Paper submitted for the International Communication Organization, Dresden, 2006
Media coverage of government policies and public satisfaction with information provision and policy results
Jan Kleinnijenhuis and Anita M.J. van Hoof Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Department of Communication Science De Boelelaan 1081 1081 HV Amsterdam e-mail: [email protected] ; [email protected]
Acknowlegment The authors would like to thank the Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst, which commissioned the data collection on which this paper rests. The authors are indebted much to dr. Dirk Oegema (dept. of Communication Science Vrije Universiteit) and dr. Jan A. de Ridder (University of Amsterdam, dept. of Communication Science) who participated in the research project on which this paper rests, as well as to Wouter H. van Atteveldt MSc and dr. P.C. Ruigrok whose contributions to the research project were invaluable also, and, last but not least to the coders in the research project.
Topics: Public information, media effects Abstract
Public information has not gained much attention in the literature on political communication, although its importance is beyond discussion. The research question of this paper asks how the news on government policies influences satisfaction with government policy. Apart from well known hypotheses such as agenda setting and priming, hypotheses are tested that deal with the question whether the government tries to increase policy satisfaction by communicating ambitions (it’s a mess, but we will do something against it) or by communicating successes (everything under control, due to us). The data to test the hypotheses come from a fourfold survey study to tap aspects of satisfaction with the Dutch government’s policy with regard to 55 policy issues in addition to a longitudinal content analysis of 24 newspapers to unravel the media coverage of these issues. The results show dissatisfaction everywhere. Increase of satisfaction by the communication of ambitions rather than by the communication of results appears to be the rule. The diffusion of negative perceptions of real world conditions may be a side effect of the latter.
2 Introduction
This study asks how public information contributes to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of citizens with government policies. Public information efforts, “irrespective of their importance for the public’s welfare, do not make it onto the radar screens of social science researchers”, according to a recent review of Graber (2005: 482, 497). Remarkably enough, satisfaction with government policies is nevertheless believed to be one of the key determinants not only of electoral choices but also of public participation (Mueller, 2003). Governments use the Internet, public libraries and their own records departments to disclose policy information, press releases and parliamentary debates. Interested citizens and citizens with an interest will find their way to obtain the information sought for. Governments use ads to further specific policy aims (e.g. reducing cigarette smoking or firework risks). Most citizens obtain most of their information on government policies from the news, however, which may explain why politicians and public servants spend much time and effort to influence citizen perceptions and citizen satisfaction by framing the issues for journalists (Jacobs & Shapiro, 2000). Citizens use the news in very different ways. Some will only retain the endlessly repeated highlights of the news, whereas others will develop a detailed cognitive map of the political landscape. Satisfaction with government policies may be based on a superficial impression of government policy, but also on detailed knowledge about it. In both cases, civilians retrieve information from issue news. Satisfaction or dissatisfaction from citizens with government policies is also important because it will ultimately influence the overall evaluation of the government. Therefore, the research question in this paper is how the news on government policies influences satisfaction with government policies.
Theory
From the point of view of the government, public information provision is the key to open the gateways to the general public. In effect, governments subsidize the news industry with all types of facilities (press rooms, press meetings, interviews, press releases, leaking of confidential information) to put their information in the press (Cook, 1998). Satisfaction with the information on government policies is nevertheless one of the least studied variables in political communication.
3 A government can use different strategies in its communication of policy intentions and policy results. Table 1 gives an elementary overview of four possible communication strategies of a government with respect to real world developments, based on two dimensions. First, the communication strategy depends on the way the government defines the real world situation towards which its policy decisions are directed. In their honeymoon weeks a new governments may emphasize evil negative developments to persuade the citizens that the policy of the previous governments should be eradicated. Alternatively, a government may emphasize good developments, for example to get reelected in the next campaign. Second, the communication strategy depends on how the government formulates its goals: as focused on the Evil – in that case the government will act towards eradicate the observed evil or preventing the evil to come – or as focused on its will to promote the Good. The latter dimension of gains versus losses, or promotion versus prevention, has recently attracted much scholarly interest (Higgins, 1998; Shah, Kwak, Schmierbach, & Zubric, 2004).
Table 1: a fourfold typology of communication strategies Government direction Towards the Evil Towards the Good (loss frame, prevention focus) (gain frame, promotion focus)
Evil Ambition communication Eradicate the observed Evil (1) Strive for the Good (2)
Good Success communication Prevent the Evil from coming (3) Claim what is Good (4) Real world Real world condition
The first communication strategy tells a story about the Evil (e.g. terrorism, unemployment), but that the government will eradicate it. The second communication strategy tells that the situation is evil now, but that the government strives for the Good (e.g. democracy in Iraq). In this case, the government will strive for something unseen before. These two strategies can be seen as a prevention focused and a promotion focused variety of ambition communication . The third communication strategy tells the story that the real world situation is good now but that the government actively prevents the Evil from coming (e.g. early warning systems to trace terrorist attacks). The fourth communication strategy praises government policy because the Good (e.g. freedom) is being preserved. The last two communication strategies are prevention focused and promotion focused variations of success communication . Different communication strategies can be chosen for different issues, but once a communication strategy is chosen, the government cannot switch fast from one strategy to another without taking the risk of becoming unbelievable.
4 The nature of election cycles implies that governments that come to power, have to shift one way or another from the communication of the ambition that the government will eradicate the ruins that can be observed everywhere (and for which a previous government can be held responsible) (1) towards success communication that the government is responsible for the positive developments that are observed everywhere (4). Whereas in the age of newspapers a media silence could be interwoven in the years in between elections, the nature of the modern publicity process implies that this is not an option anymore. Policy statements and reactions to statements from others have to be provided on an instant basis, thereby increasing the risk of mixing incompatible story lines and the risk that the public will distrust the government. Governments that are reelected will more often start with strategy two (strive for the Good: let us finish our job) or from strategy three (prevent the Evil from coming: you still need us), and not use strategy one, since it will define their own policy as a failure. Satisfaction with governmental policy can be derived from this classification of communication strategies. The first question is whether or not people agree with the definition of the real world situation as sketched by the government in the news. If so, they will be satisfied with the agenda of issue importance of the government as presented in the news. The next question is whether citizens recognize a government communication strategy. Are they satisfied with the information provided by the government? The third question is whether or not citizens are satisfied with the policy results. Therefore, satisfaction is not a one- dimensional concept. A threefold distinction should be made between awareness of the importance of the issues addressed by government policies, satisfaction with the information provided by the government in the news, and satisfaction with the outcomes of government policies according to the news. The three subsections below deal with the expected effects of the news that could have an influence upon these aspects of satisfaction.
Awareness of the importance of the issues addressed by the government
Before people can start evaluating the government policy regarding an issue as either satisfactory or unsatisfactory, they have to start thinking about the issue. They have to put the issue on their agenda. Thus, a certain policy has to attract news attention in order to gain (dis)satisfaction.
5 Agenda setting theory in its elementary form simply states that objects or issues that appear frequently in the news tend to become the objects or issues which voters deem important (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Issues that retrieve only marginal news attention will only play a role in the opinion of the well-informed and heavily interested citizens.
H1 Agenda setting: The more attention an issue receives in the news, the more citizens will deem that issue important.
Satisfaction with government information
Before people can be satisfied with government information, they have to receive that information. So, an almost trivial hypothesis is that citizens will not be satisfied with the information, when the press does not provide such information.
H2 Learning: The more attention an issue receives in the news, the more satisfied citizens will be with the government information regarding that issue.
Eventually hypothesis H2 could be geared to the media attention for government plans regarding an issue. A less trivial hypothesis is that citizens will become dissatisfied when the information provided by the government is pointless or ambiguous, for example when the policy is extremely iffy, which occurs easily with risk prevention communication, or with coalition governments in multi-party systems. Ongoing negotiations and negotiation outcomes often result in ambiguous and contradictory statements from the parties involved. Unclear statements may also result from a lack of charismatic leadership (Sheafer, 2001).
H3 Ambiguity: The less ambiguous the news regarding policy plans of the government with respect to an issue are, the more satisfied citizens will be with the government information regarding that issue.
The basic idea is that citizens – and journalists alike – will get irritated by a Minister who is often in the news as a talking head, but who nevertheless only gives neutral, ambiguous or contradictory signals or even no signals at all of his/her policy direction regarding an issue.
6 News consumers want distinctive policy ambitions. A consequence of the abundance of worldwide news in the modern publicity process is that journalists will often regard policy plans as old news, before all citizens are aware of the direction of these plans. Ministers who are not creative in finding new and newsworthy wordings for old ambitions may disappear from the news and face the risk that citizens become unsatisfied with their information provision.
Satisfaction with the results of government policies
Satisfaction with the decisiveness of governmental policy is related to the political ideology of individual citizens, but also to the attention for the viewpoints of mainstream and opposition viewpoints in the news (Zaller, 1992). According to Zaller, many issues start as issues that are of interest only to the political elite. When the amount of publicity regarding such an issue is fairly low, most citizens will not care about the issue (agenda setting hypothesis H1). With low profile issues, the press is not inclined to lend the microphone to possible opponents of government policies. One-sided low profile news typically does not give food for thoughts and reflection. Therefore, citizens usually will be satisfied with the direction of government policy.
H4 Direction: The more attention the direction of the policy plans of the government is given in the news, the more satisfied citizens will be with the results of the government policy regarding that issue.
To put it the other way around, what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over. It should be noted that ambiguous and contradictory statements (hypothesis H3) diminish by definition the clarity with respect to the direction of government plans. The attention for opposing viewpoints often increases in the case of high profile issues. Journalists will devote a part of the space and the time devoted to the issue by seeking actively for both sides of a story. They will pay attention to criticasters and criticisms that were invisible earlier on. Since citizens did not have very deep thoughts about the issue, these opposing viewpoints will also be greeted with approval.
7 H5 Social base: The more attention the direction of the policy concerns and policy proposals of other actors than the government receives in the news, the more satisfied citizens will be with the results of the government policy regarding that issue.
To be consistent with the wording of the previous hypotheses, hypothesis H5 is not worded as an hypothesis on the effects of criticisms by opponents, but simply as an hypothesis on the straightforward effect of an emphasis on the viewpoints of other actors than the government. Taken together, hypothesis H4 and H5 imply that satisfaction with government policies increases when other actors endorse to the policy plans of the government, but decreases when other actors oppose the direction of the policy plans of the government. Hypothesis H5 implies that news about a lacking social base will diminish satisfaction with the government policy. Therefore we will refer to H5 as the Social Base Hypothesis. It has been realized since long that the actual state of the economy exerts an influence on satisfaction with the outcomes of government policy. Political Science journals with attention for Political Economy such as the British Journal of Political Science, as well as some economic journals such as Public Choice, devote much attention to tests that the inflation rate and the unemployment rate explain the support for the government (Mueller, 2003). Recently is has been realized that not only economic states of affairs, but also real world developments with respect to other issues such as immigration, health care, and numbers of visible body bags in foreign intervention plays an important role. Moreover, research shows that not only objective developments, but also the frequency and the tone of the media coverage about these real world developments have an effect on perception and satisfaction (Hetherington, 1996). The consensus in the literature on public information management (e.g. Page and Shapiro, 1992) appears to be that positive developments should not only occur, but that they should be recognizable as successes on the basis of earlier news about government ambitions and government plans.
H6 Results: The more the direction of news about real world developments with respect to an issue corresponds with attention for direction of the policy aims of the government in the news, the higher citizen’s satisfaction with the results of government policy will be.
8 It should be noted that hypothesis H7 actually entails an interaction effect between the direction of the policy plans of the government and the direction of news about real world conditions on the satisfaction with the results of the government’s policy.
Satisfaction with government policies and trust in government
The impact of the news on satisfaction with government policies – i.e. perceived issue importance, satisfaction with government information and satisfaction with government results – will ultimately influence the overall evaluation of the government. We regard the overall evaluation of the government as trust.
H7 Trust. Trust in government depends on satisfaction with government policies.
So, news about issue positions of the government will have an indirect effect on trust in government. There is a complication to this general rule. Citizens may also form opinions about issues that are barely understood or barely known – for instance when asked about it in opinion polls or during discussions at a birthday party. In such cases, people will retrieve their opinion from other related issues on which they already have an opinion. Because of the media attention for the Irangate issue voters tended to evaluate president Reagan on Irangate rather than on his social policies (Krosnick & Kinder, 1990). In the literature, this is known as priming . Priming in the context of news effects research entails that news consumers base the criteria that guide their evaluations and decisions on the relative media attention for various issues in the recent past. In the context of satisfaction with government policies, priming entails that trust in government will especially be based on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction of citizens with the issues that attract considerable media attention.
H8 Priming: The higher the media attention for an issue, the greater the impact of the satisfaction with the government policy regarding that issue will be upon trust in the government.
It should be noted that from a methodological point of view the priming effect entails an interaction effect between the amount of news for each issue and a respondent’s
9 (dis)satisfaction with government policy regarding these issues. The interaction effect stipulated in hypothesis H8 presupposes the trivial hypothesis H7. Key-events, defined as events that attracted huge media attention during a relative short time, like September 11, may play an important role in priming also. Key-events in the Dutch news context in 2004 are for instance the massacre of Bosnians in Srebrenica when the Dutch peace force capitulated to the Serb general Mladic in 1995, the attack on the Twin Towers September 11, 2001 and the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn on May 6, 2002 by an animal protectionist, of Hans van Wieren on January 13, 2004 by a Moroccan school kid, and of Theo van Gogh by a Moroccan fundamentalist on November 2, 2004. In this paper, we will not present a formal test of the influence of key-events on perceived importance of issues, because the demarcation line between key-events and ordinary events is a fluid one. But these major Dutch news events can shed light on the interpretation of news effects. We will use them for that purpose.
An overview of hypotheses to be tested
Figure 1 presents an overview of the hypotheses to be tested in this paper.
H1 Agenda Amount of news regarding an setting Perceived issue issue importance H7 ” H2 H8 ” Learning Priming
Amount of unambiguous news H3 regarding policy plans of the Ambiguity H7 ” government Satisfaction with Trust in the government information government
H5 Amount of news about other Social base H7 ” actors supporting the policy plans of the government Satisfaction with results of government policy regarding issue H4 Amount of news regarding Direction direction of policy plans of the government toward an issue
H6 Amount of news direction of Results real world developments
Figure 1: Expected effects of news on satisfaction with government policy and trust in government
10
The figure shows that except for the three dependent variables regarding separate issues (perceived issue importance, information satisfaction and results satisfaction), a fourth group of hypotheses deals with trust in government.
Method
Test of the hypotheses ask for a content analysis of media content on the one hand and survey data about satisfaction with government policies on the other hand. The Dutch Governmental Information Office RVD commissioned the collection of such data for the year 2004. The content analysis data were collected by the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and the survey data by MarketResponse Inc.
Content Analysis to Measure News Variables
All Dutch newspapers that were electronically available at the Vrije Universiteit on April 1, 2004 were included in the research. The 24 newspapers that were analyzed include all national newspapers, except for two small protestant newspapers and two newspapers that are distributed for free in railway stations(Sp!ts, Metro). For 8 of the 12 provinces all regional newspapers were included. Two varieties of content analysis were performed. An automated content analysis (the ‘in-breadth analysis’) was designed to trace precisely occurrences and co-occurrences of actors and issues in newspaper articles. In addition, a conventional relational content analysis using the NET-method (Kleinnijenhuis, de Ridder, & Rietberg, 1997; Popping, 2000; van Cuilenburg, Kleinnijenhuis, & de Ridder, 1986) was used to record the nature of policy ambitions of the government and other actors, policy outcomes according to the media, as well as patterns of conflict and cooperation and attributions in the media of successes and failures for actors (the ‘in-depth analysis’). For both types of content analysis a hierarchically structured list of actors and issues was construed to spot them from the news. Actors were divided into seven broad groups: the government, parliament and political parties, the judiciary, public administration, the media, societal actors, and foreign actors. Governmental actors were subdivided into the Ministries
11 from the Netherlands and the royal family. The Ministers and Assistant Secretaries of State were classified according to their Ministry. All Members of Parliament (first and second Chamber in the Netherlands) were listed, as well as other party politicians such as former leaders and party chairmen. Subgroups of the judiciary were, except for regional and national courts of justice, the legal profession and public prosecutors. Public administration falls apart in local and regional authorities, advisory councils at the regional and national levels, and executive branches of the government, such as schools, universities, the army and the police. The media were divided in various national and international media institutions. Societal actors fall apart in citizens, a variety of interest groups, professions such as the medical profession and teachers, private enterprises and labor unions. Foreign actors were subdivided into European and non-European actors, which were in turn, further subdivided into nations and international organizations. The complete list of actors consisted of 314 governmental actors and about 500 other actors. Issues were subdivided in twelve policy domains (economic affairs, financial affairs, social welfare, health care, agriculture and environment, foreign affairs, traffic and transportation, crime, (im)migration and integration, public safety, education and citizen- government relationships) that correspond roughly, but not completely with demarcation lines between the Ministries in the Netherlands. For each policy domain five issues were distinguished that were designated as policy priorities by the Dutch coalition government, Christian Democrats (CDA), Right wing liberals (VVD) and left wing liberals (D66) that took office in 2003. For each policy domain many more issues appeared in the news than those designated by the government as policy priorities. These issues were recorded as well. All issues were split up further in concrete (sub)topics, and aspects so as to enable an automated content analysis. The complete list of issues consisted of 1553 sub issues. For the in-depth relational content analysis a stratified sample of articles from the in- breadth analysis was drawn for each of the twelve policy domains for the year 2004. Articles had to cover either one of the 60 prioritized issues, or the government. 12987 articles were coded in total. The detailed list of (sub)issues and actors from the in-breadth analysis was used in the relational content analysis to fill in the sources, subjects and objects in the source: subject / predicate / object-statements that coders were expected to extract from the headlines and leads from the articles. Coders extracted 53978 statements in total. Two types of statements are especially interesting for the purpose of this article: statements regarding policy positions of actors with respect to issues (e.g. “Minister Peijs / wants to increase (+1) /
12 traffic safety) and factual statements in the news regarding the actual developments of these issues (e.g. “Decrease in 2003 of (-) / traffic incidents” ). The fine-grained data resulting from the content analysis were aggregated to higher order meaning objects ‘automatically’ starting from the hierarchically structured list of meaning objects. For the purpose of this article we simply divided actors in governmental actors from the Netherlands and other actors. Subissues were aggregated to the level of the sixty prioritized policy issues. For the purpose of this article other issues were neglected. This aggregation step asked for sign reversals (e.g. “Decrease in 2003 of (-) / traffic incidents” comes down to “Increase in 2003 of (+) / traffic safety). The information with respect to the necessary sign reversals was built into the hierarchically structured list of issues and actors.
Operationalisation The amount of news regarding an issue was measured as the square root from the number of statements with regard to either policy plans of the government, statements from others, or factual statements about actual conditions. The square root is taken both on the basis of statistical reasons (preventing outliers) and on the basis of common sense (whether 0 or 2 stories deal with an issue makes more of a difference than whether 90 or 92 stories deal with it). The direction of a policy position toward an issue – either from the government or from others – was measured as the sum of the directions from separate statements. The direction of issue positions was measured per issue position statement on a –1..+1-scale. +1 would indicate that the government or other actors, succeeded in presenting only statements indicating that the one strives for what is valued positively in Dutch society (e.g. employment rather than unemployment). For issues on which the public is divided (e.g. whether asylum seekers should be sent back to their former countries) the majority opinion was considered to be +1. The value -1 would indicate that the government or other actors are consistently striving for what is negatively evaluated by Dutch citizens. The lack of ambiguity of policy intentions was measured as the square of the direction of a policy. Taking the square from a –1..+1-scale implies that both negative and positive statements will lead to values near one, whereas neutral statements as well as ambiguous and contradictory statements (that amount to near zero values on the average), will give rise to a value near zero.
13 The direction of news on real world developments was measured as the sum of the directions from separate statements about real world developments, which were measured also on a –1..+1-scale.
Surveys to Measure Public Opinion
At the end of each quarter from 2004, MarketResponse Inc. conducted a random sample survey to measure public satisfaction for each of the sixty prioritized policy issues (5 issues for 12 policy domains) with roughly thousand respondents each (n=910, n=1093, n=1035, n=1039 respondents respectively). To reduce the duration of the interviews only six policy domains were addressed in one wave, thus giving rise to two measurements for each policy issue within one year. We excluded the policy domain of the relationship between the government and citizens from further analysis in this paper because this issue was included only once in 2004, thereby reducing the number of issues for further analysis to 55. More detailed questions with respect to government policy were asked to a random subset of roughly 500 respondents per quarter. For each of the twelve policy domains these respondents were asked whether they were satisfied with government policy. For each of the five issues per policy domain a set of more detailed questions was asked.
Operationalization To operationalize the importance of an issue for the respondents three questions were asked. “How important is
14 Satisfaction with the information regarding the government policy with respect to an issue was measured with one direct question: “how satisfied or unsatisfied are you with the information from the government with respect to
Data analysis
Media content about an issue and a respondent’s satisfaction with the government policy regarding that issue were connected at the level of individual respondents so as to take into account the newspapers used by each single respondent. Thus, content variables with respect to the content of the media used by a single respondent were assigned as values on contextual variables to that respondent. It should be noticed that this is a major step forwards as compared to the majority of studies that do not reckon with the selective exposure to specific media by single respondents. It should be noted that most newspaper readers use the Internet and watch television also. Respondents who did not read a newspaper were assigned the average values of the various newspapers. The hypotheses to be tested in this article, center on issues and citizens, thus raising the question whether citizens, issues, or citizen-issue-combinations should be used as the units of analysis. Aggregation to the level of citizens is impractical because we would then have to test the hypotheses for each of the 55 issues involved. Aggregation to the level of issues would result in high correlations, but would completely neglect the jerkiness in individual
15 responses to the news. For the purpose of this article, a pooled analysis with citizen-issue- combinations as the units of analysis is used.
Results
Table 2 gives a description of media coverage and public satisfaction at the level of 11 policy domains that were included in the research. A description at the level of the 55 issues that were included in the research would take too much space here. The first column ‘media attention’ is based on an automated content analysis of keywords for the policy domains in all analyzed newspapers from 2004 (Report In-breadth Analysis Media Coverage 2003-2004, report Vrije Univesiteit for the RVD, April 2005).
Table 2: media coverage and public satisfaction per policy domain News variables Public opinion variables Media Direct- Social Results Perceived Satis- Satis- attention ion base (-1..+1) impor- action faction (col. %) policy policy tance with with govern- govern- (-1..+1) inform- policy ment ment ation results (- (-1..+1) (-1..+1) (-1..+1) 1..+1) Economic affairs 6.2% 0.19 0.05 0.17 0.71 -0.13 -0.24 Financial affairs 4.3% 0.19 -0.02 0.00 0.76 -0.17 -0.32 Social welfare 13.3% 0.14 0.06 0.06 0.70 -0.11 -0.23 Health care 19.9% 0.20 0.14 -0.12 0.76 -0.08 -0.19 Agriculture and environment 10.1% 0.24 0.14 0.00 0.70 -0.06 -0.12 European / foreign affairs 4.4% 0.17 0.12 -0.09 0.63 -0.07 -0.14 Traffic and transportation 8.7% 0.25 0.06 0.00 0.75 -0.03 -0.16 Justice (no crime) 21.8% 0.05 0.08 0.09 0.78 -0.16 -0.18 (Im)migration and integration 5.2% 0.12 0.14 0.09 0.69 -0.10 -0.30 Public safety 4.1% 0.09 0.01 0.00 0.74 -0.03 -0.06 Education 2.0% 0.21 0.02 0.06 0.72 -0.11 -0.16
The media paid the most attention to Justice (crime, 21.8) and Health Care (19.9%). Minister of Justice Mr. Piet-Hein Donner was summoned to Parliament many times to defend his policies due to to a number of accidents, such as kidnappings and murders by criminals who were released from prison for the weekend, but most often because of the fear for terrorist attacks, most notably after the murder on Theo van Gogh by a muslim fundamentalist on November 2, 2004. Minister of Health Care Mr. Hans Hoogervorst strived for the introduction of a new system of health care, with private insurances only, which raised many protests, amongst others from general practitioners. When combined, social welfare, economic affairs and financial affairs were often in the news also, amongst others because of conflicts over
16 wages and pensions between Minister of Social Affairs Mr. Aart-Jan de Geus and the labour unions. The second column displays whether the government policy had a strong direction according to the media. The second column tells us that according to the media Minister of Justice Mr. Piet-Hein Donner was the least populist minister (+0.05 only). To the great indignation of Parliamentarians and the press Donner continued to give nuanced statements on the rights of criminals and the impossibility to rule out crime and the risk of terrorist attacks completely. The government was most determined according to the news on policy fields that were less often in the news (e.g. traffic and transportation 0.25, agriculture and the environment 0.24). The third column presents the social base for the government, operationalized as the mean direction of the policy positions of other actors that made it into the news. Not a single policy domain is characterized by huge and undivided public support for the government (maximum of +0.14 only). Remarkably enough the press attributes by and large support to Minister of Immigration Mrs. Rita Verdonk for her tough policy on asylum seekers that had exhausted all procedures (+0.14). The least support is given for the financial policy (-0.02) and the policy on public safety (-0.02). Although the war on terror was not included in the list of 55 issues, the issues that dealt with public safety had to do with the fear for terrorist attacks in 2004. The social base for the government policy toward public safety is small (0.01). The fourth column indicates the real world developments according to the news, were. +1 would indicate that according to the news the actual conditions in the Netherlands were precisely what the majority of the Dutch wanted. According to the news the economy is recovering from the recession (+0.17). Moreover the policy of Minister of Economic Affairs Mr. Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst with respect to the mainports (Schiphol airport, Rotterdam harbour) is considered to be quite succesful. With respect to health care results are absent (- 0.17), although the concessions that Mr. Hoogervorst made to the general practitioners were probably not very significant from a broader perspective. As is known from previous research, citizens will usually say that everything is important when asked for (they will be much more selective with free recall). This usual pattern can be seen here also: European and foreign affairs are deemed the least important (+0.63) and financial affairs the most important (+0.76). The most remarkable finding from Table 2 is presumably that the Dutch citizens of 2004 are dissatisfied in every respect. They think that the information from the government is poor,
17 especially with respect to Justice and crime (-0.16) and to socio-economic policy (finanical affairs -0.17, economic affairs -0.13 and social welfare -0.11). Citizens are dissatisfied with the results of government policy also. The Dutch especially disliked the results of the financial policy of the Dutch government (especially with respect to the purchasing power of ordinary citizens). In the aftermath of the murders on Pim Fortuyn, Hans van Wieren and Theo van Gogh, the Dutch are heavily dissatisfied with the actual results of the policies with respect to immigration and integration also (-0.30).
Tests of the hypothesis Table 3 presents standardized regression coefficients and their signficance levels to test the hypotheses.
Table 3: tests of the hypotheses (standardized regression coefficients)
2 Hypothesis Independent variable Dependent variable R adj beta H1 (agenda setting) Amount of news regarding an issue Perceived issue 0.002 0.05 *** importance H2 (learning) Amount of news regarding an issue - ns Satisfaction with H3 (ambiguity) Unambiguous news regarding government information 0.0003 0.02 *** unambiguous policy plans of the government H4 (direction) Amount of news regarding direction of - ns policy plans of the government toward an issue H5 (social base) Amount of news about other actors 0.05 *** Satisfaction with the supporting the policy plans of the results of government government policy H6 (results) Amount of news direction of real world 0.005 -0.03 *** developments corresponding with direction of policy plans (interaction effect) H7” (trust) Satisfaction with results of government 0.17 *** policy H7” (trust) Satisfaction with government information 0.14 ***
Trust in the government H7” (trust) Perceived issue importance 0.03 * H8 (priming) Interaction perceived issue importance * 0.10 0.04 *** satisfaction with results of government policy Note: n = 57 887 issue-respondent combinations. Some tests at other levels of aggregation give confidence in the results (cf. Table 4). *** p < 0.001 ; ** p < 0.01; * p < 0.05, ns non-significant;
The data support most hypotheses. Media attention has an agenda setting effect on public attention indeed (H1). The amount of news does not play a significant role in subjective learning about government policies (H2 rejected). Ambiguity in government proposals, or ambiguity in their press coverage has indeed a devastating effect on the satisfaction with the information provided by the government (H3). Media attention for unambiguous statements
18 about government policy may influence the satisfaction with the information provision, but they do not exert a significant influence on the satisfaction with the results of government policies, at least not when controlled for the media coverage of the social base of the policy and the results of the policy (H4 rejected). The social base hypothesis (H5) is confirmed. The likelihood that citizens will be satisfied with the government policy regarding an issue increases when other actors have the same policy direction as the government (interaction effect of policy direction of the government and policy direction of others). As expected, satisfaction with governmental policy leads to a better evaluation of that government. Citizens, who are more satisfied with governmental policy, deem that government trustworthier. Media attention for an issue primes indeed whether trust in the government is based on the satisfaction or dissatisfaction with respect to the policy results regarding that issue (H8). Hypothesis H6 is corroborated in an intriguing way. The negative sign of the standardized regression coefficient of the interaction effect between the direction of government plans and the direction of real world developments according to the news indicates that citizens will be more satisfied with government policy, when the discrepancy increases between government plans and government results. A large discrepancy between plans and results is to be expected when the government sticks to the communication of ambitions (the country is a mess, but we want to do something about it), rather than to the communication of results (the country is in a good shape, due to us). 1 The highly significant beta coefficients indicate that the macro-level impact of the news is beyond doubt: the number of citizens who react to the news in the predicted direction surely outnumber those who react in unexpected ways. But the very small size of the explained 2 variance coefficients R adj (all of them < .10, most of them <0.01) signal a very large spread of the observations around the regression line (King, 1986), which entails that it is impossible to predict at the micro-level which respondents are sensitive to the news for which issue s. A breakdown of this remarkable result to the 11 policy domains that were included in the study reveals a clear pattern. Especially the ministries that were often in the news increased the satisfaction with government policy with a large discrepancy between the ambitions and
1 A second possibility exists to arrive at a large discrepancy between one’s policy direction according to the press and actual conditions according to the press. Newspaper may observe real world developments that are evaluated positively by the majority of citizens, while attributing the intention to the government do eradicate these developments. With the issue ‘the knowledge economy’, for example, the media observed progress in 2004. Although the Dutch government had staged this issue not long ago, the newspapers wrote also that the Dutch government actually hampered a knowledge economy with new tax measures and new cuts.
19 the actual conditions. Table 4 gives an overview of policy domains on which satisfaction was either raised with the communication of ambition or with the communication of results. Not included in the table are policy domains of ministries that did not raise satisfaction with either of these two communication strategies.
Table 4: satisfaction due to ambitions communication or due to success communication Positive effects on satisfaction due to r Positive effects on satisfaction due the r communication of ambitions communication of success Health care -0.21 ** Financial affairs 0.16 ** Justice (no crime) -0.18 ** Economic affairs 0.03 * Education -0.09 ** Public safety -0.06 ** Social welfare -0.05 ** Agriculture and environment -0.04 **
Note : coefficients are ordinary Pearson correlation coefficients between satisfaction with government policy and the interaction effect between the direction of government policy and the direction real world conditions, both according to the news. ** p < .01; * p < .05.
The communication of ambitions is most strongly represented in the domain of health care. For this policy domain this is a logical choice, since Minister Mr. Hans Hoogervorst wants to introduce a completely privatized health care insurance system on January 1, 2006. For Mr. Hoogervorst the point in time to switch from the communication of ambitions to the communication of results is obvious. Not for every other policy domain the choice is that obvious, however. On the policy domains of economics and finance, satisfaction is raised with the communication of results – and dissatisfaction with a lack of the latter.
Discussion
In this study seven interrelated hypotheses were tested with respect to the effects of public information on policy satisfaction. Public information has not gained much attention in the literature on political communication, although its importance is beyond discussion (Graber & Smith, 2005). The study showed that well known hypotheses of agenda setting and priming apply to public information also. A number of specific hypotheses stood a test as well. Ambiguous government policies, at least ambiguous news about these policies will lead to a decreased satisfaction with the information provision by the government. A solid social base for a policy, that is to say, stakeholders who endorse the policy in the news, increases the satisfaction with the outcomes of government policies. Quite remarkable results were found
20 with respect to the question whether news on real world conditions that are evaluated negatively by the majority of the population (e.g. unemployment, more serial criminals, high health care costs) is always detrimental for the satisfaction with results. That is not. On the majority of policy fields in the Netherlands Ministries increase the satisfaction with their policies with the communication of ambitions (i.e. it’s a mess, and we want to do something about it) rather than with the communication of results (i.e. everything under control, due to us). Emphasizing the mess increases the social base for new policies. This exploratory study clearly has limits. Presumably some effects of the news on policy satisfaction would have shown to be stronger, when television news could have been taken into account also. In this study we only used issue news to explain trust in the government, whereas trust in government is also dependent on conflict news and horserace news (Patterson, 1993). In the current study the effects of personality and charisma on trust were neglected. Nevertheless, the research results show a consistent pattern. From the point of view of communication research, the encouraging finding is that almost all hypotheses, which were derived from theories that were developed outside the context of public information provision, appeared to apply to public information as well. From the point of view of democratic theory the research results are both encouraging and worrying. The research results are encouraging, because they show that citizen’s trust in government is not a whim of fashion, but solidly based on the news that citizens could obtain from the media about the issues, the policy plans of the government, the social base for it, as well as on the results of government policies. The research results give evidence for the existence of a ‘ rational public’ (Page & Shapiro, 1992). The research results show that citizens fulfill the role they are expected to fulfill from the point of view of democratic theories. Whereas pessimists like Schumpeter (1944) and Downs (1957) assumed that voters would only look retrospectively at the state of the economy, this study shows that citizens take a much broader range of issues into account. Moreover, citizens appear to look also prospectively, for example to see whether government plans are unambiguous. However, the research results are worrying also. (Dis)satisfaction with government policy is not simply a plaything for governments and political parties, but an end in itself. The data show citizens who are dissatisfied with government policy on most of the 55 issues addressed in this study. Emphasizing real world problems to increase the social base for ambitious plans is not a viable strategy in the longer run. Uneasiness about real world problems and doubts about government policy may enhance a lack of trust in other areas, such as xenophobia and a
21 lack of consumer trust, thereby contributing to ethnic tensions and a staggering economy. The research results show that attention in the press for negative real world developments combined with attention for ambiguous, contradictory, complex and extremely iffy government plans shaped dissatisfaction with government policies. Widespread dissatisfaction with government policies raises the question how dissatisfaction can occur notwithstanding the growing number of communication advisers in government offices and the growing number of television stations and political journalists. One cue is given in an essay by Roderick Hart (1996). Governments have to shift from an emphasis on socio-economic problems that are supposed to increase the social base for newly developed, but painful, government plans, toward an emphasis on socio-economic successes, which are usually attributed to the government in office. Whereas in the age of newspapers Ministries and ministers could easily escape from the news in the years in between election campaigns, a media silence is no real option with communication advisers and journalists around everywhere. In the age of publicity, governments seem to have forgotten when “speech is silver, but silence is gold”. Journalists immediately seek for scandals when the honeymoon weeks of a new government have passed. The result is often an uncoordinated or even unnoticed shift from the message that serious problems exist that still need to be solved by future government policy, towards the message that the problems have been solved already.
22 Literature
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