Priming Personal Perceptions: News Media and the Salience of Personal and National Issue Perceptions in Political Evaluations.

TL;DRAbstract

Researchers have long been concerned with whether and how individuals link personal interests or concerns to their political evaluations. Previous research shows that the media can influence both personal and national perceptions about political issues as well as the relative weight each has in national political evaluations (Mutz, 1998). However, the conditions under which this phenomenon occurs have not been well delineated. The goal of this dissertation is to examine the conditions under which the news media can link perceptions of personal and national concerns to evaluations of the president and national government by focusing on different types of content and differences among individuals. News priming (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987) is used as the explanation for how information should influence the weight given to personal or national perceptions in national political evaluations. Moreover, the study examines the dynamics of the priming effect by taking into account knowledge, partisa

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