Mr. Popularity

In their article "Can a Poll Affect the Public's Perception of a Candidates Traits", Hardy and Jamison argue that polls are self serving, in that their conclusions are often parroted by the consuming public. In other words, the conclusions reached by the polls cause a shift towards that polls conclusions. Is the same thing true when the media begins associating phrases like "unpopular" with "War" and Iraq". Does the perception that a majority feels a certain way reenforce the actual numbers of that perceived majority? That is the question with which this post will deal.

Hardy the Los Angeles Times June 2004 poll as a case study. The poll showed that 58% of respondents viewed President Bush as stubborn. Subsequently, there was a spike in the long term ANES poll on the question of Bush's stubbornness. The authors argued that this spike was caused by the realease of the Los Angeles Time Poll. They characterized the general trend as follows:

The integration of priming and classical agenda-setting has led researchers
to develop a two-level theory of agenda-setting. The first, the attention level,
deals exclusively with objects sucb as a public figure, a public issue, an insti-
tution, or "anything else that is the focus of attention" (McCombs 2005.
p. 160). The second, the attribute level, deals with that object's characteristics
and traits. For example, in the 2004 campaign. President Bush was a first-
level agenda object, while his image and character traits made up the attribute
agenda. As McCombs explains, "Attribute agenda-setting is the influence
of the descriptions in the press on the public's image of the candidate"
(McCombs 2005, p. 161). In sum, the media both set the agenda by increasing
the salience of certain issues and political actors and provide the hasis for the
assessment of them (Jacobs and Shapiro 1994; Pan and Kosicki 1997; Weaver
etal. 1981).

Can we trace this phenomenon in the Iraq War? Did the media reenforce a perception that the war in Iraq was an unpopular venture, much like the Los Angeles Times Poll reenforced the idea that President Bush is stubborn? This question requires much research, but here is some data that can at least put us in the ballpark. First is the Gallup Poll that tracked answers to the question: "Was the War in Iraq a Mistake". Second is a Nexis search for the period when the majority of Americans in the poll siding one way or the other fluctuated, the year before, and the year immediately after. If the media was not responsible for reenforcing the perception that the Iraq war was unpopular, we should expect to see a steady increase in the number of results over three years, in line with public opinion. In other words, the media should not report the war in Iraq as unpopular before it really was. Any other pattern demands further analysis.

What does the data tell us?

The year 2005 is crucial. According to Gallup, January 9th 2005 was the first time a majority of the public thought the Iraq War was a mistake. December 11th 2005 was the last time a majority thought it was not.

A Nexis search of major U.S Newspapers and wire services reveals 1917 references to "unpopular" "Iraq" and "War" between those two dates. Between January 7, 2005 and January 7th 2004- a period when the Iraq War was never viewed as a mistake by the a majority of the public- there where 2250 hits for the three phrases. Between December 11th 2005 and December 11th 2006- a period where the Iraq war was never viewed favorably by the public- there where over 3000 results.

The data is inconclusive, but is defiantly grounds for further analysis. Most important, the year preceding the actual unpopularity of the Iraq War had over 2250 hits for the choice words. This is amazing for a war that had yet to become numerically unpopular! This figure seems to indicate that the media preempted the unpopularity of the war. There are however, significant reasons not to use this data to jump to conclusions. First and foremost, although proof that media primed the public that the war in Iraq is unpopular is a prerequisite towards claiming the media where somewhat responsible for the increase in negative public perception of the war, it is not proof. Second, their are numerous contexts these words can appear and not give the connotation that the War was actually unpopular in the U.S. Examples include: "The War is unpopular in the Ukraine," and "The increasingly unpopular war." Third, there is a dip during the period surveyed in 2005 when the war was fluctuating in popularity. If the media was responsible for priming the public, the amount of references should have increased or at least held steady (although that period is shorter then a year, it still is slightly off proportionality). However, the figure for 2004 demands that this topic be re-visited.