Working Papers and Papers Under Review
Biggers, Daniel R., David J.
Hendry, Alan S. Gerber, and Gregory A. Huber. "Experimental Evidence about
Whether (and Why) Electoral Closeness Affects Turnout." (Under review).
[Abstract]
The
canonical decision-theoretic Downsian model predicts that increasing
perceptions of election closeness will increase turnout. Does this
prediction hold? Past observational and experimental tests raise issues of
generalizability and credible inference. Prior field experiments either (1)
compare messages emphasizing election closeness to non-closeness messages,
potentially conflating changes in closeness perceptions with framing effects
of the voter encouragement message, or (2) deliver information about the
closeness of a particular race, potentially altering beliefs about the
features of that election apart from its closeness. We address the
limitations of prior work in a large-scale field experiment conducted in
seven states and find that a telephone message describing a class of
contests as decided by fewer, as opposed to more, votes increases voter
turnout. Furthermore, this effect exceeds that of a standard GOTV message.
The results imply expected electoral closeness affects turnout and that
perceptions of closeness can be altered to increase
participation.
Hendry, David J. "Small-group
Conformity and Political Attitudes." (Working paper).
[Abstract]
Public
responses to attitudinal questions tapping sensitive social issues are
likely to paint an optimistic picture of the degree to which individuals
adhere to desirable social norms. But little is known empirically about how
social pressures operate at the level of interpersonal interactions. This
study conducts a laboratory experiment to address the question of how even
minimal social pressure leads to conformity with respect to attitude
expressions about adherence to egalitarian norms. Baseline attitudinal
measurements were taken of subjects, and then those measurements were used
to exert social pressure in a contrived group setting. An asymmetric effect
was found in which subjects who were willing to espouse an inegalitarian
attitude in private were more likely to succumb to social pressure to change
their expressed attitudes when faced with an opposed group opinion. For
subjects who espouse egalitarian attitudes in private, social pressure to
provide an inegalitarian response has little impact.
Hendry, David J., Daniel R.
Biggers, Alan S. Gerber, and Gregory A. Huber. "Non-voting as Informed
Deference: Evidence that Perceptions of Competence and Policy Agreement
Explain Participation in Local Elections." (Under review).
[Abstract]
We
present a model of informed deference to explain non-voting among active
registrants. The theoretical perspective argues that forgoing voting may be
a form of deference, similar to deference exercised in many non-political
domains, in which we allow individuals who we perceive agree with us and
believe are better informed to make decisions on our behalf. Novel survey
data of these perceptions matched to administrative records of participation
show voters who sit out local elections (1) misperceive those who do vote as
agreeing with them on certain salient local policy dimensions and (2) both
perceive themselves as, and are objectively, less informed about local
politics. These survey measures also explain the individual-level decision
to participate. We identify implications of this finding for strategies to
increase participation and create a more representative
electorate.
Hendry, David J., Mathias
Osmundsen, Lasse Laustsen, Lene Aarøe, and Michael Bang Petersen.
"Public Opinion and the Psychology of Threats: A Dual-Process Theory."
(Invited to revise and resubmit at the British Journal of Political
Science).
[Abstract]
A
growing body of evidence suggests a strong association between perceptions
of threat and conservatism, yet little work specifies the precise
psychological mechanisms connecting the two. Integrating perspectives from
across the psychological sciences, we argue that conservative responses
emerge from intuitive processes geared towards solving evolutionary problems
associated with particular kinds of threats and, hence, vary systematically
from one threat to another. We label this a threat-specific process. In
addition, we also identify the simultaneous operations of a threat-general
process, which lead to support for any policy that ostensibly offers
protection, whether this policy can reasonably be designated as liberal or
conservative. We test these predictions in survey experiments in the United
States and Denmark using realistic news stimuli about disease and crime
threats. Our findings support the simultaneous existence of threat-general
and threat-specific processes underlying public opinion when reacting to
threats.
Hendry, David J., and Sunhee
Park. "Re-examining the Grievance-Conflict Nexus: Comparison of Objective and
Subjective Grievance Measures." (Working paper).
[Abstract]
Early
studies of the grievance-conflict nexus suggested that economic grievances
make civil conflict more likely. Empirical studies that employed objective
measures of grievance at the national level often failed to find a
relationship between grievances and conflict, while later work that
disaggregates these measures to the subnational level often finds support
for a grievance-conflict relationship. In this paper, we argue that
regardless of the level of analysis of previous work, nearly all suffer from
the limitation that they employ objective indicators as measures of
grievance, while the theoretical arguments for a grievance-conflict
relationship require that economic hardship be subjectively perceived by
actors on the ground. Merging subnationally aggregated public opinion data
from a cross-national survey with subnational indicators of conflict
occurrence, we show that subjective indicators of grievance predict conflict
in the way suggested by previous subnational researchers, largely washing
away the effects of objective measures when both are considered
simultaneously.
Hendry, David J., and Gisela Sin.
"Joining the Tea Party Caucus: A Survival Strategy." (Working paper).
[Abstract]
We
explain why some Republicans in Congress joined the Tea Party Caucus, while
others did not. We argue that members of Congress strategically became
members of the Tea Party Caucus because of career incentives generated by
the structure of campaign finance networks. While well-connected members of
Congress enjoy substantial success at pursuing political careers because
they receive continued material support from their political parties,
members of Congress with poor campaign finance networks cannot rely on that
same support to advance their political careers. Thus, we argue that
Republicans with poor campaign finance networks were more likely join the
Tea Party Caucus as a strategy of political survival. By joining the Tea
Party Caucus, these members could demonstrate to potential supporters that
they had not been coopted by political elites, thereby potentially opening
new avenues of support. We provide evidence of these dynamics by analyzing
data on members' campaign finance networks.
Huber, Gregory A., Alan S. Gerber, Daniel
R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. "Can Raising the Stakes of Election
Outcomes Increase Participation? Results from a Large-Scale Field Experiment
in Local Elections." (Under review).
[Abstract]
Political campaigns frequently emphasize the material stakes at play in
election outcomes in seeking to motivate voters. But field experimental
academic work has given greater attention to other aspects of the voter's
decision to participate, perhaps because the dominant theoretical model of
turnout implies material incentives matter only when one's vote might decide
an election. We identify three classes of treatments that may increase the
material incentive to participate and test these messages in a large scale
placebo-controlled field experiment in which approximately 38,000 treatment
letters were delivered during Connecticut's 2013 municipal elections. We
find clear evidence that these messages are effective in increasing
participation, and also that some of these messages appear more effective
than non-partisan GOTV material in motivating participation. These findings
have important implications for our understanding of how voters decide
whether to participate and how best to mobilize citizens who otherwise sit
out elections.
Laustsen, Lasse, Lene Aarøe,
David J. Hendry, John R. Hibbing, Kevin B. Smith, and Michael Bang
Petersen. "The Deservingness Heuristic in Political Communication: A
Comprehensive Test of the Strength of Bias-Congruent Frames and How to Counter
Them." (Working paper).
[Abstract]
Why are some media messages highly influential in shaping people's opinions,
while others fail to engage the public? What, in other words, affects the
strength of media messages? This is one of the most central puzzles in
political communication research. In this paper, we integrate insights on
cognitive biases into the political communication literature to argue that
media frames are strong when they contain information that resonates with
automatic psychological biases. In testing our argument, we introduce a new
comprehensive conceptualization and theorizing of communication strength
including a) emotion, b) opinions, c) duration of opinion effects over time
and, d) resilience of opinion effects in the face of counter-framing.
Empirically we focus on the case of political communications that are
congruent with the deservingness heuristic—a well-established and
automatic psychological bias shown to guide social welfare attitudes. We
implement a unique cross-national research design including a) well-powered
nationally and locally representative online survey experiments,
experimental panel studies and laboratory experiments collected in the
United States and Denmark, b) highly ecologically valid television news
features as experimental stimuli, and c) state-of-the-art physiological as
well as self-reported measures of emotional reactions. Our findings
demonstrate the strength of bias-congruent deservingess frames across the
dimensions of communication strength but also identify a novel route for
countering such frames: emotion-regulation.
Laustsen, Lasse, David J.
Hendry, Lene Aarøe, and Michael Bang Petersen. "Erasing Race? The
Effect of Race Cues on Social Welfare Attitudes in the Face of Deservingness
Cues." (Working paper).
[Abstract]
Past research on the outgroup race bias in social welfare opinions
emphasizes the stereotype that black outgroup members are lazy as a central
explanation for opposition to welfare among members of the white majority
population (cf. Gilens 1995, 1999). Recent studies in psychology and
political science on social welfare attitudes show that attitudes towards
beneficiaries of help-giving are to a large extent driven by the so-called
deservingness heuristic. More specifically, the deservingness
heuristic regulates welfare attitudes based primarily on cues about the
efforts of potential welfare recipients (e.g., Fong et al. 2005, Petersen
2012, Weiner 1995). Here we bring together the two literatures on the
outgroup race bias and the deservingness heuristic. We argue that if the
race of welfare recipients is processed simply as a proximate cue for
whether they are hard-working or lazy, clear and disamiguated information
about the efforts of welfare recipients should mitigate the effect of
recipients' racial or ethnic profile on welfare opinions. We test this
argument across four tests corresponding to central stages of the opinion
formation process employing a unique combination of professionally crafted
news media features embedded in lab studies measuring automatic and
physiological responses as well as in large-scale cross-culturally
representative survey experiements. The findings in Test 1–4
consistently support that cues about the racial profile of target
recipents affect welfare attitudes in all stages of the opinion formation
process.
Lee, Seonghui, Akitaka Matsuo, and David
J. Hendry. "Paths to False Beliefs: Ignorance, Partisan Motivation, and
Conspiracy Mentality." (Working paper).
[Abstract]
The
dominant framework in the political science literature for thinking about
belief in conspiracy theories has been to consider such beliefs as subject
to the same partisan or ideological directional biases as phenomena such as
motivated reasoning or expressive survey response. While seemingly
intuitive, we argue here that such an approach actually offers competing
expectations. On the one hand, it seems reasonable to think that belief
systems implicating one partisan or ideological group in nefarious activity
will make members of said groups less likely to adopt them and members of
competing partisan or ideological group more likely to adopt them. On the
other, some of the assumptions and conclusions are so clearly outlandish
that they should generally trigger rejection out of hand because of
individual motivations to be correct. We argue here that previous results
lending credence to a story of partisan or ideological bias in conspiracy
theory beliefs are based on the use of a narrow set of conspiracy theories.
By broadening the conceptualization of conspiracy theories as being a type
of misinformation that does not necessarily implicate actors that are easily
classifiable on the dominant political spectrum, and by accounting for
individual differences in tendencies to adopt conspiratorial
beliefs—so called conspiracist ideations—we show that the
dominant story of directionally motivated reasoning is largely not supported
by the evidence. We recommend a path forward for future researchers working
in this area that suggests classifying conspiracy theories according to
their general types if survey and experimental researchers plan to employ
them in the context of a study with specific research
goals.
Osmundsen, Mathias, David J.
Hendry, Lasse Laustsen, Kevin B. Smith, and Michael Bang Petersen. "Two
Cross-National Replications on the Physiological Foundations of Political
Ideology." (Invited to revise and resubmit at the Journal of
Politics).
[Abstract]
Studies suggest that individuals with high physiological sensitivity to
threatening stimuli are more likely to hold conservative beliefs. However,
all existing studies use non-representative samples of Americans and focus
predominantly on small samples with strong prior political beliefs. Here, we
address these shortcomings by seeking to replicate the association between
variation in physiology and a host of ideological measures in two different
countries, the US and Denmark, using well-powered locally representative
samples of adults. Moreover, we extend prior research by utilizing two
measures of physiological activity - skin conductance levels and
electromyography - as well as a self-report measure. The results replicate
previous findings with a physiological measure among Americans but not among
Danes. The self-report measure, in contrast, shows cross-national robust
associations in the expected direction. These findings highlight the
challenges of conducting research with physiological measures that are both
costly to obtain and noisy to analyze.
Publications
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R.
Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Can Political Participation
Prevent Crime? Results from a Field Experiment about Citizenship,
Participation, and Criminality." Political Behavior 39(4):
909–934.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
[Replication Materials]
Democratic
theory and prior empirical work support the view that political
participation, by promoting social integration and pro-social attitudes,
reduces one's propensity for anti-social behavior, such as committing a
crime. Previous investigations examine observational data, which are
vulnerable to bias if omitted factors affect both propensity to
participate and risk of criminality or their reports. A field experiment
encouraging 552,525 subjects aged 18-20 to register and vote confirms
previous observational findings of the negative association between
participation and subsequent criminality. However, comparing randomly
formed treatment and control groups reveals that the intervention
increased participation but did not reduce subsequent criminality. Our
results suggest that while participation is correlated with criminality,
it exerts no causal effect on subsequent criminal
behavior.
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Marc
Meredith, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Does Incarceration
Reduce Voting? Evidence about the Political Consequences of Spending Time in
Prison." Journal of Politics 79(4): 1130–1146.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
[Replication Materials]
The rise
in mass incarceration provides a growing impetus to understand the effect
that interactions with the criminal justice system have on political
participation. While a substantial body of prior research studies the
political consequences of criminal disenfranchisement, less work examines
why eligible ex-felons vote at very low rates. We use administrative data
on voting and interactions with the criminal justice system from
Pennsylvania to assess whether the association between incarceration and
reduced voting is causal. Using administrative records that reduce the
possibility of measurement error, we employ several different research
designs to investigate the possibility that the observed negative
correlation between incarceration and voting might result from differences
across individuals that both lead to incarceration and low participation.
As this selection bias issue is addressed, we find that the estimated
effect of serving time in prison on voting falls dramatically and for some
research designs vanishes entirely.
Montez-Rath, Maria E., Kristopher Kapphahn,
Maya Mathur, Aya Mitani, David J. Hendry, and Manisha Desai. 2017.
"Guidelines for Generating Right-censored Outcomes from a Cox Model Extended
to Accommodate Time-varying Covariates." Journal of Modern Applied
Statistical Methods 16(1): 86–106.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
Simulating studies with right-censored outcomes as functions of
time-varying covariates is discussed. Guidelines on the use of an
algorithm developed by Zhou and implemented by Hendry are provided.
Through simulation studies, the sensitivity of the method to user inputs
is considered.
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R.
Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Why Don't People Vote in U.S.
Primary Elections? Assessing Theoretical Explanations for Reduced
Participation." Electoral Studies 45: 119–129.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf (Main + Appendix)]
[Replication Materials]
Primary
election participation in the United States is consistently lower than
general election turnout. Despite this well-documented voting gap, our
knowledge is limited as to the individual- level factors that explain why
some general election voters do not show up for primary contests. We
provide important insights into this question, using a novel new survey to
examine three theoretical perspectives on participation never before
empirically applied to primary races. Compared to general elections, we
find that for U.S. House primary elections sizable segments of the
electorate consider the stakes lower and the costs of voting greater, feel
less social pressure to turn out and hold exclusionary beliefs about who
should participate, and are more willing to defer to those who know and
care more about the contests. Multivariate analysis reveals that these
attitudes explain validated primary election participation. These findings
point to new directions for future research.
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R.
Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Self Interest, Beliefs, and Policy
Opinions: Understanding the Economic Source of Immigration Policy
Preferences." Political Research Quarterly 70(1): 155–171.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
[Replication Materials]
Research on
how economic factors affect attitudes toward immigration often focuses on
labor market effects, concluding that, because workers' skill levels do
not predict opposition to low- versus highly skilled immigration, economic
self-interest does not shape policy attitudes. We conduct a new survey to
measure beliefs about a range of economic, political, and cultural
consequences of immigration. When economic self-interest is broadened to
include concerns about the fiscal burdens created by immigration, beliefs
about these economic effects strongly correlate with immigration attitudes
and explain a significant share of the difference in support for highly
versus low-skilled immigration. Our results suggest that previous work
underestimates the importance of economic self-interest as a source of
immigration policy preferences and attitudes more
generally.
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R.
Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2016. "A Field Experiment Shows that
Subtle Linguistic Cues Might Not Affect Voter Behavior." Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113(26):
7112–7117.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf (Main + Appendix)]
[Replication Materials]
One of the
most important recent developments in social psychology is the discovery
of minor interventions that have large and enduring effects on behavior. A
leading example of this class of results is in the work by Bryan et al.
[Bryan CJ, Walton GM, Rogers T, Dweck CS (2011) Proc Natl Acad Sci
USA 108(31):12653–12656], which shows that administering a set
of survey items worded so that subjects think of themselves as voters
(noun treatment) rather than as voting (verb treatment) substantially
increases political participation (voter turnout) among subjects. We
revisit these experiments by replicating and extending their research
design in a large-scale field experiment. In contrast to the 11 to 14%
point greater turnout among those exposed to the noun rather than the verb
treatment reported in the work by Bryan et al., we find no statistically
significant difference in turnout between the noun and verb treatments
(the point estimate of the difference is approximately zero). Furthermore,
when we benchmark these treatments against a standard get out the vote
message, we estimate that both are less effective at increasing turnout
than a much shorter basic mobilization message. In our conclusion, we
detail how our study differs from the work by Bryan et al. and discuss how
our results might be interpreted.
Park, Sunhee, and David J. Hendry. 2015.
"Reassessing Schoenfeld Residual Tests of Proportional Hazards in Political
Science Event History Analyses." American Journal of Political
Science 59(4): 1072–1087.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
[Replication Materials]
An
underlying assumption of proportional hazards models is that the effect of
a change in a covariate on the hazard rate of event occurrence is constant
over time. For scholars using the Cox model, a Schoenfeld residual-based
test has become the disciplinary standard for detecting violations of this
assumption. However, using this test requires researchers to make a
choice about a transformation of the time scale. In practice, this choice
has largely consisted of arbitrary decisions made without justification.
Using replications and simulations, we demonstrate that the decision about
time transformations can have profound implications for the conclusions
reached. In particular, we show that researchers can make far more
informed decisions by paying closer attention to the presence of outlier
survival timesf and levels of censoring in their data. We suggest a new
standard for best practices in Cox diagnostics that buttresses the current
standard with in-depth exploratory data analysis.
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Marc
Meredith, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2015. "Can
Incarcerated Felons Be (Re)integrated into the Political System? Results from
a Field Experiment." American Journal of Political Science 59(4):
912–926.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
[Replication Materials]
How does
America's high rate of incarceration shape political participation? Few
studies have examined the direct effects of incarceration on patterns of
political engagement. Answering this question is particularly relevant for
the 93% of formerly incarcerated individuals who are eligible to vote.
Drawing on new administrative data from Connecticut, we present evidence
from a field experiment showing that a simple informational outreach
campaign to released felons can recover a large proportion of the reduction
in participation observed following incarceration. The treatment effect
estimates imply that efforts to reintegrate released felons into the
political process can substantially reduce the participatory consequences of
incarceration.
Gerber, Alan S., Kevin Arceneaux, Cheryl
Boudreau, Conor M. Dowling, D. Sunshine Hillygus, Thomas R. Palfrey, Daniel R.
Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2014. "Reporting Guidelines for
Experimental Research: A Report from the Experimental Research Section
Standards Committee." Journal of Experimental Political Science 1(1):
81–98.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
The
Standards Committee of the Experimental Research section of the American
Political Science Association has produced reporting guidelines that aim to
increase the clarity of experimental research reports. This paper describes
the Committee's rationale for the guidelines it developed and includes our
Recommended Reporting Standards for Experiments (Laboratory, Field, Survey).
It begins with a content analysis of current reporting practices in
published experimental research. Although researchers report most important
aspects of their experimental designs and data, we find substantial
omissions that could undermine the clarity of research practices and the
ability of researchers to assess the validity of study conclusions. With the
need for reporting guidelines established, the report describes the process
the Committee used to develop the guidelines, the feedback received during
the comment period, and the rationale for the final version of the
guidelines.
Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R.
Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2014. "Ballot Secrecy Concerns and Voter
Mobilization: New Experimental Evidence about Message Source, Context, and the
Duration of Mobilization Effects." American Politics Research 42(5):
896–923.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
[Replication Materials]
Recent
research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an
institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by
providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about
ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who
had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group's mailing
designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the
highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we
exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during
the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent
effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental
sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message
source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters
by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address
these beliefs increases long term participation.
Althaus, Scott L., Nathaniel Swigger, Svitlana
Chernykh, David J. Hendry, Sergio C. Wals, and Christopher Tiwald.
2014. "Uplifting Manhood to Wonderful Heights? News Coverage of the Human
Costs of Military Conflict from World War One to Gulf War Two." Political
Communication 31(2): 193–217.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
[Online Appendix]
[Contact corresponding author]
Domestic
political support is an important factor constraining the use of American
military power around the world. Although the dynamics of war support are
thought to reflect a cost-benefit calculus, with costs represented by
numbers of friendly war deaths, no previous study has examined how
information about friendly, enemy, and civilian casualties is routinely
presented to domestic audiences. This paper establishes a baseline measure
of historical casualty reporting by examining New York Times
coverage of five major wars that occurred over the past century. Despite
important between-war differences in the scale of casualties, the use of
conscription, the type of warfare, and the use of censorship, the frequency
of casualty reporting and the framing of casualty reports has remained
fairly consistent over the past 100 years. Casualties are rarely mentioned
in American war coverage. When casualties are reported, it is often in ways
that minimize or downplay the human costs of war.
Hendry, David J. 2014. "Data Generation for
the Cox Proportional Hazards Model with Time-Dependent Covariates: A Method
for Medical Researchers." Statistics in Medicine 33(3):
436–454.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Local pdf]
The proliferation
of longitudinal studies has increased the importance of statistical methods
for time-to-event data that can incorporate time-dependent covariates. The
Cox proportional hazards model is one such method that is widely used. As
more extensions of the Cox model with time-dependent covariates are
developed, simulations studies will grow in importance as well. An
essential starting point for simulation studies of time-to-event models is
the ability to produce simulated survival times from a known data generating
process. This paper develops a method for the generation of survival times
that follow a Cox proportional hazards model with time-dependent covariates.
The method presented relies on a simple transformation of random variables
generated according to a truncated piecewise exponential distribution, and
allows practitioners great flexibility and control over both the number of
time-dependent covariates and the number of time periods in the duration of
follow-up measurement. Within this framework, an additional argument is
suggested that allows researchers to generate time-to-event data in which
covariates change at integer-valued steps of the time scale. The purpose of
this approach is to produce data for simulation experiments that mimic the
types of data structures applied researchers encounter when using
longitudinal biomedical data. Validity is assessed in a set of simulation
experiments and results indicate that the proposed procedure performs well
in producing data that conform to the assumptions of the Cox proportional
hazards model.
Althaus, Scott L., Nathaniel Swigger, Svitlana
Chernykh, David J. Hendry, Sergio C. Wals, and Christopher Tiwald.
2011. "Assumed Transmission in Political Science: A Call for Bringing
Description Back In." Journal of Politics 73(4):
1065–1080.
[Abstract]
[doi]
[Online Appendix]
[Replication Data]
News outlets
cannot serve as reliable conveyors of social facts, nor do their audiences
crave such content. Nonetheless, much political science scholarship assumes
that objective information about social, political, and economic topics is
routinely transmitted to the mass public through the news. This article
addresses the problem of selection bias in news content and illustrates the
problem with a content analytic study of New York Times coverage
given to American war deaths in five major conflicts that occurred over the
past century. We find that news coverage of war deaths is unrelated to how
many American combatants have recently died. News coverage is more likely to
mention war deaths when reporting combat operations and less likely to
mention them when a war is going well. These findings underscore the need to
document selection biases in information flows before theorizing about
proximate causes underlying the relationships between political systems and
public opinion.
Hendry, David J., Robert A. Jackson, and Jeffery J. Mondak. 2009.
"Abramoff, Email, and the Mistreated Mistress: Scandal and Character 2006
Elections." In Fault Lines: Why the Republicans Lost Congress, eds.,
Jeffery J. Mondak and Dona-Gene Mitchell. New York: Routledge pp.
84–110.
[Publisher]
[Google]