Letting the People Decide: Dynamics of a Canadian Election

Johnston, Jordan; Johnston, Richard B.; Blais, André; Brady, Henry E.; Crête, Jean

doi:10.2307/3341250

Cited by 113 publications

(161 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

153

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The data for our study come mainly from rolling cross section designs of the kind pioneered by Johnston, Blais, Brady and Crete (1992), in which independent samples of potential voters are polled over each day of a multi-day survey. Ads that have run up to the day of interview in the respondent's market constitute our persuasive message.…”

Section: Overview Of Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

How Quickly We Forget: The Duration of Persuasion Effects From Mass Communication

Hill¹,

Lo²,

Vavreck³

et al. 2013

Political Communication

188

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholars do not usually test for the duration of the effects of mass communication, but when they do, they typically find rapid decay. Persuasive impact may end almost as soon as communication ends. Why so much decay? Does mass communication produce any long-term effects? How should this decay color our understanding of the effects of mass communication? We examine these questions with data from the effects of advertising in the 2000 presidential election and 2006 sub-national elections, but argue that our model and results are broadly applicable within the field of political communication. We find that the bulk of the persuasive impact of advertising decays quickly, but that some effect in the presidential campaign endures for at least six weeks. These results, which are similar in rolling cross-section survey data and county-level data on actual presidential vote, appear to reflect a mix of memory-based processing (whose effects last only as long as short-term memory lasts) and on-line processing (whose effects are more durable). Finally, we find that immediate effects of advertising are larger in sub-national than presidential elections, but decay more quickly and more completely.2 Joseph Klapper's classic argument that exposure to mass communication rarely causes significant opinion change is no longer persuasive to many scholars (Klapper, 1960). In the laboratory and in the field, multiple studies have demonstrated fairly large and seemingly consequential effects of exposure to mass communication. 1 A handful of recent studies, however, has found that persuasion effects can be quite shortlived, decaying in a few weeks or even a few days. Best known is the Texas advertising study, which found no persistence of persuasion effects in the week following exposure to the ads (Gerber, Gimpel, Green, and Shaw, 2011). But other recent studies show similar results. For example, Mutz and Reeves (2005) found that exposure to "uncivil behavior" on TV talk shows reduced the public's level of political trust, but that trust bounced back to baseline levels in a follow-up survey.Social psychologists have grappled for decades with findings that persuasive communication often produces only short-lived effects (Cook and Flay, 1978;Petty and Wegener, 1998 raised, much less investigated, are the focus of this paper. We answer them with evidence on the effects of political advertising, but our analysis is framed in terms generally applicable within the field of mass political communication.The paper begins with the theoretical observation that, in politics as in the rest of life, citizens 1 For reviews, see Iyengar and Simon, 2000; Kinder 2003. 3 form opinions by one of two routes (Hastie and Park, 1986). In the first, memory-based evaluation, people express opinions on the basis of information available in memory when asked. In this model, the effect of persuasive messages is to create opinions that may persist only as long as the messages underlying them remain accessible in memory, which may not be long. In the...

show abstract

Section: Overview Of Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

How Quickly We Forget: The Duration of Persuasion Effects From Mass Communication

Hill¹,

Lo²,

Vavreck³

et al. 2013

Political Communication

188

109

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These four issues include: whether or not Canada should have closer ties to the United States; whether or not Canada should do more for Quebec; attitudes towards abortion; and attitudes towards same sex marriage. This study separates voters in the rest of Canada from those in Quebec, normal practice in the study of Canadian elections and public opinion (see, Johnston et al 1992;Mendelsohn and Nadeau 1997), due to the substantially different nature of the political contest within Quebec.…”

Section: Modeling the Role Of Information 2004mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Information and Social Cleavages: Explaining Issue Attitudes and Vote Choice in Canada

Bittner

2007

CJP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:This paper examines the relationship between social group identity and level of political information in explaining Canadians' issue attitudes and vote choices. Traditional accounts of Canadians' partisan political leanings have placed a great deal of emphasis on social group identity in explaining attitudes. However based on data from the Canadian Election Studies from 1988-2004, it is argued that both social group identity and information influence the nature of vote choice and public opinion in Canada. In fact, level of voter information has two contradictory effects on the political attitudes of different social groups. In some cases voters' level of information reduces the role of social group identity in explaining attitudes and vote choices; information acts to 'bridge' the differences between different social groups (for example Catholics/non-Catholics and urban/rural Canadians). In other cases, voters' level of information acts to 'amplify' the importance of social group identity in predicting attitudes (for example women/men and religious/non-religious). These findings suggest that not only is social group identity a less effective predictor of attitudes than has traditionally been thought; but that there are also significant underlying differences between the so-called 'old' and 'new' cleavages in Canada when it comes to understanding their impact on political values.Résumé: Ce texte examine la relation entre les bases sociologiques et le niveau d'information politique dans l'explication des attitudes vis-à-vis des questions d'intérêt politique et des choix de vote des Canadiens. Les analyses traditionnelles des appuis aux partis des Canadiens ont affirmé que les bases sociologiques sont d'une grande importance pour expliquer les attitudes. Cependant, en nous appuyant sur les données des Études électorales canadiennes de 1988 à 2004, nous défendons la thèse selon laquelle à la fois les bases sociologiques et l'information influencent la nature du choix de vote et de l'opinion publique au Canada. En réalité, le niveau d'information des électeurs produit deux effets contradictoires vis-à-vis des attitudes politiques des différents groupes sociaux. Dans certains cas, le niveau d'information des électeurs réduit le rôle de la base sociologique dans l'explication des attitudes et des choix de vote ; l'information est un moyen d'outrepasser les différences entre divers groups sociaux (par exemple catholiques/non-catholiques et Canadiens en milieu urbain/rural). En d'autres cas, le niveau d'information des électeurs "amplifie" l'importance de la base sociologique en prédisant les attitudes (par exemple femmes/hommes et religieux/non-religieux). Ces découvertes suggèrent que la base sociologique est un indicateur moins efficace que les analyses traditionnelles ne le supposent pour prédire les attitudes. De surcroît, il y a des différences sousjacentes et importantes entre les soi-disant "anciens" et "nouveaux" clivages au Canada pour comprendre leur impact vis-à-vis des valeurs politiques.

show abstract

“…For the most part scholars have failed to find significant content bias of in a policy issue that favours one frame over its competition. This is especially true in studies that measure content bias in elections (Frizzell & Westell, 1985;Johnston, Blais, Brady, & Crête, 1992;Nevitte, Blais, Gidengil, & Nadeau, 2000;Soroka & Andrew, 2010).…”

Section: New Institutionalism and Framesmentioning

confidence: 99%