Framing the “Others”: Examining positive and negative framing effects on attitudes toward immigration in neutral news media and partisan sources Open Access
Liu, Muzhi (Spring 2023)
Abstract
Framing has been increasingly used by political elites as a tactic to influence public opinions toward immigration. Motivated by the widespread use of framing, my paper intends to study the impacts of framing on public attitudes toward immigrants, public attitudes toward immigration policies, and public willingness to participate in political actions for or against immigration. Using a survey experiment, I compare the impact of economic threat frames versus cultural threat frames, positive frames versus negative frames, and frames from a neutral source versus frames from a partisan-leaning source. My research aims to reconcile the two main domains of literature in the field of political communication – racial priming and general framing, as this research examines if the findings on the factors that determine the relative effectiveness of framing – tone, source, and moderators – can be applied to the context of immigration priming with a racial overtone.
This research finds: (1) Overall, negative frames are more effective than positive frames. Cultural frames do not demonstrate a consistent difference in effects than economic frames. While the neutral frames that come from the Associated Press steadily showcase a larger impact than the Republican frames, the neutral AP frames do not show a consistent difference in impacts than Democratic frames. (2) Liberals display a decline in their level of favorableness toward immigration in response to an exposure to any type of frames, either positive or negative, neutral or partisan. Conservatives are more persuade by negative frames and less persuaded by positive frames. Moderates generally display framing effects in alignment with the tone – either positive or negative - of the frames.
Table of Contents
Table of Content
Introduction 1
Literature Review 3
Portrayal of immigrants since 1870 3
Long-term factors that shape immigration attitudes 6
Long-term memory activated by situational triggers - framing 9
Racial priming in general and in the immigration context 10
Effects of negative versus positive framing 13
Relative effectiveness of different types of framing 15
Understudied areas in racial priming and potential contribution of this thesis 17
Theory and Hypotheses 19
Two pillars of my theory – racial priming and general framing theory 20
Negative framing vs. positive framing 21
Economic framing vs. cultural framing 22
Neutral framing vs. partisan framing 24
Political ideology’s mediating effects on framing 25
Research design 28
Statistical analysis 34
Descriptive statistics 34
Framing effects overall 38
Framing effects with people’s political ideology controlled 51
Discussion 58
Conclusion 63
Appendix:
Appendix A: Survey Questionnaire 69
Appendix B: Tables and Figures 70
Reference 73
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