Topic The Role of Emotions in Political Communication
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Universiteit Van Amsterdam (UvA)
Summary of the topic 'The Role of Emotions in Political Communication' (University of Amsterdam) year . It consists of short summaries of all required readings and notes from the lectures week 1-7.
topic the role of emotions in political communication
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Communicatiewetenschap
Topic The Role of Emotions in Political Communication
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Topic: Role of Emotions in Political Communication
(required literature & lectures week 1-7)
Overview literature
Week 1: Introduction to Media Effects Research
• No required literature.
Week 2: The Power of Feelings?
• Schuck & Feinholdt (2015)
• Gross (2008)
• Igartua et al. (2011)
Week 3: Case Study 1: Election Campaigns
• Valentino et al. (2011)
• Brader (2005)
• Marcus & MacKuen (1993)
Week 4: Emotions: Theories and Models
• Scherer (2005)
• Nabi (1999)
• Redlawsk et al. (2007)
Week 5: Case Study II: Climate Change
• Myers et al. (2012)
• Schannell & Gifford (2013)
• Hart & Feldman (2014)
• Bilandzic et al. (2017)
Week 6: Case Study III: The European Union
• Boomgaarden et al. (2011)
• Lecheler et al. (2013)
• Vasilopoulou & Wagner (2017)
Week 7: Special Issues in Affective Media Effect Research
• Gadarian (2010)
• Nabi (2015)
• Stieglitz & Dang-Xuan (2013)
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, Week 1: Introduction to Media Effects Research
Research paradigms
1. The beginnings: Powerful media (1900-1930)
It was thought that the media were very powerful, due to:
a. Observation of enormous popularity of media
b. Principles of propaganda; media as manipulators
c. Psychological and biological theories
➔ Stimulus-Response model (also referred to as ‘hypodermic needle theory): the assumption
that the mass media has powerful effects. Media messages result in effects on thought and
behaviour that are direct, immediate, uniform and therefore powerful.
Example: “War of the Worlds” – a realistic radio dramatization of an alien invasion. People who were
listening to the radio believed this → caused panic among the audience. This shows the powerful effects
the media had in that time.
But: some people panicked and some people not panicked in response to the message. →
2. (A little bit less) powerful media (1940-50s)
People respond differently to the same type of information: black box between stimulus and
response was considered; more attention for moderators between stimulus and response.
a. Discovering individual differences in the ‘black box’
b. Intervening factors: existing attitudes, opinions etc.
c. No isolated individuals, but connected members of small networks
3. Limited effects (1960-1970s)
Different motives why people use certain media (pleasure, information etc.), we ourselves decide
how we use the media → downhill in turn of media power and manipulation. This idea came up
after a book of Joseph Klapper.
4. Return to (moderately) powerful effects (1970s)
Moderate effects era: effects on society. Media do not have an effect on individuals, but they might
shape and form society in certain ways.
a. Shift to long-term effects of media; social change
b. Increasing knowledge-gap: cultivation of fear through the media → natural tendency of
media to focus on the negative (anything that catches attention), this cultivates a society
which believes the world is worse than it.
5. Return to powerful effects
Agenda-setting and framing: media has powerful effects (but not for everyone) → conditions: who
is affected by media content and who is not? It is different from the stimulus-response
relationship, because many moderators (e.g. emotions) are considered in the relationship.
a. Agenda setting: media affect what people think about.
o “The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but
it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.” (Cohen, 1963)
o Not only media set the agenda, but also politicians.
b. Framing: media affect how we think of political issues.
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, c. Not everybody is equally affected: who is affected? (moderators)
d. Underlying effect mechanisms: how are people affected? (mediators)
Framing
Framing: the observation that media can portray one and the same topic in very different ways,
emphasizing certain evaluations or only parts of an issue at the expense of possible others.
→ Select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient, in such a way as to promote
a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment
recommendation for the item described (Entman, 1993).
Example: the term ‘global warning’ is associated with greater public understanding, emotional
engagement, and support for personal and national action than the term ‘climate change’.
The world is too big, too complex and too distant → frames give us simpler modes to facilitate
understanding. It is inevitably only a partial representation of reality: decision what aspects to report
and what not.
Types of frames
Two types of frames:
• Equivalency framing (psychology): different presentations of identical decision-making
scenarios influence people’s choice and evaluations. It encourages certain interpretations and
discourages certain others. They are often worded in opposite terms, like gain vs loss, full vs
empty or ‘80% survive vs 20% die’.
• Issue framing (sociology): people cannot understand the world fully and try to make sense of
it. To efficiently process information, people apply interpretative schemas (frames) to classify
information and interpret it. Focus is placed on specific aspects and others are excluded.
Aspects that create or help construct a frame:
o Placement
o Repetition
o Omission: not mentioning or de-emphasizing things
o Association with culturally important symbols or metaphors
Generic frames can be applied to a lot of different topics. Most common generic news frames are:
• Responsibility frame: government or individual responsibility, suggested problem solution,
call for action.
• Conflict frame: disagreement, two or more sides, blame of the conflict, winner vs loser.
• Human interest frame: human face, personal impact on lives, sympathy/pity, personal
aspects.
• Economic consequences frame: financial gains/losses, costs/expenses, future consequences.
• Morality frame: moral message, social prescriptions how to behave.
Issue-specific frames are only applicable to specific issues. For example: the refugee crisis (frame it as
‘human-drama’ or as ‘terrorist threat’) or Turkey in the EU (frame it as ‘Islam-threat’ or ‘bridge to the
East’) → different ways of framing the same topic.
Thematic vs episodic framing:
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, • Thematic framing: issues are placed into a broader context, more factual information, stats
and figures.
• Episodic framing: an issue is presented by offering a specific example (individual story), more
emotionally engaging.
Different effects of different frames:
* Thematic framing > persuading, affect opinions
* Episodic framing > mobilizing, affect emotions
* Positive and negative emphasis framing (valence frames) > persuading and can also be
(de-)mobilizing
* Conflict framing > negative effects on opinion, mobilizing (if conflict is not uncivil attack)
* Strategy framing (focus on style and strategic motives of politicians) > makes people more
cynical, demobilizing.
Difference agenda-setting and framing
The difference between agenda-setting and framing: agenda-setting looks on story selection as a
determinant of public perceptions of issue importance and evaluations of political leader. Framing
focuses not on which topics or issues are selected for coverage by the news media, but instead on the
particular ways those issues are presented.
➔ Difference between whether we think about an issue (agenda-setting) and how we think about it
(framing). So, framing goes one step further than agenda-setting.
Priming (not important for exam)
Priming: a technique in which the introduction of one stimulus influences how people respond to a
subsequent stimulus. It activates an association or representation in memory just before another
stimulus or task is introduced. When media determine which topics people think are important, the
public is going to evaluate political actors based on these issues. Priming forms the ground on which
people evaluate politicians.
➔ “Priming is the impact that agenda-setting can have on the way individuals evaluate public officials
by influencing the thematic issues that individuals use to form these evaluations” (Scheufele, 2002).
Cognitive framing effects
When you look at the framing research of Scheufele and Duckman, you find that they focus on
cognitive framing effects. They consider belief important change (M1) and belief content change (M2)
as important → frames have an effect because you in your head start believing that certain aspects of an
issue are more important (M1) or you change the content of your beliefs (M2).
➔ Emotions are missing in this research.
Week 2: The Power of Feelings?
Studying emotions
Reasons why emotions have not been studies so much before:
o Politics was seen as ‘serious business’ ; emotions should not matter, normatively speaking.
o Politics is too boring; it will not spark any emotions.
o Politics is detached from our daily lives, people feel distant from it.
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