Publication
Title
What draws politicians' attention? An experimental study of issue framing and its effect on individual political elites
Author
Abstract
What politicians devote attention to, is an important question as political attention is a precondition of policy change. We use an experimental design to study politicians attention to incoming information and deploy it among large samples of elected politicians in three countries: Belgium, Canada, and Israel. Our sample includes party leaders, ministers and regular members of parliament. These elites were confronted with short bits of summary information framed in various ways and were then asked how likely it was that they would read the full information. We test for three frames: conflict, political conflict, and responsibility. We find that framing moderates the effect of messages on politicians attention to information. Politicians react more strongly (i.e., they devote more attention) to political conflict frames than to non-political conflict frames and they react stronger to political responsibility attributions than to non-political responsibility attributions. Conflict frames attract more attention than consensus frames only from members of opposition parties. Political conflict frames attract more attention from government party politicians. These effects occur largely across issues and across the three countries.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Political behavior. - New York
Related dataset(s)
Publication
New York : 2018
ISSN
0190-9320
DOI
10.1007/S11109-017-9413-9
Volume/pages
40 :3 (2018) , p. 547-569
ISI
000442002500001
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (open access)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Project info
Information-processing by individual political actors. The determinants of exposure, attention and action in a comparative perspective (INFOPOL).
Information-processing by individual political actors. The determinants of exposure, attention and action.
Publication type
Subject
Law 
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 05.09.2017
Last edited 09.10.2023
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