News coverage affects attitudes with a peak two-week memory window.
Evidence
Note that our specification, taken literally, suggests that respondents have zero memory of events before the window of the Gallup survey in which they participated. While this assumption is certainly incorrect, we know of no work that calibrates the proper look-back window and rate of decay of current events on respondents’ attitudes and opinions (and of course choosing the rate of decay that maximizes our results would have been improper). We have explored robustness of our results to varying respondents’ “memories.” The coefficient on South × Articlecount and its significance increases as we add previous days to the window up to about two weeks, and then starts to fall. — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 622
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to agenda-setting and media-effects literature; also the appeal-broadcast study in the reading list about how campaign media matters. — connects to: Short experimental news exposure measurably shifts perceived problem importance; Dynamic, time-series tests confirm that media attention shapes public concern — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1445; News coverage prominence shapes issue weighting independent of persuasion (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Dynamic, time-series tests confirm that media attention shapes public concern
#corroborates(0.90) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1445 - Short experimental news exposure measurably shifts perceived problem importance
#corroborates(0.88) - News coverage devoted to a problem increases public belief in its importance
#corroborates(0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1472 - Media priming affects only opinions directly implicated by the story
#qualifies(0.85) - News coverage prominence shapes issue weighting independent of persuasion
#expands(0.82) - Priming works only when news frames closely correspond to the opinions that get weighted
#qualifies(0.82) - News coverage prominence shifts how heavily people weigh issues in political judgments
#corroborates(0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1404 - Attitude changes from majority pressure are quick but temporary and shallow
#corroborates(0.78) - News revelations can shift how opinions weight judgments without shifting the opinions themselves
#corroborates(0.75) - How media frame an event shapes the audience’s attitude toward it.
#corroborates(0.75) — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 177 - Alert viewers are better able to resist media’s agenda-setting priorities
#qualifies(0.75) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1509 - News media bias in agenda-setting overrides assumptions of constant effects
#complicates(0.72) - Minority attitudes toward another minority are doubly mediated by media and memory
#expands(0.72) — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 1723 - Media exaggeration shapes public perception of events significantly.
#exemplifies(0.70) — Cohen, Stanley, Folk devils and moral panics, 185 - Media exposure to Muslim-related issues spikes negative attitudes.
#corroborates(0.70) — Goleen Samari, Islamophobia and Public Health in the…, 20