In light of our conversation about the parties, I think it’s worth considering how ideology maps onto party.

Does it make more “sense” for those who fall into the libertarian portion of the Nolan chart to associate with the Democrats or the Republicans? How do you all view the ideological positions offered by each of the two major parties? Does your own position on the Nolan chart lead you to easily affiliate with one of the two major parties?

Response from Liam:

The ideology quiz was pretty spot on. The only thing that I wasn’t a fan of was that they made me have an opinion on things that I don’t really know much – and thus don’t really care much – about. I don’t really use public libraries, so what do I care about whether or not a library in Alabama has a book on evolution or not

Response from Ayli:

While replying to some of the questions I already had a sense of what my results would be. I also noticed that for a majority of my answers, after reading the first statement I immediately strongly agreed with it, without bothering to read the second statement. Although I knew for a fact that my results would not show me as Conservative, they might’ve showed me as a Moderate however (my results said Liberal), since I not only supported government provision of social services and higher welfare, while keeping their hands of social morals and behaviors, but I also shared a conservative outlook with regards to governmental involvement in the economy and business regulation, where the less intervention in the economy the better.

Response from Brett

Modern politicians attempt to paint all issues as black and white, with themselves and their party on the correct side. For this reason, it is easy for modern voters to see which answers correspond with which political party or ideology. Still, the second test (Nolan Chart Survey) seems to do a better job of delving into the complexities of the issues, but a majority of the time it was still obvious which answer represented the “conservative” and “liberal” viewpoints. The first quiz’s (Typology Test) reliance on short answers caused the answers to be more transparent, meaning I could easily differentiate between “liberal” and “conservative”.

One interesting note is that the Nolan Chart Survey was developed by David Nolan, who in the 1970′s was instrumental in the creation of the Libertarian Party of the United States. This could have factored in his framing of the responses, but it is difficult to tell.

Response from Brooke:

I was actually a little surprised by my results on the quiz. It put me further on one side of the scale while I believe I’m more towards the center. Like Mike and Mary, I could tell which answers would give a certain result but I tried to ignore it. However, the results were still a bit incorrect. Then I took the quiz that Mary posted and my results better reflected my political ideology. I took a similar quiz last year to see where I fell on the Nolan Chart and I have almost identical results as last year’s. A lot has changed in the political climate over the past year but I don’t think that it’s had an effect on my beliefs.

Consider the same questions that I asked below.

Also consider what Professor Freedman calls the “admosphere.”

1) Where and when did the ad air? Here’s a link to a Washington Post article discussing the ad itself. A short amount of googling around can turn up information like this. You should try to find similar information in order to support your broader argument.

2) Why does this make sense? What constituency is Hillary appealing to here and does it make sense for her to have aired it where and when she did?

1) What do you notice about this ad?

2) In class today Professor Freedman identified three primary objectives of political ads – persuasion, reinforcement/mobilization of supporters, and demobilization of opponents supporters – which is this ad designed to achieve?

3) Can you link this to Iyengar or Iyengar and Kinder? For example, is priming at work here? How is the argument made in News That Matters linked to the objectives identified by Professor Freedman?

*Update

A student offers this response to my questions above. This is exactly how I think that you all should be thinking about discussing ads in your final papers.

Note that she identifies what she thinks is the goal of the ad maker. This should come early in your papers. Note also that she pays attention to those aspects of ads that Professor Freedman discussed in class. These points should all serve as evidence for the larger argument that you are making.

The first thing I notice about this ad is the music. I think right off the bat any viewer is going to tune in because the music invokes a level of anxiety that danger is nearby, that the viewer needs to be careful, and that the narrator’s message should be seriously considered or else you’re in trouble. The second thing I noticed right away was the man’s wedding ring. The ad makers obviously wanted viewers to concentrate on the ring since the focus of that scene is on his hands (it even zooms in quite closely). As subtle as it may seem to some, perhaps the ad makers were trying to relate the content of the ad as a possibility for any working family man. Both of these aspects amplify the ad’s invocation of negative emotion toward Harvey Gantt.

With that said, I think we can all agree that this is a direct attack on Gantt’s stance on a particular issue. Therefore, in the context of Prof. Freedman’s possible objectives of campaign advertising, this ad was probably designed to demobilize the opponents of Jesse Helms. Clearly, the ad’s explicit message referring to Gantt’s vote supporting Ted Kennedy’s racial quota law is meant to raise a level of concern and doubt regarding Gantt as the best candidate. As Prof. Freedman pointed out in class, while this ad probably would not have completely change the minds of Helms’ opponents, it could have at least gotten them to stay home on election day.

We have moved into our discussion of political advertising and as you all know, one of the topic questions for paper 2 asks for an analysis of ads. As I’ve mentioned in section, the best papers on this topic are those that offer a specific hypothesis about the intent of the ad and then provide a examination of its component parts to illustrate how the ad maker seeks to achieve this outcome. In this way, the best papers draw parallels between the results of Iyengar/Kinder and Iyengar’s experiments and the desired effect of specific ads.

To get you all thinking in these terms, I am listing a few of the most basic terms/concepts that emerge from these experiments. I will also be posting a series of ads that we will discuss in section. The more you all can offer suggestions about what these ads are designed to achieve – both here and in section – the better prepared you will be to write good papers. To that end, I encourage you all to provide info on each of these concepts and to comment as much as possible on the ads that I post.

Terms:
1) agenda setting
2) priming
3) domain specific vs. global views
4) episodic vs. thematic framing
5) individual vs. societal attributions of responsibility

Ad 1:

Remember, you should put yourself in the shoes of the ad maker. What response is (s)he hoping to generate among viewers? How does (s)he work to generate the desired reaction?

Update:
A student provided a link to another ad that’s worth your time. You can find it here.

I think this article from the Washington Post today is the perfect example of Bennet, Lawrence, and Livingston’s argument.

Now that a prominent official has come out against the effort in Afghanistan, that point of view is finally acknowledged in the press.

I think that this is right. In addition, Senator Russ Feingold went on the CBS Sunday show “Face the Nation” last week and made similar arguments. If Bennett et. al. are correct, these voices will be drowned out by the roar of the Washington consensus. We’ll need to wait and see what happens but I hope that you all continue paying attention.

2) This week we begin our discussion of media coverage of campaigns by reading Patterson, Hershey, and Farnsworth. I want to spend most of our time thinking about one theme that runs through each work: the role of frames.

To begin this discussion, I am posting a series of news clips that I think highlight the role of frames and how they change through the campaign (as discussed by Hershey/Farnsworth). You should think about what frames are at work here, how they change, and what they say about coverage of campaigns:

Clip One: ABC round-table discussion of Sarah Palin days after the Republican Convention (September 7, 2008);

Clip Two: The widely seen reaction to Palin’s September 24, 2008 interview with Katie Couric:

Clip Three: Election night analysis of the “Palin Effect:”

The most frequently cited reason for this phenomenon is “indexing.” Put simply, the press will not report on the argument for complete withdrawal because nobody with institutional power or the capacity to draw press attention is advocating this position.

You may or may not agree with this point just as you may agree with the idea that complete withdrawal is both a) out of the question; and b) potentially disastrous. The issue is that this perspective is quickly becoming the minority position. Indeed, a recent CNN poll found the following:

According to the poll, 59 percent of people questioned opposed sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan with 39 percent in favor. Of the 59 percent opposed, 28 percent want Washington to withdraw all U.S troops, 21 percent are calling for a partial American pullout, and 8 percent say the number of troops should remain the same.

In other words, nearly 60% oppose more troops and 49% of those want to begin some kind of withdrawal. In light of these numbers does the argument in When The Press Fails appear even more compelling? How is it that with 6 in 10 Americans opposed to the war – and a near majority of those favoring some kind of withdrawal – we are still without a credible counter-narrative to the “more troops vs. status quo” debate?

2) In today’s lecture, Professor Freedman raised the issue of war-reporting from journalists who are “on the ground.” I highly recommend this almost unbelievable 5 part series from New York Times reporter David Rohde. Rohde traveled to Afghanistan in an effort to provide a report on the Taliban. Once there, he was kidnapped, held hostage for 7 months, and only recently escaped from his captors.

3) I’ve noted that a number of you are currently taking (or have taken) classes in the psychology department. As you may have noted, there is a significant amount of overlap between the issues we cover here – how people respond to the news, how people act on these responses, etc. – that overlap with psychological factors. If you are one of those psych students (or are otherwise interested in the psychological impact of news or propaganda), I recommend this 4 part BBC documentary called “The Century of the Self.” It serves as a fascinating look at the development of modern propaganda methods and their incorporation into the daily functioning of our democratic system.

A preview:

So what do we have? A media that predominantly bases its stories on what it is fed because it has to. Ever-leaner staffing, compressed news cycles, and access journalism all conspire to drive reporters to focus on the “must cover” news, which is to a large degree influenced by the parties that initiate the story. And that means they are increasingly in an echo chamber, spending so much time with the influential sources they feel they must cover that they start to be swayed by them. It is less intense, but not dissimilar to the effect achieved when reporters are embedded in military units. The journalists often wind up adopting the views of the people they associate with frequently (I am sure readers will add more nefarious theories in comments, but the point here is a simple: an up the center description of what has happened to the media shows it has fallen under the sway of powerful interests).

*Note: For those still looking for a good paper topic, examining coverage of either the financial crisis, the bailout, or the impending “recovery” would make for an interesting analysis.

I also recommend this (long) New York Times Magazine profile of General Stanley McChrystal – the General heading up our efforts in Afghanistan.

Has anybody seen this story in the mainstream press? Thoughts on this decision?