Browsing by Subject "agenda setting"
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Item Essays on the Impact of Presidential and Media-Based Usage of Anxiety-Producing Rhetoric on Dynamic Issue Attention(2012-02-14) Olds, Christopher PaulThe intention of the project is to determine whether political elites have to discuss an issue using a specific emotional tone before the public and other political elites consider that issue a problem. Research has not yet demonstrated under what conditions elite rhetorical cues can heighten issue attention. Past studies have suggested that an increase in the absolute intensity of elite issue discussion can heighten perceptions of an issue as a problem. The problem with this notion is that within that absolute issue discussion, elites might simply be repeatedly saying conditions related to an issue are stable. They might also be presenting basic factual background information about an issue, a type of discussion unlikely to capture the interest of many in the political system. There has to be a specific type of cue that elites can offer to compel others in the political system to reconsider their outlook on issue salience. Derived from dual systems theories of emotion, the dissertation predicts that issue discussion that heightens feelings of anxiety increases the likelihood of an altered outlook on issue salience. To evaluate this prediction, time series statistical techniques are employed. The time series models evaluate whether prior change in the level of anxietybased cues by the president and the media predict changes in the level of attention the public offers to that issue. The same types of models evaluate whether this form of issue discussion by the president predicts issue dynamics of the media, and vice-versa. The several issues studied are crime, health care, poverty, and the environment. Information spanning thirty years is collected from presidential papers, general and ideological media newspaper coverage, and multiple public survey organizations. The findings suggest anxiety-based issue discussion does have the potential to guide issue attention. Prior changes in anxiety-based cues do predict future levels of attention the public provides to issues. A positive shift in anxiety cues by elites appears to have the capacity to increase public attention to issues. This increase though appears to be very small and abbreviated, suggesting limited effects. Elites do not appear to influence each other through anxiety cues.Item Struggling to set the campaign agenda: candidates, the media, and interest groups in elections(Texas A&M University, 2005-02-17) Campbell, Kristin LynnDemocracy is best described as a struggle over competing ideals and values. One of the most important places where this struggle takes place is in the electoral arena. My dissertation examines the struggle between candidates and their respective messages in this arena. Focusing on fourteen Senate races from 1998 and 2000, I examine, in depth, how the struggle over competing ideals takes place (or in some cases, does not take place) and whether some candidates are more successful than others at navigating their message through the political environment to voters. This study examines the impact of candidate skills and resources as well as state characteristics on the strategies candidates employ when emphasizing campaign issues. In addition, my dissertation focuses on the impact interest group advertising has on the candidates? campaign dialogue and analyzes media coverage in Senate races by comparing each candidate?s core message to the campaign information transmitted by the media to voters. The analysis presented here reveals that candidates employ both multi-dimensional and unidimensional strategies. State party competition appears to offer the most plausible explanation for the variation in strategy across the states. Competition, rather than encouraging a multi-dimensional campaign strategy, appears to promote convergence towards the median voter and a unidimensional strategy. Furthermore, this study suggests that candidates face a number of obstacles in trying to transmit their campaign message to voters. In addition to struggling against their opponent, candidates have to struggle against both interest groups and the media to get their message to the electorate. Just under one-half of the advertisements interest groups ran were successful at interjecting issues into the campaign debate. Furthermore, in over seventy percent of the Senate races included in this study, the media emphasized issues other than what the candidates were focusing on. While this may have the positive benefit of infusing more issues into the debate, it may also blur the lines of accountability?particularly if candidates have no intention of acting on issues emphasized exclusively by the media.Item The Forgotten Storm: The Implications of Agenda Setting on Hurricane Ike?s National Relevance(2012-10-19) Sudduth, Amanda MichelleThis study utilized content analysis of newspaper articles in the month following Hurricane Ike's landfall to evaluate the presence of agenda setting and framing. Three national newspapers were analyzed to determine the existence and order of news frames. The results indicate that Semetko and Valkenburg's (2000) news frames changed in order of importance in this study. The order of news frames varied among the three national newspapers. The newspaper with mostly human interest frames was determined to be more sensational than the other two, more serious newspapers with predominantly responsibility frames. This study then compared the five ordered frames to previous framing research on Hurricane Katrina. The two hurricanes differed greatly in amount of news coverage and varied slightly in the order of the news frames. An evaluation of news coverage of major U.S. events occurring in the month after Hurricane Ike was conducted, with results indicating that news attention of the hurricane was hindered by other major national events.