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I WHEN EXPERTS TALK, DOES ANYONE LISTEN? ESSAYS ON

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I WHEN EXPERTS TALK, DOES ANYONE LISTEN? ESSAYS ON WHEN EXPERTS TALK, DOES ANYONE LISTEN? ESSAYS ON THE LIMITS OF EXPERT INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC OPINION by Eric Roman Owen Merkley M.A., McGill University, 2013 B.A. (Honours), Wilfrid Laurier University, 2011 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Political Science) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2019 © Eric Roman Owen Merkley 2019 i The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: When experts talk, does anyone listen? Essays on the limits of expert influence on public opinion in partial fulfillment of the requirements submitted by Eric Roman Owen Merkley for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science Examining Committee: Paul J. Quirk Supervisor Richard G. C. Johnston Supervisory Committee Member Frederick E. Cutler Supervisory Committee Member Gyung-Ho Jeong University Examiner Mary Lynn Young University Examiner ii Abstract There are large gaps in opinion between policy experts and the public on a wide variety of issues. Scholarly explanations for these observations largely focus on the tendency of citizens to selectively process information from experts in line with their ideology and values. These accounts are likely incomplete. This dissertation is comprised of three papers that examine other important limitations of expert influence on public opinion on topics featuring widespread expert agreement. The first paper looks at the degree to which information on expert agreement is available in the information environment of the average citizen – the news media – and whether or not such information is clouded by media bias towards balance and conflict. An automated and manual content analysis was conducted on over 280,000 news stories on 10 issues featuring widespread expert agreement. The results show that discussion of expert agreement is extremely rare in news content. On occasions when such discussion is featured, it is typically found in the midst of claims and counter claims by polarizing political actors. The second paper seeks to explain rising climate skepticism in the American public and related polarization of Democratic and Republican Party supporters on climate science. An automated content analysis was conducted on over 26,000 news stories to measure over time dynamics in polarizing information, such as party elite and ideological identity cues, messages from organized climate skeptics, and economic cost frames. Results show that the prevalence of party elite cues is strongly associated with aggregate levels of climate skepticism and polarization even after controlling for other possible factors. The third paper explores the role of anti-intellectualism as a predisposition that governs persuasion by expert agreement and the possibility that anti-elite rhetoric may prime this predisposition in information processing. Findings from the General Social Survey and an original survey of over 3,600 American citizens show that anti-intellectualism is strongly associated with opposition to a variety of positions of expert agreement. Results of an embedded survey experiment demonstrate that anti-intellectuals are less persuaded by messages of expert agreement and that this is particularly true when primed with anti-elite rhetoric. iii Lay Summary This dissertation is composed of three papers that illustrate important limitations of policy expert influence on public opinion. The first paper evaluates media content to examine how often expert agreement is discussed in coverage of relevant topics and whether or not such information is clearly communicated. The results show that journalists rarely discuss expert agreement when appropriate and when they do it is typically in a polarizing political context. The second paper seeks to explain rising skepticism of climate science among Americans and political polarization on this topic. Findings suggest that a proliferation of political messages in news coverage may have played an important part in this process. The third paper explores anti-intellectualism’s role in shaping citizen acceptance of expert agreement. Results indicate that this set of beliefs is strongly associated with opposition to expert positions, while anti-intellectuals are less persuaded by expert agreement messages in an experimental setting. iv Preface Paper I of this dissertation is completely comprised of my own research. I constructed the literature review, formulated the research questions, and collected and analyzed the data. A previous version of this paper has been presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association in 2018. Paper II was co-authored with Dr. Dominik Stecula, a former Ph.D. student in the department of political science at UBC and now a postdoctoral fellow at the Annenberg School of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. Dominik and I contributed equally to this paper. We both contributed to the development of the relevant research questions and downloaded media content for analyses. Dominik gathered the public opinion polls and constructed the aggregate public opinion measures. He also generated the graphics for this paper. I was responsible for the time series modelling. We both contributed equally to the writing of the paper. Dominik wrote the bulk of the literature review, introduction, and discussion, while I penned most of the data and methods section, and results. A version of this work has been presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2015 and 2016, the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association in 2016, and the Comparative-Canadian Workshop at UBC in the fall of 2015. Some of the data and materials from this paper has been recently featured in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Science Communication. The citation is: Merkley, E., & Stecula, D. A. (2018). Party elites or manufactured doubt? The informational context of climate change polarization. Science Communication, 40(2), 258-274. Paper III was constructed entirely by myself. I compiled the literature review, formulated the research questions, and collected and analyzed the data. The data collection for this paper was funded out of pocket by myself and Miriam Matejova – a fellow graduate student at UBC who had survey questions oriented towards her own dissertation. The survey and the experiment were approved by the UBC Behavioural Research Ethics Board (application # H18-01595). A version of this paper has been presented in 2019 at both the Annual Meeting of the Western Political Science Association and the Comparative-Canadian Workshop at UBC. v Table of Contents Abstract .............................................................................................................................................................. iii Lay Summary ..................................................................................................................................................... iv Preface ................................................................................................................................................................. v Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................................. vi List of Tables ..................................................................................................................................................... ix List of Figures ..................................................................................................................................................... x Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................................... xi Dedication ........................................................................................................................................................ xiii Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 1 Paper I – Are experts (news)worthy? Balance, conflict and mass media coverage of expert agreement .................................................................................................................................. 7 1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 7 2 Media bias and the presentation of expert opinion ............................................................................... 8 3 Data and methods .................................................................................................................................... 12 4 Results ........................................................................................................................................................ 22 4.1 The frequency of experts messages in news coverage ................................................................. 22 4.2 Balance and polarizing conflict in news coverage of experts ..................................................... 26 5 Discussion ................................................................................................................................................. 29 Paper II
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