529 / 658
527
Friday, November 11
1 6 : 0 0 – 1 7 : 3 0
POL09
Perceptions, Participation, and Attitudes
PP 351
The Economy, the News and the Public: A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Economic News on Economic Evaluations
and Expectations
A. Damstra
1
, M. Boukes
1
1
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam School of Communication Research, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Extant research finds that economic coverage affects economic sentiments, above and beyond the impact of real-world economic indicators (e.g. Soroka
et al, 2015; Hollanders & Vliegenthart, 2011). Economic sentiments, on their turn, are found to be a crucial predictor of political attitudes and behaviour,
such as presidential approval (Nadeau et al, 1999) and eventually vote choice (Hetherington, 1996). While there is an extensive literature supporting
the presence of these relationships generally, not much is known about the exact media characteristics that cause this or the conditionality of these effects:
One may expect the media to have a stronger impact in times of crisis than under regular circumstances. This paper employs a longitudinal analysis to
study the impact of economic news on economic perceptions and political preferences. We test the interrelationships between news coverage, economic
perceptions, and political attitudes, while controlling for real-world economic indicators. Additionally, we test the hypothesis that media effects are stron‑
ger during an economic crisis by including this as a moderator in the analyses. To learn more about the mechanisms driving these relationships, we use
an extensive dataset. Instead of looking at media coverage generally as most previous research has done, we take a step further and distinguish between
general economic news and economic coverage in which political key actors play a role. Thereby, we examine whether the impact of economic coverage on
political attitudes, such as governmental support, is dependent on the direct presence of political key actors in the text. Second, we disentangle the concept
of economic sentiments into four subcomponents based on two dimensions: personal versus national and retrospective versus prospective. This generates
four operationalizations: an evaluation and expectation of one's personal economic situation, and an evaluation and expectation regarding the national
economic situation. This disentanglement contributes to a better understanding of the interrelationship between economic news and public attitudes and
goes beyond the reliance on a general measure of consumer confidence as normally employed.We use data from the Netherlands in the time period running
from 1998 to 2015. Selecting this time frame generates a dataset in which economic variables show considerable variation, and it covers periods of both
economic prosperity and severe downturn. We hypothesize that the interrelationship between coverage and perceptions is stronger in times of crisis than it
is during prosperous times, because in a crisis context people are willing to update their economic expectations more frequently (Doms & Morin, 2004). We
rely on Vector Autoregression analyses to test the over-time relationships between all variables. By disentangling our central concepts into specific subcom‑
ponents (e.g., specific types of media content, particular kinds of economic perceptions), we cast a clear light on the mechanisms driving the relationships
between them. Moreover, the longitudinal design allows us to test how the functioning of this triangle between media, economic perceptions and political
attitudes differs in times of economic crisis versus prosperous times. Altogether, we give insight in some of the most crucial media processes that are shaping
today's political landscape.
PP 352
Appreciate or Ignore? The Perception of Disappointed Citizens That Manifest Themselves Outside the Participation Process
C. Bleijenberg
1
, R.J. Renes
1
, N. Aarts
2
1
University of Applied Sciences Utrecht, Faculty of Communication and Journalism, Utrecht, Netherlands
2
Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands
In today's society government and citizens are increasingly working together to solve social problems. Participatory processes involve assumptions, ex‑
pectations and constraints which in turn lead to all kinds of intended and unintended effects (e.g. Van Herzele & Aarts, 2013; Turnhout, et al, 2010). One
of the unintended effects is the exclusion of certain actors, including citizens who are disappointed in the nature and course of the participation process
(Turnhout et al, 2010). These disappointed citizens often use both informal and formal legal channels to influence policy development and implementation
outside the framework of the participation process. From the idea that participation is intended to include perceptions from as many citizens involved,
the relevant question is how participants in a participatory process deal with disappointed citizens. Our main question is: what is the perception of par‑
ticipants, both civil servants and citizens, of disappointed citizens manifesting themselves outside the participation process? And what can be said about
the effect on the course of the participation process? Theoretical framework In conversations people make sense of the world around them. The reverse is
also true: "Realities are constructed and maintained in and through conversations”(Ford, 1999, p 483.). Framing is the way we look at situations and helps
us to give meaning to the complex world around us by as Entman (1993: 52) puts it ‘making some aspects of a perceived reality more salient’. In this paper
we use the concept of interactional framing in which frames are constructed and presented in interaction (Aarts & VanWoerkum, 2006; Dewulf et al, 2009;
Dewulf & Construction, 2012). Which perspective (frame) people choose depends on their goals, in terms of content, process and relationship (Aarts, 2009;
Dewulf et al., 2009). Method and DataWe collected data from consultation groups in two municipalities in the Netherlands. The first group was situated in
the context of the concentration of several cultural facilities in one historical building; the second in the context of the establishment of a hostel for drug
addicts. The meetings and interviews were audio-taped, transcribed and analyzed using Atlas. Ti. Preliminary results In both cases the results show that
the activities of the disappointed citizens played a major role in the participation process. In the first group these citizens were seen as a nuisance and mostly
ignored. In the second group their critique is being appreciated and listened to. We found that a negative perception increased the distance to the disap‑
pointed citizens allowing them to become a threat to the participation process. An open approach contributed to reconciliation, with a beneficial effect on
the course of the participation process.