Agenda Setting, Public Opinion, and the Issue of Immigration Reform

Dunaway, Johanna; Abrajano, Marisa; Branton, Regina

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1017846

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Berg 2009;Hopkins 2010;Rocha et al 2011). Media exposure, too, could play this role depending on the extent and tone of coverage on the issue (Dunaway et al 2010;Valentino et al 2012). Finally, the broader political context-both ''dramatic'' events such as terror attacks (Branton et al 2011) or longer-term reform efforts (Schildkraut 2012)-may affect the structure of individual choices.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration Policy Across the Legal/Illegal Divide: The Role of Categorical and Attribute-Based Decision-Making

2015

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Scholars debate the relative strength of economic and 'socio-psychological' sources of anti-immigrant sentiment. However, the literature often fails to distinguish legal from illegal immigration and therefore overlooks a major instance in which this debate is moot. To address this issue, we develop a theory that recognizes two different modes of evaluating immigrants: ''attribute-based'' judgment, in which respondents weigh immigrants' desirability based on individual characteristics-human capital, race, language ability, and so on-and ''categorical'' judgment, which disregards these altogether. Categorical judgments arise when a policy issue triggers blanket considerations of justice or principle that obviate considerations about putative beneficiaries' individual merits, instead evoking overriding beliefs about the desirability of the policy as a whole or casting the entire category as uniformly deserving or undeserving. We use experimental evidence from two national surveys to show that the principal distinction between attitudes toward legal and illegal immigration is not in the relative weight of immigrants' attributes but the much greater prevalence of categorical assessments of illegal

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration Policy Across the Legal/Illegal Divide: The Role of Categorical and Attribute-Based Decision-Making

2015

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“…Other scholars have found that the rallies did have important agenda-setting effects that shifted voters' attitudes, particularly towards the foreign-born. For example, Dunaway, Abrajano, and Branton's (2007) research showed that the protests increased the media's attention to, and heightened the general public's perception of, the issue of immigration. Using exit-poll data from three different states, Cohen-Marks, Nuno, and Sanchez (2008, 708) found that the marchers' efforts to include pro-American messages did not improve perceptions of Mexican immigrants, particularly among whites, conservatives, and Republicans.…”

Section: Time Space and The Effects Of Protests On Public Opinionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial and Temporal Proximity: Examining the Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes

Wallace

Zepeda-Millán

Jones-Correa

2013

American J Political Sci

105

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This article utilizes data from the Latino National Survey (2006) to analyze temporal and spatial variation in the effects of the immigrant rights marches in 2006 on Latino attitudes towards trust in government and self‐efficacy. Using a unique protest dataset, we examine the effects of proximity and scale by mapping respondents’ specific geographic location against the location of the marches as well as size of the protests using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). We find that local proximity to small marches had a positive impact on feelings of efficacy, whereas large‐scale protests led to lower feelings of efficacy. The results shed light on the role localized political events can play in shaping feelings towards government, the importance of conceptions of space and time to the study of social movements, and the positive outcomes that can result from contentious politics.

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“…When reporting issues, the media add emphasis to some of these (Sheafer, 2007). The coverage of issues by the media has an effect, but the level of salience that an issues gains varies from one issue to another (Dunaway, Branton and Abrajano, 2010;Walgrave, Soroka, Nuytemans, 2008).…”

Section: Agenda Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human rights organizations and online agenda setting

Meriläinen

Vos

2011

Corporate Communications: An International Journal

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to better understand agenda setting by international human rights organizations in the online environment and at the same time contribute to agenda-setting theory. The role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the area of human rights is clarified, and agenda-setting and related concepts are discussed.Design/Methodology/Approach -The study focuses on how attention is drawn to human rights issues in online communication by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International. A content analysis of online forums of HRW and Amnesty International was conducted by monitoring their web sites and Facebook and Twitter pages over a period of 3 months. In addition, two expert interviews with representatives of Amnesty Finland were conducted to better understand how the organization's online communication activities relate to its policies in drawing attention to human rights.Findings -Based on this study, drawing attention to human rights issues is a goal that leads to active online communication. NGOs aim at attracting attention to their issues online by initiating a dialogue via online forums and motivating the public to participate in activities that may influence the media and the political agenda. The existing agenda-setting research tends to emphasize the role of journalists in setting the public agenda, and mentions NGOs primarily as a source for journalists and as a political player. The online environment shows, however, that that these NGOs mostly aim at setting the public agenda to create social change, while the media and political agenda are also not forgotten. Research limitations/implications -This study suggests that the interdependence of the media, public and political agendas is more complex than has thus far been considered in agenda-setting theory, especially in the current online environment. It investigates online agenda-setting by two international NGOs, but does not discuss the role of the media or the public at large in their relationship with these NGOs. As this study has a limited time-frame, a content analysis over a longer period and interviews with representatives of a wider variety of NGOs could be a next step. Future research could also compare the online communication of NGOs with that of profit organisations.Practical implications -The findings show how agenda setting is supported by intricate multiplatform activities in the present-day online environment by the organizations studied in order to initiate a dialogue on societal issues. This suggests that in the online environment, the media, public and political agendas are becoming increasingly interrelated and within this triangle the public agenda seems to be gaining further in importance.Originality/value -The impact that NGOs have on today's society is growing, and hence studying their online agenda setting is valuable from the perspective of corporate communication. International NGOs early on recognised the value of online communication.

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Agenda Setting, Public Opinion, and the Issue of Immigration Reform

Cited by 10 publications

References 28 publications

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration Policy Across the Legal/Illegal Divide: The Role of Categorical and Attribute-Based Decision-Making

Public Attitudes Toward Immigration Policy Across the Legal/Illegal Divide: The Role of Categorical and Attribute-Based Decision-Making

Spatial and Temporal Proximity: Examining the Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes

Human rights organizations and online agenda setting

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