Chapter 5: Hearing the Other Side and
Standing Firm
Arceneaux and Johnson
Erinn Lauterbach
Feb. 28, 2014
 Main point: What role could partisan news play in hardening the
attitudes of viewers against opposing arguments?
 Example: Birthers in 2008
 These shows both bolster pre-existing attitudes and help hone
viewer defenses to arguments from the other side.
 Partisan show hosts (O’Reilly & Olbermann)
 Promote their own views
 Tear down others with whom they disagree
 These kinds of communications can wall off like-minded viewers
from hearing the other side.
 One theory of political communication is that if people are
exposed to opposing arguments (both proattitudinal and
counterattitudinal) they will have more moderate views and
reasonable opinions.
 Authors use a hypothetical counterfactual
 Questions: will hearing the other side moderate views (increase
openness) or will exposure to countervailing views harden
partisans against those arguments?
 Again the A & J are borrowing from the psychology literature
 Exposure to proattitudinal information increases peoples political
efficacy and bolsters their initial opinions
 Primes group identity
 If counterattitudinal information signals an out-group threat it
would motivate people to defend their groups position
 This desire for in-group cohesion can mediate even reasonable counter
arguments
 Examples? Climate change?
 Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (Petty and Cacioppo)
 Helps the authors incorporate how the audience might differ in
their receptivity to pro and counterattitudinal arguments.
 “some individuals have a strong need to intellectually process, or
elaborate, arguments while others are less inclined to do so”
 Need for cognition
 Individuals high in need for cognition are better at and enjoy
dissecting arguments as well as generating their own counter
arguments.
 People who have weak attitudes and high need for cognition tend to
moderate their opinions when exposed to both side.
 People with strong attitudes and high need for cognition tend to
counterargue when exposed to counterattitudes.
 Rehearse counterarguments
 Distrust the source
 Resist persuasion
Experiments
 Selective Exposure Experiments (SEEs) 09 & 11
 Randomly assigned to 3 groups:
 Proattitudinal show
 Counterattitudinal show
 Entertainment show (later to became channel changing group)
 Focus on tax policy (Warren Buffet)
 Asked to watch the news selection and rate the
counterattitudinal persuasiveness on a 9 point scale
 ELM measure was given in a pre-test
Results
 If a respondent claims the counterattitudinal argument was
not persuasive (weak) then there is evidence that watching
partisan news hardens people’s opinions making them less open
to opposing viewpoints.
 This is what they found. When compared to the control group,
those in the counterattitudinal group rated the given argument
as weak.
ELM?
 Low need for cognition participants:
 In both pro and counterattitudinal groups did not evaluate
arguments differently from the control group.
 High need for cognition participants:
 The partisan arguments caused participants to be more resistant
to opposing arguments.
Entertainment Folks?
 News seekers have a desire to maintain their opinions and
should be capable of resisting counterattitudinal arguments.
 Entertainment seekers however may benefit from exposure
to both pro and counterattitudinal news.
 Have less defense against counter arguments.
 ELM?
 May lack the desire to connect arguments made in the news to
any pre-existing opinions.
Experiment
 Fall 2011 Participant Preference Experiment (PPE)
 Shorter version of the fall 2011 SEE
 Before being randomly assigned to a group, participants were
asked what they preferred to watch.
 ELM was given in the post-test
Results
 Partisan news shows have a larger affect on entertainment
seekers
 Specifically, proattitudinal group entertainment seekers
substantially increase their resistance to counter arguments.
 ELM:
 Both low and high need for cognition entertainment seekers are
more likely to resist opposing arguments after watching
proattitudinal news.
 It does little to harden attitudes further though
 Takeaway:
 Partisan news has the potential to have massive effects, but these are
likely unrealized because the most susceptible tune out opinionated
cable news programs.
Chapter 6: The Salience and Framing
of Issues
 Agenda Setting:
 By reporting on some issues at the expense of others, news media
influences what issues the mass public sees as most important
 Salience
 Primes:
 News media can construct shared perceptions about a collective
experience and thus influence peoples political judgments
 Helps people decide what information to rely on when constructing
attitudes
 Frames:
 How a problem is defined can affect what people think about an
issue
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfb9f7yFYgw
 Question: Does the rise of partisan media alter agenda setting?
 Possible theories:
 Partisan media may focus on different things.
 Stroud (2001) looked at the 2004 Presidential election. He found
that the agenda on each side was similar, but the way they framed
the issues was different.
 Implications: audiences of one news outlet will have a different
conversation from that of the audience of other news outlets.
 Viewer watching a counterattitudinal show may accept the
agenda, but not the partisan definition given with the issue.
 A & J find that both pro- and counterattitudinal shows can shape
perceptions of issue salience.
 O’Reilly devoted much of
his time to talking about
the budget and economy
 Olbermann did not discuss
the economy at all
 Olbermann viewers were
14% less likely than
O’Reilly to mention the
economy as the most
important problem.
 Olbermann successfully
shifted the focus of his
viewers away from the
economy.
Experiment
 Winter 2011 SEE
 Focus on the ACA/Obamacare
 Posttest includes and overall evaluation of the president
 The liberal and conservative shows presented the ACA in
completely different ways
Findings
 Control Group
 There was basically no relationship between health care and
their performance evaluation of the president
 Counterattitudinal Group
 Participants were more likely to bring health-care specific and
evaluations of Obama in line with each other
 Partisan (especially counterattitudinal) news appear to prime
the issues relevant to their evaluations of the president.
However, counterattitudinal shows magnify partisanship in
issue-specific presidential evaluations.
 Agenda Setting:
 Most likely to happen among entertainment seeking groups
assigned to proattitudinal shows.
 News seekers in the counterattitudinal group appear to resist
agenda setting (they were 10 percentage points less likely to
mention the environment as a problem)
 Issue Framing
 Partisan media not only wants to set the agenda but also to affect
how viewers define the issue.
 Priming
 Because counterattitudinal shows attack people’s core
predispositions and partisan identities, a defensive priming effect
may be more robus than simple agenda-setting effects are.
Experiment
 Fall 2011 PPE
 Participants were presented with six problem definitions of
federal tax policy and asked to rank how important each was.
 Definitions taken from the news shows, 3 liberal & 3 conservative
 Participants physically drag each definition to the spot where
they thought it belonged.
Findings:
 News Seekers
 Were highly likely to choose attitude-consistent problem
definitions without the aid of partisan news
 Definitions were unaffected by pro or counterattitudinal shows.
 Entertainment Seekers
 Proattitudinal shows appeared to facilitate an attitude-consistent
problem definition (only slighly)
 Counterattitudinal shows lowered the probability that they
chose an attitude-consistent definition as their first choice.
 These shows may successfully alter problem defintions