Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and Issue Framing Effects · 2012. 8. 31. · Political...

Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and IssueFraming Effects

Rune Slothuus Aarhus University

Claes H. de Vreese University of Amsterdam

Issue framing is one of the most important means of elite influence on public opinion. However, we know almostnothing about how citizens respond to frames in what is possibly the most common situation in politics: whenframes are sponsored by political parties. Linking theory on motivated reasoning with framing research, we arguenot only that citizens should be more likely to follow a frame if it is promoted by ‘‘their’’ party; we expect suchbiases to be more pronounced on issues at the center of party conflicts and among the more politically aware. Twoexperiments embedded in a nationally representative survey support these arguments. Our findings revise currentknowledge on framing, parties, and public opinion.

When receiving news about politics, citizensare confronted with elites struggling todefine and interpret what the issues of the

day are really about in attempts to inform and influencepublic opinion. For example, elites might present orframe a social welfare proposal in terms of fightingpoverty or straining on public budgets. Similarly,allowing a hate-group rally could be framed as protect-ing free speech or risking public order. Given the logicof electoral competition and representation in democ-racy, political parties and candidates are center stage inpublic debate and accordingly their attempts to frameissues their way are the driving force of much policydiscussion. As Sniderman observes, ‘‘[t]o win politicalpower, the parties must compete, and a central aspectof this competition is their effort to define the terms ofpolitical choice’’ (2000, 75).1

Nevertheless, we have a surprisingly poor under-standing of how public opinion is influenced by suchissue frames explicitly sponsored by a political party;what we call party frames. This is because extantresearch is awkwardly divided. On the one hand, avibrant and rapidly growing literature has demon-strated that elite frames can shape public opinion inpowerful ways (for reviews, see Chong and Druckman2007b; Kinder 2003); yet, this research has neglected

the impact of some of the most important sourcesof issue frames in real-world politics: political parties.On the other hand, studies of political parties haveprimarily focused on the impact of parties on publicopinion over the long haul, not the effects of parties’specific communications; e.g., how transformationsin party elites over time have led to mass transfor-mations (Carmines and Wagner 2006), or how partycompetition increases the attitude consistency acrosspolicy domains (Petersen, Slothuus, and Togeby n.d.;Sniderman and Bullock 2004).

Consequently, we still know very little about howcitizens actually react towards much of the everydaypolitical discussion wherein political parties developand promote issue frames in attempts to win publicsupport for their policies. Thus, whereas there is nowa widespread understanding of the importance ofelite framing to public opinion (Kinder 2003), it hasbeen virtually overlooked what it means that issueframes are often sponsored by political parties orpartisan candidates. In other words, we still need toclarify the basic questions of how people respond toissue frames from political parties, and which indi-vidual and situational factors determine the kind andstrength of effects that party frames might have onopinion formation.

The Journal of Politics, Vol. 72, No. 3, July 2010, Pp. 630–645 doi:10.1017/S002238161000006X

� Southern Political Science Association, 2010 ISSN 0022-3816

1Schoenbach, de Ridder, and Lauf (2001) found that politicians account for between one-half and two-thirds of all political actorsoccuring in television news during election campaigns, and these figures also appear to generalize to everyday politics (Binderkrantz2008).

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In this study, we bring together two of the majorliteratures in political behavior—framing and partyidentification—to examine for the first time howpublic opinion is influenced by issue frames explicitlysponsored by political parties. We thus address aserious lack of realism in extant research, and theresult is major revisions to our understanding of howboth framing and partisanship work. Drawing on thetheory of motivated reasoning—a widely acceptedpsychological account of how people process politicalinformation that hitherto has not been employed tounderstand framing—we propose a set of novelpredictions specifying the political conditions underwhich parties should be especially important toframing effects and among what groups of citizens.

Based on our unique experimental design em-bedded in a representative national survey, we notonly find strong empirical support for the suspicionthat the partisan sponsor of a frame conditionsframing effects in critical ways. We also show,consistent with our theory, that the structure of partycompetition across issues matters such that citizensreact more strongly towards the party sponsor on apartisan conflict issue than on a partisan consensusissue. Moreover, we find that opinion among themore politically aware is driven more by the partisansource than by substantive frame content, whereasthe opposite pattern is evident among the less aware.

These findings are important and revise currentknowledge on framing, parties, and public opinion.First, we show that under the more realistic con-ditions involving both frames and parties, citizens areable to resist and even counterargue frames, based onthe partisan source of the frame. These results suggestthat citizens are not as susceptible to framing as someprevious accounts have worried (e.g., Bartels 2003;Zaller 1992). Second, in contrast to a large literatureon party cues, we find that partisan sources, incombination with frames, matter most in situationswhere citizens are traditionally seen as sufficientlywell-equipped to not relying on source cues—i.e.,when they are politically knowledgeable and the issueis widely debated (see Kam 2005; Mondak 1993).

Political Parties and Framing Effects

Building on prior work, we understand issue framingas a process in which a communicator ‘‘defines andconstructs a political issue or public controversy’’(Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley 1997, 567) by empha-sizing ‘‘a subset of potentially relevant considera-tions’’ (Druckman and Nelson 2003, 730) and

thereby pointing the receiver to ‘‘the essence of theissue’’ (Gamson and Modigliani 1987, 143). A fram-ing effect occurs when such ‘‘frames in communica-tion’’ subsequently affect the ‘‘frames in thought’’ ofthe receivers, that is, their cognitive understanding ofa given situation and/or their opinion (Chong andDruckman 2007b).

Recent studies of issue framing have reaffirmedthe potential of alternative frames to sway publicopinion, while at the same time have improved therealism of earlier work. Thus, scholars have begun toexamine effects of competing frames (Chong andDruckman 2007a; Jerit 2009; Sniderman and Theriault2004), the interplay of frames and citizens’ deliberationwith peers (Price, Nie, and Cappella 2005; Druckmanand Nelson 2003), and how framing effects evolve overtime (Chong and Druckman 2008; Lecheler and deVreese 2009). A few studies have also addressed howthe source of a frame moderates framing effectsand found that, e.g., frames have little influencewhen promoted by a noncredible source (Chong andDruckman 2007a; Druckman 2001a; Hartman andWeber 2009; Joslyn and Haider-Markel 2006).

However, while this current trend of researchilluminates framing effects in contexts more represen-tative of many of the real-world environments facingcitizens, none of this work has taken political partiesinto account (though see Slothuus n.d.).2 Given theubiquity of political parties as sponsors of issue framesin policy debates and political news reporting (e.g., Jerit2008), we find the absence of parties a seriouslimitation of current framing research. This limitationis all the more unfortunate because partisan loyaltieshave been found to be one of the most fundamentalingredients in public opinion (Carsey and Layman2006; Goren 2005) and hence the party sponsor mightlikely influence how people judge the frame. Thus,fundamentally, we know little about whether frameshave different effects if sponsored by one party ratherthan another—and in what ways, if any, the partysponsor affects framing effects.

How Parties Matter to FramingEffects

For frames to matter we assume that considerationsemphasized in a frame must be available, accessible,

2Druckman (2001b) also includes parties but this study focusedon equivalence framing (i.e., presenting information in different,but logically equivalent ways), a kind of framing that is rare inpolitical discourse (Sniderman and Theriault 2004, 135).

political parties and framing effects 631

and judged to be applicable at the time of forming anopinion (Chong and Druckman 2007a, 639; Priceand Tewksbury 1997). First, being available meansthat a consideration is comprehended by the receiverand stored in memory such that it can subsequentlybe retrieved and used. Second, the available consid-eration must be sufficiently accessible in memory tobe activated and used when forming an opinion(Higgins 1996). Third, and most important to ourargument, a consideration being available and acces-sible may not be sufficient for it to influence opinionformation; people might critically judge how appli-cable (i.e., relevant), they feel a consideration empha-sized in a frame is to their opinion on the issue(Chong and Druckman 2007a, 639–40; Nelson,Clawson, and Oxley 1997; Price and Tewksbury1997, 192–94; Shen and Edwards 2005). As Priceand Tewksbury explain,

‘‘ . . . it is important to recognize that social perceiverswill evaluate the constructs they have accessible interms of their suitability for interpreting and respond-ing to their environment. Consequently, they often. . . will either filter out these items they considerinappropriate or they will use them as standards, orcontrast points, in their evaluations.’’ (1997, 187–88)

We argue that the partisan source can criticallyinfluence whether a consideration emphasized in aframe is deemed applicable and hence potentiallyused in opinion formation. To understand how partyframes work to influence opinion, the theory of‘‘motivated reasoning’’ provides a helpful approach.Motivated reasoning is a widely accepted psycholog-ical account of how people process political informa-tion (see Mutz 2007); yet, there appears to be afundamental disconnect between framing and moti-vated reasoning in extant research (Druckman,Kuklinski, and Sigelman 2009).

A basic premise in research on motivated reason-ing is that people are not merely motivated to formopinions that are accurate, but often also to a largedegree strive to defend and maintain their extantvalues, identities, and attitudes. In politics, citizenswill thus tend to be motivated by directional morethan accuracy goals (Chaiken, Liberman, and Eagly1989, 234–38; Kunda 1990). As such, citizens cannotbe expected to seek out and assess information andinterpretations, such as those provided by a partyframe, with an open mind. Rather, citizens will bedriven by their predispositions to reach conclusionsin a particular direction and may thus ‘‘ignore ordevalue contrary information, bias the perception ofcredibility, or overlook important factors’’ (Taber,Lodge, and Glathar 2001, 208–209). Taber and Lodge

(2006, 756) suggest that directional goals and selec-tive information processing are driven by affect,automatically elicited by the attitude object or someinformation about it. Thus, affect and cognitioninteract in determining how citizens process politicalinformation.

Following these insights, we argue that citizensact as ‘‘motivated reasoners’’ when responding toissue frames promoted by political parties. Indeed,the explicit party label might spark a motivatedassessment of the frame. Partisanship is a fundamen-tal and enduring political predisposition (Campbellet al. 1960; Green, Palmquist, and Schickler 2002),more stable than core political values (Goren 2005),that has been demonstrated to shape policy opinions(Carsey and Layman 2006) and perceptions (Bartels2002; Gaines et al. 2007). Thus, people’s feelingstowards political parties should be particularly likelyto bias how they assess the applicability of partyframes. Specifically, if a frame is sponsored by a partypeople feel attached to, motivated reasoning shouldlead them to pay closer attention to frame contentand assess it more favorably. In contrast, if peoplehave negative feelings towards the party sponsor, theywould discount, simply ignore, or even engage incounterarguing the interpretations in the frame (seeLebo and Cassino 2007; Taber and Lodge 2006).Thus, when forming or updating opinions, citizensought to rely more on considerations emphasized in aparty frame if sponsored by ‘‘their’’ party thanotherwise. This is our first hypothesis:

H1: Citizens should be more inclined to follow a partyframe if they feel attached to the party sponsor thanif they do not feel attached to the party sponsor.

The phenomenon that citizens use partisanshipto filter political information has been recognized inclassic voting studies (e.g., Campbell et al. 1960) aswell as in more recent work on party cues (Kam 2005;Mondak 1993; Zaller 1992). However, not only do weextend this mechanism to the domain of framing; ourtheoretical account based on motivated reasoningalso allows us to develop novel predictions about howreactions toward party frames should vary acrosssituations (i.e., between issues) and individuals (i.e.,between levels of political awareness). These expect-ations challenge conventional wisdom on the influ-ence of parties on opinion formation.

First, we expect people to be particularly moti-vated to judge the applicability of a frame accordingto its partisan source in situations where the issue isat the center of conflict between political parties. As

632 rune slothuus and claes h. de vreese

Huddy explains, theories of social identity and self-categorization posit that ‘‘individuals are more likelyto think of themselves as members of social groupsunder conditions in which the use of a group labelmaximizes the similarities between oneself and othergroup members, and heightens one’s differences withoutsiders’’ (2001, 134). Such party-based groupdifferences are emphasized precisely when politicalparties conflict over an issue. Thus, Price argues, ‘‘bydepicting which groups are at odds over a particularissue, media reports can signal which social identitiesare relevant to the problem;’’ in this way, politicalnews ‘‘may trigger social categorization, inducingpeople to think of themselves and others in relationto the issue as group members’’ (1989, 200, 201,emphasis in original).

In other words, on issues at the center of partisanconflict—where partisan values seem to be particu-larly at stake—citizens’ partisan loyalties should beespecially salient and hence more likely bias theirresponse to party frames (e.g., Taber, Cann, andKucsova 2009, 139). Therefore, people will followframes from ‘‘their’’ party more carefully, and willtend to dismiss or even counterargue frames fromopposing parties (see Lupia and McCubbins 1998,60–61, 194). Conversely, on party consensus issues—e.g., involving broad consensual values or nationalinterests—motivated reasoners should not per se dis-miss or react in contrast to a frame merely because it isput forward by an opposition party, as even an out-party can be perceived as sharing ‘‘common interests’’(Lupia and McCubbins 1998) if it stands on the sameside of an issue as one’s own party. Thus, on consensusissues party identification will be less salient to citizenswhen assessing party frames. This argument is capturedin our second hypothesis:

H2: Partisanship should bias citizens’ opinion inresponse to party frames to a greater extent onconflict issues than on consensus issues.

Furthermore, we expect the more politically awareto react more strongly towards the party sponsor of aframe, compared to the less politically aware. Whilepartisanship determines the direction of bias inmotivated reasoning, citizens’ engagement with poli-tics should influence the strength of bias. Previousresearch has found engagement with an issue toincrease the motivation to engage in selective infor-mation processing (Taber, Lodge, and Glathar 2001,210). Following existing work (Chong and Druckman2007a, 647; Taber and Lodge 2006, 757, 760), we takegeneral political awareness to capture both citizens’motivation and ability to process party frames. Thus,

political awareness not only determines how muchpeople care about politics and how likely they are torecognize when parties conflict over an issue (moti-vation); the politically aware also ‘‘possess greaterammunition with which to counterargue’’ (ability)(Taber and Lodge 2006, 757). As Taber, Cann, andKucsova suggest, ‘‘it takes very little sophistication tofeel that attitude-congruent arguments are strongerthan those that challenge one’s priors; the activegeneration of counter-arguments on the other handshould require more sophistication’’ (2009, 153).

Based on these arguments, we expect people withgreater motivation and ability to be more biasedwhen assessing party frames in general, but we expectsuch persons in particular to be distinguished fromtheir less motivated and capable fellow citizens inreacting more strongly in response to party framesfrom opposing parties because they are better equippedto counter-argue. Thus, at least on conflict issues wherepartisan values are at stake, politically aware receiversshould tend to react against party frames—i.e., adopt aposition contrary to the one implied in the frame—if itis sponsored by an opposing party. This dynamic iscaptured in our third hypothesis:

H3: On partisan conflict issues, citizens with greaterpolitical awareness will tend to react towards aparty frame from an opposing party by adoptingthe position opposite the one advocated in theframe (leading to a contrast effect).

In sum, we extend the mechanism of partisanbias to understanding how citizens respond to framesexplicitly sponsored by political parties. Our expect-ations that such reactions should be stronger onpartisan conflict issues and among the more politi-cally aware are novel and advance current knowledgein several ways. First, we extend traditional models ofpersuasion that do not expect individuals to counter-argue (Lupia and McCubbins 1998, 41–43). Forexample, Zaller (1992) asserts that politically awarecitizens will just ignore messages inconsistent withtheir predispositions, while our argument raises thepossibility that people have the capacity to counter-argue and take an opposite position of a frame if theyare sufficiently motivated.

Second, our argument advances current discus-sions of contrast effects in framing research. Thus,Chong and Druckman (2007a) found contrast effects—among politically aware—when individuals compareda strong and a weak frame on each side of an issue, butnot in response to varying sources of frames. Theysuggested that ‘‘a contrast effect requires competingrationales that vary sharply in their persuasiveness’’


(Chong and Druckman 2007a, 648). We argue, incontrast, that when frames are promoted by suchpolitically engaging sources as political parties, citizensmight be motivated to form opinions that contrast witheven strong frames.

Third, our hypotheses contradict previous workon party cues. From these studies we would expectthat party source cues matter most on distant issuesof little concern (Gilens and Murakawa 2002, 21) andthat the least politically aware would benefit mostfrom party cues (Kam 2005)—the opposite of whatour hypotheses state. Studies of party cues havegenerally focused on how party cues can help citizensovercome their limited issue-relevant knowledge andnevertheless form opinions. Based on theory ofmotivated reasoning, we argue that parties shouldmatter to framing, not because people are ignorant ofpolitics, but because they care. Or, more precisely,partisan sources should be particularly important toframing effects when people care—as they are likelyto do when parties conflict over an issue or when theyare politically aware.

Experimental Design

In order to test our hypotheses, we implemented twoexperiments covering a partisan conflict (welfarepolicy) and consensus (trade policy) issue. In eachexperiment, embedded in an online survey, partici-pants read a constructed newspaper article about apolicy proposal and subsequently reported theiropinion on the proposed policy. Because we areinterested in testing whether the effects of differentframes vary depending on the party sponsor, weconstructed four conditions in each experiment: apro frame and a con frame (see Chong and Druck-man 2007a) sponsored by one of two politicalparties.3 This design enabled us to measure the effectof party sponsor by comparing the opinions amongparticipants exposed to the same frame but withdifferent party sponsors. We also measured the effectsof frame content by comparing between the opinionsof participants exposed to different frames sponsoredby the same party.

Parties and Issues

Denmark, a Western European proportional-representation parliamentary system, formed the

context of our study. We focus on the two majorparties as party sponsors in both experiments: theSocial Democrats and the Liberals (Venstre). Eventhough Denmark is a multiparty system with seven oreight parties usually represented in parliament, thesetwo parties each normally garner between one-thirdand one-fifth of the popular vote, and they are tradi-tionally among the leading parties in governmentcoalitions (Green-Pedersen and Thomsen 2005).

The conflict issue experiment focused on welfare,the major partisan conflict issue in contemporaryDanish politics. The competition between most parties,and the Social Democrats and Liberals in particular,centers around which party can most persuasively pro-vide the most public welfare, e.g., health care, childcare,and care for the elderly, as opposed to whether publicwelfare ought to be expanded. Thus, while the policydistances between the major parties have narrowed, theconflict between parties has intensified. Care for theelderly has therefore come to form a major issue inrecent election campaigns (Andersen 2006). In thisstudy, we focus on a particular partisan conflict overthe means through which in-home care for seniorcitizens ought to be provided: should in-home care beprovided by caretakers in the public sector or becontracted out to private firms?

Experimentation with party framing involves adelicate balance between making experimental varia-tion in party positions to gain control while alsomaintaining experimental realism. Contracting outin-home care for seniors appears to be a suitable casefor our purposes, as the issue has been at the center ofparty conflict for more than a decade (Togeby 2004,114–15, 124–25), yet the two major parties havetended to take rather ambiguous positions on theissue. Thus, the Social Democrats are officially againstcontracting out most welfare services despite largeparts of the party having argued in favor of it (Green-Pedersen 2002, 283). Conversely, the Liberals areofficially in favor of contracting out but have adjustedtheir policy to endorse expanding public welfare andincreasing the number of public employees (Andersen2006). Contracting out in-home care is thereforeclearly a partisan conflict issue, while it should bepossible to realistically vary party positions in thestimulus articles.

In the partisan consensus experiment, we focusedon whether Denmark should join a proposed tradeagreement between the World Trade Organization(WTO) and China. International trade is a low-salientissue in Danish politics and also calls for consensusbetween most political parties, including the SocialDemocrats and the Liberals. Including both a conflict

3For other purposes, the design also included three nonpartisanconditions not analysed here.


and a consensus issue in the study allows us toilluminate possible different dynamics of party fram-ing across the two kinds of issues.

Participants

The experiments were embedded in a survey con-ducted online by the Zapera polling company. Thesample (N 5 925) was approximately representativeof the Danish adult population.4 The survey wasfielded November 20 through December 4, 2006 witha response rate of 61% (AAPOR RR1; seewww.aapor.org).

Stimulus Material

We constructed news articles to vary party sponsorswhile keeping frame content and factual informationconstant (Social Democratic versus Liberal conditions)and to vary the framing of the issue while keepingother content identical (pro versus con frame con-ditions). The articles mimicked day-to-day news re-porting common in Danish newspapers, and whilequotations and policy proposals were fictitious, thearticles mirrored actual ongoing discussions at the timeof the study. Thus, we presented our diverse group ofparticipants with meaningful issues and avoided pre-senting ‘‘emaciated’’ frames (Kinder 2007, 158).

In the conflict issue experiment, the pro frameemphasized the positive consequences of contractingout, while the con frame emphasized the negativeconsequences. Similarly, the pro frame in the con-sensus issue experiment emphasized the positiveconsequences for Denmark in joining the tradeagreement between the WTO and China, while thecon frame emphasized the negative consequences. Inboth experiments, a core of the articles containingfactual information and the context of the issueremained constant between the pro and con frames.The valence of the frames was confirmed in a pretest.5

Measures

As our dependent opinion variable, we measured (ona 7-point scale) support for the two policy proposals

covered by the respective news articles. In the conflictissue experiment, we asked participants to indicatetheir support for contracting out in-home care tosenior citizens. In the consensus issue experiment, wemeasured support for Denmark joining the WTOtrade agreement with China. The variables wererecoded to range from 0 through 1, with highervalues indicating greater support; ‘‘don’t know’’answers were excluded from analyses.6

Besides varying frame content and party sponsors,our hypotheses involve two individual-level factors:party attachment and political awareness. We meas-ured participants’ party attachment by simply enquir-ing who they would vote for.7 Voting preference isclearly a weaker measure of party affiliation than partyidentification, but the implication is likely that we willfind weaker effects of party affiliation and are thusobtaining conservative estimates of partisan bias (e.g.,Gaines et al. 2007). Because we focus on differentialreactions to party frames from supporters of the twoparties in our stimulus material, we limit our analysesto those who would vote for the Social Democrats(27.8 %, N 5 257, coded 0) or the Liberals (20.2 %,N 5 187, coded 1).8 We measured political awarenessusing four factual knowledge questions (Zaller 1992).Due to our focus on party politics, our questionsspecifically related to political parties. These items weresummed to an index scored from 0 through 1 (a 5 .68;M 5 .55, SD 5 .35) and dichotomized by its median:.50 (less aware 5 51.5%, coded 0; more awarecoded 1).9

Results

We begin by noting that the opposite (pro or con)frames push opinion in opposing directions on both

4The sample matched population data on gender and region. Onage, the sample was fairly representative, though it contained toofew younger (18–20 years) and older (65+ years) individuals,whereas the middle-aged (51–55 years) respondents were slightlyoverrepresented. Moreover, among our participants more hadcompleted further education and fewer had completed only basicschool education. Details available from the authors.

5See the online appendix (at either http://journals.cambridge.org/jop or www.ps.au.dk/en/slothuus) for details and full-lengtharticles.

6On the conflict issue, 5% answered ‘‘don’t know’’; on theconsensus issue, 21%. Including these respondents in the analysisdoes not change results.

7To avoid the experimental stimulus to influence the measure ofpartisanship and hence raise problems of endogenerity, thisquestion was asked before the experimental treatment.

8Other partisan groups contain too few cases to permit mean-ingful analyses.

9Question wordings are in the online appendix. We feel confidentthat our measure of political awareness is not merely an indicatorof strength of partisanship. Thus, in the 2005 Danish NationalElection Study, less politically aware Social Democratic voterswere just as likely to report they identified with the party as moreaware were. Among Liberal voters, nearly as many of the lessaware than the more aware identified with the party (details arein the online appendix).


the conflict issue (welfare policy) and the consensusissue (trade policy).10 Thus, on welfare, opinion ismore supportive of contracting out in-home care in thepro-frame (M 5 .54) than in the con-frame (M 5 .45)condition (p , .05). Likewise, there is more supportfor the trade agreement among participants exposedto a pro frame compared to those exposed to a conframe (Mpro 5 .75 vs. Mcon 5 .55, p , .01).11 Thus,our framing manipulations influence opinion and wehence replicate the general finding from previousframing studies (Chong and Druckman 2007b), evenwhen the frames are explicitly promoted by parties.According to our theory, however, the framing effectswill be much more differentiated when consideringthe separate combinations of frame, party sponsor,and receiver party preference.

The Impact of Parties on Framing Effects

Hypothesis 1 predicts that citizens should generallybe more inclined to follow a frame promoted by aparty if they feel attached to the party sponsor.Therefore, across both issues studied here, we expectthat among Social Democratic voters, frames spon-sored by the Social Democrats will have a greaterinfluence on opinion than frames sponsored by theLiberals. Conversely, among Liberal voters we expectframes sponsored by the Liberals to have a greaterimpact than frames sponsored by the Social Demo-crats. Thus, the size of framing effects should becontingent upon a match between the partisan sourceof the frame and receiver partisanship.

We test this by first specifying models where weregress opinion on dummy variables indicating thedirection of the frame (pro or con) participants wereexposed to, the party sponsor of the frame (SocialDemocrats or Liberals), and participants’ party pref-erence (Social Democrats or Liberals) as well as thefull set of interactions between these variables (seeDruckman and Nelson 2003; Hartman and Weber2009). As the results in Table 1 reveal, we find athree-way frame 3 party sponsor 3 party preference

interaction on both issues. Specifically, on the conflictissue the three-way interaction coefficient is b 5 .35(s.e. 5 .14, p 5 .01) and on the consensus issue thethree-way interaction coefficient is b 5 .29 (s.e. 5 .11,p , .05).12 These results indicate that issue framesdo indeed vary in influence based upon both theparty of the receiver and the sponsor. However, thethree-way interactions provide only a partial test ofour first hypothesis.13 To clarify whether, as Hypoth-esis 1 predicts, frames are more influential if there is amatch between the party of the sponsor and receiver,we next conduct a series of simple effects testscomparing the magnitude of framing separately forSocial Democratic and Liberal voters.

Focusing first on the conflict issue (see upper halfof Figure 1), opinion among Social Democraticvoters (panel A) tended to be more affected whenthe frames were promoted by ‘‘their’’ party thanwhen the same frames were sponsored by the Lib-erals. Thus, the difference in support for contractingout among Social Democratic voters is 21% pointsbetween pro and con frames if the source is SocialDemocratic (Mpro 5 .50 vs. Mcon5 .29, p , .01),twice as large as when the frame is sponsored by theLiberal party (Mpro 5 .37 vs. Mcon5 .28, n.s.). To testwhether this difference in framing effects between partysponsors is statistically significant, we regress opinionon frame, party sponsor, and frame 3 party sponsor.We find the two-way frame 3 party sponsor inter-action does not reach statistical significance (b 5 2.12,s.e. 5 .10, p 5 .21).

Conversely, among Liberal voters (panel B),framing effects are greater if the Liberal party pro-motes the frames (Mpro 5 .74 vs. Mcon5 .56, p 5 .01)than if the Social Democratic party does. In fact,there is a tendency (though not statistically signifi-cant) to a contrast effect among Liberals if the partysponsor is Social Democratic (Mpro 5 .64 vs. Mcon5

.69, n.s.). In short, frames exert a greater influence onopinion when the partisan source matches partici-pants’ partisanship. This difference in framing effectsis corroborated by a significant two-way frame 3

party sponsor interaction (b 5 .23, s.e. 5 .10, p ,

.05), consistent with our first hypothesis. In sum, onthe conflict issue the size of framing effects differ

10Comparisons across experimental groups on socio-demo-graphic variables (gender, age, region, education, income) in-dicate successful randomization; thus, differences in opinionbetween groups can be attributed to the experimental stimuli(within statistical limits). All results reported are robust if weinclude sociodemographic variables as controls in the models.

11These means refer to participants with a Social Democratic orLiberal party preference because we focus our analyses on theseindividuals. Corresponding means among all participants regard-less of partisanship are Mpro 5 .50 vs. Mcon 5 .45 (p , .05) onthe conflict issue and Mpro 5 .71 vs. Mcon 5 .55 (p , .01) on theconsensus issue. All significance tests reported are two-tailed.

12All results, in both experiments, are robust if we used orderedprobit models instead of OLS regression (see the online appen-dix); for ease of interpretation we prefer to report the latter.

13The three-way frame 3 party sponsor 3 party preferenceinteraction suggests that the two-way interactions between frameand party sponsor or party preference, respectively, differ withthe levels of the third variable, but the three-way interactioncannot, by itself, tell the nature of these contingencies.


significantly across party sponsors among Liberalvoters, but not among Social Democratic voters,lending partial support to Hypothesis 1.

Turning to the consensus issue experiment, wefind similar results to those on the conflict issue, butthe support for our hypothesis that people will bemore inclined to follow frames if sponsored by‘‘their’’ party is more consistent. Thus, as shown inthe lower half of Figure 1, among Social Democraticvoters (panel C) difference in opinion is more thantwice as large if the opposing frames are sponsored bythe Social Democrats (Mpro 5 .72 vs. Mcon5 .48,p , .01) than by the Liberals (Mpro 5 .68 vs. Mcon5

.58, p , .10). Likewise, among Liberal voters (panelD) frames are twice as influential if sponsored by theLiberals (Mpro 5 .83 vs. Mcon5 .53, p , .01) than bythe Social Democrats (Mpro 5 .76 vs. Mcon5 .61,p , .05). These differences in framing effects arecorroborated by a significant two-way frame 3 partysponsor interaction among Liberal voters (b 5 .15,s.e. 5 .08, p , .10) and in this experiment amongthe Social Democratic voters as well (b 5 2.14, s.e. 5

.08, p , .10).These results on the consensus issue provide

strong support for Hypothesis 1. Furthermore, it isimportant to note that on this issue, in contrast to theconflict issue, citizens seemed to be persuaded even byframes sponsored by the opposing party (i.e., they didnot dismiss the frames). These results provide evidencethat even if people see some merit in frames sponsoredby other parties, they are more likely to be affected byframes if they are promoted by their own party.

In sum, overall our findings support Hypothesis1 that people are more inclined to follow a frame if it

is sponsored by their own party, with the exception ofSocial Democratic voters on the conflict issue. Theseresults suggest that citizens act as motivated reasonerswhen responding to party frames. Thus, when judg-ing applicability of frames explicitly sponsored by apartisan source, people tend to use their partisanshipas a filter biasing their assessment of the frame.14

However, our theory also suggests when such partisanbiases should be more pronounced and among whom.We next assess these conditions empirically; as part ofthe analysis we will also clarify why our first hypoth-esis was only partly supported among the SocialDemocratic voters.

Party Conflict and Political Awareness

We expect citizens to be particularly motivated to usetheir partisanship in assessing party frames on issueswhere political parties are in conflict. In contrast topolitical consensus, party conflict signals that parti-san values are at stake and emphasizes differencesbetween parties. In such conflict situations, citizens’partisanship should to be more salient to them andhence more likely be used in judging the applicabilityof framings of the issue. Accordingly, Hypothesis 2expects that partisanship will bias citizens’ responsesto party frames to a greater extent on conflict issuesthan on consensus issues.

Two findings across our experiments providesupport for Hypothesis 2. First, as already noted,

TABLE 1 Effects of Party Sponsor, Frame Content, and Receiver Party Preference on Policy Support

Conflict IssueExperiment

Consensus IssueExperiment

Constant .29 (.05)*** .48 (.04)***Liberal Party Sponsor 2.01 (.07) .10 (.06)*Pro Frame .21 (.07)*** .24 (.05)***Liberal Party Preference .40 (.07)*** .13 (.06)**Liberal Party Sponsor 3 Pro Frame 2.12 (.09) 2.14 (.08)*Liberal Party Sponsor 3 Liberal Party Preference 2.12 (.10) 2.18 (.08)**Pro Frame 3 Liberal Party Preference 2.26 (.10)*** 2.09 (.08)Liberal Party Sponsor 3 Pro Frame 3 Liberal PartyPreference

.35 (.14)*** .29 (.11)**

Adjusted R2 18.9% 14.0%N 379 356

Note: Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. Dependent variable: Support forcontracting out in-home care (conflict issue) or trade agreement (consensus issue). All independent variables are dichotomized.*p , .10, **p , .05, ***p # .01 (two-tailed).

14We replicated all findings with another measure of partyattachment, the probability of voting for either party in thefuture, thus lending robustness to our results (see onlineappendix).


the overall framing effect (regardless of partisansource) was twice as large on the consensus issue—-difference in opinion was .21 on the 0–1 scale—thanon the conflict issue (.09). Second, the party sponsorsmattered more on the conflict issue than on theconsensus issue. Specifically, on the consensus issuethe frames were able to move opinion even if theywere sponsored by an out-party (see panels C and Din Figure 1) whereas frames promoted by opposingparties did not influence opinion significantly on theconflict issue (see panels A and B in Figure 1). Inother words, frame content mattered more on theconsensus issue than on the conflict issue, whereaspartisan sources mattered more on the conflict issue

than on the consensus issue. These results are exactlywhat we should expect to find given Hypothesis 2.

However, our strongest evidence that the dis-tinction between conflict and consensus issues isessential to understanding party framing comes fromanalyzing how the more politically aware participantsresponded to party frames. We expect more politi-cally aware citizens to be distinguished from lesspolitically aware by being both more motivated andbetter able to assess frames critically and to possiblycounterargue them. The motivation to dismiss orcounterargue frames from opposing parties should beparticularly pronounced when the parties are inconflict and hence signal that partisanship matters.

FIGURE 1 Effects of Party Frames on Opinion by Party Preference


Hypothesis 3 captures this dynamic by expecting thaton conflict issues, but not on consensus issues, themore politically aware will tend to form opinions incontrast to the frame promoted by an opposingparty.

As a first step in testing whether the nature andmagnitude of framing effects vary this way, we extendthe regression models from Table 1 by including adummy variable for less/more politically aware andall interactions between political awareness and theother variables. According to Hypothesis 3, themagnitude of framing effects on a conflict issueshould depend not only on a match between theparty of the sponsor and the receiver, but also onindividuals’ level of political awareness. The results inTable 2 reveal a significant four-way frame 3 party

sponsor 3 party preference 3 awareness interactionon the conflict issue (b 5 .49, s.e. 5 .28, p , .10),indicating that how citizens react towards partyframes on this issue indeed depends on their partypreference, the party sponsor as well as their level ofpolitical awareness.

To clarify whether the more politically aware caremore about which party promotes a frame than theless aware do, as Hypothesis 3 predicts, we nextreestimate the model from Table 1 separately for lessand more aware participants. These results appear inthe second and third columns of Table 2 and show asubstantial and significant three-way frame 3 partysponsor 3 party preference interaction among themore aware (b 5 .59, s.e. 5 .18, p , .01) and alimited and non-significant three-way frame 3 party

TABLE 2 Effects of Party Sponsor, Frame Content, and Receiver Party Preference, and Political Awarenesson Policy Support

Conflict Issue Experiment Consensus Issue Experiment

AllLess

AwareMore

Aware AllLess

AwareMore

Aware

Constant .35 (.07)*** .35 (.07)*** .21 (.07)*** .50 (.06)*** .50 (.07)*** .46 (.05)***Liberal Party Sponsor 2.02 (.10) 2.02 (.11) .05 (.09) .04 (.09) .04 (.09) .14 (.07)*Pro Frame .17 (.09)* .17 (.09)* .25 (.10)** .20 (.08)** .20 (.08)** .27 (.07)***Liberal Party Preference .24 (.10)** .24 (.11)** .59 (.10)*** 2.01 (.08) 2.01 (.09) .25 (.07)***Liberal Party Sponsor 3

Pro Frame.05 (.13) .05 (.14) 2.26 (.13)** 2.11 (.12) 2.11 (.12) 2.17 (.10)*

Liberal Party Sponsor 3

Liberal Party Pref.2.04 (.15) 2.04 (.16) 2.27 (.13)** 2.10 (.12) 2.10 (.12) 2.22 (.11)**

Pro Frame 3 Liberal PartyPreference

2.12 (.13) 2.12 (.14) 2.41 (.14)*** .03 (.12) .03 (.12) 2.17 (.11)

Liberal Party Sponsor 3 ProFrame 3 Liberal Party Pref.

.10 (.20) .10 (.21) .59 (.18)*** .24 (.17) .24 (.17) .29 (.15)*

More Aware 2.14 (.10) 2.04 (.08)Liberal Party Sponsor 3 More

Aware.07 (.14) .10 (.11)

Pro Frame 3 More Aware .09 (.14) .07 (.11)Liberal Party Pref. 3 More Aware .35 (.15)** .26 (.11)**Liberal Party Sponsor 3 Pro

Frame 3 More Aware2.31 (.19) 2.06 (.15)

Liberal Party Sponsor 3 LiberalParty Pref. 3 More Aware

2.22 (.20) 2.12 (.16)

Pro Frame 3 Liberal PartyPref. 3 More Aware

2.29 (.20) 2.20 (.16)

Liberal Party Sponsor 3 ProFrame 3 Liberal PartyPref. 3 More Aware

.49 (.28)* .04 (.23)

Adjusted R2 21.4% 7.2% 34.7% 16.1% 14.8% 14.2%N 379 186 193 356 163 193

Note: Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coefficients with standard errors in parentheses. Dependent variable: Support forcontracting out in-home care (conflict issue) or trade agreement (consensus issue). All independent variables are dichotomized.*p , .10, **p , .05, ***p , .01 (two-tailed).


sponsor 3 party preference interaction among theless aware (b 5 .10, s.e. 5 .21, n.s.). These findingssuggest that, on the conflict issue, the more politicallyaware citizens react more strongly toward the partysponsor than the less aware do.

A series of direct effects comparisons substantiatethis initial support for Hypothesis 3. Figure 2 illustratesthe substantial meaning of the above interaction effectsby presenting differences in opinion separately byreceiver party preference and political awareness. Look-ing first at the Social Democratic voters (panel A), it isclear that both less and more aware individuals react inthe same manner towards frames promoted by theirown party and tend to follow the frame (lessaware: Mpro 5 .51 vs. Mcon5 .35, p , .10; moreaware: Mpro 5 .46 vs. Mcon5 .21, p , .05). However,if the frames are sponsored by the Liberals (panel B),

more aware Social Democrats dismiss the frame(Mpro 5 .25 vs. Mcon5 .25, n.s.), while less awareSocial Democrats follow the frame to about the sameextent as when it was sponsored by their own party(Mpro 5 .54 vs. Mcon5 .32, p , .10). Thus, asexpected, more aware Social Democrats clearly filterthe Liberal frame out; though we do not see a contrasteffect. Conversely, less aware Social Democrats do notappear to discriminate between party sponsors (andHypothesis 1 is, thus, not supported in this group).

Turning to the responses from Liberal voters, wefirst observe that the more and lesser politically awareLiberals respond nearly uniformly towards framessponsored by the Liberal party (panel C). In bothgroups, there is a strong and significant framing effect(less aware: Mpro 5 .72 vs. Mcon5 .52, p , .10; moreaware: Mpro 5 .75 vs. Mcon5 .58, p , .10). When

FIGURE 2 Conflict Issue Experiment: Effect of Party Frames on Opinion by Party Preference andPolitical Awareness


the Social Democrats sponsor the frame, however, adramatically different image emerges (panel D).While the less aware Liberal voters to some limitedextent tend to follow the frame even if it is presentedby the Social Democrats (Mpro 5 .64 vs. Mcon5 .59,n.s.), there is a substantial contrast effect amongaware Liberal voters: if the Social Democrats framethe issue by emphasizing the disadvantages fromcontracting out, Liberal voters become even moresupportive of contracting out (Mpro 5 .64 vs. Mcon5

.80, p , .10).These results lend strong support to Hypothesis 3:

While citizens, regardless of their level of politicalawareness, tend to follow frames sponsored by a partythey support, political awareness appears to be a strongmoderator of citizens’ responses towards frames spon-sored by an opposing party on this conflict issue. Thus,the more aware were able to dismiss and in some casescounterargue frames from opposing parties (i.e., tak-ing the opposite position than advocated by theframe). In contrast, the less aware tended to followeven frames sponsored by the opposing party, espe-cially Social Democratic voters.15 Significant two-wayframe 3 party sponsor interactions among moreaware Social Democratic and Liberal voters, but notamong the less aware of these voters, corroborate thisconclusion.

Turning to the consensus issue, Hypothesis 3predicts that citizens’ level of political awareness willnot condition how they respond to party framesbecause the more aware should not be particularlymotivated to dismiss or counterargue frames fromthe opposing party. Again, we test this by regressingopinion on frame, party sponsor, receiver partisan-ship, and political awareness along with all interac-tions among these variables. As shown in Table 2,we find a nonsignificant four-way frame 3 partysponsor 3 party preference 3 awareness interaction,indicating that responses towards party frames on theconsensus issue is not moderated by political aware-ness. Consistent with this finding, the three-wayframe 3 party sponsor 3 party preference interac-tions among less and more aware, respectively (seecolumns 5 and 6 in Table 2), are essentially of thesame magnitude (less aware: b 5 .24, s.e. 5 .17, p 5

.15; more aware: b 5 .29, s.e. 5 .15, p , .10) andvery similar to the overall three-way interaction in

Table 1. These results clearly support Hypothesis 3predicting no difference in framing effects acrosslevels of awareness on the consensus issue.

To illustrate these similar response patternsamong citizens of greater and lesser political aware-ness, Figure 3 displays mean opinions across groups.Among Social Democratic voters, regardless of thelevel of political awareness, frames sponsored by theSocial Democrats (panel A) result in strong framingeffects (less aware: Mpro 5 .70 vs. Mcon5 .50, p 5 .01;more aware: Mpro 5 .73 vs. Mcon5 .46, p , .01).Even though frames promoted by the Liberals have asmaller impact on opinion (panel B), responses againare quite similar among less and more aware SocialDemocrats (less aware: Mpro 5 .64 vs. Mcon5 .54,n.s.; more aware: Mpro 5 .71 vs. Mcon5 .60, n.s.).

A similar picture emerges among Liberal voters,though the more aware receivers are somewhat morereluctant to follow the frames if sponsored by theSocial Democrats (panel D; less aware: Mpro 5 .72 vs.Mcon5 .49, p , .05; more aware: Mpro 5 .81 vs.Mcon5 .71, n.s.) than if sponsored by the Liberals(panel C; less aware: Mpro 5 .80 vs. Mcon5 .44, p ,

.01; more aware: Mpro 5 .85 vs. Mcon5 .63, p , .01).In sum, these findings support Hypothesis 3: On anissue marked by consensus between parties, peopleappear to feel less reason to discriminate sharplybetween party sponsors and are even less inclined toreact against the out-party frame.16

In sum, while participants across both issues weremore influenced by frames promoted by their ownparty, this partisan bias was more pronounced on theconflict issue than on the consensus issue, thussupporting Hypothesis 2. As expected from Hypoth-esis 3, however, on the conflict issue this partisan biaswas dramatically more pronounced among the morepolitically aware. Thus, aware Social Democraticvoters simply dismissed the frames if promoted bythe Liberals, and among aware Liberal voters therewas even a contrast effect where they moved theiropinion away from a frame sponsored by the SocialDemocrats. The significant role of political awarenessin motivating and enabling citizens to assess framescritically was further emphasized by the finding onthe conflict issue that less aware Social Democraticvoters were just as likely to follow frames promotedby the Liberals as frames from the Social Democrats.

15Results are robust to different codings of political awareness.For example, the most politically aware quartile (answered allfour knowledge questions correctly) reacted even more selectivelyto frames sponsored by an opposing party than those with amoderate level of awareness; among Liberal voters, this impliesthat the contrast effect was even greater among the most aware.

16Again, results are robust to different codings of politicalawareness. Indeed, the most aware quartile appear to distinguisheven less between party sponsors on this consensus issue than doother groups, which further supports our argument about thedifferent logic across types of issues.


Discussion

In this paper, we have brought together two of themajor literatures in political behavior—framing andparty identification—to examine how public opinionis affected by ‘‘framing battles’’ in policy debate,where political parties typically are at the center ofthe struggles to define and construct what is at stake.We know from existing research that how issues areframed often influence public opinion (Chong andDruckman 2007b), and we know that political partiesare among the most powerful forces structuringopinion formation (e.g., Campbell et al. 1960; Carseyand Layman 2006). Yet, no prior study has illumi-nated how public opinion is influenced by issueframes explicitly sponsored by political parties.

Our results suggest it is long overdue for framingresearch to begin taking into account that real-world

issue frames are typically promoted by affectivelycharged political groups; and prominent among themare political parties. We found that citizens tend torespond more favorably to an issue frame if spon-sored by a party they vote for than if the frame waspromoted by another party. This is in itselfan important result, as it underlines the importanceof considering political parties in framing effectsresearch. Drawing on the theory of motivatedreasoning, however, our arguments furthermorespecified—and our experiments supported—that thispartisan bias in citizens’ response towards partyframes should be more pronounced on issues at thecenter of party conflict, not on consensus issues; andthe more politically aware should be more sensitive tothe partisan source of the frame—relative to theactual content of frames—than the less politicallyaware.

FIGURE 3 Consensus Issue Experiment: Effects of Party Frames on Opinion by Party Preference andPolitical Awareness


These results revise conventional wisdom onframing, parties, and public opinion. Our findingscorroborate studies that have found source credibilityto matter to framing effects (Druckman 2001a;Hartman and Weber 2009), but at the same timeprevious studies have not found the source to elicitcontrast effects (see Chong and Druckman 2007a;Zaller 1992). Moreover, from existing research onparty cues we would have expected the least politi-cally aware to make the greatest use of partisan cueson the least engaging issue (Kam 2005; Mondak1993), but we found the opposite: the partisan sourcemattered more among the more politically aware andin a situation where the issue was nothing butperipheral.

We believe processes of motivated reasoning(Taber and Lodge 2006) can explain why citizensresponded more strongly towards political parties—because citizens are engaged in politics, not becausethey are ignorant of it. Hence, parties appear tofunction as much more than merely facilitatingcognitive efficiency—parties are important land-marks in the political landscape that citizens relateto (see Cohen 2003; Sniderman 2000). Therefore, wewould probably have found even stronger framingeffects as well as contrast effects had we been able todistinguish strong party identifiers in our data. Thus,we supported our hypotheses in analyses with a quitemild indicator of partisanship—party preference orvote likelihood—compared to party identification(see Campbell et al. 1960; Carsey and Layman2006). Hence, partisan biases might be even morepronounced than illuminated in this study.

However, an important caveat is in order. Whileour participants, quite sensitively, only reactedstrongly against frames from the opposing partywhen they had reason to do so—i.e., on the conflictissue where parties have signalled that partisan valuesare at stake (similar to the ‘‘observer effect’’ identifiedby Lupia and McCubbins 1998)—the two issues inour study might differ on other dimensions than thedegree of party conflict. In fact, in a pretestinvolving 202 participants, who did not participatein the main survey but were drawn from the sameInternet panel as the main study participants, theelderly care issue was perceived as more personallyimportant than the trade issue. On a 7-pointimportance rating scale coded 0–1, the mean forelderly care was thus .79 versus .61 for internationaltrade (paired-samples difference of means test:t199 5 8.713, p , .001). Thus, we cannot rule outthat difference in importance or salience drives thedistinct responses across the two issues. In addition,

we were not able to test formerly the statisticalsignificance of the differences in responses acrossthe two issues (i.e., estimating five-way interactionsby adding issue type to the four-way interactions inTable 2).

Nevertheless, we believe the driving force ispartisan conflict—this is what makes issues salientin the news and hence among the public, and a clearpartisan divide is what according to Carmines andStimson (1980) over time will make the issue ‘‘easy.’’Moreover, Carsey and Layman (2006) show thatpeople rather change their opinions than partyaffiliations, except on personally important issues.Accordingly, if personal issue importance was at stakein our case, people should have been less responsiveto parties on the personally involving welfare issuecompared to the less personally involving trade issue.But we found the exact opposite result, and we takethis as indication that party conflict is really whatmade the difference. This interpretation is further-more consistent with what we predicted from socialidentity theory.

Finally, the apparent importance of politicalparties to framing effects uncovered in this studyraises some methodological challenges. As we dis-cussed, the real-world positions and reputations ofparties and degree of issue conflict between partiesplaces limits on the possibilities available to research-ers to credibly vary party positions in experiments.Powerful designs to study the effects of party framesin varying political contexts may therefore wellbenefit from employing similar experimental designsacross contexts (e.g., cross-national or in differentparty systems) providing natural variation in issuesaliency, partisan conflict structure, and levels ofparty identification, or across time.

Such studies will help identify the constraints andpossibilities available to partisan elites to framepublic opinion. Sniderman and Theriault assertedthat ‘‘political parties and candidates are not free toframe issues however they wish’’ (2004, 141). Thismight be true under some conditions; however, ourresults suggest that parties can be quite powerful inshaping public opinion, not only among their ownvoters, but also more broadly in the electorate onconsensus issues in which citizens do not discriminateas strongly as to which party promotes the frame. Thus,even though we also identified conditions under whichcitizens can use the party sponsor of a frame to resistpersuasion, parties appear to continue to play a vitalrole by mobilizing and structuring public opinion andhence defining what the political conflicts are actuallyabout.


Acknowledgments

The authors thank James N. Druckman, ChristofferGreen-Pedersen, Todd K. Hartman, Sophie K. Lecheler,Peter B. Mortensen, Michael Bang Petersen, MartinRosema, Paul M. Sniderman, Lise Togeby, ChristopherR. Weber, and participants in the Research Section onDanish and Comparative Politics, Aarhus Universityfor helpful comments. A previous version of the articlewas presented at the 2007 annual meeting of theAmerican Political Science Association in Chicago.Data collection was supported by the Danish SocialScience Research Council.

Manuscript submitted 2 January 2009Manuscript accepted for publication 9 December 2009

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Claes H. de Vreese is Professor and Chair ofPolitical Communication at University of Amster-dam, 1012 CX Amsterdam, The Netherlands.


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