Lies, damn lies... and political spin

Gaber, Ivor

doi:10.1177/095647480001100111

Cited by 18 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…Completeness ensures that the information being disseminated presents the public with all relevant information needed to understand the policy (Grimmelikhuijsen et al ). Objectivity means the disclosed policy information does not exaggerate the benefits (or drawbacks) of an adopted or proposed policy, thus ensuring individuals’ understanding of a proposed policy (Gaber ). Usability refers to the notion that policy information is made public in a way that citizens can understand.…”

Section: Policy Transparencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

Porumbescu

Lindeman

Ceka

et al. 2017

Public Administration Review

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Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors argue that policy transparency indirectly influences voluntary policy compliance intentions through a positive effect on citizens' levels of policy understanding. To enhance the validity of the findings, the authors assess these relationships across two policy domains. The findings reflect an indirect positive effect of transparency on voluntary compliance occurring through policy understanding. However, this emerged only for one policy domain. These results suggest that the effects of policy transparency on policy understanding and voluntary policy compliance intentions may depend on the policy domain.Acknowledging these important gaps in transparency and compliance research, the objective of this article is to examine how government transparency shapes citizens' voluntary policy compliance. As we will explain in greater detail later, voluntary policy compliance can be understood as citizens' willingness to comply with a government request related to a particular policy. In addressing our research objective,

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Section: Policy Transparencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

Porumbescu

Lindeman

Ceka

et al. 2017

Public Administration Review

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show abstract

“…This could consist of, indeed, various forms of spin, such as highly positive interpretations, irrelevant information or outright lies (e.g. [20,50]). Second, transparency pessimists stress that increased transparency could lead to increased blaming of government.…”

Section: The Debate On Transparency and Trust In Governmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Transparency is one of the exponents of this information culture yet this pressure to be transparent has also pushed spin control towards the center stage of government [48] as a counter-pressure. Several tactics of spin exist to divert attention or to counter transparent information [20,48]. Spin could also entail simply to lie or to craft a story containing highly positive interpret by valid statistics.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Being transparent or spinning the message? An experiment into the effects of varying message content on trust in government

Grimmelikhuijsen

2011

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Computer-mediated transparency is widely acknowledged to be a powerful instrument to strengthen citizen trust in government. However, government websites are often used as a convenient way to spread 'spinned' policy messages with highly positive interpretations of government policies. This paper focuses on this particular element of transparency: the extent to which a policy message contains balanced information. A truly balanced message should also mention dissenting viewpoints of government policies. This study examines the effect on trust of a balanced message compared to messages subject to varying degrees of spin. An experiment was designed to compare the effect of a very positive policy message, a slightly positive message and a message containing both positive and negative information. The results demonstrate that a balanced message on a website about government policy leads to negative evaluations of government competence to solve policy problems. Further, less spin does not positively affect the perceived honesty and benevolence of a government organization. This study suggests that showing balanced content might not be helpful when it comes to increasing trust in government, and that people might even prefer a light form of spin on government information as it provides the image that government knows what it is doing and where it is heading.

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“…It is not surprising such activity seems to fall in line with the "below-the-line" spin-doctoring tactics identified by Gaber (2000).…”

Section: Measuring Government Media Relations In Queenslandmentioning

confidence: 80%

Quantifying government media relations in Queensland

Pearson¹,

McLean²

2010

PCR

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This article draws upon historical and contemporary data to attempt to identify key issues in government media relations and to discuss the processes and challenges involved in attempting to quantify the expenditure on this activity in the state of Queensland in the modern era. A combination of investigative journalism and academic research methods have been used to position government media relations as a practice and to gauge expenditure, staffing, and cost to the taxpayer of government media relations in Queensland. The Electoral and Administrative Review Commission’s Report on review of government media and information services (EARC, 1993) was the first comprehensive measure of such costs and since then only some insights were offered by premiers Beattie and Bligh in 2006 and 2008 in response to parliamentary questions on notice. This article reviews these costs, canvasses expert estimates of the real cost of government media relations, and debates some of the competing interests at stake.

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Lies, damn lies... and political spin

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?

Being transparent or spinning the message? An experiment into the effects of varying message content on trust in government

Quantifying government media relations in Queensland

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