High-Conflict Television News and Public Opinion

Abstract

This research assesses whether conflict-laden news coverage affects public perceptions of political institutions and political elites in general. Particularly, is conflict-oriented television news coverage of politics contributing to negative evaluations of political institutions and their leaders? We present evidence from an experiment designed to address this question. Our experiment is constructed around media coverage of the State of the Union Address. We control for the source of news (CNN), and examine how CNN’s Crossfire and Inside Politics’ coverage and analyses of the State of the Union Address influenced the attitudes and perceptions of viewers. We find that conflict-laden television coverage decreases public evaluations of political institutions, trust in leadership, and overall support for political parties and the system as a whole. Our findings have implications for public opinion in an era of increased abundance of high-conflict cable news talk shows that turn the political process into a contact sport.

Towards A Typology of Conflict Frames

“…The findings in this paper point to the relevance of such variations for the specific case of conflict framing and apply pre-existing theories to identify and measure these underlying dimensions. Previous studies define conflict framing by definition as strategic (e.g., Gross and Brewer 2007), characterized by incivility (Mutz and Reeves 2005;Forgette and Morris 2006), or make the distinction between attacks on style and integrity or personal attacks and attacks based on issues (e.g., Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995;Hänggli and Kriesi 2010). This paper aimed to combine these elements.…”

“…Conflict frames have been associated with a number of negative outcomes on citizens. For instance, public approval of politicians decreases after exposure to conflict-laden television coverage (Forgette and Morris 2006). Furthermore, studies have found conflict frames to contribute to the erosion of political trust (Mutz and Reeves 2005).…”

“…Conflict news can also be characterized by incivility between politicians, instead of civil and courteous political deliberation (Mutz and Reeves 2005;Forgette and Morris 2006). Second, conflict frames may vary by the extent to which journalists intervene during the news production process.…”

The impact of communications about swine flu (influenza A H1N1v) on public responses to the outbreak: results from 36 national telephone surveys in the UK.

“…Examples of such attributes are a hazard's adverse effects on children, its fatal consequences, and disagreement or uncertainty among scientific experts about the nature of the risk. [32][33][34] Conversely, portrayal of a risk as having been deliberately exaggerated by politicians, scientists or the media may increase scepticism among the public as to the true importance of the issue and result in decreased levels of concern. 35,36 The 2009 outbreak of swine flu was accompanied by extensive reporting by the UK news media.…”

On the Fundamentals of Law and Public Policy

“…The study had been interested in the construction of the state of Union Address, and the ways to influence the attitudes and perceptions of viewers. It focused on the CNN's Crossfire and Inside Politics' coverage (Forgette, R. & Morris, J. S., 2006). This odd simplification and strategic framing can make it a kind of contact sports lacking prudence and contemplation.…”