Television Dramas and Support for Controversial Public Policies: Effects and Mechanisms

Michael D. Slater · Donna Rouner · Marilee Long

280 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Communication

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Media Influence and Health Media Studies and Communication Media Influence and Politics

Abstract

In this experiment, we examine effects of television dramas on support for controversial public policies (gay marriage and the death penalty) and explore mechanisms that may explain such effects. The dramas influenced support for death penalty but not gay marriage. As predicted, exposure to the relevant drama eliminated the relationship between prior ideology (conceptualized as a continuous variable) and death penalty support. Moreover, the valence of the relationship between prior (increasingly liberal) ideology and salience of a relevant value (perceived importance of a safe and crime-free society) went from negative in the comparison condition to positive after exposure to the relevant drama. These and other results suggest that a television narrative can influence policy support by reframing the dramatic situation to reduce the effect of prior ideology and values and by minimizing processing of the story as intentionally persuasive discourse.

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1973The nature of human values 2000The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives.2001Social Cognitive Theory of Mass Communication 2002Entertainment-Education and Elaboration Likelihood: Understanding the Processing of Narrative Persuasion 1984Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory 1999Entertainment-Education: A Communication Strategy for Social Change 2003Narrative Impact

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