Media Favoritism and Presidential Nominations: Reviving the Direct Effects Model

Values, Frames, and Persuasion in Presidential Nomination Campaigns

“…The main alternative measure, political awareness (e.g., the ability to correctly identify particular political leaders or facts about the contemporary political landscape), is at least partly a function of media/campaign attentiveness, which in this case is likely to have independent effects over nomination choices, based on the nature of media coverage. That is, content analyses of media coverage of the 2000 nomination contest revealed substantial favoritism toward McCain, which translated into greater support for McCain among voters with high levels of political awareness (see Barker and Lawrence, 2006;Paolino and Shaw, 2001). Such an influence represents a potential confound, which could interfere with respondents' processing of particular frames.…”

The Opinion Factor: The Effects of Opinionated News on Information Processing and Attitude Change

“…While Barker and Lawrence (2006) provide survey evidence for the direct persuasive effects of Rush Limbaugh, even among Democratic listeners, Owen (1997) found that political talk radio had no effect on listeners' attitudes after controlling for partisan predispositions. Meanwhile, experimental research has found evidence for direct persuasion in certain issue contexts and polarization in others (Cappella & Jamieson, 2008).…”

“…Rather than intensifying attitude differences among opposing partisans, the unidirectional flow of information in opinionated news broadcasts could promote processing and attitude change in the direction of the news message, without regard to partisanship. Indeed, direct persuasive effects-where partisan audiences are uniformly moved by a media message-have been demonstrated in response to newspaper editorials (Dalton, Beck, & Huckfeldt, 1998) and political talk radio (Barker & Lawrence, 2006). On one level, then, this research examines how audiences respond to opinionated news relative to more traditional, non-opinionated formats, with implications for understanding the broader role of opinionated news in democratic politics.…”

Exploiting a Rare Communication Shift to Document the Persuasive Power of the News Media

“…Second, media outlets may follow, not lead, their audiences' politics, which also could be mistaken for persuasion. Thus, although many studies find individual‐level associations between survey reports of exposure to certain news outlets and political opinions (Barker 1999, 2002; Barker and Lawrence 2006; Dalton, Beck, and Huckfeldt 1998; Druckman and Parkin 2005; Kahn and Kenney 2002; Lawson and McCann 2004; Newton and Brynin 2001; Project for Excellence in Journalism 2007), these associations could arise either because of media persuasion or because of these two alternatives.…”