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The purpose of this paper is to assess media impact on voter issue positions. This assessment is based on measuring the degree to which improvement in voters' issue awareness during the 1972 presidential election was positively related to voters' exposure to three mass communications channels--television network news, daily newspapers, and televised political advertising.

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This standard for judging media impact is precise, but obviously limited. Nonetheless, we believe it is a reasonable standard because both political candidates and media representatives

claim to give high priority to communicating issue information during presidential election campaigns.

Data Sources

Our data come from two sources.

The first is a panel survey of

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more than 600 voters, who were interviewed at both the start and conclusion of the 1972 general election. The survey provides information about voters' media exposure and changes in their issue awareness. The second is a content analysis of all weeknight television network newscasts and all televised political ads broadcast during the period September 18 through November 6, 1972. The content analysis provides systematic information on the issue messages that were being communicated to the voters.

Changes in Voters' Issue Awareness

Changes in voters' issue awareness were determined by changes in their issue beliefs. An "issue belief" refers to the connection a

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voter sees between a candidate and an issue. For example, a voters view that George McGovern favored an immediate pull-out of all U.S. troops from Vietnam would be an issue belief.

We measured voters' issue beliefs by having our respondents indicate where they thought Richard Nixon and George McGovern stood on a wide range of major political issues. Voters indicated their beliefs by responding to seven-point scales such as the following:

George McGovern favors an immediate pull-out
of all U.S. troops from Vietnam

LIKELY:

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: UNLIKELY

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We had our respondents mark these scales during both an initial interview in September and a final pre-election interview in November. Because our respondents indicated their beliefs in both September and November,,we can determine whether their awareness of a candidate's issue stand increased, stayed the same, or decreased during the general election campaign. Consider, for example, responses to the scale above, George McGovern's actual position was that he favored an immediate pull-out of U.S. troops. Now, if between September and November, a voter's belief about McGovern's stand on Vietnam withdrawal moved toward the LIKELY end of the scale, his awareness of McGovern's stand improved. If he marked the same point in both September and November, his issue awareness stayed the same. And finally, if his belief moved toward the UNLIKELY end of the scale, his issue awareness of McGovern's stand decreased.

In the tables subsequently presented, we report issue belief change within categories of media exposure. This change is based on the movement of all the voters in each category. To arrive at the

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number, we first computed the sum of voters' movements toward the correct end of the scale, and the sum of their movements toward the incorrect end. Using these totals, we then computed the, percentage of total change that is correct and incorrect. Overall change, then, is simply the difference between the percentage correct change and percentage incorrect change. Precisely, the formula for change in issue awareness is:*

Correct change

Incorrect change
Total change

Change = Total change

Clearly, if a greater voter change was toward the correct end, the result was positive. If more was toward the incorrect end, the result was negative. Further, the larger the number, the more overwhelmingly the movement was in either the correct or incorrect direc

tion.

In our analyses, we examined changes in voters' awareness on 18 5 issue positions. The issue positions are:

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*In the tables, the change figures have been multiplied by 100 to express the results in percentage differences.

McGovern's issue stand on:

level of military spending
amnesty for draft evaders
taxes on higher incomes
immediate Vietnam withdrawal
political corruption

This list includes all of the issues measured in our survey which received at least some serious attention during the campaign.

For three reasons there are more Nixon items than McGovern items. First, some items refer to the performance of the Nixon administration (handling of China, Russia, the Vietnam war, inflation and unemployment) for which there are no analogous McGovern items. Second, for inclusion on the list it was necessary for the candidate to have stated a reasonably clear position on the issue, and McGovern's stand on several issues was ambiguous. Third, McGovern's campaign was directed as

much at attacking Nixon's record as it was at articulating his own policy stands.

Media Exposure

Since the research question is the extent to which the level of media exposure influenced changes in voters' issue beliefs, our measures of voter exposure to television network news, daily newspapers, and televised political advertising need to be explained.

Television news exposure was measured by the frequency of watching weeknight television network newscasts. Respondents who reported

watching the news less than four nights per week were placed in the low exposure category. Those who reported watching four or more nights per week were placed in the high category. The result was that approximately 50 percent of our respondents were placed in each cate

gory.

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Exposure to televised political advertising was measured by using program-by-program logs to estimate the amount of time each respondent spent viewing television between the hours of 7 and 11 p.m., the period during which most political spots were aired.

Respondents who

reported watching television about one hour or less on an average evening were placed in the low exposure category; those viewing more than about one hour per evening were placed in the high exposure category. Using this cutoff point, 69 percent of the respondents fell in the high advertising exposure category and 31 percent in the low

category.

The Issue Content of the Media

Exposure to the media can be expected to influence voters' issue awareness only on the issues which the media give attention. During the 1972 election, the mass media extensively covered some issues and almost totally neglected others. Consequently, we will look for media impact only on the issues which received heavy coverage from one or more of the three communication channels.

Television network news gave heavy coverage to only two issues-Nixon's handling of the Vietnam war and charges of his involvement in political corruption and favoritism (see Table 1). This coverage was contained largely in reporting on the Paris peace talks and in stories about the watergate incident and the Soviet wheat deal.

Four other issue positions received as many as five explicit mentions and at least two minutes of air time: Nixon's position on the level of government spending and his handling of inflation, and George McGovern's positions on military spending and Vietnam withdrawal.

The messages broadcast on television news were clear and consis

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