Issue Framing and Public Opinion on Government Spending

The issue of government spending provides an interesting context for testing issue-framing effects in American public opinion. Competing partisan elites clearly portray the spending issue in different ways: Republicans tend to focus on broad, general appeals, while Democrats aim at more specific for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of political science 2000-10, Vol.44 (4), p.750-767
Main Author: Jacoby, William G.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Child care
Coefficients
Financial policy
Frame Analysis
Framing effects
Government
Government Spending
Opinion change
Partisanship
Political attitudes
Political campaigns
Political communication
Political opinions
Political Parties
Political partisanship
Political science
Public assistance programs
Public expenditure
Public finance
Public Opinion
Self interest
U.S.A
United States of America
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Summary:The issue of government spending provides an interesting context for testing issue-framing effects in American public opinion. Competing partisan elites clearly portray the spending issue in different ways: Republicans tend to focus on broad, general appeals, while Democrats aim at more specific forms of programmatic expenditures. Their differing arguments undoubtedly arise because the varied issue frames generate different kinds of responses. This study uses data from the 1992 CPS National Election Study to examine the preceding hypothesis. The results from the empirical analysis show that public opinion on government spending does, in fact, vary markedly with the presentation of the issue. This framing effect is powerful enough to induce individual-level opinion change. And, framing effects arise because varying presentations of the government-spending issue activate different sets of influences on citizens' issue attitudes. These findings have broad implications concerning both the magnitude of framing effects and the explicitly political nature of the issue-framing process.
ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.2307/2669279