scholarly journals With a Little Help From The People? The Role of Public Opinion in Advocacy Success

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Rasmussen ◽  
Lars Kai Mäder ◽  
Stefanie Reher
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
News Media ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Multilevel Regression ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Issues

Recent years have witnessed an increased interest in research on advocacy success, but limited attention has been paid to the role of public opinion. We examine how support from the public affects advocacy success, relying on a new original data set containing information on public opinion, advocacy positions, and policy outcomes on 50 policy issues in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Claims by advocates are measured through a news media content analysis of a sample of policy issues drawn from national and international public opinion surveys. Our multilevel regression analysis provides evidence that public support affects advocacy success. However, public opinion does not affect preference attainment for some of the lobbying advocates whose influence is feared the most, and the magnitude of its impact is conditional upon the number of advocates who lobby on the policy issue in question.

scholarly journals Influence, affluence and media salience: Economic resources and lobbying influence in the European Union

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 728-750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Stevens ◽  
Iskander De Bruycker
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
News Media ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Beneficial Role ◽  
The Media

This paper evaluates the circumstances under which affluent interest groups wield influence over policy outcomes. Interest group scholarship is ambiguous about the beneficial role of economic resources for lobbying influence. Economically resourceful groups are often presumed to provide more and better expert information to decision-makers and, in exchange, receive more favourable policy concessions. We argue that the beneficial role of economic resources is contingent on the media salience of policy dossiers. We expect that resourceful groups are more influential when issues are discussed behind the public scenes, while their competitive advantage dampens once issues grow salient in the news media. We test our expectations in the context of European Union policymaking, drawing from 183 expert surveys with lobbyists connected to a sample of 41 policy issues. Our empirical findings demonstrate that economic resources matter for lobbying influence, but that their effect is conditional on the media salience of policy issues.

scholarly journals Public Opinion, Turnout and Social Policy: A Comparative Analysis of Policy Congruence in European Liberal Democracies

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 992-1009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Hooghe ◽  
Ruth Dassonneville ◽  
Jennifer Oser
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Social Expenditure ◽  
Comprehensive Investigation ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Responsiveness ◽  
Redistributive Policies ◽  
High Turnout

According to democratic theory, policy responsiveness is a key characteristic of democratic government: citizens’ preferences should affect policy outcomes. Empirically, however, the connection between public opinion and policy is not self-evident and is increasingly challenged. Using an originally constructed data set with information from 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries between 1980 and 2014, our research design allows for a comprehensive investigation of the linkages between ideological positions of citizens, parliaments and cabinets on one hand, and redistributive policies in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries on the other hand. We find that the role of the cabinet is more important than that of parliament. Although citizens’ left–right positions do not have an effect (directly or indirectly) on the level of social expenditure, there is a connection between mass preferences and the ideological position of parliament and government in high-turnout contexts.

Policy Issue Substance and the Revitalization of Legislative Studies

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Lapinski
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
Legislative Studies ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
Vantage Points ◽  
Oriented Approach ◽  
Oriented Research

This chapter seeks to introduce a substance-oriented research program based on policy issues for studying Congress from multiple vantage points. In doing so, it makes serious progress on systematically understanding Theodore Lowi's provocative claim that “policy determines politics,” which, while important, has never been satisfactorily understood, either empirically or theoretically. In advancing a substance-oriented approach to studying policymaking and lawmaking in Congress, the chapter sheds light on several important new tools and ideas to use in determining how policy issue substance matters for lawmaking. These include new data, such as an immense data set on U.S. lawmaking between 1877 to 1994; new and massive measures of political preferences broken down by policy issue areas for U.S. lawmakers spanning the period 1877 to 2010; and fresh approaches to analyzing these new data sets.

Challenging the Models of Terrorism Discourse in the News: European and Islamic Values in the French and Italian Press

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 384-413
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Ugolini ◽  
Dario Fanara
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Social Role ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Media Content ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
The Social ◽  
Terrorism Discourse ◽  
Islamic Values

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the social role of European journalists as they cover the issue of terrorism, which is a potential threat to European society itself. For this purpose, the paper presents the results of a qualitative media content analysis related to the news coverage of the aftermath of three major terrorist attacks. Specifically, the research focuses on the values involved in the coverage of the event rather than on the strict report of what happened. The authors observe that both liberal/‘trustee’ and polarized pluralist/‘advocacy’ models engender a double paradox concerning the interest of citizens in being informed or being protected by news media. Nonetheless, the liberal value of responsibility emerges as fundamental, in order to face and resolve this paradox.

Media discourse in a hyper connected society: a comparison between media frame and Twitter discourse during media strike

Info ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seong Eun Cho ◽  
Dong-Hee Shin
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
News Frames ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – This study aims to examine the impact of news frames associated with traditional media and with Twitter discourse on social issues. Design/methodology/approach – Using semantic network analysis, it identifies the role of new alternative channels as well as discussing ways of understanding and consuming news content in the changing media environment. Additionally, it focuses on the dominant Twitter communicators who rank high in betweenness centrality. Findings – The results confirmed that traditional news media tend to superficially describe main events and media strikes without comment. They tended to consciously or unconsciously favor media corporations by engendering anxiety and conflict or by restraining reports on the rationales of the strike. Twitter discourse, on the contrary, positively represents the striker's arguments and frequently reveals support of the strike. Research limitations/implications – The data set of this study was specialized, not generalized. However, the findings extend literature relating to the role of journalism and alternative channel. For example, this study indicated that the change of media environment has reinforced partiality of news, including both traditional and alternative channels. Practical implications – The findings imply that the advent of new media does not purely represent a laymen's voice and rather tends to strengthen the partiality of media, including both traditional and new media, beyond selective exposure on content of the receiver. Originality/value – By clarifying the influence of alternative channels, this study suggests the counterpart of traditional journalism in the near future.

Political Support

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (12) ◽  
pp. 1511-1532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henar Criado ◽  
Francisco Herreros
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Individual Variables ◽  
The Government

The analysis of the causes of political support for political institutions has been focused either on one-case studies that stress the relevance of individual variables or cross-national studies that stress the role of institutions. In this article, the authors suggest that to understand the logic of political support, it is necessary to combine both types of explanations. Using evidence from 17 European countries of the 2002 to 2003 European Social Survey data set, the authors show that the effect of the performance of the institution on political support is higher in majoritarian democracies, where the attribution of responsibility for policy outcomes is clear, than in proportional democracies. They also show that the effect of ideology on political support depends on the type of democracy: Those citizens ideologically far from the government will show higher levels of political support in proportional democracies than in majoritarian ones.

scholarly journals The AI doctor will see you now: assessing the framing of AI in news coverage

AI & Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercedes Bunz ◽  
Marco Braghieri
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Hippocratic Oath ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Medical Expert ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Development

AbstractOne of the sectors for which Artificial Intelligence applications have been considered as exceptionally promising is the healthcare sector. As a public-facing sector, the introduction of AI applications has been subject to extended news coverage. This article conducts a quantitative and qualitative data analysis of English news media articles covering AI systems that allow the automation of tasks that so far needed to be done by a medical expert such as a doctor or a nurse thereby redistributing their agency. We investigated in this article one particular framing of AI systems and their agency: the framing that positions AI systems as (1a) replacing and (1b) outperforming the human medical expert, and in which (2) AI systems are personified and/or addressed as a person. The analysis of our data set consisting of 365 articles written between the years 1980 and 2019 will show that there is a tendency to present AI systems as outperforming human expertise. These findings are important given the central role of news coverage in explaining AI and given the fact that the popular frame of ‘outperforming’ might place AI systems above critique and concern including the Hippocratic oath. Our data also showed that the addressing of an AI system as a person is a trend that has been advanced only recently and is a new development in the public discourse about AI.

Framing Public Opinion in Competitive Democracies

2007 ◽  
Vol 101 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-655 ◽  
Author(s):  
DENNIS CHONG ◽  
JAMES N. DRUCKMAN
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Urban Growth ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
The Right ◽  
Extremist Group

What is the effect of democratic competition on the power of elites to frame public opinion? We address this issue first by defining the range of competitive contexts that might surround any debate over a policy issue. We then offer a theory that predicts how audiences, messages, and competitive environments interact to influence the magnitude of framing effects. These hypotheses are tested using experimental data gathered on the opinions of adults and college students toward two policy issues—the management of urban growth and the right of an extremist group to conduct a rally. Our results indicate that framing effects depend more heavily on the qualities of frames than on their frequency of dissemination and that competition alters but does not eliminate the influence of framing. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for the study of public opinion and democratic political debate.

Public Opinion

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devesh Kapur
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Issue Area ◽  
Indian Foreign Policy ◽  
Over Time

This chapter examines the role of public opinion on Indian foreign policy and focuses on four principal questions: One, how informed is the Indian public about foreign policy issues and how have its views been measured? Two, what shapes public opinion on foreign policy issues in India? Who are the key actors and how have they changed over time and issue area? Three, what are the mechanisms that link public opinion to public policy in foreign policy and on what issues has public opinion mattered? And four, what is public opinion about India in other major countries and what does it reveal? Finally the chapter concludes with some observations on public opinion’s interactions with changes in other variables shaping foreign policy, such as the rise of business and a more federal polity.

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