Walaa Bazoun
Pronouns:
Research Mentor(s): Ahab Chopra
Research Mentor School/College/Department: /
Program: Mellon
Session: Session 7 (4:40pm – 5:30pm)
Authors: Zainab Bazoun, Erin Cikanek
Abstract
Emotions powerfully affect political opinions, positions, attitudes, and behavior (Brader & Marcus, 2013). Here, I test if emotions conveyed in cable and traditional news influence the political opinions and positions of respondents. This study, using CloudResearch’s Connect platform, prompts 750 participants, split equally between Democrats and Republicans, to respond to survey questions about governmental versus non-profit support in foreign policies after being randomly assigned to an emotionally charged or neutral political news transcript. The experiment’s aim is to analyze the effect of enthusiastic versus angry news on recipients’ political positions and opinions, specifically whether they are more or less likely to approve governmental versus non-governmental support for the war in Ukraine, and whether their agreement with their political parties’ policies will grow stronger or weaker after viewing an emotionally charged transcript about elections. By understanding the influence that emotions in the news have on the political opinions of viewers, newscasters who don’t intend to be biased should consider changing their style of presentation and use a neutral tone to convey the news. Furthermore, researchers who study polarization should consider studies about this topic with samples that are not specific to the war in Ukraine, as providing participants with domain specific stimuli (emotions) about the topic that they are evaluating is likely to show more precise results.
