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

researcher finally collected 16 questions exploring respondents' attitude toward

environmental expenditure. A yearly latent series of public attitude is drawn in 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

Policy-making. The federal government's actual spending on environmental issues

is used to measure the policy-making on environmental issues. Scholars believe that

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

policy-making in that year.

Reliability and Validity

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,

which is acceptable for most of the studies.543

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

' Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada, 56.

Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada, 57.


3
See Wimmer and Dominick, Mass Media Research.

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

correlations are above 0.67.544

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

independent, Soroka suggests several methods to analyze time-series data.550 According

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

Granger Method, Vector Autoregression (VAR) and Seemingly Unrelated Regression

(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

Soroka, Agenda-Setting Dynamics in Canada, Appendix A.


551
Wu, Stevenson, Chen, and Guner, "The Conditioned Impact of Recession News."

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

finding answers to the research question.

of the other variable as the independent variables, and can be written


CO CO

as yt = y, ajy,-i + X, PjXt-j "*" ci + v


u • T n e essence of the Granger Causality test is to see whether
i=l y=l

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

RESULTS: SOCIAL DYNAMICS ON THE ENVIRONMENT

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.

Before the hypothesis testing, it is helpful to take a look at the data.

Trends of the Public, Presidential, and Media Agendas and Attitudes

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

President Reagan's pro-development policy.558 Meanwhile, the unusual hot summer in

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

Gore, a foremost environmentalist politician and the then Democratic presidential

candidate, debated with the Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush on

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 Dunlap and Scarce, "Environmental Problems and Protection."

See Vig, "Presidential Leadership and the Environment: From Reagan to Clinton."

144
Figure 4.1 a

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Note: the latent series can be intuitively interpreted as the proportion of people that think the environment is important

Figure 4.2 Public Attitude and Media Attitude


CD
CD ~

CD _
t-

QJ

\ r
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B

DL
1 / ^ «\ / / m
CD V TV / s
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•••: i i I I r"
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year
Public Attitude Media Attitude

Note: The latent series of public attitude can be interpreted as the


proportion of people supporting more environmental spending, and the
media attitude is the sum tone of the news pieces appearing in the time
unit.

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.

The latent series of public attitude, which is operationalized as the principle

component of the series percentage of the people that support an increase in

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.

The federal environmental spending has been, in general, consistently increasing

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

most of Clinton's tenure as the president, the federal government's environmental

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

$31,772 million in 2007.

CD
Figure 4.3a The Environmental Policy-Making
CD
CD
CD
^r

=
ss
-co
CD

CD
C3)CD
a CD
152 CD
"TO CN

e
=^CD
.ti CD
Q . CD

1
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Year
Outlay in Nominal Dollars Outlay in Real Dollars
Note: Policy-making is measured b y federal en \tranmental outlay in million of dollars.

Figure 4.3b Percentage and Ratio in


CD

CD
en
<T5

r CM 53

o
•55
CD

r
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UJ

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010


Year

Ratio of Percent Change- Environmental Outlay Percentage


Hote: T h e envirofiHientail outlay percentage is calculated with t h e environmental outlay divided b y t h e
total federal outlays. T h e ratio of percentage change is calculated with t h e annual percentage change
in spending o n t h e environment v e r s u s t h e percentage c h a n g e ©f t h e overall federal spending.

147
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

valid measurement of policy-making. However, the series of the environmental outlay in

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

outlay in real dollars is not as steep as that in the nominal dollars.

Professor Stephens also calculated the percentage of the environmental outlay in

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

Using the GDP deflator index available at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fv05/sheets/hist 1 Oz 1 .xls.


with fiscal year 2000 as the base year.
561
Personal communications with Professor Lowndes F. Stephens, July 3, 2008.
562
Using the nominal dollars, which mean dollars that have not been adjusted for the inflation with the
GDP deflators.

148
Figure 4.4 Media Agenda and Presidential Agenda
J
S
c
d>


£ CO
e
•>
c
LU
_£ CM ^
£
O
TO

a> *-

oH
i -"'"i • •• i

1980q1 1985q1 1990q1 1995q1 2000q1 2005q1


Time

Media Agenda Presidential Agenda


Note: Agenda is measured by the amount of the pieces appearing in the time unit.

Figure 4.5 Media Attitude and Presidential Attitude


o

c
CD

£
LU
0) O
.CCM

CO

§o
CD
TJ
3

<o4
1 1 1
1980q1 1985q1 1990q1 1995q1 2000q1 2005q1
Time
Media Attitude Presidential Attitude
Note: Attitude is measured by the sum tone of the pieces appearing in the time unit.

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

by the amount of news pieces or presidential documents appearing in a particular quarter

(or a year for the yearly series). The media attitude and presidential attitude are measured

by the sum of the tones of those news pieces or presidential documents.

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

coverage of environmental issues is not at its all-time high in 2000.

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

Smith, Energy, the Environment, and Public Opinion, 4.

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,

advocated the installation of land-based missile system over an underwater alternative,

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

will be used to analyze the data and test the hypotheses.

Modeling the Effects of the Public, Media and Presidential Agendas and Attitudes

The Vector Autoregression (VAR) modeling is a powerful method to capture the

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

assumption can result in spurious regression.556 Second, VAR allows researchers to

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

differenced for the purpose of detrending.

Unit Roots Test

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

information criterion (SBIC), Hannan-Quinn information criteria (HQIC), or other

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

Dickey-Fuller generalized least-square regression test (DFGLS), a modified Dickey-

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

suggestions of the information criteria.

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

maximum lag length that is calculated with a formula proposed by G. William

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

includes a trend in the test.

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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155
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

information for analysis.

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

observations, while the last one only has 28 observations.

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

the existence of at least one unit root (See Table 4.1).

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.

Figure 4.6 Autocorrelation and Partial Autocorrelation of Policy-Making


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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

difference (See Table 4.1).

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

suggested by the information criteria after a seasonal difference.

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

VAR modeling is usually preferred by scholars to identify the causality because it

allows relationships, unidirectional or bidirectional, among several variables to be

simultaneously determined.578 It is a better approximation of the dynamics in reality,

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

statistical significance of the coefficients of a particular variable or a group of

variables. If excluding a particular variable in the equation makes a statistically

significant difference in predicting the endogenous variable, the variable is considered as

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

the order of the hypotheses but the order of the datasets.

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

properly transformed or differenced. Although HQIC and SBIC also recommended 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

residual is not normally distributed as a good model requires.586

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

differenced and log-transformed policy making equation (See Table 4.2).

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)

Endogenous Variable Exogenous Variable Coefficient SE Z P


Public Agenda
Public-Agenda LI 0.857 0.140 6.14 <.001*
L2 -0.672 0.178 -3.77 <.001*
L3 0.356 0.143 2.48 .013*
Public-Attitude LID 0.078 0.069 1.13 .259
L2D 0.050 0.068 0.73 .464
L3D 0.096 0.065 1.48 .138
Log(Policy-Making) LD 3.719 3.176 1.17 .242
L2D -1.577 3.496 -0.45 .652
L3D -8.089 3.812 -2.12 .034*
Constant 10.960 3.044 3.60 <.001*
D.Public-Attitude
Public-Agenda LI -0.443 0.317 -1.39 .163
L2 -0.107 0.406 -0.26 .793
L3 -0.595 0.326 -1.83 .068
Public-Attitude LID -0.200 0.158 -1.27 .203
L2D 0.004 0.155 0.03 .978
L3D 0.030 0.147 0.20 .840
Log(Policy-Making) LD -4.491 7.223 -0.62 .534
L2D -4.707 7.950 -0.59 .554
L3D -18.230 8.670 -2.10 .035*
Constant 28.115 6.923 4.06 <001*
D.Log(Policy-Making)
Public-Agenda LI -0.002 0.007 -0.29 .769
L2 0.010 0.009 1.08 .279
L3 -0.006 0.007 -0.75 .450
Public-Attitude LID 0.001 0.004 0.26 .792
L2D 0.002 0.004 0.60 .552
L3D 0.002 0.003 0.56 .573
Log(Policy-Making) LID 0.151 0.164 0.92 .357
L2D 0.226 0.181 1.25 .211
L3D 0.279 0.197 1.41 .157
Constant -0.031 0.157 -0.20 .842
Notes: 1. For the operators, D stands for the first one-lag difference, and S4 stands for the first seasonal
difference. Log stands for a Logarithm transformation.
2. * means significant at the 0.05 level.
3. With a one-order difference on some of the variables and three lags in the model, the dataset lose
some observations. The sample to support the model covers from 1970 to 2007 with 38 observations. AIC
= 7.24, SBIC = 8.54, HQIC = 7.70. For the equation of the public agenda series, R-square = 0.691; for the
equation of the differenced public attitude series, R-square = 0.394; for the equation of the log-transformed
and differenced policy making series, R-square = 0.235. The lag length of the VAR model is selected based
on the minimum AIC criteria. Posttests show that the estimation of the VAR(3) model is stable. No
autocorrelation is found in the residual, and the residual is normally distributed.

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

well, but pays more attention when it has problems.

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.

Table 4.3 Granger Causality Tests on the Yearly Data (43-obs)

VAR Granger Bivariate Granger Causality Test


Causality Test
Chi- P Chi- P F(dj\,dfl) P
Direction square (df) square (df)
Public-Agenda -> 14.65 (3) .002* 13.97(3) .003* 3.90 (3,36) .016*
D.Public-Attitude
D.Public-Attitude -> 4.16(3) .245 14.28 (3) .003* 3.98 (3,36) .015*
Public-Agenda
Public-Agenda -> 1.47(3) .689 16.63 (3) <.001* 4.64 (3,36) .008*
D.Log(Policy-
Making)
D.Log(Policy- 6.28 (3) .099 3.61 (3) .307 1.01 (3,36) .401
Making) -> Public-
Agenda
D.Public-Attitude -> 0.72 (3) .869 6.74 (3) .081 1.88(3,36) .15
D.Log(Policy-
Making)
D.Log(Policy- 7.72 (3) .052 4.58 (3) .205 1.28 (3,36) .296
Making) ->
D.Public-Attitude
Notes: 1. For the operators, D stands for the first one-lag difference, and S4 stands for the first seasonal
difference. Log stands for a Logarithm transformation. * means significant at the 0.05 level.
3. Bivariate Granger Causality tests are also run with three lags.
4. Usually the results of VAR Granger Causality test and the Bivariate Granger Causality test are
very similar.590 But here in some of the tests the VAR Granger tests are dramatically different from the
bivariate tests. A tentative explanation is that the presence of some variables significantly influences the
relationship among other variables.

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

relationship, in which the two variables Granger cause each other.591

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

suggests that, when the federal government makes a decision on environmental

expenditures, it rarely considers public attitudes about environmental spending.

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

shown in the tests.

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

positive influence on the public attitude in the current year.

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

partially supported with rather weak evidence.

166
Table 4.4 VAR(l) with the Yearly Data (28-obs)

Endogenous Variable Exogenous Variable Coefficient SE


D.Public-Attitude
Public-Attitude LID .359 .226 1.59 .112
Media-Attitude LID -0.091 0.054 -1.69 .091
Constant 0.429 0.705 0.61 .543
D.Media-Attitude
Public-Attitude LID 2.071 0.917 2.26 .024
Media-Attitude LID -0.282 0.219 -1.29 .199
Constant -0.053 2.86 -0.02 .985
Notes: 1. For the operators, D stands for the first one-lag difference.
2. * means significant at the 0.05 level.
3. With a one-order difference on both of the variables and one lag in the model, the dataset lose two
observations. The sample to support the model covers from 1982 to 2007 with 26 observations. AIC =
13.69, SBIC = 13.98, HQIC = 13.77. For the equation of the differenced public attitude series, R-square =
0.117; for the equation of the differenced media attitude series, R-square = 0.164. The lag length of the
VAR model is selected based on the minimum AIC, SBIC and HQIC. Posttests show that the estimations of
the VAR(l) model are stable. No autocorrelation is found in the residual, and the residual is normally
distributed.

Table 4.5 Granger Causality Tests on the Yearly Data (28-obs)

VAR Granger Bivariate Granger Causality Test


Causality Test
Chi- p Chi- p F(df[,dJ2) p
Direction square (df) square (df)
D.Public-Attitude -> 5.10(1) .024* 3.09(1) .079 0.92(1,25) .347
D.Media-Attitude
D.Media-Attitude -> 2.87 (1) .091 5.49(1) .019* 1.64(1,25) .213
D.Public-Attitude
Notes: 1. For the operators, D stands for the first one-lag difference.
2. * means significant at the 0.05 level.
3. Bivariate Granger Causality tests are also run with one lag.

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

2007, including 96 observations. It explained 68.1 percent of the variation in the

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

Endogenous Variable Exogenous Variable Coefficient SE Z P


S4.Media-Agenda
Media-Agenda L1S4 0.781 0.201 3.88 <.001*
L2S4 -0.845 0.210 -4.01 <.001*
L3S4 0.388 0.208 1.86 .063
L4S4 -0.142 0.202 -0.70 .483
L5S4 0.646 0.211 3.06 .002*
L6S4 -0.614 0.217 -2.83 .005*
L7S4 0.070 0.211 0.33 .739
L8S4 -0.282 0.173 -1.64 .102
Media-Attitude L1S4 -0.182 0.148 -1.22 .221
L2S4 0.593 0.150 3.97 <.001*
L3S4 0.212 0.146 1.45 .148
L4S4 -0.599 0.151 -3.97 <.001*
L5S4 -0.190 0.154 -1.23 .217
L6S4 0.259 0.158 1.64 .100
L7S4 0.343 0.162 2.12 .034*
L8S4 -0.061 0.146 -0.42 .675
Presidential-Agenda L1S4 -0.359 0.217 -1.65 .098
L2S4 0.185 0.245 0.76 .449
L3S4 0.115 0.257 0.45 .653
L4S4 0.464 0.252 1.84 .066
L5S4 -0.699 0.273 -2.56 .010*
L6S4 -0.251 0.273 -0.92 .357
L7S4 -0.270 0.234 -1.15 .249
L8S4 0.790 0.237 3.33 .001*
Presidential-Attitude L1D4S4 -0.0001 0.124 -0.00 .999
L2D4S4 0.046 .331 0.14 .889
L3D4S4 0.199 0.527 0.38 .706
L4D4S4 0.343 0.612 0.56 .576
L5D4S4 0.250 0.591 0.42 .673
L6D4S4 0.127 0.481 0.26 .791
L7D4S4 0.124 0.290 0.43 .671
L8D4S4 0.105 0.105 1.00 .317
Public-Agenda LI S4 0.750 0.387 1.94 .052
L2S4 -0.402 0.520 -0.77 .439
L3S4 -0.829 0.517 -1.60 .109
L4S4 1.012 0.515 1.97 .049*
L5S4 0.303 0.489 0.62 .536
L6S4 -0.716 0.492 -1.46 .146
L7S4 -0.175 0.464 -0.38 .706
L8S4 0.603 0.299 2.01 .044*
Constant 0.043 0.314 0.14 .890

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 seasonally differenced public agenda equation.

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

(coef. = 0.603,/? = .044).

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.

Presidential agenda is positively influenced by media attitude at lag two (coef. =

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

and down frequently, as in Figure 4.3.

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

VAR Granger Bivariate Granger Causality Test


Causality Test
Chi- P Chi- P F(dfY,dfl) P
square (df) square
Direction (df)
S4. Media-Agenda 36.59 (8) <.001* 17.08 (8) .029* 4.83 (8,95) <.001*
-> S4.Media-Attitude
S4.Media-Attitude -> 40.01 (8) <.001* 14.74 (8) .065 4.17(8,95) <.001*
S4.Media-Agenda
S4.Presidential- 18.94(8) .015* 11.83(8) .159 3.34 (8,95) .002*
Agenda ->
S4.Media-Agenda
S4.Media-Agenda -> 9.37 (8) .312 13.04(8) .111 3.69 (8, 95) <.001*
S4.Presidential-
Agenda
S4.Media-Attitude -> 19.56(8) .012* 9.89 (8) .273 2.80 (8,95) .008*
D4S4.Presidential-
Attitude
S4.Presidential- 99.39 (8) <.001* 17.08(8) .029* 4.83 (8,95) .001*
Agenda ->
D4S4.Presidential-
Attitude
D4S4.Presidential- 5.87 (8) .661 59.95 (8) <.001* 16.95(8,95) <.001*
Attitude -»
S4.Presidenital-
Agenda
S4.Public-Agenda -> 12.27 (8) .140 27.95 (8) <.001* 7.90 (8,95) <.001*
S4.Media-Agenda
S4.Media-Agenda -> 39.67 (8) <.001* 10.70 (8) .219 3.03 (8,95) .005*
S4.Public-Agenda
S4.Public-Agenda -> 5.87 (8) .661 3.93 (8) .863 1.11(8,95) .363
S4.Presidential-
Agenda
S4.Presidential- 31.60(8) <.001* 8.87 (8) .354 2.51 (8,95) .016*
Agenda -^
S4.Public-Agenda
D4S4. Presidential- 17.51 (8) .025* 7.37 (8) .497 2.08 (8,95) .045*
Attitude -> S4.
Media-Attitude
Notes: 1. In the table, D stands for the first one-lag difference, and S4 stands for the first seasonal
difference. Log stands for a Logarithm transformation. * means significant at the 0.05 level.
2. The bivariate Granger Causality tests also have eight lags.
3. See Table 4.2 Notes for a tentative explanation of the difference between the results of the
multivariate and the bivariate Granger Causality tests.

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).

H5 predicts that presidential attitude is a Granger Cause of media attitude. The

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).

Picturing the Causalities

In this chapter, hypotheses derived from the integrated mass communication

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

environment, and content analysis of 1,334 newspaper articles, television program

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
Agenda
HI •-—*--? Agenaa
The Media H2 The Public
-* in
-Attitud
. _ Attitude
H3

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

toward the same direction in several quarters.

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

environment rise, the media follow.

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

on a particular unidirectional relationship.

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.

The only relationship that is suggested by previous studies but failed to be

supported by this study is the influence of public attitude on environmental policy

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

support environmental protection.

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

Erikson, Mackuen and Stimson, The Macro Polity.

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

watching the environmental policy making.

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

CONCLUSION, LIMITATION, AND SUGESTIONS

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

measured as the amount of news articles, television news summaries, presidential

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

analysis of around 1,334 documents.

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

Non-Linear Transformation Media Effects

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

1970s. While the all-powerful-effects phase is represented by the notorious magic

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

studying media effects."604

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.

McQuail, Mass Communication Theory, 47.

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

over certain issues (See Table 5.1).

The Bi-Dlrectional Relationships

As stated, although agenda-setting and framing researches are supported by this

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

reflect the reality of the community.

Media Effects at Different Levels

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

at lower information processing levels will cause changes at higher levels.

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

of the causal relationships identified in this study needs more exploration.

The Presidential Influence on the Media and the Public

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

agenda follows the direction led by the presidential agenda.

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

most of the statistically significant coefficients of presidential agenda and presidential

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

influence on the presidents and their environmental expenditure.

Table 5.1 A Summary of the Hypothesis Testing and Research Question

Test Results Conclusion


Tests Results
Hypotheses
HI: Media Agenda -> Multivariate x2 test X2(8) = 39.67, /?<.001 Partly
Public Agenda Bivariate %2 test X2(8)= 10.70,/? = .219 supported
Bivariate F test F(8,95) = 3.03,/? = .005
H2: Public Agenda -> Multivariate x2 test X2(3)= 14.65, /? = . 002 Fully
Public Attitude Bivariate x2 test X2(3) = 13.97,/? = .003 supported
Bivariate F test F(3,36) = 3.90, /? = .016
H3: Media Attitude^ Multivariate %2 test X2(l) = 2.87, p = . 091 Partly
Public Attitude Bivariate %2 test X2(l) = 5.49, /? = .019 supported
Bivariate F test F(l,25)= 1.64,/? = .213
H4: Presidential Agenda Multivariate x2 test X2(8)= 18.94,/? =.015 Partly
2
-> Media Agenda Bivariate x2 test X (8)= 11.83,/? = .159 supported
Bivariate F test ^(8,95) = 3.34,/? = .002
H5: Presidential Multivariate %2 test X2(8)= 17.51,/? = .025 Partly
Attitude -> Media Bivariate x2 test X2(8) = 7.37,/? = .497 supported
Attitude Bivariate F test F(8,95) = 2.08,/? = .045
H6: Public Attitude -> Multivariate x2 test X2(3) = 0.72 ,/? = .869 Not
Policy-making Bivariate x2 test X2(3) = 6.74 ,/? = .081 supported
Bivariate F test F(3,36)=1.88,p = .15
Research Question
Public Agenda -> Multivariate x2 test X2(8)= 12.27,/? = .140 Partly
Media Agenda Bivariate x2 test X2(8) = 27.95,/? <.001 supported
Bivariate F test F(8,95) = 7.90,/?<.001
Public Attitude -> Multivariate x2 test X2(3) = 4.16,/? = .245 Partly
Public Agenda Bivariate x2 test X2(3)= 14.28,/? = .003 supported
Bivariate F test JF(3,36) = 3.98,p = .015

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

different topics, in directions as well as magnitudes.607 This study, however, does

contribute to enhance the understanding of the interaction among the three major political

forces on environmental issues.

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

environmental spending of his administration is also independent of the public

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

public interests served.

Such dynamics confirm Juergen Habermas' idea of "media society." While the

contemporary western societies are experiencing an impressive increase of the volume of

political communications, Habermas believes that most of these communications are

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

Habermas, Political Communication in Media Society.

Habermas, Political Communication in Media Society, 13, 14.

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

through the media.

The domination of the mediated communication in political arena will not pose a

severe problem if, as Habermas holds, the requirement of media's self-regulation is

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

unresponsive to the public, to whom they are really responsible.

The suggestion of this study to environmentalists is also clear: to advance the

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

public environmental agenda.

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

of governmental manipulation, which meets the requirement of Habermas' "media

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

to public opinion effectively.614

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

when this dissertation research was almost done.

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

Guizhou is located in the southwestern China.


616
Yongsong Ruan, "The Weng'an Accident and the Necessity of Loosening the Media Control," Lainhe
Zaobao (3 July 2008), http://www.zaobao.com/vl/tx080703 502,shtml. (accessed July 3, 2008)
617
Yunjiang He and Yucen shi, "Guizhou Strictly Investigates the Misconducts of the Officials in the 6.28
Accident," Xinhuanet Website. (3 July 2008). http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2008-
07/03/content_8485 748.htm (accessed July 3, 2008). In Chinese.
618
Ruan, "The Weng'an Accident and the Necessity of Loosening the Media Control." In Chinese.

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.

Strengths and the Weaknesses

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

of the study and helps to avoid the Hawthorne effect61 in research.

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

VAR modeling method can help resolve this problem.

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

procedure, the multivariate Granger Causality test, is hence used by scholars as

hypothesis testing tool. While the multivariate Granger Causality test, like its bivariate

counterpart, is powerful in identifying causal relationship between variables, it does not

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

coefficients as a reference when interpreting the relationships. However, it should be

reiterated that the complication of the formation of the VAR coefficients622 reduces the

reliability of the interpretations.

Suggestions for Further Research

Econometrists have developed a new advanced tool, impulse response function

analysis, to supplement the aforementioned drawbacks of VAR modeling. Using impulse

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

variables. If the impulse response function goes to a uncertain number, it can be

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

the short-term effects and the direction of the effects.

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

influence on environmental issues. It is interesting to see if this conclusion can be

supported by more replications.

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

they are important in a democracy as well as other societies.

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

or the ratio of changes in the environmental outlays and total outlays.

629
Soproka, "Issue Attributes and Agenda-Setting by Media, the Public, and Policymakers in Canada.''

201
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219
APPENDIX

DATA COLLECTION AND MEASUREMENT

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 from Media Coverage and Presidential Documents

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

LexisNexis database. The database of ProQuest is used to supplement newspaper articles

not available in LexiaNexis. Presidential documents are collected from The Weekly

Compilation of the Presidential Documents, available at the online Federal Register

Library in the Hein database.

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,"

"environmental," "environmentalist(s)," or "environmentalism" in the headline of articles

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
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Figure Alb Searching Results


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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.

Figure A2a Searching N e w York Times Articles in ProQuest

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ProQuest

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Figure A2b ProQuest Searching Results

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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

obtained 257 Washington Post articles for content analysis.

Figure A 3 a Searching W a s h i n g t o n P o s t Articles in L e x i s N e x i s

»*. - «3> ~!«?V*S* «JSW«M


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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

the content analysis.

Figure A4 Searching Television News Summaries in the Vanderbilt Television


iNews Archive _

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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

documents, including presidential speeches, nominations and announcements of various

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 natural environment, the researcher has a document population of 2,031.

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

be redone to be consistent with the method used to search newspaper articles.

The researcher had to go back to find the missing documents and search the Hein

database again by the key words "environment" OR "environmental" OR

"environmentalist" OR "environmentalism." This time, the researcher searched the

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
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226
obtained a more complete population, hence representative samples (See Figure A5).

After repairing the population, the researcher selected every fourth matching document

and came up with a sample pool of 485 documents.

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,

327; presidential documents, 476.

Coding Scheme

Four Variables are coded in the content analysis:

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.

Tone.630 Tone toward environmental protection is coded at the ordinal level,

with -2 = highly unsupportive, -1 = unsupportive, 0 = neutral or balanced, 1 =

supportive, and 2 = highly supportive.

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

overall attitude of the writer or the speaker toward environmental protection.

Following are the criteria used in the coding:

To determine 2, highly supportive: for news stories, there are no

anti-environment quotes, only pro-environment ones, and that environmental

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

supportive toward environmental protection. For television news abstracts, no

anti-environment sources, such as industry representatives and polluters, are quoted

and no interests other than environmental protection mentioned. For presidential

documents, at least one section, marked by subtitles, is devoted to address supporting

environmental protection, without binding it with other interests such as protecting

jobs and energy security.

To determine 1, supportive: for news stories, pro-environment quotes

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,

such as environmentalists, environmental group representatives, and environmental

experts, but also quotes a couple of anti-environment sources, or noted other interests.

For presidential documents, the president expresses support for environmental

protection but relates it to other interests such as economic development; or there is

only brief mention, rather than a whole section, of environmental protection.

To determine 0, neutral or balanced: for news stories, number of quotes of both

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

anti-environment sources are quoted; or no attitude is shown. For presidential

documents, nominations for environmental officials without further comments are

coded as 0. Presidential speeches and opinion pieces usually are not coded as 0.

To determine -1, unsupportive: for news stories, anti-environment quotes

outnumber pro-environment ones; or, although recognizing the importance of

protecting the environment, the story favors the side that puts other interests over

environmental protection as priority. For opinion pieces, the author is generally

anti-environment but still voices a little support, or promotes other interests over, but

without denouncing, environmental protection. For television news summaries, the

piece quotes more anti-environment sources than pro-environment ones, or highlights

other interests than environmental protection. For presidential documents, the

president expresses the view of putting other interests first, such as economical

development, but still notes environmental protection.

To determine -2, highly unsupportive: for news stories, there are no

pro-environment quotes; for opinion piece, the author is clearly anti-environment; for

television news summaries, no pro-environment sources are quoted; for presidential

document, other interests are pit against environmental protection and that the president

completely stands for other interests.

Data from Public Opinion Polls and Federal Budget

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.

Poll Questions Measuring Public Agenda and Public Attitude

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

listed in the Table A l .

Table Al Poll Questions Measuring the Agenda and the Attitude

Question Wording (Choice) Pollster N


Public Agenda
What do you think is the most important problem facing ABC/Washington 28
this country today? (Environment/Pollution) Post
Which is more important to you personally—protecting the ABC/Washington 4
environment or encouraging economic growth? (Protecting Post
the environment)
I am going to read to you six aspects of electricity Bisconti 3
production and I'd like you to tell me which one is most
important to you....Clean air, affordability, reliability,
efficiency, energy independence, sustainability (Clean air)
What do you think are the two most important problems Cambridge 17
facing the United States today? (environment)
What do you think is the most important problem facing the CBS/New York 46
country today? (Environment) Times
What do you think is more important—producing energy, or CBS/New York 12
protecting the environment? (Protecting the environment) Times
What do you think is the single most important problem for CBS/New York 7
the government—that is, the President and Congress—to Times
address in the coming year? (Environment)

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

series from a group of observed series is developed by political scientist James

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

available at Stimson's personal website: http://www.unc.edu/~jstimson/

To use WCalc, the data need to be formatted according to WCalc's requirements.632

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

researchers to choose to draw one dimension or two dimensions.

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.

See the instruction of WCalc, which is available with WCalc.

Personal communication via e-mail, May 19, 2008.

235
and quarterly format. Some series questions were deleted after running the analysis

because of their failure to meet the 0.5 standard.

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 as important is taken as the observed measure of public agenda on 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

the smoothing option is also checked.

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

observed series and the yearly data generated by WCalc.

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

series to the latent series is fine.

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

Estimation, R e p o r t Cor F i l e s CsMtecunsents a n d S e t t i n g s \ XatoXDes fctop\pageiH*a»tart


S31 records a f t e r date scan

p e r i o d ; 1365 t o 200? 4i 3 X3>^ie yO'3U£kt M


Kuiifaer o f S e r i e s ; 26
E x p o n e n t i a l Steootttiags o n

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 "
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4 -CBSNYI" N = is Correlation = .574 Mean: 1.7 STB; 1.3
S "CBSHYTEVE"
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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
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13 "Harris" H = 14 Correlation = .882 Mean; 2.2 STB; ,9
14 "SARTsTEETE"
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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"
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13 "PRINCETON™
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20 "FRIHCEIOHT*
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21 "ROPERS" H - 11 Correlation m ! i i 9 Mean: 1 3 . 7 STD; 3.S
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23 "TRENSEXAIR-
H - 11 Cerrslsticn m- .778 Vgaa; S3.€ STD: 2. 6
24 "TRETOEXSSO"'
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25 "KIHSIOH" H « 4 Correlation m . 5 5 7 Means 2.S SID: . 5

Eigea Estimate 3 . 4 S o£ p o s s i b l e 4.4


Pet Variance Explained: 79.12

Weighted Average Metric; Mean; 2 2 . 3 1 Sx, Dev : 2.2S

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

correlations are also above 0.05 (See Figure A9).

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&

7 "3*1 l a p i s " M «* 4 Correlation «* .39« Mtfan: 10.5 3ID: 3.%


S •*G3ll«p25'* H = 4 Correlation = -9S€ Keart; 10.5 STD; 3.6
9 "SallupCF" H «• 3 CurrelatiQB -^ .991 M<sa.rt: €4.7 SID: 3.1
10 "Gallup!IPC"
H - S Ccrrelatioa « . 9 8 3 Me»tl: 2.3 ST3: .S
11 *© a l 1 u p V o r i "
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12 "Hirxia* M - Si Correlation • .811 Xean; 2.3 SI3: 1.4
13 "BARIsTEETE"
H » 8 C o t r e l K i c n m. . 33 3 Meant 4.4 SID: 2-«
14 *ICR- M = 5 Correlation — , S 4 & Kean; 2.3 STD: .4
15 "1AT" H - 4 Correlation m . 72^ 2 K e a a : 2.0 STZ>s 3.7
16 "Princeton™
H m ^ Co3TI%l9tiQ^ m, .894 Kesra: 2.2 ST3: 1. 2
17 "BRIUCETOM"
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18 "PRINCETONr"
H = 10 Correlation = . 7 9 3 K«ars; 5 2 . 7 ^ 1 &^« S-0
19 "ROFERE" H «• 3 Correlation - . S 4 0 SCtestn. i 14 . 5 S I D : S.£
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21 "IREEFDEXXIR"
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22 "TBJEW&EXSSftT"
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23 "TKENDEXXJUf"
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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

Figure A10 for the reliabilities.

240
Figure A10
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9 "1JSF" M _ S Ccrrslati"n _ , 331 Xeas; (F4 •
J E : " "
10 "PRIMCEtai"
W m 5 Ccrrels.tie.Ei «n . 3^4 He»n; 43 « 3T: ; 11 0
11 "RCJER" 11 m 14 , €5 9 Mesa: 50 »;• ST TI 1 4 3
12 "TREK&EKMP"
a = 10 Ccrralatiaa SB
. e?.s Kear, i €0 S ST;: s 3
13 "TPEfCEXKXT"-
21 S* Is Corialatica m . 93 4 M e a a i €^ p 2TT; 4 z
14 "nyenrsxPAR*
H • 13 Correlation w . 30.2 X t a a : S4 s 5 C ; 3 5
15 —iCS" It 4 Ccjrcel&tiea _ , 554 Heart: 43 3 * I
a>
sit::
E l g e r s EaTiapjst* Z.S£ ci p a a s i f c l s 3 . 1 9
P e t V a r i a n c e E x p - l s i n e i ; £ C , li
Kteigfetedl & v « r a g t e H e t n c : K««a: 38.63 St. 3ev: <?, 53

Policy Making

Policy making is measured by the federal outlay in "natural resources and

environment" (in millions of dollars) which is drawn from Table 3.1 attached at the end

of the 2009 federal budget.

241

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