ESTADO DE FLUJO DE CAJA

Nearly one hundred years ago W alter Lippman (1922) explicated the process by which we construct over-simplified representations of the world outside to make sense of our complex political environment, and his theories about the mediatization of politics continue to inform our understanding of the media’s political effects today (Rogers, 2004; Strömbäck & Esser, 2009). Following Lippmann’s development of the stereotype model in political psychology, many other branches of the social sciences also underwent a paradigm shift away from the stimulus-response or behaviorism school of thought toward more detailed analysis of our cognitive maps and the effects of information on them. By the middle of the 20th century, much social science research focused on the interactions between the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information and its effects on our attitudes and behavior. For instance, Bartlett (1932) examined the impact of information on internal memory structures and laid the groundwork for the development of schema theory and the results of Klapper’s (1960) research pointed toward more limited effects of media messages. In Public Opinion, Lippmann (1922) provided a mass society perspective on media effects when he argued that most people were too self-centered and focused on the mundane aspects of their daily life to devote much energy to the consumption, processing, and analysis of news and political information. To deal with this complex environment, he suggested that we construct pictures in our heads to populate our pseudo-environment of subjective, oversimplified political images. These stereotypes, then, act as organizing guides and heuristic shortcuts in our political information processing. Thus, while we may all live in the same world, we may think and feel about it in very different ways.

Since the information used to construct the pictures in our heads is provided by the media, Lippmann contended that this information also constructs our reality by establishing the basis upon which public opinion is formed. The impact of this mediatization of the news in regard to foreign affairs was analyzed by Cohen (1963) who first articulated the thesis of the agenda-setting function of the media when he stated that the media may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but they are “stunningly successful in telling people what to think about” (p.13). Cohen refined Lippmann’s mass society perspective into a limited effects framework and established a basis upon which the agenda- setting hypothesis could be tested. M cCombs and Shaw (1972) translated Cohen’s comment into a prediction that topics emphasized by the amount and prominence of news media coverage would also be the topics people think are most important.

Cognitive Effects of Interest Group Advertising

At present, television advertising remains the dominant form of communication between candidates and voters in both national and most state-wide elections despite continuing advances in communication technologies and the Internet (Hindman 2009; Kaid, Fernandes, & Painter 2011). The results of early investigations into the effects of televised political advertising evidenced that exposure to political spots may increase voters’ issue knowledge and understanding of candidates’ policy positions at stake in the election (Atkin & Heald, 1976; Hofstetter & Strand, 1983; Martinelli & Chaffee, 1995). There is also abundant research suggesting that televised political candidate advertising may influence the salience of issues at stake in the election by both the media and the public at large (Herrnson & Patterson, 2000; Kaid, 1976; Roberts & M cCombs, 1994; W illiams, Shapiro, & Cutbirth, 1983).

More specifically related to interest group campaigns, D onovan, Tolbert, & Smith (2008) conducted a content analysis of newspaper reports and Campbell and Monson (2008) analyzed direct mail efforts to verify that the saliency of same-sex marriage was greater in states with marriage protection amendment campaigns than in states without such campaigns. The results of these studies provide support for the notion that the issues raised by interest group campaigns are more salient in states allowing for these direct democracy measures. While there is only one previous investigation into the effects of interest group campaign advertising extant in the literature, the results suggest these ads may significantly impact voting behavior and electoral outcomes (Stratmann, 2006). Based on the results of these analyses, we propose an experimental test of the agenda-setting effects of exposure to interest group advertisements. Therefore, we predict:

H1: Exposure to the interest group campaign advertisement will have an agenda- setting effect by increasing the saliency of marriage as an issue.

Lippmann (1922) argued that the media, by providing the information upon which public opinion is formed, affected politics in ways transcending the saliency of particular issues. M ore recently, social psychologists contend that increasing the saliency of an issue may make it more immediately accessible and therefore it may be applied to the interpretation of subsequent information — even in unrelated contexts (Kunda, 1999). In this manner, the agenda-setting effect of the media not only influences the salience of an issue, but it may also prime the issue as a criterion for evaluating candidates (Weaver, Graber, McCombs, & Eyal, 1981; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). While this agenda-setting effect referred to as priming does not result in attitude change or persuasion per se, it may “alter the weight voters assign to issues through varying the salience of considerations” (Nicholson, 2005, p. 19). Therefore, we inquire:

RQ1: W hat are the effects of exposure to the interest group campaign advertisement on candidate evaluation?