A Review of Public Issue Salience: Concepts, Determinants and Effects on Voting

Dennison, James

doi:10.1177/1478929918819264

Cited by 84 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 73 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Perceived salience denotes the attributed significance of information and has been conceptualized in a variety of ways in media research and political science (see Dennison 2019; Miller et al 2016), including significance conveyed to the audience by news frames (de Vreese 2004) or importance of evaluative beliefs attributed by researchers (Budd 1986). Similar to an image’s compellingness, a media message perceived as salient increases an individual’s motivation to intensively engage with it (Bucher and Schumacher 2006).…”

Section: Perceived Image Salience and Information Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Still Images—Moving People? How Media Images of Protest Issues and Movements Influence Participatory Intentions

Geise

Panke

Heck

2020

The International Journal of Press/Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

While media images can ease political information perception and processing, the impact of images on behavioral intentions to engage in protest is relatively unexplored. We ask: Under what conditions can news images of protest “move” people and affect the willingness to participate? Aiming to answer this question from an information-processing perspective, we shed light on the nexus between spontaneous, sensory behavior and cognition in response to news media images of protest. We conducted a multigroup experiment in which 143 recipients were randomly exposed to four news images of protest and their visual attention monitored. Multilevel regressions indicate that viewers fixate on images of protest prior to accompanying texts. When exposed to protest images with a negative valence, an increase in the observation duration for protest images increases the recipient’s willingness to participate. Contrariwise, when viewing protest images with a positive valence, a longer observation duration does not increase participatory intentions. Irrespective of image valence, the greater the salience that viewers subjectively ascribed to the image, the greater their willingness to protest concerning the depicted issue. Our analysis also reveals a cross-level interaction effect indicating that the impact of image observation duration on the willingness to engage is conditional on individual levels of political interest: The positive effect of observing protest images on the willingness to protest is especially increased, if an individual is highly politically interested. These results indicate that, under certain conditions, media images are efficient carriers of political content that can motivate citizens to protest.

show abstract

Section: Perceived Image Salience and Information Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Still Images—Moving People? How Media Images of Protest Issues and Movements Influence Participatory Intentions

Geise

Panke

Heck

2020

The International Journal of Press/Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These elements have been largely neglected by scholars, who mostly tend to extrapolate mere assumptions about the 1 The term 'politicisation' is variously defined in the existing literature, for a review see: Grande, Schwarzbözl & Fatke, 2018. 2 Krosnick (1990, p. 60) defines issue salience as 'the degree to which a person is passionately concerned about and personally invested in an attitude' (for a more extensive review of the concept, see Dennison, 2019). Issue salience is typically measured in surveys by asking respondents what they consider to be the (two) most important issues or problems affecting themselves or their country (Dennison & Geddes, 2018, p.5).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Unexpected Dynamics of Politicisation of Migration: The Case of the Refugee Crisis in Sicily

Pettrachin

2020

Mediterranean Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Through analysis of decision-making dynamics on migration in Sicily, this paper shows how party elites define strategies to politicise migration. Conventional explanations of the politicisation of migration assume that party elites politicise migration in reaction to increasing flows and issue salience, explicitly ignoring cognitive factors and actors' reasoning. Conversely, I show that Sicilian party elites' politicisation strategies are not shaped by objective evidence about public attitudes, salience and the effects of migration, but, rather, by actors' understandings of these objective factors, embedded in deeply rooted narratives and reinforced by the outputs of the decision-making dynamics that they contribute to shape.

show abstract

“…Climate change is thus a low salience issue for many members of the public. Issue salience contributes strongly to many people's vote choice (Dalton, 2013;Dennison, 2019), meaning that politicians are much more likely to respond to public opinion on high salience issues than low salience issues (Burstein, 2003).…”

Section: What Shapes Climate Politics? Economic Elites Corporations mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Issue salience -broadly defined as the importance citizens place on an issue relative to other issues -is a central concept in theories of electoral behaviour and the relationship between public opinion and policy (Burstein, 2003;Dahl, 1956;Dennison, 2019;Page & Shapiro, 1983). Some members of the public decide their vote based on the issue positions of candidates and parties (Dalton, 2013).…”

Section: Issue Saliencementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The dimensions of public opinion on climate change: belief, issue salience and support for government action

Crawley¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change is a problem that requires urgent attention. In most countries, large sections of the population accept that climate change is happening and that it is a serious problem. Despite this, the political response in many developed nations has so far been inadequate, and emissions continue to climb globally. Some authors have used this apparent lack of policy responsiveness to public preferences as evidence that vested interests have excessive influence over climate change policy. But this perspective does not fully account for the complexity of climate change opinion. For instance, many people who are highly concerned about climate change rank it as a low priority issue compared with issues such as the economy, healthcare and education. Moreover, some people who believe that climate change is happening and is a serious problem do not support government action to address it. I therefore investigate public opinion on climate change in terms of three dimensions: belief, issue salience and support for government action. Focussing on developed countries, I rely on survey data from Eurobarometer, the New Zealand Election Study and data collected as part of this research project. I investigate the nature of opinions with respect to these three dimensions and examine how opinions vary between individuals and across countries. Furthermore, I investigate the forces that shape climate opinion on these three dimensions, including external influence (such as messages from interest groups), individual characteristics (such as social and political attitudes) and country-level factors (such as country wealth). I find that belief is high in most developed countries, as is support for government action. However, salience is low in most countries, particularly in the less wealthy developed countries. Political orientation and other social attitudes relate positively to belief, issue salience and support for government action, although the relationships tend to be stronger for salience. By investigating the factors that shape climate opinion in different dimensions, this study contributes to knowledge of why people hold particular climate views. Moreover, my examination of the complexity of public opinion on climate change in terms of belief, issue salience and support for government action sheds light on why the political response to climate change has been ineffective in many countries.

show abstract

A Review of Public Issue Salience: Concepts, Determinants and Effects on Voting

Cited by 84 publications

References 73 publications

Still Images—Moving People? How Media Images of Protest Issues and Movements Influence Participatory Intentions

Still Images—Moving People? How Media Images of Protest Issues and Movements Influence Participatory Intentions

The Unexpected Dynamics of Politicisation of Migration: The Case of the Refugee Crisis in Sicily

The dimensions of public opinion on climate change: belief, issue salience and support for government action

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About