Television News, Mexico's 2000 Elections and Media Effects In

Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects in Emerging Democracies

CHAPPELL LAWSON AND JAMES A. MCCANN*

On the basis of an analysis of a four-wave panel survey, we argue that exposure to television news had significant, substantial effects on both attitudes and vote choices in Mexico’s watershed presidential election of 2000. These findings support the contention, implicit in some research on political communication, that the magnitude of media effects varies with certain features of the political context. In particular, television influence in electoral campaigns may be substantially larger in emerging democratic systems.

In contrast to ‘small effects’ models of media influence in electoral campaigns, we argue that television coverage had a powerful impact on Mexico’s 2000 presidential election. Exposure to broadcasts on the Televisioń Azteca network dampened enthusiasm for Francisco Labastida, nominee of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). Meanwhile, the initially deleterious effects of newscasts from the Televisa network on opinions of Cuauhte´moc Ca´rdenas disappeared when coverage of that candidate improved markedly during the second half of the campaign. Exposure to television news also affected political behaviour (i.e., vote choice). For instance, viewing Televisioń Azteca was associated with substantial increases in the likelihood of supporting victorious opposition candidate Vicente Fox and substantial declines in the likelihood of supporting Labastida. Televisa news coverage, by contrast, had a much more muted effect. Television coverage was not the only, nor even the most important, influence on Mexican voters in 2000; widespread disenchantment with corruption and economic mismanagement, political reforms during the 1990s that levelled the electoral playing field, Fox’s charismatic appeal and Labastida’s lack thereof were also crucial ingredients in the final outcome.1 But news coverage was a crucial factor in shaping voter attitudes and behaviour.

* Department of Political Science at, respectively, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Purdue University. The authors are indebted to Chistopher Achen, Steve Ansolabehere, Brandice Canes-Wrone, Jorge Domıńguez, Pippa Norris, Alejandro Poire´, David Sanders, Jim Snyder, Gadi Wolfsfeld, four anonymous reviewers from the Journal and their collaborators in the Mexico 2000 Panel Study for advice and comments on earlier drafts. Organizers of the Mexico 2000 Panel Study include Miguel Basan˜ez, Roderic Camp, Wayne Cornelius, Jorge Domıńguez, Federico Este´vez, Joseph Klesner, Chappell Lawson (Principal Investigator), Beatriz Magaloni, James McCann, Alejandro Moreno, Pablo Para´s and Alejandro Poire´. Support for the Mexico 2000 Panel Study was provided by the National Science Foundation (SES-9905703) and Reforma newspaper. Technical details on the Mexico 2000 Panel Study, as well as copies of the survey instruments, are available at: http://web.mit.edu/polisci/Faculty/C.Lawson.html. The authors are also grateful to Reforma newspaper, the Federal Electoral Institute and Edmundo Berumen for providing data from their analyses of Mexican television coverage, as well as to the Mexican Academy of Human Rights for providing recordings of the news programmes with which to conduct their own content analysis. The bulk of this analysis was performed by Mariana Sanz. 1 Jorge I. Domıńguez and Chappell Lawson, eds, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election: Candidates, Voters, and the Presidential Campaign of 2000 (Stanford and La Jolla, Calif.: Stanford University Press and the Center for U.S-Mexican Studies, University of California at San Diego, 2003). 2 LAWSON AND McCANN

These findings have potentially broad implications for the study of elections and political communication outside of the developed West. Among other things, they suggest the limited transportability of ‘small effects’ models of campaign influence to emerging democracies. They thus lend support to the notion, implicit in some research on political communication, that the magnitude of media influence varies with certain features of the political context. The first section of this article briefly reviews the literature on media effects in elections. This section suggests that media influence on voter’s attitudes and behaviour depends on specific aspects of the political and informational context. Where these aspects are less pronounced, as in Mexican elections, the potential scope for media effects is substantially greater. The second section evaluates television news coverage in Mexico during the 2000 campaign, drawing on data from the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Reforma newspaper, and a detailed content analysis of the two leading nightly news programmes. This latter dataset includes measures of visual tone, previously neglected in much of the media effects literature.2 All told, content analysis reveals that different television audiences received somewhat different cues at different points in the campaign. In general, the country’s largest network (Televisa) remained more sympathetic towards the ruling party than its newer rival (Televisioń Azteca). But campaign coverage, especially Televisa’s coverage of Ca´rdenas, also shifted over the course of the race. The third section analyses the effects of television coverage on public opinion towards the three main candidates. Using data from the Mexico 2000 Panel Study, this section shows that large differences in the tone of coverage of the main candidates shaped relative appraisals of those candidates. Where reporting was balanced, the effects of exposure to television news were quite small; however, substantial discrepancies in the tone of coverage were typically reflected in public opinion. The fourth section turns to the impact of television coverage on political behaviour – specifically, self-reported vote choice in the election. Exposure to network news on Televisioń Azteca eroded support for Labastida, mainly to the benefit of Fox. The effects of Televisa coverage, however, were modest. The fifth section addresses potential objections to our analysis of media effects. In essence, this section comprises various tests designed to demonstrate the robustness of the findings summarized above. We conclude that the same results hold when we employ different clusters of control variables, apply newer methods for handling missing data, control for measurement error, take into account audience self-selection to ideologically congruent media outlets, and allow for switching between television networks over the course of the campaign. The final section briefly considers the implications of these findings for the study of political communication. For the most part, current arguments about the effects of television news coverage on partisan preferences and voting behaviour are based on the experience of established democracies in the developed world, such as the United States,

2 See H. M. Kepplinger, ‘Visual Biases in Television Campaign Coverage’, Communication Research,9 (1982), 432–46; H. M. Kepplinger, ‘Content Analysis and Reception Analysis’, American Behavioral Scientist, 33 (1989), 175–82; Doris A. Graber, ‘Content and Meaning; What’s It All About?’ American Behavioral Scientist, 33 (1989), 144–52; Doris A. Graber, ‘Television News without Pictures’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 4 (1987), 74–8; S. F. Geiger and Byron Reeves, ‘The Effects of Visual Structure and Content Emphasis on the Evaluation and Memory for Political Candidates’, in Frank Biocca, ed., Television and Political Advertising, Vol. 1 (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1991), pp. 125–44. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 3

Canada, England and Germany.3 Conclusions from such studies may not travel well to emerging democracies in the developing world. In these countries, we argue, the potential scope for media effects on public opinion and voting behaviour is much greater.

MEXICO AND THE MINIMAL EFFECTS PARADIGM For almost ﬁfty years, scholars in the United States have maintained a healthy scepticism about the effects of television news coverage on partisan preferences and voting behaviour. Although media exposure might heighten public consideration of particular issues, help to frame political debate, and shape the opinions of uninformed or undecided voters, their direct impact remains fairly limited.4 In particular, the persuasive inﬂuence of television coverage during general election campaigns ranges from modest to minimal.5

3 Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: John Wiley, 1960); Thomas E. Patterson and Robert McClure, The Unseeing Eye: The Myth of Television Power in National Elections (New York: Putnam, 1976); William J. McGuire, ‘Theoretical Foundations of Campaigns’, in Ronald E. Rice and Charles K. Atkins, eds, Public Communication Campaigns (London: Sage, 1989), pp. 15–40; Richard Johnston, Andre´ Blais, Henry E. Brady and Jean Creˆte, Letting the People Decide: Dynamics of a Canadian Election (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); Holli A. Semetko and Klaus Schoenbach, Germany’s Unity Election: Voters and the Media (Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton, 1994); Lawrence LeDuc, Richard G. Niemi and Pippa Norris, eds, Comparing Democracies: Elections and Voting in Global Perspective (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996); and Pippa Norris, John Curtis, David Sanders, Margaret Scammell and Holli Semetko, On Message: Communicating the Campaign (London: Sage, 1999). 4 Thomas Holbrook, Do Campaigns Matter? (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1996); Larry Bartels, ‘Uninformed Voters: Information Effects on Presidential Elections’, American Journal of Political Science, 40 (1996), 194–230; David Domke, David D. Fan, Michael Fibison, Dhavab V. Shah, Steve S. Smith and Mark D. Watts, ‘News Media, Candidates and Issues, and Public Opinion in the 1996 Presidential Campaign’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 74 (1997), 718–37; Diana C. Mutz, Paul M. Sniderman and Richard A. Brody, eds, Political Persuasion and Attitude Change (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), esp. Steven H. Chaffee and Rajiv Nath Rimal, ‘Time of Vote Decision and Openness to Persuasion’, pp. 267–92; Stephen Ansolabehere, Roy Behr and Shanto Iyengar, ‘Mass Media and Elections: An Overview’, American Politics Quarterly, 19 (1991), 109–13; Stephen Ansolabehere, Roy Behr and Shanto Iyengar, The Media Game: American Politics in the Television Age (New York: Macmillan, 1993); Jon A. Krosnick and Donald R. Kinder, ‘Altering the Foundations of Presidential Support through Priming’, American Political Science Review, 84 (1990), 497–512; Dan Drew and David Weaver, ‘Media Attention, Media Exposure, and Media Effects’, Journalism Quarterly, 67 (1990), 740–8; William J. McGuire, ‘Theoretical Foundations of Campaigns’, in Ronald E. Rice and Charles K. Atkins, eds, Public Communication Campaigns (London: Sage, 1989), pp. 43–65; Shanto Iyengar and Donald Kinder, News that Matters: Television and American Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Carl R. Bybee, Jack M. McLeod, William D. Luetscher and Gina Garramone, ‘Mass Communication and Voter Volatility’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 45 (1981), 69–90; Steven H. Chaffee and Sun Yuel Choe, ‘Time of Decision and Media Use in the Ford–Carter Campaign’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 44 (1980), 53–69; Lutz Erbring, Edie Goldenberg and Arthur Miller, ‘Front Page News and Real World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media’, American Journal of Political Science, 24 (1980), 16–49; Steven H. Chaffee and John L. Hochheimer, ‘The Beginnings of Political Communication Research in the United States: Origins of the “Limited Effects” Model’, in Everett M. Rogers and Francis Balle, eds, The Media Revolution in America and Western Europe (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1982), pp. 267–96; Elihu Katz, ‘Platforms and Windows: Broadcasting’s Role in Election Campaigns,’ Journalism Quarterly, 48 (1973), 304–14; Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, ‘The Agenda-Setting Function of the Mass Media’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 36 (1972), 176–87. 5 Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet, The People’s Choice, 2nd edn (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948); Bernard Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954); Campbell et al., The American Voter; Patterson and McClure, The Unseeing Eye; Thomas E. Patterson and Robert McClure, The Mass Media Election: How Americans Choose Their President (New York: Praeger, 1980); William J. McGuire, ‘The Myth of Massive Media Impact: Savagings and Salvagings’, Public Communication and Behavior, 1 (1986), 4 LAWSON AND McCANN

To be sure, a variety of priming, framing and agenda-setting effects have been found in Western democracies. But precious few studies have demonstrated persuasively that exposure to conventional news broadcasts during a campaign can lead to significant, substantial changes in public opinion and voting preferences. As one recent summary of the literature put it: Political scientists still routinely attribute electoral outcomes to structural variables – most notably, the state of the national economy and the level of the incumbent president’s popularity – giving short shrift to the specifics of day-to-day campaign events. These are generally viewed as having ‘minimal consequences’ … Perhaps the most fundamental obstacle to understanding the real-world role of political campaigns is a conceptual limitation on what effects are deemed relevant. Traditional research has looked mainly at persuasion (i.e., the effect of a campaign on voter preference). Within this definition, the law of minimal consequences has some validity … [Moreover] identifiable traces of persuasion are bound to be minimal because most campaigns feature offsetting messages.6 The original arguments for ‘minimal’, ‘modest’ or indirect media influence were developed in the United States and (to lesser extent) other affluent, established democracies. These countries are characterized by several features that would tend to limit media effects on voters’ attitudes and decisions. First, pronounced and enduring partisan cleavages render most voters resistant to short-term campaign stimuli.7 In addition, widespread access to different sources of information means that media audiences are not heavily dependent on one-sided cues about political alternatives. Instead, voters rely on sources that are either reasonably balanced or that accord with their existing preferences.8

(F’note continued) 173–257; Johnston et al., Letting the People Decide; Steven E. Finkel, ‘Re-examining the “Minimal Effects” Model in Recent Presidential Campaigns’, Journal of Politics, 55 (1993), 1–21; Semetko and Schoenbach, Germany’s Unity Election; David L. Swanson and Paolo Mancini, eds, Politics, Media, and Modern Democracy: An International Study of Innovations in Electoral Campaigning and their Consequences (New York: Praeger, 1996); Maxwell McCombs, Juan Pablo Llamas, Este´ban Lo´pez-Escobar and Federico Rey, ‘Candidate Images in Spanish Election: Second-Level Agenda-Setting Effects’, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly,74 (1997), 703–17; and Timothy Colton, Transitional Citizens: Voters and What Influences Them in the New Russia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 6 Shanto Iyengar and Adam F. Simon, ‘New Perspectives and Evidence on Political Communication and Campaign Effects’, Annual Review of Psychology, 51 (2000), 149–69, at pp. 150–1. 7 Lazarsfeld et al., The People’s Choice; Campbell et al., The American Voter; Philip E. Converse and Georges Dupeux, ‘Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States,’ Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (1962): 1–23; David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969); Herbert B. Asher, ‘Some Consequences of Measurement Error in Surveys’, American Journal of Political Science,18 (1974), 469–85; Christopher H. Achen, ‘Mass Political Attitudes and the Survey Response’, American Political Science Review, 69 (1975), 1218–31; Donald P. Green and Bradley Palmquist, ‘Of Artifacts and Partisan Instability’, American Journal of Political Science, 34 (1990), 872–902; Jon Krosnick, ‘The Stability of Political Preferences: Comparisons of Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Attitudes’, American Journal of Political Science,35 (1991), 547–76; Eric Schickler and Donald Green, ‘The Stability of Party Identification in Western Democracies’, Comparative Political Studies, 30 (1997), 450–83; R. Prislin, ‘Attitude Stability and Attitude Strength: One Is Enough to Make It Stable’, European Journal of Social Psychology, 26 (1996), 447–77; Donald P. Green and David H. Yoon, ‘Reconciling Individual and Aggregate Evidence Concerning Partisan Stability: Applying Time-Series Models to Panel Survey Data’, Political Analysis, 10 (2002), 1–24. 8 Jack M. McLeod and Lee B. Becker, ‘The Uses and Gratifications Approach’, in Dan D. Nimmo and Keith R. Sanders, Handbook of Political Communication (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1981), pp. 67–100; John R. Zaller, ‘The Myth of Massive Media Impact Revived: New Support for a Discredited Idea,’ in Mutz, Sniderman and Brody, eds, Political Persuasion and Attitude Change, pp. 17–78; Holli Semetko, ‘Political Balance on Television: Campaigns in the United States, Britain and Germany’, Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 1 (1996), 51–71; Russell J. Dalton, Paul Allen Beck and Robert Huckfeldt, ‘Partisan Cues and the Media: Information Flows Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 5

These features, of course, are not typical of most of the world’s democracies. In many emerging democratic systems, partisan identifications tend to be weaker and political alternatives less familiar.9 As a result, a greater percentage of the population may be available for persuasion over the course of the campaign. The informational context in most democracies, too, is quite different. Outside northern Europe and the Anglophone immigrant countries, dominant media outlets are typically controlled by private individuals with clear political preferences (Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, etc.), by public authorities that systematically favour the incumbent party (Hungary, Czech Republic, Taiwan until 2000, etc.), or by some combination of the two (Russia, Italy, etc.).10 Rarely do viewers have access to balanced reporting on a state-run network, as in Germany and England, or substantial choice between different private broadcasting networks, as in the United States. Self-selection to ideologically congruent or unbiased media outlets is consequently more difficult. Even in developed democracies, scholars have found more pronounced effects when one or more of the features that normally limit media influence did not hold. For instance, where political alternatives are less well known and partisan cues cannot be used to distinguish between contenders, as with primary elections and independent candidacies, scholars have tended to find larger persuasive impacts.11 Likewise, researchers have found evidence of substantial media influence where audiences depended heavily on biased sources for information, or where reporting fell clearly on one side of an issue.12 One interpretation

(F’note continued) in the 1992 Presidential Election’, American Political Science Review, 92 (1998), 111–26; and Diana C. Mutz and Paul S. Martin, ‘Facilitating Communication across Lines of Political Difference: The Role of the Mass Media’, American Political Science Review, 95 (2001), 97–114. 9 James A. McCann and Chappell Lawson, ‘An Electorate Adrift: Public Opinion and the Quality of Democracy in Mexico’, Latin American Research Review, 38 (2003), 60–81. 10 Chappell Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate: Democratization and the Rise of a Free Press in Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Matthew Wyman, Stephen White and Sarah Oates, Elections and Voters in Post-Communist Russia (London: Edward Elgar, 1998); Ellen Mickiewicz and Andrei Richter, ‘Television, Campaigning and Elections in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia’, in David L. Swanson and Paolo Mancini, eds, Politics, Media, and Modern Democracy: An International Study of Innovations in Electoral Campaigning and their Consequences (New York: Praeger, 1996), pp. 107–28; LeDuc et al., Comparing Democracies; Silvio Waisbord, ‘Television and Election Campaigns in Contemporary Argentina’, Journal of Communication, 44 (1994), 125–35; Thomas E. Skidmore, ed., Television, Politics, and the Transition to Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore/Washington, D.C.: Johns Hopkins University Press/Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993); Slavko Splichal, ‘Media Privatization and Democratization in Central-Eastern Europe’, Gazette, 46 (1992), 3–22. 11 Larry Bartels, Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988); Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); John R. Zaller with Mark Hunt, ‘The Rise and Fall of Candidate Perot: Unmediated versus Mediated Politics. Part 1 of a Two-Part Article’, Political Communication, 11 (1994), 357–90; Mark Hunt and John Zaller, ‘The Rise and Fall of Candidate Perot: The Outsider vs. The System. Part 2 of a Two-Part Article’, Political Communication, 12 (1995), 97–123; Zaller, ‘The Myth of Massive Media Impact Revived’. 12 Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur, ‘A Dependency Model of Mass Media Effects’, Communication Research, 3 (1976), 3–21; Sandra J. Ball-Rokeach, M. Rokeach and J. W. Grube, The Great American Values Test: Influencing Behavior and Belief through Television (New York: Free Press, 1984); L. Becker and D. C. Witney, ‘Effects of Media Dependencies: Audience Assessments of Government’, Communication Research,7 (1980), 95–120; Richard A Brody, Assessing the President: The Media, Elite Opinion and Public Support (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991); Benjamin I. Page and Robert Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 339–47; John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Public Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Michael 6 LAWSON AND McCANN of the scholarly literature, then, is that media effects on partisan preferences and voting behaviour may be minimal, modest or moderate depending on the political and informational context. Mexico shares with developed democracies certain features that tend to limit media effects. Gradual democratization over the last fifteen years has left Mexicans much more familiar with their political alternatives.13 Its three main parties are now quite well known, and partisan attachments – while not as entrenched as in most developed democracies – certainly exist.14 The median voter is literate and at least theoretically has access to different channels of political communication.15 Moreover, the media environment itself has changed markedly since the early 1990s, with the relaxation of official controls and the emergence of a second national television network.16 At the same time, several features of the Mexican political context suggest more pronounced media influences. Although all three major parties were well known in 2000, only one of them had ever held power at the national level. Partisan cleavages were relatively weak at the start of the 2000 campaign, with only 24 per cent of Mexicans identifying strongly with any party and 30 per cent declining to express a partisan preference.17 At the same time, Mexicans rely on a relatively limited number of media outlets for information about politics. Broadcast television dwarfs other traditional information sources – such as radio, newspapers and interpersonal communication – in its reach, and it surpasses those sources in perceived credibility.18 Moreover, television is itself quite concentrated. In February 2000, for instance, approximately 93 per cent of Mexicans who reported watching television news during the campaign watched one of the two main networks, and two-thirds watched one of the two main nightly news programmes on these networks.19 There is thus ample reason to anticipate more pronounced media

(F’note continued) B. MacKuen, Robert S. Erikson and James A. Stimson, ‘Peasants or Bankers: The American Electorate and the U.S. Economy’, American Political Science Review, 86 (1992), 597–610; Steven H. Chaffee, ed., Political Communication (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1975). 13 Roderic Ai Camp, Politics in Mexico (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Wayne Cornelius, Mexican Politics in Transition: The Breakdown of a One-Party-Dominant Regime (La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies/University of California at San Diego, 1996); Jorge I. Domıńguez and James A. McCann, ‘Shaping Mexico’s Electoral Arena: The Construction of Partisan Cleavages in the 1988 and 1991 National Elections’, American Political Science Review, 89 (1995), 34–48; Jorge I. Domıńguez and James McCann, Democratizing Mexico: Public Opinion and Electoral Choice (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Jorge I. Domıńguez and Alejandro Poire´, Toward Mexico’s Democratization: Parties, Campaigns, Elections, and Public Opinion (New York: Routledge, 1999); Domıńguez and Lawson, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election; Kathleen Bruhn and Daniel C. Levy with Emilio Zepaduá, Mexico: The Struggle for Democratic Development (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Chappell Lawson, ‘Mexico’s Unfinished Transition: Democratization and Authoritarian Enclaves in Mexico’, Estudios Mexicanos/Mexican Studies, 16 (2000), 267–87. 14 Domıńguez and Lawson, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election; Joseph L. Klesner, ‘The Structure of the Mexican Electorate: Social, Attitudinal, and Partisan Bases of Vicente Fox’s Victory’, in Domıńguez and Lawson, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election, pp. 91–122; McCann and Lawson, ‘An Electorate Adrift?’; Domıńguez and Poire´, Toward Mexico’s Democratization; Domıńguez and McCann, Democratizing Mexico. 15 James A. McCann, ‘The Changing Mexican Electorate: Political Interest, Expertise, and Party Support in the 1980s and 1990s’, in Mońica Serrano, ed., Governing Mexico: Political Parties and Elections (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998), pp. 15–37. 16 Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate. 17 Mexico 2000 Panel Study; McCann and Lawson, ‘An Electorate Adrift?’; Klesner, ‘The Structure of the Mexican Electorate’. 18 Chappell Lawson, ‘Television Coverage, Vote Choice, and the 2000 Campaign’, in Domıńguez and Lawson, eds, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election, pp. 187–209. 19 Mexico 2000 Panel Study. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 7 effects in Mexico than have so far been found in the United States, Canada, Australia and Western Europe.

TELEVISION COVERAGE IN 2000 Where audiences are exposed to roughly the same signals, media effects may be difficult to detect. Where different segments of the electorate receive divergent cues, however, large effects may be more readily apparent.20 One important step in analysing media effects, therefore, is to find adequate variation in media exposure. In Mexico, the long-dominant Televisa network has frequently been criticized for bias in favour of the ruling party.21 News on the smaller, newer Television Azteca network, by contrast, is generally seen as more balanced, at least with regard to the conservative National Action Party (PAN). Both networks are regarded as more hostile towards the leftist Party of Democratic Revolution (PRD), although the extent of this hostility has varied over time. Finally, coverage over the course of the 2000 campaign appears to have shifted following Labastida’s poor performance in the first televised debate in late April. In the wake of that event, the PRI put on intense pressure to accord greater coverage to Fox’s rivals, and some broadcasters capitulated to these pressures.22 Assuming that these impressions of television coverage are correct, it should be possible to identify segments of the electorate who received quite different media cues, either chronically or at specific periods, during the 2000 campaign. Perhaps the simplest way to evaluate coverage on Mexico’s main networks is by measuring the volume of airtime devoted to each candidate. Table 1 presents two different inventories of television news coverage for the three major candidates – Labastida (PRI), Fox (of the Alliance for Change, dominated by the PAN), and Ca´rdenas (of the Alliance for Mexico, dominated by the PRD) – on the two national networks from the official beginning of the campaign in February 2000 to the end of June that same year.23 The first set of columns shows IFE figures for the major nightly news programme on each network. The second shows data from Reforma newspaper’s monitoring of all daily coverage on the

20 Zaller, ‘The Myth of Massive Media Impact Revived’. 21 Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate; Mony de Swaan, Carolina Go´mez and Juan Molinar-Horcasitas, ‘Medios y objetividad’, Milenio Diario, 25 June 2000; Luis Guillermo Hernańdez, ‘Piden equidad en medios’, Reforma, 4 May 2002; Guadalupe Irı´zar, ‘Es equidad tema central en Televisa’, Reforma, 9 May 2000; Daniel C. Hallin, ‘Media, Political Power and Democratization in Mexico’, in James Currant and Myung-Jin Park, eds, De-Westernizing Media Studies (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 97–110; William A. Orme Jr, ed., A Culture of Collusion: An Inside Look at the Mexican Press (Miami, Fla.: North-South Center, University of Miami and The Committee to Protect Journalists, 1997); Ilya Adler, ‘The Mexican Case: The Media in the 1988 Presidential Election’, in Skidmore, ed., Television, Politics, and the Transition to Democracy in Latin America, pp. 145–74; Pablo Arredondo-Ramı´rez, Gilberto Fregoso-Peralta and Rau´l Trejo-Delarbre, Ası´ se callo´ el sistema: Comunicacioń y elecciones en 1988 (Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1988); Rau´l Trejo-Delarbre, ed., Las redes de Televisa (Mexico City: Claves Latinoamericańas, 1988); Fernando Mejıá-Barquera and Rau´l Trejo-Delarbre, Televisa: el quinto poder (Mexico City: Claves Latinoamericanos, 1985). 22 First author’s interviews with journalists, academics, electoral authorities and political advisers in Mexico City, May–June 2000; Ramoń Sevilla-Turcios, ‘Alertan sobre favoritismo en televisoras’, Reforma, 27 April 2000; Mark Stevenson, ‘Pressure Increases on Mexican Media’, Associated Press, 20 June 2000; Sallie Hughes and Chappell Lawson, ‘Propaganda and Crony Capitalism: Partisan Bias in Mexican Television News’, Latin American Research Review (forthcoming). 23 The table excludes data for the three minor presidential candidates – Manuel Camacho, Porfirio Munõz Ledo and Gilberto Rincoń Gallardo – who collectively garnered less than 3 per cent of the vote. 8 LAWSON AND McCANN

TABLE 1 Volume of Television Coverage, by Network over Time

IFE Reforma

Candidate (coalition/party) Televisa Azteca Televisa Azteca

Labastida (PRI), Feb–April 33% 38% 36% 38% Labastida (PRI), May–June 32% 33% 30% 34% Labastida (PRI), total 33% 36% 34% 35% Fox (AC/PAN), Feb–April 38% 42% 39% 38% Fox (AC/PAN), May–June 37% 41% 33% 37% Fox (AC/PAN), total 37% 40% 37% 39% Ca´rdenas (AM/PRD), Feb–April 29% 20% 25% 24% Ca´rdenas (AM/PRD), May–June 31% 26% 37% 30% Ca´rdenas (AM/PRD), total 30% 24% 30% 26% Total seconds, Feb–April 17,568 22,455 55,433 56,181 Total seconds, May–June 22,020 22,474 54,914 62,181 Total seconds 39,588 44,929 110,347 118,362

two major networks.24 Because of differences in the programming analysed, the figures are not identical. Both, however, reveal the same basic tendency: major-party candidates received roughly comparable shares of airtime throughout the campaign. Fox received the most coverage, followed by Labastida and then Ca´rdenas, on both networks throughout the campaign. Discrepancies between the two measures tend to cancel each other out; the only clear trend in both is increased attention to Ca´rdenas during the second half of the race. Thus, considering only the volume of coverage, one would not perceive significant biases in television coverage nor expect major differences in patterns of attitude change across viewers of the two networks. Nor would one anticipate major changes in attitudes over time, with the possible exception of slightly increased support for Ca´rdenas towards the end of the campaign. Of course, focusing exclusively on time may obscure important differences in the tone of news reports. To assess tone in a systematic way, we conducted a more detailed analysis of campaign coverage in a randomly selected sample of forty broadcasts from the two main nightly news programmes (twenty from each) during the period 18 February to 1 July 2000.25 In addition to measures such as time devoted to different candidates and verbal characterizations of the main contenders, our content analysis devoted substantial attention to visual tone of campaign coverage. To this end, we recorded and evaluated a separate ‘image’ each time the camera angle changed.26 Each image was classified into one of thirteen categories: (1) pan or aerial shots of a large supportive crowd; (2) the candidate

24 Reforma’s monitoring was conducted for twelve hours every day for three different periods: early morning (6 through 10 a.m.), early afternoon (1 through 4 p.m.), and evening prime time (7 through 11 p.m.). Every type of programme broadcast in the corresponding time and channels was monitored: news programmes, sports, soap operas, entertainment shows, etc. 25 This period was selected to coincide with the timing of surveys for the Mexico 2000 Panel Study. Days selected included: 25 February, 3, 13, 17, 20, 22 and 27 March, 13, 17 and 25 April, 2, 4, 8 and 12 May, 1, 7, 13, 14, 28 and 30 June. Full results from the content analysis are available from the first author upon request. 26 All ‘images’ were treated the same, regardless of length. The number of different images per story ranged from one to forty. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 9 with a supportive crowd; (3) the candidate accompanied by a popular personality, such as an entertainer, clergyman or athlete; (4) an interview with the candidate by an agreeable interviewer; (5) an interview with a supporter of the candidate; (6) the candidate surrounded by reporters; (7) the candidate alone; (8) the candidate speaking to a passive audience, typically in a formal setting; (9) a disturbance at the candidate’s event; (10) the candidate with an unsupportive crowd or heckler; (11) an interview with the candidate by an aggressive or hostile interviewer; (12) an interview with a critic of the candidate; and (13) other shots during campaign coverage.27 These types of images were then combined into positive, negative and neutral categories. Pan or aerial shots of a large supportive crowd, shots of the candidate with a supportive crowd, images of the candidate accompanied by a popular personality, interviews of the candidate by an agreeable interviewer and interviews with a supporter of the candidate were coded as positive images. The reverse of these categories were coded as negative images (the exception being that there were no images of candidates posing with generally detested or unpopular figures). Images of the candidate alone, the candidate surrounded by reporters, or passive audiences listening to the candidate’s speech were coded as neutral; ‘other’ images were excluded. The summary measure ‘net positive images’ represented positive images minus negative images, divided by total images (including neutral images but excluding ‘other’ images).28 Although this measure is hardly comprehensive, it captures a crucial element of television coverage. This measure of tone also confirms anecdotal impressions about the relative treatment of different candidates on Mexican television at different stages in the campaign. For instance, Televisioń Azteca was widely regarded as more sympathetic towards Fox than was Televisa, which was generally seen as more sympathetic towards the ruling party. Likewise, various observers noted that coverage of Labastida and Ca´rdenas improved during the second half of the race.29 All of these patterns show up in our data. Trends in visual tone of coverage largely paralleled those in verbal tone – that is, positive and negative references to the main candidates.30 Although verbal characterizations were

27 ‘Other’ images included shots of a landscape, an unknown speaker, the president (not with the candidate), etc. Collectively, ‘other’ images accounted for approximately 16 per cent of the total, most of which were sui generis. 28 To maximize the validity and reliability of the data, the coding scheme was piloted three times – and amended each time to clarify coding criteria – on news broadcasts not included in the sample. The principal coder and the ﬁrst author then separately recorded the number of positive, negative and neutral images for each of the three main candidates in a randomly selected news broadcast. Inter-coder reliability was measured by the following formula: [1 Ϫ [(number of images coded by ﬁrst coder) Ϫ (number of images coded by second coder)]/[(number of images coded by both coders)/2]. In this test, average inter-coder reliability across all nine categories (positive images of Labastida, negative images of Labastida, neutral images of Labastida, positive images of Fox, negative images of Fox, neutral images of Fox, positive images of Ca´rdenas, neutral images of Ca´rdenas, negative images of Ca´rdenas) exceeded 90 per cent. After the coding was complete, two individuals who had not participated in the original coding process were given basic instructions and asked to record the number of positive, negative and neutral images of each candidate in the same randomly selected broadcast. Inter-coder reliabilities between the two new coders averaged 75 per cent across all categories. Reliabilities between each new coder and the primary coder were higher than reliabilities between the new coders, as were reliabilities for the summary measure ‘net positive images’ for each candidate. 29 Hughes and Lawson, ‘Propaganda and Crony Capitalism’; Lawson, ‘Television Coverage, Vote Choice, and the 2000 Campaign’. 30 Our analysis coded included all positive and negative references to the three main candidates in the course of a broadcast, regardless of the source, other than references to the candidates by anchors or reporters that were devoid of editorial content (for instance, when they were introducing a candidate’s campaign stop that day). 10 LAWSON AND McCANN

TABLE 2 Tone of Coverage, by Network over Time

Labastida Fox Ca´rdenas

Net positive coverage on Azteca, February–April 27% 41% 31% Net positive coverage on Azteca, May–June 41% 50% 52% Net positive coverage on Azteca, total 36% 46% 44% Net positive coverage on Televisa, February–April 37% 45% 7% Net positive coverage on Televisa, May–June 74% 25% 71% Net positive coverage on Televisa, total 59% 36% 42% Total images on Azteca, February–April 91 111 88 Total images on Azteca, May–June 155 147 114 Total images on Azteca 246 258 202 Total images on Televisa, February–April 57 82 56 Total images on Televisa, May–June 81 71 68 Total images on Televisa 138 153 124

Note: Days included in the February–April sample were: 25 February, 3, 13, 17, 20, 22 and 27 March, 13, 17 and 25 April. Days included in the May–early June period were 2, 4, 8 and 12 May, 1, 7, 13, 14, 28 and 30 June. Uncategorized (‘other’) images are excluded.

substantially less positive towards all of the candidates than were visual images, the relative tone of coverage for the main candidates was similar for both measures.31 We thus feel comfortable treating visual cues as a rough indicator of relative coverage of the main candidates, which could be used to predict changes in viewers’ relative opinions of the candidates. Overall tone of coverage was similar for the three candidates: the percentage of net positive images over the course of the campaign was 44 per cent for Labastida, 42 per cent for Fox, and 43 per cent for Ca´rdenas. These aggregate data, however, mask important differences in coverage between the two networks. The visuals that supported Labastida, it turns out, came disproportionately from Televisa. By contrast, Televisioń Azteca coverage remained more favourable towards Fox than towards the PRI candidate. Coverage of the Left, meanwhile, was approximately the same on both networks. Also noteworthy are changes in the tone of coverage over the course of the campaign. On Televisioń Azteca, coverage of all three candidates shifted slightly, but the difference was not dramatic. From February through April, coverage was 27 per cent net positive for Labastida, 41 per cent net positive for Fox, and 31 per cent net positive for Ca´rdenas; the corresponding figures for May–June were 41 per cent, 50 per cent and 52 per cent. Changes

31 For instance, Labastida fared poorly compared to Fox on Televisioń Azteca in the first half of the campaign, and he fared poorly compared to both opposition candidates on that network in the second. Likewise, verbal characterizations of Ca´rdenas were particularly harsh on Televisa during the first half of the race but moderated substantially in the second half. Had we used only verbal cues as our measure of media content, we would still have found a media-content-basis for the large, significant attitude changes that we document in our analysis of the panel data. In theory, we could use either verbal or visual measures. In practice, however, there were far fewer coded verbal references to the candidates in our sample than there were coded images – only 191, in contrast to 1,121 images. Because these references were divided across three candidates, two networks and two time periods, there were an average of approximately sixteen references per ‘cell’, with the smallest cells having just eight references. Consequently, we felt that visual characterizations offered equally valid and more reliable estimates of tone. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 11 in the tone of coverage on Televisa, however, were pronounced. Net positive images of Labastida on the country’s largest network soared from a respectable 37 per cent to a whopping 74 per cent. The shift in favour of Ca´rdenas was even more marked, from 7 per cent net positive to almost 71 per cent. Meanwhile net positive images of Fox on Televisa’s nightly news programme dropped from 45 per cent to 25 per cent.32 These findings are shown in Table 2. In summary, content analysis reveals fairly even-handed coverage of the three main candidates on television overall. Biases in the volume and tone of coverage were modest over the course of the 2000 presidential campaign. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify differences in coverage of the main candidates on different networks and at different times during the race.

MEDIA EFFECTS IN 2000 Attitudes Towards the Main Candidates We now turn to whether the patterns identified by content analysis were reflected in the attitudes expressed by television viewers. As indicated in Table 2, Televisa’s coverage of Ca´rdenas in the early campaign period was harsh in comparison to coverage of Fox and Labastida; this may have hurt the PRD leader’s standing relative to that of his rivals. In June, however, the network reversed course: Ca´rdenas received both more and better coverage – roughly equivalent to the coverage received by Labastida – while coverage of Fox deteriorated. If media coverage had an impact on public opinion, Ca´rdenas (and Labastida) should have enjoyed a boost relative to Fox among Televisa viewers in the second half of the race. On Televisioń Azteca, meanwhile, coverage was less favourable towards Labastida compared with both his main rivals. This was especially true in the second half of the race. Assuming that this pattern of coverage was reflected at the mass level, Televisioń Azteca viewers should have downgraded their assessments of Labastida relative to Fox and Ca´rdenas. To assess changes in viewers’attitudes, we use survey data from the first three waves of the Mexico 2000 Panel Study.33 The first wave was administered in February 2000 to a randomly selected national sample of 2,400 Mexicans; it was timed to coincide with the official start of the general election campaign. The second wave was conducted in late April–early May, on a subset of respondents chosen at random (N ϭ 952). In June, with just two weeks left in the campaign, a third questionnaire was administered to a randomly chosen group of participants from the second survey wave plus all available respondents from the initial sample who had not been interviewed in the second wave (a total of 974).34

32 These shifts and the relative tone of coverage towards the main candidates are directionally similar if we exclude the second half of June from our sample, though the magnitude of the changes in coverage on Televisa is somewhat smaller. 33 Approximately half of the respondents in the first round of the panel reported watching Televisa news at least occasionally, the bulk of whom watched three to five days per week. Just over one third of the sample reported watching some news on Televisioń Azteca. Thirteen per cent of the respondents watched news programming on both networks, and approximately 30 per cent never watched either. Average exposure levels in later waves was slightly higher on Televisioń Azteca and about the same on Televisa. 34 By varying the number of times respondents were contacted, the study sought to cut down on interview-induced bias and panel attrition. On the potential for interviewing to cause changes in respondent attitudes and behaviour, see R. Gary Bridge, Leo G. Reeder, David Kanouse, Donald R. Kinder and Vivian Tong 12 LAWSON AND McCANN

By using panel data, we take into account the fact that audiences might self-select to different media outlets. For instance, it may be that opponents of the PRI disproportionately favoured Televisio´n Azteca news, while sympathizers with the ruling party disproportionately remained with Televisa.35 If so, cross-sectional data alone would not allow us to distinguish between initial audience predispositions and the effects of exposure to different news programmes. Panel data, however, allow us to assess changes over time in the same individual. We can thus control for respondents’ views towards the main candidates (and other factors that might inﬂuence their vote) at the beginning of the period in question. Largely for this reason, panel studies are the preferred method for analysing media effects in the mass public.36 To examine the effect of the two networks on relative evaluations of the main candidates, we calculated attitude differentials based on eleven-point ‘feeling thermometer’ scores.37 Thus we subtracted feeling thermometer ratings of Fox from analogous ratings of Labastida to produce a Fox–Labastida score that theoretically ranged from Ϫ 20 to ϩ 20.38 We then regressed these attitude differentials on self-reported television exposure from the same wave,39 plus lagged attitude differentials from the previous wave.40 The addition of the lagged dependent variable on the right-hand side makes the model explicitly dynamic, allowing us to ascertain whether certain factors changed citizens’ initial judgements. In theory, the use of panel data with lagged dependent variables should control for respondents’ attitudes at the start of the campaign. It is possible, however, that respondents not only held different initial attitudes towards the main candidates, but also had different predispositions to change their attitudes about these candidates. If respondents’ pro-

(F’note continued) Nagy, ‘Interviewing Changes Attitudes – Sometimes’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 41 (1977), 56–64; and James Downing, Charles M. Judd and Markus Brauer, ‘Effects of Repeated Expressions on Attitude Extremity’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63 (1992), 17–29. 35 On the other hand, it is possible that choice of news programmes was primarily determined by preference for entertainment programmes that preceded and followed the news, rather than by political preferences. In that case, we would expect relatively little self-selection to ideologically congruent broadcasts. 36 See Jeffrey Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics: A Modern Approach (Mason, Ohio: South-Western College, 2000), chap. 9. 37 Feeling thermometer ratings were obtained from the following item: ‘[Show card] I am going to ask your opinion about political parties and candidates for President. On this scale, zero indicates that your opinion is very bad and ten that your opinion is very good. If you don’t have an opinion, just tell me and we’ll go on to the next one. What is your opinion of …? [READ AND ROTATE].’ Options were ‘PRI, PAN, PRD, Francisco Labastida, Vicente Fox, Cuauhte´moc Ca´rdenas’. 38 These attitude differentials better anticipate our subsequent model of vote choice, which involves relative comparisons between the three main candidates. Mean feeling thermometer differentials ranged from Ϫ 0.30 (Labastida minus Fox in June) to 1.82 (Fox minus Ca´rdenas in February); standard deviations ranged from 4.58 (Labastida minus Fox in June) to 3.43 (Fox minus Ca´rdenas in April/May). 39 Television news exposure was measured using the following item: ‘Do you watch any television news program? [IF YES] Which one? Approximately how many days a week do you watch it?’ Interviewers were instructed to mark up to two programmes. Respondents who reported watching a particular programme six or seven days a week were treated as watching five days a week. Those who reported watching two programmes on the same network were treated as having been doubly exposed; i.e., their self-reported exposure to one programme was added to their self-reported exposure to the other programme. For both networks in all three waves, over 93 per cent of respondents were coded as watching five or fewer days per week. Mean exposures for Televisioń Azteca ranged from 1.43 in February (with standard deviation of 2.41) to 1.86 in April/May (with standard deviation of 2.56); mean exposures for Televisa ranged from 1.90 in July (with standard deviation of 2.54) to 2.34 in April/May (with standard deviation of 2.57). 40 In formal terms, the model is: Candidate Attitude Differentialt ϭ ϩ 1 Televisa Exposuret ϩ 2 Azteca Exposuret ϩ 3 Candidate Differentialt-1 ϩ 4–21 Controls. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 13 pensities to alter their relative assessments of the candidates were correlated with news exposure, excluding them could lead us to make spurious inferences about the effects of television.41 For instance, in comparison to the Televisa audience, Televisioń Azteca viewers are somewhat better educated, more affluent and more likely to live in urban areas. More educated, affluent urbanites may not only be more inclined to favour Fox over Labastida initially; they may also be inclined to favour Fox over Labastida increasingly during the course of the campaign, regardless of their exposure to television. To take into account such crystallization effects, we include the main demographic variables thought to affect partisan preferences in Mexico:42 age, gender, education, socio-economic status,43 union membership, church attendance, region of the country in which the respondent resided and whether the respondent lived in a city. A similar point could be made with respect to partisanship. For this reason, we also included dummy variables for the following categories: PRI identifiers or leaners, strong PRI identifiers, PAN identifiers or leaners, strong PAN identifiers, PRD identifiers or leaners and strong PRD identifiers.44 Finally, in order to isolate the effects of television, we added controls for other types of campaign cues that might be correlated with both television exposure and attitude change. These include respondents’ self-reported attention to the campaign and the frequency with which they reported discussing politics.45 Table 3 shows the results of all three regressions on attitude differentials in late April–early May. Table 4 reports the same results for attitude differentials in June. The results for television exposure conform with expectations from content analysis. Early in the campaign, those who watched newscasts on Televisa grew more negative towards the Left relative to both of the other main candidates; this effect was not evident for exposure to Televisioń Azteca, which accorded Ca´rdenas coverage that was roughly equivalent in tone to that of the other two contenders. Different patterns of coverage during the second half of the campaign produced the opposite results. Televisioń Azteca’s coverage of Ca´rdenas in May–June was similar to coverage of Fox, and Televisa’s coverage of Ca´rdenas during that period was similar to its coverage of Labastida; in neither of these cases did exposure exercise a clear effect on public opinion. By contrast, Televisioń Azteca clearly favoured Ca´rdenas over Labastida, and Televisa’s coverage clearly favoured him over Fox; in both of these cases, the influence of television exposure proved statistically significant. One puzzling finding from this analysis concerns the lack of a clear effect from exposure to Televisa on relative attitudes towards Fox and Labastida in the second half of the race.

41 Measurement error could also produce what appear to be crystallization effects. The issue of measurement error is discussed further below. 42 Domıńguez and Lawson, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election; Domıńguez and Poire´, Toward Mexico’s Democratization;Mońica Serrano, ed., Governing Mexico: Political Parties and Elections (London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 1998); Domıńguez and McCann, Democratizing Mexico. 43 We measured socio-economic status through a factor score based on: (1) interview coding of the respondent’s dwelling on a five-point scale; and (2) number of light bulbs in the respondent’s house. Using different measures of socio-economic status does not materially change our findings about media influence. 44 Partisan identification was measured using the following item: ‘In general, do you consider yourself priı´sta, panista or perredista? [If R has affiliation:] Do you consider yourself very priı´sta/panista/perredista or somewhat priı´sta/panista/perredista? [If R has no affiliation]: Toward which party do you most lean?’ 45 Some of the demographic controls mentioned above might also be construed as proxies for certain campaign signals. For instance, church attendance is an indicator of exposure to electoral cues from religious authorities, and regional dummies may capture differences in partisan mobilization and canvassing. See Domıńguez and Lawson, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election, pp. 34–5, 81–3, 200. 14 LAWSON AND McCANN s.e. ´rdenas ˆ 0.145 0.797 0.269 0.227 0.073 0.098 0.229 0.342 1.19*0.081 0.470 0.377 2.14** 0.729 0.005 0.114 0.141 0.149 0.076 0.048 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ s.e. ´rdenas Fox–Ca ˆ 0.018† 0.009 0.007 0.008 0.440† 0.259 0.121 0.132 0.187 0.115 0.425 0.388 0.854* 0.349 1.24* 0.534 0.306 0.595 1.21* 0.534 1.82* 0.834 0.077 0.131 0.046 0.170 0.033 0.054 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ standard errors. † Significant at 0.10.* Significant at 0.05.** Significant ϭ s.e. 746 734 741 0.34 0.35 0.26 ˆ Labastida–Fox Labastida–Ca 1.14** 0.412 0.015 0.544 1.33* 0.633 0.0820.1660.024* 0.391 0.382 0.010 0.091 0.081 0.379 0.370 0.165 0.288 0.332 0.324 0.156 0.267 0.0900.309* 0.313 0.136 0.080 0.303 0.201 0.266 0.046 0.143 0.024 0.139 0.053 0.121 0.084 0.135 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Estimated coefficients; s.e. ϭ Effects on Candidate Attitude Differentials, April/May 2 R 3 : Pairwise deletion employed. statistic 19.3 19.8 13.3 F- Note at 0.01. TABLE Variable ConstantNorthern region Metro regionCentral region Age 1.23 0.023 0.939 0.409 1.17 0.399 0.396 0.910 0.319 0.346 Male Urban resident Education Religiosity 0.133 0.115 0.045 0.111 Union member 0.422 0.403 0.203 0.390 Income proxy Weak PRI partisan orWeak leaner PAN (Feb.) partisan or leaner (Feb.) 1.30** 0.400 1.43** 0.390 0.047 0.332 Weak PRD partisan or leaner (Feb.) Strong PRI partisan (Feb.)Strong PAN partisan (Feb.) 2.05** 0.467 2.11** 0.455 Strong PRD partisan (Feb.) 0.233 0.830 Attitude differential (Feb.)Talk about politics (April/May) 0.405** 0.041 0.376** 0.036 0.371** 0.037 Campaign attention (April/May) 0.086 0.176 Azteca exposure (April/May) 0.047 0.056 Adjusted Televisa exposure (April/May)N 0.040 0.054 0.129* 0.052 0.091* 0.045 Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 15

TABLE 4 Effects on Candidate Attitude Differentials, June

Labastida–Fox Labastida–Ca´rdenas Fox–Ca´rdenas Variable ˆ s.e. ˆ s.e. ˆ s.e.

Constant 1.54 1.35 1.10 1.14 Ϫ 0.323 1.25 Northern region Ϫ 0.078 0.561 Ϫ 0.913† 0.473 Ϫ 0.795 0.521 Metro region 0.485 0.586 Ϫ 0.785 0.495 Ϫ 1.23* 0.544 Central region Ϫ 0.315 0.547 Ϫ 0.837† 0.462 Ϫ 0.518 0.508 Age Ϫ 0.002 0.014 0.009 0.012 0.010 0.013 Male Ϫ 0.019 0.385 0.101 0.325 0.104 0.357 Urban resident Ϫ 0.814† 0.452 Ϫ 0.445 0.381 0.382 0.419 Education Ϫ 0.101 0.203 0.258 0.171 Ϫ 0.157 0.189 Religiosity Ϫ 0.042 0.165 Ϫ 0.199 0.139 Ϫ 0.153 0.153 Union member 0.686 0.578 0.285 0.487 Ϫ 0.322 0.536 Income proxy Ϫ 0.277 0.206 Ϫ 0.220 0.173 0.060 0.191 Weak PRI partisan or leaner (Feb.) 0.185 0.572 0.711 0.486 0.662 0.521 Weak PAN partisan or leaner (Feb.) Ϫ 1.07† 0.583 0.687 0.484 1.64** 0.541 Weak PRD partisan or leaner (Feb.) Ϫ 0.908 0.780 Ϫ 1.70* 0.665 Ϫ 0.962 0.733 Strong PRI partisan (Feb.) 2.08** 0.667 2.08** 0.568 0.228 0.596 Strong PAN partisan (Feb.) Ϫ 2.50** 0.895 0.416 0.747 2.84** 0.835 Strong PRD partisan (Feb.) Ϫ 2.80* 1.19 Ϫ 4.16** 1.02 Ϫ 1.54 1.13 Attitude differential (April/ May) 0.544** 0.050 0.598** 0.044 0.546** 0.056 Talk about politics (June) 0.002 0.185 0.141 0.157 0.148 0.172 Campaign attention (June) 0.049 0.260 0.267 0.220 0.181 0.242 Azteca exposure (June) Ϫ 0.080 0.082 Ϫ 0.124† 0.069 Ϫ 0.041 0.076 Televisa exposure (June) 0.088 0.071 Ϫ 0.062 0.060 Ϫ 0.160* 0.067 N 316 315 316 Adjusted R2 0.49 0.57 0.36 F-statistic 15.5 21.2 9.54

Notes: Pairwise deletion employed; ˆ ϭ estimated coefficients; s.e. ϭ standard errors. † Significant at 0.10.* Significant at 0.05.** Significant at 0.01.

To be sure, the coefficient has the expected sign; although it is not significantly different from zero (p ϭ 0.22), it is significantly different from the effect of exposure to Televisioń Azteca. Nevertheless, it appears that even quite biased coverage on Televisa had only a limited impact on relative evaluations of the ruling party’s candidate. (We return to this issue when discussing the effects of Televisa exposure on vote choice.) Coefficients for the control variables in Tables 3 and 4 suggest that attitudes tended to crystallize along expected lines over the course of the campaign. The more educated increasingly favoured the opposition, especially the PAN, over the ruling party. Likewise, initial supporters of the PRI liked Labastida increasingly more relative to his main rivals. Nevertheless, these crystallization effects attenuated substantially as the campaign progressed. By June, even partisan predispositions exercised only a limited effect on many attitude differentials. 16 LAWSON AND McCANN

The effects of television news exposure were quite powerful relative to the impact of other variables. Standardized coefficients for news exposure were consistently larger than those for generalized attention to the campaign or interpersonal communication about politics (which were never significant) and for the bulk of the demographic controls. In general, television effects approximated the crystallizing influence of education and reached about half those of partisan predispositions. Moreover, the effects of television coverage remained strong in the second half of the race, after crystallization effects began to fade. All told, these results demonstrate that television coverage had substantial and significant effects on attitudes towards the main candidates in Mexico’s 2000 presidential race. There was thus an important linkage between the tone of news coverage to which respondents were exposed (on the one hand) and respondents’ opinions (on the other). Candidates who received relatively favourable coverage tended to prosper in relative terms; candidates who did not tended to suffer compared with their main competitors.

Vote Choice So far, our analysis has focused on political attitudes: specifically, relative assessments of the main candidates at different points in the campaign. We have not yet directly addressed the issue of political behaviour – in this case, how respondents actually voted on election day. Although it seems likely that attitude change would find expression in voting behaviour, it is also conceivable that the effects of media exposure on mass opinion could have failed to shape voting patterns. For instance, changes in relative candidate evaluations might not have provoked corresponding shifts in electoral outcomes if these changes were confined to non-voters or to voters who had already made up their minds. It is also possible that other factors (such as election-day mobilization) could have reversed the effects of television coverage on candidate preference. Finally, factors like vote-buying, coercion and heavy-handed clientelism could have prevented the translation of attitude change into shifts in electoral behaviour. To assess the impact of television coverage on how citizens actually voted, we make use of the fourth wave of the Mexico 2000 Panel Study, collected in the week following the 2 July election. Among those respondents who reported voting, 47 per cent chose Fox, 38 per cent backed Labastida and 14 per cent favoured Ca´rdenas. This breakdown reflects fairly well the official tally (43 per cent, 36 per cent, 17 per cent, respectively).46 Thus, although levels of self-reported turnout were substantially higher in the post-electoral wave of the panel, the partisan division of the vote was similar to that of the broader electorate.47 Table 5 presents the results from a multinomial logistic regression, where vote choice was modelled as a function of presidential voting preference in the first survey wave

46 Vote in July was measured by the following question: ‘Did you vote in the elections of July 2? [If yes:] Could you mark on this ballot for whom you voted in the elections for President of the Republic? [Hand ballot and request that R deposit it in the box.]’ Vote preference in February was measured using the following item: ‘Now for the purposes of this survey let’s suppose that today is election day and you are going to vote for President of the Republic. For this I am going to give you a piece of paper where you can mark your response without me seeing it and afterwards deposit it in this box. If the elections for President of the Republic were today, for whom would you vote?’ [Respondents were then handed a sample ballot.] In both February and July, those who voted for one of the tiny leftist parties were grouped with Ca´rdenas. 47 As is typical in post-electoral surveys, self-reported voter participation was inﬂated in our data. The actual rate reported by the IFE was 64 per cent; in the Mexico 2000 Panel Study, it was 81 per cent. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 17

TABLE 5 Television Exposure and Vote Choice in July

Fox v. Ca´rdenas/ Non-voter Labastida Other v. Labastida v Labastida Variable ˆ s.e. ˆ s.e. ˆ s.e.

Constant 0.420 0.703 Ϫ 0.892 0.939 3.18** 0.877 Northern region Ϫ 0.008 0.263 Ϫ 0.445 0.378 0.832* 0.327 Metro region Ϫ 0.190 0.289 0.232 0.367 0.319 0.367 Central region 0.024 0.261 Ϫ 0.448 0.362 0.671* 0.323 Age Ϫ 0.011 0.007 0.001 0.010 Ϫ 0.045** 0.010 Male 0.024 0.197 0.342 0.262 0.402† 0.237 Urban resident 0.407† 0.221 Ϫ 0.155 0.300 0.275 0.259 Education Ϫ 0.070 0.108 0.092 0.146 Ϫ 0.221 0.138 Religiosity 0.026 0.082 0.117 0.108 0.067 0.097 Union member Ϫ 0.640* 0.283 Ϫ 0.077 0.371 Ϫ 0.780* 0.387 Income proxy 0.095 0.115 Ϫ 0.094 0.165 0.048 0.144 Vote for Labastida (Feb.) Ϫ 1.02** 0.308 Ϫ 1.25** 0.422 Ϫ 1.29** 0.353 Vote for Fox (Feb.) 1.54** 0.371 0.484 0.470 Ϫ 0.212** 0.445 Vote for other candidate (Feb.) 0.257 0.451 1.53** 0.476 Ϫ 0.772 0.539 PRI partisan or leaner (Feb.) Ϫ 1.17** 0.255 Ϫ 1.32** 0.369 Ϫ 0.921** 0.313 PAN partisan or leaner (Feb.) 0.171 0.366 Ϫ 0.536 0.493 0.067 0.449 PRD partisan or leaner (Feb.) Ϫ 0.748† 0.453 0.396 0.450 0.018 0.510 Talk about politics (Feb.–July) 0.071 0.137 0.070 0.183 Ϫ 0.166 0.168 Campaign attention (Feb.– July) 0.008 0.174 Ϫ 0.056 0.236 Ϫ 0.571** 0.218 Azteca exposure (Feb.–July) 0.129* 0.053 0.137* 0.069 0.079 0.066 Televisa exposure (Feb.–July) 0.009 0.042 0.006 0.057 0.019 0.051 Valid N 1,062 Pseudo-R2 (Cox and Snell) 0.26 Chi-squared statistic (60 d.f.) 704

Notes: ˆ ϭ estimated coefficients; s.e. ϭ standard errors.† Significant at 0.10.* Significant at 0.05.** Significant at 0.01.

(February) and average exposure to network news over the course of the campaign.48 As in our analysis of attitude differentials, we include a full complement of control variables. To make the main campaign controls comparable to television exposure, attention to the campaign and interpersonal communication about politics were averaged over all three pre-election waves. The results in the ﬁrst column show the impact of early presidential preferences and television news on choosing Fox over Labastida; those in the second column show the same results for the choice of another opposition candidate; and those in the last column show the results for not voting (versus voting for Labastida). As might be expected, there was a great deal of continuity in candidate support between February and July; citizens who

48 The Hausman test supports the assumption of ‘independence from irrelevant alternatives’ (IIA) for the multinomial logistic regression model. 18 LAWSON AND McCANN

TABLE 6 Effects of Television Exposure on Vote Choice in July

Fox Labastida Ca´rdenas/Other None

Televisio´n Azteca 0 days 44% 33% 10% 14% 1 day 46% 30% 10% 14% 2 days 48% 28% 11% 14% 3 days 50% 25% 11% 14% 4 days 51% 23% 12% 14% 5 days 53% 21% 12% 13% Televisa 0 days 47% 29% 11% 14% 1 day 47% 29% 11% 14% 2 days 47% 29% 11% 14% 3 days 47% 29% 11% 14% 4 days 47% 28% 11% 14% 5 days 47% 28% 11% 14%

Notes: Figures represent the marginal effect of television exposure on probability of voting for any one candidate, with all other variables held at their mean values. Simulations using Clarify software show that the difference in support for Fox between minimum and maximum exposure to Televisioń Azteca is significant at the 10 per cent level and that the difference for Labastida is significant at the 5 per cent level; other differences are not significant. See Michael Tomz, Jason Wittenberg and Gary King, ‘Clarify: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results’; this program is freely available at http://gking.harvard.edu. For technical details regarding estimation routines, see Gary King, Michael Tomz and Jason Wittenberg, ‘Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation’, American Journal of Political Science, 44 (2000), 347–61. supported Labastida in February were inclined to remain loyal to him on election day. Several other control variables were also significant, operating in the expected direction. Nevertheless, television exposure clearly had important electoral consequences, controlling for respondents’ initial dispositions, exposure to other campaign cues and various demographic factors. Those watching Televisioń Azteca became significantly more likely to support the main opposition candidates, especially Fox, over Labastida. Exposure to Televisa, by contrast, exercised no discernible effect. These effects can be seen more clearly in Table 6, where the probability of voting for each candidate is mapped as a function of television exposure levels in June. Holding all other predictors at their mean values, individuals who did not see any Televisioń Azteca news programming in the weeks leading up to election day were nearly as likely to choose Labastida as Fox (33 per cent versus 44 per cent). These probabilities diverged rapidly, however, as news exposure increased. Citizens who reported seeing five days worth of newscasts overwhelmingly flocked to Fox. Televisioń Azteca also benefited the Left, although this difference was much more modest. Clearly, though, Televisioń Azteca exerted far more than ‘minimal effects’. One puzzling finding – which also surfaced in analysis of attitude differentials – concerns the failure of sympathetic coverage on the Televisa network to generate support for Labastida. If audiences responded mechanically and automatically to media messages, Televisa viewers should have upgraded their assessments of Labastida compared with Fox during the second half of the race, and they should also have become increasingly inclined Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 19 to vote for the ruling party over the course of the whole campaign. Our analysis uncovered only weak evidence for the former and no evidence for the latter. Labastida even appeared vulnerable when he and Ca´rdenas received apparently comparable coverage, as on Televisioń Azteca during the beginning of the campaign and Televisa at the end (though neither effect reached statistical significance). It thus appears that television exercised asymmetric effects on attitudes towards the ruling party: unfavourable coverage helped to erode support for Labastida, but even highly favourable coverage could not do much to stimulate it. One possibility is that Labastida was an inherently unappealing candidate relative to the other main contenders and thus tended to lose ground when coverage was balanced. Another possibility is that some Mexican voters disliked the PRI but initially felt insufficiently informed about the opposition parties to support them; as they learned more about both groups, even when what they learned about the opposition was not uniformly positive, they tended to shift away from Labastida.49 A third possibility is that other aspects of television coverage on both networks – such as attention to issues like crime, corruption and drug trafficking – may have reinforced negative attitudes towards the ruling party.50 Consequently, what appeared to be favourable coverage toward Labastida was actually relatively balanced coverage overall, while what appeared to be only slightly favourable coverage of the opposition was actually quite favourable.51

TESTS OF ROBUSTNESS Because the persuasive effects we report are considerably larger than previous research on television and campaigns might suggest, it is important to demonstrate that our results are not ﬂukes or artefacts of a particular statistical approach. To this end, we explicitly consider whether the results reported above might be the product of (1) our treatment of missing data; (2) measurement error on the key variables; (3) omitted variable bias stemming from left-out demographic factors or campaign stimuli; or (4) audience self-selection to particular news networks.

Missing Data Our data are characterized by two broad types of missingness. First, and most conventionally, we have missing answers to particular questions for certain respondents in each panel wave. The extent of this sort of missingness is actually quite small, and using different methods to correct for it – for example, listwise vs. pairwise deletion in our ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions – does not materially change our ﬁndings. A second type of missingness results from the panel structure of our data, in which certain respondents were interviewed in some waves but not in others. Some of this missingness

49 Alejandro Moreno, ‘The Effects of Negative Campaigns on Mexican Voters’, in Domińguez and Lawson, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election, pp. 243–68. 50 Our content analysis suggests that issue coverage was similar across the two networks but that crime, corruption and drug trafficking received substantial attention (317 minutes in our sample) compared to coverage of the president (79 minutes), the economy (113 minutes) or education (87 minutes). 51 One other possible explanation is that Televisa was regarded as less credible than Televisioń Azteca and thus exercised less of an effect on attitudes and behaviour. Although this explanation seems plausible, we found that exposure to Televisioń Azteca was not significantly associated with greater confidence in the credibility of television news than exposure to Televisa. 20 LAWSON AND McCANN was the product of panel attrition, as respondents from the first wave could not be located in subsequent waves. In the fourth wave, where interviewers attempted to contact all respondents from the February wave, attrition accounted for all missing respondents. In the second and third waves, however, interviewers consciously attempted to contact only a randomly pre-selected sample of respondents from the first wave in order to minimize cost and attrition. Thus, most ‘missing’ respondents in the second and third waves were intended to be missing. Analysis undertaken as part of the Mexico 2000 Panel Survey suggests that panel attrition introduced only very small biases in the composition of the sample.52 Moreover, the potential directional consequences of any sample biases for our analysis are indeterminate, and the fact that these individuals were randomly selected implies that their exclusion should not affect our analysis. Nevertheless, the availability of new methods for dealing with missing data allows us to address this possibility directly. To this end, we re-ran our analyses using multiple imputation to fill in missing data for all respondents.53 The use of multiple imputation substantially enhanced the statistical significance of our findings.

Measurement Error Survey data are often riddled with measurement error. Measurement of our key independent variable, network news exposure, is likely to be particularly unreliable.54 Random measurement error on this variable might likely bias our results towards zero, making media effects look smaller than they really are. Meanwhile, measurement error on our dependent variable (attitude differentials) or on other independent variables could distort our results in ways we have not anticipated. To guard against these eventualities, and any spurious inferences that might follow from them, we factored out measurement error for media exposure and attitude differentials using the Wiley–Wiley method.55 The effects of news exposure in this more elaborate model closely parallel those reported in Tables 3 and 4. (These ﬁndings are available upon request.)

Omitted Variable Bias As discussed above, our analysis controls for obvious confounding variables: demographic factors, the strength and direction of partisan afﬁliations, and certain non-television campaign inﬂuences. In theory, however, the attitude change that we ascribe to television could be the result of some omitted variable that is correlated with exposure to news programming and with changes in attitudes towards the main candidates. To address this

52 Domı´nguez and Lawson, Mexico’s Pivotal Democratic Election, pp. 14, 347–8. 53 Gary King, James Honaker, Anne Joseph and Kenneth Scheve, ‘Analyzing Incomplete Political Science Data: An Alternative Algorithm for Multiple Imputation’, American Political Science Review, 95 (2001), 49–69. 54 Vincent Price and John Zaller, ‘Who Gets the News? Alternative Measures of News Reception and Their Implications for Research’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 57 (1993), 133–64. See also Larry Bartels, ‘Messages Received: The Political Impact of Media Exposure’, American Political Science Review, 87 (1993), 267–85. 55 Following Wiley and Wiley, we assume that: (a) the residual term in a particular regression is not correlated with residuals in any other wave, the latent attitude variables, or any measurement errors in the survey instruments, (b) measurement error variance is constant for each item throughout the panel, and (c) these errors in measurement are not correlated with latent attitudes or measurement errors for survey items in any other panel wave. See David E. Wiley and James A. Wiley, ‘The Estimation of Measurement Error in Panel Data’, American Sociological Review, 35 (1970), 112–17. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 21 possibility, we re-ran our analyses with various combinations of control variables. These included:

—A bloc of demographic variables, including education, rural residency, union membership, socio-economic status, church attendance, gender and age. —Campaign engagement: An index of frequency with which respondents discussed politics over all four waves of the panel, campaign attention over all four waves of panel, and newspaper readership over first three waves of panel. (This last item was not asked in the fourth wave.) —Alternative campaign engagement: All elements of the index of campaign engagement, plus interest in politics, averaged over all four waves of panel. —Debate exposure: An index of whether respondents saw all, part or none of the first presidential debate; saw all, part or none of the second debate; discussed the first debate with others; discussed the second debate with others; saw comments about the first debate; and saw comments about the second debate – based on items from the second, third and fourth waves of panel. —Attitude differential (AD) in February: Differences in feeling thermometer ratings between the main candidates in February. —Party attitude differential (AD): Differences in feeling thermometer ratings between the main parties in February. —1994 vote: Presidential vote in 1994, coded as Zedillo (PRI), Fernańdez (PAN), other candidate and non-voter/not sure. —1999 primary vote: Vote in 1999 PRI primary, coded as Labastida, losing candidate and did not participate. —Partisan identification (PID): strong PRI identification, weak PRI identification, independent leaning to PRI, strong PAN identification, weak PAN identification, independent leaning to PAN, strong PRD/other identification, weak PRD/other identification, independent leaning to PRD/other, and independent non-leaners, as reported in February.

Reporting tests of robustness across different combinations of these controls, different time periods, different networks and different candidate dyads would fill hundreds of tables. For economy of presentation, we simply summarize the effects of exposure to the two main networks on differences in feeling thermometer ratings of the three main candidates in the third wave of the panel (June), controlling for different combinations of variables. The results of OLS regression are reported in Table 7. The first two columns of Table 7 report the effects of exposure to Televisa news and Televisioń Azteca news on differences between Labastida and Fox. The next two columns report the effects of exposure to Televisa news and Televisioń Azteca news (respectively) on differences between Labastida and Ca´rdenas. As the table shows, the effects of television news exposure attenuate with the addition of control variables, but they remain impressive. Adding attitudinal controls tends to moderately diminish their influence, especially for Televisioń Azteca. Adding controls for demographics and other campaign-related stimuli weakens the effect of Televisioń Azteca exposure but enhances the effects of exposure to Televisa. Regardless, however, significant effects from exposure to television news persist when different combinations of controls are added. We repeated this analysis for vote choice in July, substituting vote preferences in February (Labastida, Fox, Ca´rdenas/other, and none/undecided) for attitude differentials 22 LAWSON AND McCANN

TABLE 7 Effects of Network News Exposure on Evaluation of the Main Candidates in June

Labastida Labastida minus Fox minus Ca´rdenas Controls Televisa Azteca Televisa Azteca

AD 0.14* Ϫ 0.39** 0.14* Ϫ 0.26** AD, campaign engagement 0.16* Ϫ 0.35** 0.16** Ϫ 0.24** AD, campaign engagement, debate exposure 0.18* Ϫ 0.30** 0.17** Ϫ 0.19** AD, campaign engagement, debate exposure, demographics 0.26** Ϫ 0.26** 0.19** Ϫ 0.16* AD, PID 0.13* Ϫ 0.23* 0.11* Ϫ 0.21** AD, party AD, PID, ’94 vote, PRI primary vote 0.13* Ϫ 0.17** 0.01 Ϫ 0.11** AD, demographics, PID 0.16** Ϫ 0.17** 0.14** Ϫ 0.15** AD, campaign engagement, demographics, PID 0.16** Ϫ 0.17** 0.14** Ϫ 0.15** AD, campaign engagement, debate exposure, demographics, PID 0.16** Ϫ 0.17* 0.15** 0.15* AD, party AD, PID, campaign engagement, debate, demographics 0.16** Ϫ 0.13* 0.12* Ϫ 0.13* AD, campaign engagement, demographics, ’94 vote, primary vote 0.18** Ϫ 0.19** 0.16** Ϫ 0.14*

** Significant at 0.01.* Significant at 0.05.† Significant at 0.1.

in February. For economy of presentation, Table 8 presents only the results for Televisioń Azteca news. (Televisa effects were consistently not significant.) As Table 8 indicates, the coefficient for exposure to Televisioń Azteca news remains significant at the 5 per cent level regardless of which controls are included, and its magnitude changes little. The effects of Televisioń Azteca news on support for the Left are somewhat less robust, although they are normally significant as well.

Self-selection to Media Outlets Related to left-out variable bias is the issue of self-selection to ideologically congruent media outlets – i.e., the fact that Fox supporters might prefer Televisio´n Azteca and Labastida supporters might lean towards Televisa. In general, the panel nature of our data should ensure that this sort of self-selection does not drive our results.56 However, it is conceivable that initial measures of partisan predispositions do not adequately capture propensities for attitude change, and that those propensities are somehow correlated with network preference. If so, what we have interpreted as media-induced attitude change could be nothing more than attitude crystallization over the course of the campaign. If self-selection were driving our results, we would expect relatively consistent impacts of exposure to different networks on attitudes towards the main candidates (and vote

56 See Wooldridge, Introductory Econometrics, chap. 9. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 23

TABLE 8 Effect of Televisio´n Azteca Exposure on Vote in July (Base is Vote for Labastida)

Controls Fox Other Non-voter

February vote 0.16** 0.14* Ϫ 0.06 February vote, campaign engagement 0.16** 0.15* 0.02 February vote, demographics, region, campaign engagement 0.16** 0.13* 0.03 February vote, demographics, region, alternative campaign engagement, debate exposure 0.14** 0.10 0.02 February vote, PID 0.14** 0.13* Ϫ 0.07 February vote, campaign engagement, PID 0.12* 0.13* Ϫ 0.00 February vote, alternative campaign engagement, PID 0.12* 0.12† Ϫ 0.00 February vote, demographics, campaign engagement, PID 0.13* 0.13* 0.01 February vote, demographics, alternative campaign engagement, PID 0.13* 0.13† 0.01 February vote, demographics, region, alternative campaign engagement, debate exposure, PID 0.13* 0.09 0.01 February vote, demographics, campaign engagement, 1994 vote, 1999 primary vote 0.14** 0.09 0.01

** Significant at 0.01.* Significant at 0.05.† Significant at 0.1. choice). That is, watching Televisa in February should improve assessments of Labastida relative to Fox in April–May; watching Televisioń Azteca should have the opposite effect. Similarly, we would expect exposure to different networks to exercise roughly the same sort of effect on Ca´rdenas at different points in the campaign. In both cases our data show the opposite. Watching Televisa (and Televisioń Azteca) was not a significant predictor of attitude change towards the two main candidates during the first half of the race, when coverage of the candidates was similar on both networks. However, television news exposure was associated with attitude change later in the race, when the tone of news coverage on the two networks was quite different. Self-reported exposure to network news mattered when the content of that news was different; it did not matter when networks accorded the candidates similar coverage. It should also be noted that self-selection only makes sense with respect to the effects of Televisioń Azteca on comparisons between Fox and Labastida. It could not be expected to explain attitudes towards Ca´rdenas, given that the Left had historically received poor coverage on both networks. If anything, there was less animosity between the PRD and Televisa than between the PRD and Televisioń Azteca, which had been involved in a protracted battle against the PRD’s administration in Mexico City. Nevertheless, Televisa coverage was associated with diminished support for Ca´rdenas during the first half of the campaign, whereas Televisioń Azteca exposure was not. It is theoretically possible, of course, to devise a direct test of the possibility that self-selection to ideologically congruent media is driving our results. This approach hinges on identifying a variable other than news exposure that captures underlying propensities to prefer one network over another, and thus hidden dispositions to change one’s opinions of the candidates in a way correlated with network news exposure. We chose network preference in February, based on which television news broadcast a respondent reported 24 LAWSON AND McCANN watching first, regardless of whether the respondent also reported watching another broadcast and regardless of how frequently she reported watching television news. We then re-ran our analyses with both network preference and network news exposure. Including this variable attenuated certain effects but neither altered the direction the coefficients reported above nor rendered them statistically insignificant. There remains the possibility that our results might be the product of viewers switching from one network to another over the course of the campaign in response to political coverage. For instance, Fox voters may have switched away from Televisa and towards Televisioń Azteca in response to perceived differences in coverage on the two networks. If so, Fox supporters would wind up becoming disproportionately reliant on Televisioń Azteca, while Labastida supporters would wind up relying more on Televisa. Such switching by committed partisans from one network to another (or changes in the amount of television news they watched on each channel) could be responsible for what we have interpreted as attitude change brought on by exposure to media messages. In the Mexican context, this possibility seems extremely remote. Because biases were quite modest compared to past elections, viewers who were inclined to change their choice of news outlet based on their political attitudes would presumably either have switched before the 2000 campaign or remained unmotivated to switch in the run-up to the elections. Moreover, as an empirical matter, several of our results are the opposite of what would be expected from self-selection during the campaign. For instance, if strong Ca´rdenas supporters who watched Televisa had switched away from that network during February–April, Televisa exposure in May–June should be correlated negatively with attitudes towards the Left. In fact, the reverse was true. It is nevertheless possible to address the issue of endogeneity bias explicitly by fitting simultaneous equations, where candidate differentials affect television viewing in a given survey period while at nearly the same time are affected by the content of the news.57 In formal terms, these equations would be specified as follows:

Candidate differentialt ϭ b1 (candidate differentialt-1) ϩ b2 (Azteca

exposuret) ϩ b3 (Televisa exposuret) ϩ b4-k (controls)

Azteca exposuret ϭ b1 (Azteca exposuret-1) ϩ b2 (Televisa exposuret -1) ϩ b3-k (controls)

Televisa exposuret ϭ b1 (Televisa exposuret -1) ϩ b2 (Azteca

exposuret -1) ϩ b3-k (controls) The assumption underlying this model is that lagged values of television exposure are exogenous to changes in feeling thermometer scores from one survey wave to the next.58 The independent effect of media exposure on candidate differentials when endogeneity is purged, shown in Tables 9 and 10, corroborates the findings from Tables 3 and 4. In the April/May wave, exposure to the Televisa network drove respondents away from Ca´rdenas and towards Fox; to a lesser extent, individuals who saw programming on Televisioń Azteca moved closer to Fox relative to Labastida. In the June wave, Televisioń Azteca viewers became less supportive of Labastida relative to Ca´rdenas. All of these findings were statistically significant.

57 This procedure would also correct for any tendency for respondents to overreport or underreport their level of exposure to news broadcasts as their candidate evaluations changed over the course of the campaign. 58 Steven E. Finkel, Causal Analysis with Panel Data (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 1995). Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 25

Based on these ﬁndings, we conclude that our substantive inferences are not the product of our treatment of missing data, measurement unreliability on the key variables, omitted variable bias, self-selection to ideologically congruent news broadcasts or related confounding factors.

DISCUSSION A decade ago, John Zaller argued that ‘massive’ media effects could be observed where analysts developed good measures and found adequate variation on key independent variables.59 Although our operationalization differs from Zaller’s, we reach a similar conclusion: in Mexico’s 2000 race, we find evidence for substantial, if not ‘massive’, media effects. Televisioń Azteca tended to hurt the ruling party relative to its main rivals, especially Vicente Fox. Meanwhile, Cuauhte´moc Ca´rdenas was initially harmed by negative coverage on Televisa but then rebounded when coverage of him on that network improved markedly in the second half of the race. The scope of these effects on both attitudes and voting behaviour was quite large. At first glance, it seems conceivable that these findings could be the product of more accurate measures of media content and exposure, rather than differences in political context between the United States and Mexico. For instance, our measure of tone of coverage is arguably more sophisticated than the purely verbal indicators employed in many analyses of television influence. We also explicitly take advantage of the fact that coverage may differ substantially across networks, a source of variation not examined in most earlier studies of effects. It might be that other researchers using these same methods would uncover comparable levels of persuasive influence in, say, American or British elections. If so, our findings suggest a new direction for research on television and electoral campaigns in established democracies. That said, we are sceptical of the notion that researchers would regularly have found large effects in established democracies if only they had looked harder. First, despite several decades of research, few scholars have found large-scale effects of television news coverage on voters’ partisan preferences in general election campaigns. Secondly, the changes in attitudes and behaviour that we have documented were produced by relatively modest biases on television. Although these biases were somewhat larger than those documented by content analyses of television news in the United States, they were not dramatically so.60 Nevertheless, the effects that we report on attitudes and behaviour are substantially greater than those found in most general election campaigns in established democracies. We thus lean strongly towards the conclusion that television influence on voters during Mexico’s 2000 campaign was the product of particular features of the Mexican political context. These features include not only a different media environment but also greater susceptibility to media influence.

59 Zaller, The Nature of Public Opinion. 60 See Doris A. Graber, ‘Framing Election News Broadcasts: News Context and its Impact on the 1984 Presidential Election’, Social Science Quarterly, 68 (1987), 552–68; Doris A. Graber, ‘Kind Pictures and Harsh Words’, in Kay Schozman, ed., Elections in America (Boston, Mass.: Unwin-Hyman, 1987), pp.115–41; Kepplinger, ‘Visual Biases in Television Campaign Coverage’; C. Richard Hoffstetter, Bias in the News: Network Television Coverage of the 1972 Election (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1976), pp. 119–30; Michael Robinson and Margaret A. Sheehan, Over the Wire and on TV: CBS and UPI in Campaign ’80 (New York: Russell Sage, 1983); Ansolabehere et al., ‘Mass Media and Elections’, p. 64. 26 LAWSON AND McCANN s.e. ´rdenas ˆ 0.153 0.850 0.580 0.676 1.50 0.942 1.48*0.018 0.549 0.510 0.010 0.011 0.492 0.376 0.274 0.421 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ s.e. ´rdenas Fox–Ca ˆ 1.05 0.962 0.040 0.774 1.09 1.08 0.170 0.165 0.035 0.148 0.191 0.476 0.995* 0.418 1.16† 0.619 0.015 0.013 0.068 0.463 0.141 0.411 0.206 0.472 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ standard errors.† Significant at 0.10.* Significant at 0.05.** Significant s.e. ϭ 690 677 684 0.34 0.34 0.24 ˆ Labastida–Fox Labastida–Ca 0.3260.233 0.244 0.185 0.114 0.227 0.232 0.179 0.396† 0.411** 0.209 0.156 0.844 0.997 1.36† 0.718 0.147 0.694 1.79** 0.618 0.0040.0750.165 0.181 0.131 0.170 0.086 0.072 0.176 0.126 0.108 0.129 0.155 0.111 1.10* 0.504 0.006 0.013 0.2240.090 0.503 0.482 0.249 0.493 0.523 0.437 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ estimated coefficients; s.e. ϭ ˆ Effects on Candidate Attitude Differentials, April/May (Two-Stage Model) 2 R 9 : Pairwise deletion employed; -statistic 17.8 17.9 11.1 Azteca exposure (April/May) Televisa exposure (April/May) N Adjusted Campaign attention (April/May) Attitude differential (Feb.)Talk about politics (April/May) 0.499 0.381** 0.047 0.797 0.396** 0.047 0.329** 0.050 Strong PRI partisan (Feb.)Strong PAN partisan (Feb.) 2.90** 0.600 2.90** 0.567 Strong PRD partisan (Feb.) 0.093 1.07 MaleUrban residentEducation Income proxy 0.285 0.174 0.383 0.300 0.460 0.019 0.368 0.291 0.114 0.151 0.325 0.257 Religiosity Union member 0.862† 0.440 0.207 0.423 PRI partisan or leanerPAN (Feb.) partisan or leaner (Feb.) 1.45** 0.492 1.65** 0.472 0.249 0.416 PRD partisan or leaner (Feb.) 0.180 0.619 F Notes at 0.01. Variable Age TABLE ConstantNorthern region 1.28 1.21 1.01 1.19 0.055 1.02 Metro region Central region 0.233 0.501 Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 27 s.e. ´rdenas ˆ 0.1760.121 0.593 0.190 2.40**0.972 0.824 1.10 1.911.12*0.165 1.40 0.505 0.488 0.3610.177 0.234 0.732 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ s.e. ´rdenas Fox–Ca ˆ 0.461* 0.191 3.49** 1.11 1.400.4610.140 1.44 0.796* 0.512 0.499 0.2480.143 0.4010.087 0.277 0.167 0.0650.405 0.241 0.149 0.032 0.394 0.734 0.271 0.167 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ standard errors.† Significant at 0.10.* Significant at 0.05.** Significant ϭ s.e. 296 295 295 0.51 0.54 0.38 ˆ Labastida–Fox Labastida–Ca 0.338†0.121 0.202 0.181 0.019 0.183 0.049 0.181 2.14†0.061 1.130 0.615 0.068 0.596 0.6670.2520.3260.259 0.420 0.479 0.287 0.176 1.21† 0.1641.97* 0.621 0.464 0.855 1.05† 0.305 0.293 0.584 0.455 0.818 2.20** 0.572 Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ Ϫ estimated coefficients; s.e. ϭ ˆ Effects on Candidate Attitude Differentials, June (Two-Stage Model) 2 R 10 : Pairwise deletion employed; -statistic 15.5 17.3 9.5 Adjusted Campaign attention (June)Azteca exposure (June) Televisa exposure (June) N 0.680 0.675 0.836 0.647 0.245 0.653 Strong PRD partisan (Feb.) Attitude differential (April/May)Talk about politics (June) 0.480** 0.055 0.466** 0.053 0.520** 0.063 Variable ConstantNorthern regionMetro regionCentral regionAgeMale Urban resident Education Religiosity Union memberIncome proxyPRI partisan or leanerPAN (Feb.) partisan or leaner 0.110PRD (Feb.) partisan or leanerStrong 1.28 (Feb.) PRI partisan (Feb.)Strong 0.600 PAN 0.018 partisan (Feb.) 0.583 1.49 0.542 1.04† 0.518 0.011 0.164 0.196 0.397 1.86** 0.317 0.598 0.015 0.562 0.758 0.592 0.661 0.251 1.69** 0.018 0.173 0.547 2.82** 0.571 0.014 0.549 0.547 0.642 0.690 0.009 0.069 1.03† 0.562 0.014 0.546 0.589 F Notes at 0.01. TABLE 28 LAWSON AND McCANN

From a theoretical perspective, our findings suggest a re-reading of the literature on campaign effects. Rather than presume that the persuasive effects of television exposure on partisan preferences and voting behaviour are minimal, researchers might instead assume that media effects vary with the political and informational context. Where partisan identifications are strong, political alternatives well known, media coverage balanced and audiences free to choose between a range of outlets, effects may well be modest. By contrast, where partisan identifications are weak, political alternatives more unfamiliar, media coverage less balanced and audiences dependent on a small number of sources for political information, effects may be pronounced. Such an interpretation of campaign effects is in keeping with recent scholarship on political communication, which has identified various caveats to the ‘minimal effects’ model. The magnitude of television influence in 2000 can only lead us to speculate about the impact of television news on past presidential campaigns in Mexico. During the 2000 race, both networks accorded the three main candidates roughly the same amount of coverage, and residual biases in tone were relatively subtle. In the presidential campaigns of 1988 and 1994, by contrast, both the volume and tone of coverage were grossly skewed in favour of the ruling party, and audiences were even more dependent on Televisa news for information about the main candidates.61 It seems likely that television bias prevented substantial defections from the ruling party in those contests. Empirically, our ability to generalize beyond Mexico is limited by the paucity of panel surveys with adequate indicators of media exposure. Theories of media influence, however, offer grounds for suspecting pronounced effects. In terms of the relative weakness of partisan attachments, the comparative unfamiliarity of political alternatives, and the extent of dependence on biased outlets, most of the world’s electoral contests look more like Mexico’s than they look like those in the United States. Consequently, limited effects models developed in the United States may substantially understate media-induced attitude change in much of the world. Indeed, by global standards, Mexico is really an intermediate case; the factors that appear to permit substantial media effects in that country are even more pronounced elsewhere. In Brazil, for instance, partisan attachments at the mass level are extremely weak; citizens rely overwhelmingly on television for information about candidates; and bias on television can be striking.62 One might expect even greater media influence in such contexts. Such developing democracies clearly represent promising territory for research on the political impact of television.

61 Lawson, Building the Fourth Estate; Murray Fromson, ‘Mexico’s Struggle for a Free Press’, in Richard R. Cole, ed., Communication in Latin America: Journalism, Mass Media, and Society (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources Books, 1996), pp. 115–38; Adler, ‘The Mexican Case’; Arredondo-Rami´rez et al., Ası´ se callo´el sistema; Victor Manuel Bernal-Sahagun and Eduardo Torreblanca-Jacques, eds, Espacios de silencio (Mexico City: Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, 1988). 62 Roberto Amaral and Cesar Guimaraes, ‘Media Monopoly in Brazil’, Journal of Communication, 44 (1994), 26–38; Mauro Porto, ‘Making Sense of Politics: TV News and the Interpretation of Politics in Brazil’ (paper presented at the XXII Conference of the Latin American Studies Association, Miami, 2000); Joseph D. Straubhaar, Organ Olsen and Maria Cavaliari Nun˜es, ‘The Brazilian Case: Inﬂuencing the Voter’, in Skidmore, ed., Television, Politics, and the Transition to Democracy in Latin America, pp. 118–36. Television News, Mexico’s 2000 Elections and Media Effects 29

APPENDIX

QUESTION WORDING AND CODINGS Television news exposure: ‘Do you watch any television news program? [IF YES] Which one? Approximately how many days a week do you watch it?’ Interviewers were instructed to mark up to two programs. Respondents who reported watching a particular program six or seven days a week were treated as watching five days a week. Those who reported watching two programs on the same network were treated as having been doubly exposed; i.e., their self-reported exposure to one program was added to their self-reported exposure to the other program. For both networks in all three waves, over 93 per cent of respondents were coded as watching five or fewer days per week. Feeling thermometers: ‘[SHOW CARD] I am going to ask your opinion about political parties and candidates for president. On this scale, zero indicates that your opinion is very bad and ten that your opinion is very good. If you don’t have an opinion, just tell me and we’ll go on to the next one. What is your opinion of …? [READ AND ROTATE].’ Options were ‘PRI, PAN, PRD, Francisco Labastida, Vicente Fox, Cuauhte´moc Ca´rdenas’. These feeling thermometer scores were then differenced to create attitude differentials. Vote preference (February): ‘Now for the purposes of this survey let’s suppose that today is election day and you are going to vote for President of the Republic. For this I am going to give you a piece of paper where you can mark your response without me seeing it and afterwards deposit it in this box. If the elections for President of the Republic were today, for whom would you vote?’ Respondents were then handed a sample ballot. Vote choice (July): ‘Did you vote in the elections of July 2? [IF YES:] Could you mark on this ballot for whom you voted in the elections for President of the Republic? [HAND BALLOT AND REQUEST THAT R DEPOSIT IT IN THE BOX.]’ Partisan identification: ‘In general, do you consider yourself priı´sta, panista or perredista? [IF R HAS AFFILIATION:] Do you consider yourself very priı´sta/panista/perredista or somewhat priı´sta/panista/perredista? [IF R HAS NO AFFILIATION]: Toward which party do you most lean?’ Campaign attention: ‘And in particular how much attention are you paying to the presidential election campaign this year – a lot, some, a little, or none?’ Talks about politics: ‘How often do you talk about politics with other people – daily, a few times a week, a few times a month, rarely, or never?’ Debates: ‘Did you see the televised debate last week/month between …? [IF YES] Did you see all of it or just a part? [FOR ALL RESPONDENTS] From which of the following have you heard commentary about the debate?’ [Options were ‘Television reports, close family members, friends or acquaintances, radio reports, any other?’]. Credibility of television news: ‘When they talk about the candidates for the presidency, how much do you believe the news on television – a lot, a little, some, or none?’ 30 LAWSON AND McCANN

TABLE A1 Responses and Distributions for Main Variables

Variable Minimum Maximum Mean St. dev. N

TV Azteca exposure (February) 0 10 1.43 2.41 2,355 TV Azteca exposure (April/May) 0 10 1.86 2.56 952 TV Azteca exposure (June) 0 10 1.70 2.46 974 TV Azteca exposure (July) 0 10 1.76 2.56 1,254 Televisa exposure (February) 0 10 2.39 2.75 2,355 Televisa exposure (April/May) 0 10 2.34 2.57 952 Televisa exposure (June) 0 10 2.38 2.72 974 Televisa exposure (July) 0 10 1.90 2.54 1,254 Labastida–Fox (February) Ϫ 10 10 Ϫ 0.26 3.90 1,982 Labastida–Fox (April/May) Ϫ 10 10 Ϫ 0.05 4.31 851 Labastida–Fox (June) Ϫ 10 10 Ϫ 0.30 4.58 901 Labastida–Ca´rdenas (February) Ϫ 10 10 1.55 4.19 1,966 Labastida–Ca´rdenas (April/May) Ϫ 10 10 1.30 4.17 847 Labastida–Ca´rdenas (June) Ϫ 10 10 0.60 4.20 900 Fox–Ca´rdenas (February) Ϫ 10 10 1.82 3.47 1,965 Fox–Ca´rdenas (April/May) Ϫ 10 10 1.35 3.43 852 Fox–Ca´rdenas (June) Ϫ 10 10 0.90 3.80 901

Note: Respondents scored 10 on network exposure if they reported watching two different shows on the same network every day. Fewer than 7 per cent of respondents scored over 5 on any of the network exposure variables listed above.