Skip Navigation


International Journal of Public Opinion Research Advance Access originally published online on September 16, 2005
International Journal of Public Opinion Research 2006 18(3):340-350; doi:10.1093/ijpor/edh103
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
18/3/340    most recent
edh103v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Pan, Z.
Right arrow Articles by Houden, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol. 18 No. 3 © The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.

Exploring the Perceptual Gap in Perceived Effects of Media Reports of Opinion Polls

Zhongdang Pan

Zhongdang Pan is a professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on news media in political communication and China’s media reforms.

Joseph L. Abisaid

Joseph Abisaid is a graduate student in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include perceived effects of opinion polls, public opinion, news media, and election campaigns.

Hye-Jin Paek

Hye-Jin Paek is an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on communication campaigns, media effects, and research methods.

Ye Sun

Ye Sun is a graduate student in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on public health campaigns and media effects on individuals.

Debra Houden

Debra Houden is a graduate student in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on conflict and interpersonal and organizational communication.

Address correspondence to Zhongdang Pan, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 6138 Vilas Hall, 821 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706, USA, e-mail: zhongdangpan@wisc.edu

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

This paper tackles, in two studies, one specific aspect of the perceptual processes in public opinion: how people assess the effects of media reports of opinion polls. There are several reasons to address this question empirically. First, opinion polls, as a mass feedback mechanism (Mutz, 1994), influence individuals’ perceptions of mass opinion or the opinion of the generalized other (Fields & Schuman, 1976; Glynn, Ostman, & McDonald, 1995; Mutz, 1998). However, how news reports are perceived as having effects received research attention only recently (e.g., de Vreese & Semetko, 2002). Second, reporting opinion polls has become a steady feature of political coverage of the news media (Frankovic, 1998; Patterson, 1993), making poll reports a distinct type of media message. Political actors often take actions (e.g. to spin poll results) predicated on perceived effects of such messages (Mutz, 1995). . . . [Full Text of this Article]


   METHOD
 
SURVEY STUDY
LABORATORY EXPERIMENT

   RESULTS
 
SURVEY STUDY
LABORATORY EXPERIMENT

   CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
 

Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?