Communication · Executive Insight Brief · 130
Same belief. Different weight.
Repeated issue emphasis can change the weight of a consideration without changing the underlying belief
Premise
People rarely evaluate a leader, government, candidate, or policy by consulting every belief they hold. They use a subset of considerations that feel accessible and relevant at the moment of judgment. Political priming explains how repeated media emphasis can make an issue count more heavily in that evaluation.
Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder adapted the broader psychological concept of priming to political communication in News That Matters. Their claim is narrower than saying that media tell people what to think. A person can retain the same opinion about the economy or public safety while changing how strongly that opinion influences an overall assessment.
What the model is: Priming (Media/Political Priming) in Knowledge →
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- FamilyModel
- CategoryEffects, Biases & Phenomena
- DomainMedia, Publics & Society
What these mean
Editorial orientation · Family
Model
In this series, Model names the editorial family primarily used to understand and explain communication: theories, frameworks, effects, traditions, principles and other conceptual resources. It is an umbrella for a route into the field, not a claim that every included object is a predictive model.
Editorial orientation · Category
Effects, Biases & Phenomena
Identifies a bounded pattern in judgment, behavior or communication and the conditions under which it appears. Naming the pattern makes a recurring difficulty recognizable; it does not make the pattern inevitable or supply a complete explanation.