Media Effects and Public Opinion GV917

Mediated and Unmediated Opinions Mediated opinions are those which come from the mass media rather than personal experience Unmediated relate to the individual’s personal experience On the face of it we might expect unmediated attitudes to be more important than mediated attitudes

Mediated and Unmediated Judgements One of Diane Mutz’s key arguments is that the effects of personal experience predominantly work on personal level judgements (eg ‘What is going to happen to me and my family?’) and mass media effects primarily work on collective level judgements (eg ‘What is going to happen to the country as a whole?’) How are personal judgements and collective judgements related to each other?

Egocentric judgements about the retrospective performance of the economy in the 2005 British Election Study Now a few questions about economic conditions. How does the financial situation of your household now compare with what it was 12 months ago? (Please take your answers from this card – CARD L) 1Got a lot worse 2Got a little worse 3Stayed the same 4Got a little better 5Got a lot better

Egocentric-Retrospective Economic Performance

Judgements about the retrospective performance of the sociotropic economy in the 2005 British Election Study How do you think the general economic situation in this country has changed over the last 12 months? (Please take your answers from this card – CARD L) 1Got a lot worse 2Got a little worse 3Stayed the same 4Got a little better 5Got a lot better

Sociotropic-Retrospective Economic Performance

Findings People tend to be more pessimistic about the national economy than their own economic circumstances – they are a bit more optimistic about themselves than the country They are more likely to think the national economy will change than their own economic circumstances They are more likely to say ‘Don’t Know’ when thinking about the national economy

Judgements about the prospective egocentric economic performance How do you think the financial situation of your household will change over the next 12 months? (Please take your answers from this card – CARD M) 1Get a lot worse 2Get a little worse 3Stay the same 4Get a little better 5Get a lot better

Egocentric Prospective Economic Evaluations

Judgements about prospective sociotropic economic performance How do you think the general economic situation in this country will develop over the next 12 months? (Please take your answers from this card – CARD M) 1Get a lot worse 2Get a little worse 3Stay the same 4Get a little better 5Get a lot better

Sociotropic Prospective Economic Evaluations

Findings Respondents are more likely to say Don’t Know when looking to the future than when looking to the past Again, they are more likely to think that their own prospects will not change in comparison with the national economic prospects

Crosstabs of Egocentric and Sociotropic Evaluations

Relationships between the egocentric and sociotropic measures 48 per cent of the retrospective respondents were consistent in using the same categories 10 per cent of the retrospective respondents switched sides from better to worse or vice versa 54 per cent of the prospective respondents were consistent in using the same categories 6 per cent of the prospective respondents switched sides from better to worse or vice versa

How Related Are They? Further analysis shows that there is a single ‘Economic evaluations’ latent variable underlying these items, so it appears that the egocentric and sociotropic variables are measuring rather similar things

Implications of this Finding Mediated and unmediated judgements may not be that different from each other after all. Opinions in general appear to be influenced by a mixture of personal experience and mediated effects, although there are some differences between the two.

Can Newspapers influence Voting Behaviour?

Links between Newspaper Readership and Voting There is an association between newspaper readership and voting behaviour - eg. Daily Telegraph readers are very likely to be Conservative voters and Guardian readers are very likely to be Labour voters But does this imply that newspapers influence the vote? Or is it that voters buy the newspaper which is aligned with their existing political sympathies?

A case study – the Sun Newspaper in Britain The General Election of 1992 in Britain was close – Labour thought it could win, but the Conservatives succeeded in winning a small majority of seats in a surprise victory The Sun Newspaper vociferously supported the Conservatives during the campaign and actually claimed credit for the victory after the election with a famous headline: ‘IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT’

A case study – the Sun Newspaper in Britain By the time of the 1997 general election the Sun had changed sides and rather weakly endorsed Labour and Tony Blair in the election This provides a natural experiment for testing the effects of a newspaper on voting behaviour The Sun’s endorsement of Labour came rather late on in the election campaign so it is unlikely that people started buying it before the election because they were already Labour voters If there was a change in the voting behaviour of Sun readers it was more likely caused by the paper’s endorsement of Labour

A Complication The whole country shifted towards voting Labour in 1997, so we would expect Sun readers to shift in the same direction for reasons unrelated to their reading the newspaper. The Daily Mirror and the Sun have a very similar readership profile – they are tabloid papers which appeal to working class and less educated people in Britain The Mirror endorsed Labour both in 1992 and 1997

The Quasi-Experiment If the Sun and Mirror readers are very similar to each other in their social profiles then we might expect them to vote in a similar way – subject to some variations. However, they differ in one key respect – the Sun switched between 1992 and 1997 but the Mirror remained pro-Labour throughout So if Sun readers were more likely to swing to Labour in 1997 than Mirror readers this suggests that the paper’s endorsement influenced their readers voting behaviour

Sun Readers Voting Behaviour Vote1997 VoteChange Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat129-3 Didn’t Vote

Daily Mirror Reader’s Voting Behaviour Vote1997 VoteChange Conservative Labour Liberal Democrat108-2 Didn’t Vote

Conclusions The Labour vote went up by 8 per cent for Sun readers and Daily Mirror readers The Conservative Vote fell by twice as much (-16 per cent) for Sun readers than for Daily Mirror readers (-8) The Change in the Liberal Democrat vote share was about the same for both newspapers But the per cent who did not vote increased by almost three times as much for Sun readers (11 per cent) as it did for the Daily Mirror readers (4 per cent) It appears that the Sun’s endorsement for Labour encouraged many Conservatives not to vote, but it didn’t actually increase the Labour vote.