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Kevin Coe
Matter?
Television News, Public Opinion, and the Iraq War: Do Wartime Rationales

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Communication Research
XX(X) 1 20
The Author(s) 2012
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1
University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Corresponding Author:
Kevin Coe, Department of Communication, University of Arizona, 211 Communication Building,
Tucson, AZ 85721-0025, USA
Email: kevincoe@email.arizona.edu
Television News, Public
Opinion, and the Iraq
War: Do Wartime
Rationales Matter?
Kevin Coe
1
Abstract
The idea that the public is swayed by the rationales for war that circulate throughout the
media environment is well established in popular discourse. Research on the determinants
of support for war, however, has largely ignored the role that such rationales might play.
This study is the first to directly test the possibility that rationales for war present in news
coverage influence public support for war. Pairing a detailed computer-assisted content
analysis with measures of public support for the Iraq War, this study shows that, contrary
to popular wisdom, rationales for war present in television news have only a limited
impact on public attitudes about U.S. military action.
Keywords
television news, framing, public opinion, war, Iraq
Deeply ingrained in the American mythos is an image of the American public turning to
media to help gauge the value of military action. We imagine people gathered around
radios listening to Franklin Roosevelt, in one of his fabled fireside chats, promote the
defense of freedom in Europe, or we think of families staring at television sets as news
reports broadcast disturbing pictures from Vietnam. More recently, we recall media cover-
age of the Bush administrations months-long campaign to convince the public that it was
necessary to invade Iraq and displace Saddam Hussein. In popular discourse, such moments
are typically viewed as deeply consequential for public attitudes about war. There is no
shortage of commentary, for instance, suggesting that President Bush effectively spun
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2 Communication Research XX(X)
news coverage in his favor and induced the public to support U.S. engagement in Iraq
(e.g., Fritz, Keefer, & Nyhan, 2004; Isikoff & Corn, 2006; Rich, 2006). Despite this com-
mon perception, there is little evidence to support the idea that media content has a measur-
able impact on public support for war. But neither is there much evidence to support the
idea that it does not.
Surprisingly, the growing body of research on the determinants of public support for
war (e.g., Feaver & Gelpi, 2004; Gartner & Segura, 1998; Jentleson, 1992; Mueller, 1973)
has generally neglected the role that political discourse and news coverage might play in
influencing the public. The few studies that have considered the role of such communica-
tion (e.g., Berinsky, 2009; Larson, 1996, 2005; Zaller, 1992) have focused narrowly on
consensus or dissensus among political leaders, without precisely measuring the actual
media content that might transmit these views to the public. The most extensive treatment
of the subject to date (Baum & Groeling, 2010) addresses these shortcomings, but focuses
primarily on the general evaluations of war policy that appear in media coverage, as
opposed to the specific justifications provided in support of war. Nor do studies in this area
regularly measure the amount of media use among the public to determine their level of
exposure to elite perspectives, which severely constrains the interpretation of effects as
media generated. The result is that we do not yet know if and how the specific rationales
for war that circulate throughout the media environment during wartime actually influence
public attitudes about military action.
This study is the first to test this long-assumed relationship. It does so by examining the
primary medium through which wartime discourse circulates: network television news.
Focusing on network news is useful because its audiences, though declining, still dwarf
those of other media. During the yearlong period of analysis used in this study, the average
nightly audience for the three network news programs was well over 25 million people
(Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005). Further, substantial majoritiesconsistently
in the 70% to 80% range in the decade leading up to the period of analysisreported that
television was the medium they relied on to get most of their national and international
news (Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2005). Using framing as a theoretical frame-
work, I employ a detailed computer-assisted content analysis procedure to measure the
extent to which common rationales for warfreedom, threat, evil, and the likewere
present in television news coverage during an important yearlong period of the Iraq War.
Including these measures in a series of regression models with other common predictors of
war support indicates that, contrary to popular wisdom, rationales for war present in televi-
sion news have only a limited impact on public attitudes about U.S. military action.
News Media and the
Determinants of Public Support for War
A considerable and growing body of scholarship has focused on the determinants of pub-
lic support for American wars (e.g., Feaver & Gelpi, 2004; Gartner & Segura, 1998; Gelpi,
Feaver, & Reifler, 2005; Jentleson, 1992; Jentleson & Britton, 1998; Mueller, 1973). In
general, this research has concluded that public attitudes about war are the result of a
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Coe 3
rational calculus. Citizens are thought to weigh the costs of the warespecially the num-
ber of U.S. casualtiesagainst the benefits of the war and the likelihood that those bene-
fits will ultimately be attained. To the extent that the benefits of a war are judged to
outweigh its costs, the war receives public support. This calculus is conditioned by the
events that take place during the warsuccess in a major battle might result in an uptick
in support, for exampleand by the level of consensus or dissensus among U.S. govern-
ment officials. When political leaders are united in their support for a war, the public is
more supportive. When leaders begin to split, however, citizens use partisan cues to deter-
mine whether their side is still supportive and adjust their views accordingly. Such elite
consensus/dissensus (e.g., Berinsky, 2009; Larson, 1996, 2005; Zaller, 1992), the impact
of which is heavily influenced by media framing (Baum & Groeling, 2010), is the primary
place where scholarship on war support meaningfully engages the role that communication
might play in shaping public attitudes about war.
The puzzle that emerges, then, is this: research on the determinants of support for war
focuses primarily on real-world factors without necessarily acknowledging that most of
these factors are constructed rhetorically or transmitted to the public via the news media.
For example, although actual casualties are an objective reality of war, public knowledge
of casualty levels is usually gained through news coverage (Gartner, 2004). Additionally,
studies that find that, citizens tolerance for casualties is based on the missions objective
(e.g., Jentleson, 1992; Jentleson & Britton, 1998; Oneal, Lian, & Joyner, 1996) rely heavily
on news coverage to determine that objective. After all, absent political rhetoric circulating
in mass media, who would know what a particular war is aiming to achieve? As for events,
they tend to mean little unless they are given importance through news coverage. Indeed,
the size of the opinion rally that typically follows key events depends in part on how suc-
cessful political elites are in drawing media attention to the event (Baker & Oneal, 2001).
Further, without news coverage, scholars have difficulty gauging what events are signifi-
cant enough to include in their studies; therefore, most use news coverage to make such
decisions (e.g., Mueller, 1973; Sigelman, Lebovic, Wilcox, & Allsop, 1993). In short, the
majority of the literature on public support for war focuses on real-world factors to explain
public support for war. In so doing, ironically, it highlights opportunities for public
communicationespecially news coverageto influence support.
With this in mind, the question becomes whether the content of news coverage actually
does influence the public. The few studies that have explored this question give reason to
believe it might. Theoretically, new war-relevant information, transmitted to the public via
news coverage, could cause citizens to alter their thinking about the war. Zaller (1993), for
example, demonstrated that opinion about the Gulf War could be partially explained by the
traditional Converse-McGuire model, which holds that attitude change is simply the prob-
ability of receiving a message times the probability of accepting the message given that it
was received. Thus, the more exposure one has to news coverage of war, the more oppor-
tunity that person has to receive new information that might influence attitudes (see also
Fan, 1993). Althaus and Kim (2006), meanwhile, found that Gulf War opinion about the
presidents handling of the war responded to shifts in the quantity and tenor of news cover-
age. In the most extensive treatment to date, Baum and Groeling (2010) showed that public
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4 Communication Research XX(X)
attitudes are responsive to the level of favorable and unfavorable evaluations of war policy
present in news coverage. However, none of these studies examined the specific justifica-
tions for war that also circulate in news coverage. In reviewing this literature, Berinsky and
Druckman (2007) called for more research focusing on the mix of messages from compet-
ing elites (of varying credibility), the number of messages, [and] the vividness of the mes-
sages, because these factors undoubtedly shape what people think about the war
(pp. 138-139).
The present study takes a step in this direction by testing the effects of the rationales for
war that circulate in news coverage. Framing theory provides a useful framework for
understanding why such rationales might influence public support for war. Entman (2004)
explains that framing is the act of selecting and highlighting some facets of events or
issues . . . so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution (p. 5).
News stories do precisely this when they talk about wars in certain terms as opposed to
others. A war might be framed as a defense of freedom, or as a way to rid the world of evil,
or as a necessity that ensures the security of the American people, or as many other things.
To the extent that these frames promote a certain understanding of the war in the minds of
the audience, public support might vary accordingly. Numerous studies have tracked the
presence of various frames in news coverage during times of war and crisis (e.g., Bennett,
Lawrence, & Livingston, 2007; Coe, 2011; Domke, 2004; Entman, 2004), but it is rare for
studies in this domain to directly test the effects of these frames on public opinion.
Nonetheless, evidence demonstrating the effects of framing in a wide range of other con-
texts, from issues of race and gender to issues of free speech, is plentiful (e.g., Kellstedt,
2000; Nelson, Clawson, & Oxley, 1997; Terkildsen & Schnell, 1997). Translating the find-
ings of this body of research into the context of war suggests that rationales circulating in
news coverage should influence public support.
However, this is not the whole story. There is also reason to believe that the rationales
for war present in news coverage may have very little impact on public support. In particu-
lar, several studies have shown that framing effects elicited in a laboratory might be of
limited consequence in the real world (Druckman, 2004; Druckman & Nelson, 2003). This
is because the effects of news frames might last for only a short period of time, and because
the effects of competing frames might cancel each other out and thus generate no net
change in public attitudes. Further, issues that touch on deeply held core values are less
subject to framing effects than are other issues (Nelson et al., 1997). Rationales for war,
which sometimes play on core values such as freedom, might therefore be hampered in
their ability to move public opinion. This way of thinking about the potential for news
frames to influence the wartime public is consistent with the limited effects tradition of
mass media research (e.g., Hovland, Lumsdaine, & Sheffield, 1949; Lazarsfeld, Berelson,
& Gaudet, 1944). This perspective takes seriously the fact that media are only one factor
operating within a nexus of important influences in peoples lives. Consequently, news
media are thought to usually act as an agent of reinforcement rather than change (Klapper,
1960, p. 18).
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Coe 5
Expectations for the Influence
of News Rationales in Iraq
Taken together, the literature discussed so far highlights two things: the need for a direct
test of the influence of wartime rationales and the competing expectations that exist
about the impact such rationales might have on public support for war. This section of the
article briefly clarifies what impact we can expect the rationales that circulated in televi-
sion news to have had during the yearlong period of the Iraq War considered in this study.
First, we should expect rationales to influence public opinion, if only modestly. Per the
discussion above, framing theory predicts that heavy news emphasis on specific justifica-
tions for the war could lead people to understand the war in these terms and adjust their
support accordingly. Previous research has shown that, throughout much of U.S. history, a
consistent set of rationales has been used to justify war (Coe, 2009; Ivie, 1974). America is
presented as going to war to meet a direct threat to the nations security and values; to
stamp out evil in the world; to defend freedom at home and abroad; to promote eventual
peace; to support the sacrifice made by the troops; and to protect religious faith by acting
in accordance with Gods wishes for the nation. Each of these six rationales frames the war
in decidedly positive terms, so the net effect of each should be to increase public support.
Given this, and given the popular belief that news content sways the wartime public, the
following set of hypotheses is proposed:
Hypothesis 1 (H1a): An increased television news emphasis on the threat rationale
will predict an increase in public support.
Hypothesis 1 (H1b): An increased television news emphasis on the evil rationale
will predict an increase in public support.
Hypothesis 1 (H1c): An increased television news emphasis on the freedom ratio-
nale will predict an increase in public support.
Hypothesis 1 (H1d): An increased television news emphasis on the peace rationale
will predict an increase in public support.
Hypothesis 1 (H1e): An increased television news emphasis on the troops rationale
will predict an increase in public support.
Hypothesis 1 (H1f): An increased television news emphasis on the faith rationale
will predict an increase in public support.
Second, we can expect that any influence that media rationales had during this period
would vary based on a host of individual-level characteristics, such as basic demographics,
that typically influence support for war (Berinsky, 2009; Jacobson, 2007; Wilcox, Hewitt,
& Allsop, 1996). In particular, political ideology would likely be important. Partisans have
long been known to respond differently to war, and the Iraq War has been especially
divided along partisan lines (Jacobson, 2007). Gaines, Kuklinski, Quirk, Peyton, and
Verkuilen (2007), for instance, found that partisans shared roughly the same information
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6 Communication Research XX(X)
about Iraq, but filtered that information through their own political lens. Further, in his
classic study of public support for war, Mueller (1973) noted that when asked if they support
an ongoing war, Partisans seem to see the query as one asking for the approval or disap-
proval of an action of the administration (p. 116; see also Zaller, 1992). Given this con-
nection that citizens draw between their side and their opinion on the war, it follows that
in the case of the Iraq Warwhich was initiated by, and strongly associated with, a
Republican administrationRepublicans would be more receptive to rationales for that
war. Put simply, it is easier for a message to increase support among people predisposed
to support than among those predisposed to skepticism. With this in mind, we should
expect Republicans to be more receptive to the rationales for war that circulated in televi-
sion news during the Iraq War. Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 2 (H2): To the extent that news rationales predict increased public sup-
port, the increase will be greater among Republicans than among Democrats.
Finally, we should expect news exposure to matter. In particular, it is likely that those
with higher exposure would be more influenced by rationales for war circulating in news
coverage because, quite simply, they would have more opportunity to encounter them (see
Zaller, 1993). A recent study, for example, demonstrated that, across several different
wars, levels of support changed more substantially when newspaper coverage about the
war was plentiful than when it was rare (Althaus & Coe, 2011). Thus, a final hypothesis
is proposed:
Hypothesis 3 (H3): To the extent that news rationales predict increased public sup-
port, the increase will be greater among high news users than low news users.
Method
This study focuses on television news coverage and public opinion about the Iraq War
between November 3, 2003, and October 31, 2004. This period of analysis was chosen to
coincide with appropriate measures of public opinion (discussed below) but has several
other advantages. For one, a year is a reasonably long period of time. Although it is a frac-
tion of the total time the U.S. spent in Iraq, it is much longer than some other U.S. military
engagements (e.g., it is nearly twice as long as the entire engagement in the Persian Gulf).
Further, this particular year was a transformative period in the war: major combat opera-
tions had concluded, the insurgency was taking full form, and several key events took
place, including Saddam Husseins capture and the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison. During
this time, public opinion about the war was still moving (varying within a range of roughly
20 points), meaning people had not yet settled their minds about the wara key difference
between this period and most of the years since. Finally, this was the period leading up to
the 2004 presidential election, in which Iraq was a central issue. Thus, news coverage was
devoting considerable attention to the war, making rationales more likely to surface and
more likely to have serious political consequences. In sum, this period provides an excellent
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Coe 7
opportunity to determine if rationales for war present in news coverage influenced public
opinion.
Analysis of Public Opinion
The surveys that provide the standard wartime support questions used in much of the
extant scholarship (e.g., Althaus & Coe, 2011; Larson, 1996, 2005; Mueller, 1973) rarely
include measures of media use. Consequently, it is usually impossible to partially disag-
gregate these data to capture opinion dynamics among those most likely to hear media
rationales. My solution to this problem is to sacrifice the breadth of analysis made possible
by focusing on multiple wars for the precision of analysis made possible by finding survey
data that include the necessary measures of media use. Although focusing on a particular
time period during a single war limits my ability to make broad claims, it increases the
likelihood that I will be able to capture those effects that do exist in this particular instance.
As this study represents the first test of the influence of wartime rationales, precision over
breadth seems an appropriate trade-off.
With this in mind, I rely on the 2004 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES).
This survey is among the most intensive election studies ever conducted, with surveys in
the field every day for more than a year: from early October 2003 to mid-November 2004.
In total, the study included 81,422 respondents and had a 54% cooperation rate (for full
survey details, see Romer, Kenski, Winneg, Adasiewicz, & Jamieson, 2006). For the pur-
poses of this study, the NAES has two key advantages: (a) it includes the worth it ques-
tion, a standard measure of war support; (b) it asks respondents about their television news
use, which allows those who regularly watch television news to be analyzed separately
from those who do not. To ensure I was working with the most representative part of the
NAES data, I excluded a few weeks at the beginning and end of the survey period when
the samples were not as large. Doing so left me with 1 years worth of daily opinion data:
the 52 Monday through Sunday weeks leading up to Election Day. This 52-week period
totaled 364 days; NAES had data for 357 of them (surveys were not completed on major
holidays).
1
Analysis focused on respondents who gave a valid answer to the worth it question
(n = 35,974), which asked, All in all, do you think the situation in Iraq was worth going
to war over, or not? Additionally, a variety of standard demographic variables that have
been shown to influence public support for war were included (see Berinsky, 2009;
Jacobson, 2007; Wilcox et al., 1996). These were party identification (dummy variables for
Republican and Democratic identifiers), gender (males = 1, females = 0), race (Non-Whites = 1,
Whites = 0), age (in years), and education (college degree or more = 1, else = 0). To ana-
lyze different groups based on the amount of network television news they consume,
I used the question: How many days in the past week did you watch the national network
news on TV? By national network news, I mean Peter Jennings on ABC, Dan Rather on
CBS, Tom Brokaw on NBC, and the Jim Lehrer NewsHour on PBS. Splitting responses
at the midpoint left me with one group of low users (0-2 days) and one group of high users
(3-7 days).
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8 Communication Research XX(X)
Finally, U.S. casualties were included because they have been shown to decrease sup-
port for war (Gartner & Segura, 1998; Mueller, 1973). Daily casualty data were retrieved
from validated Department of Defense data compiled by the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
website at www.icasualties.org. From these counts, I calculated the 28-day marginal casu-
alty rate; that is, the number of American deaths incurred in the past 28 days. I chose a
28-day period because it roughly parallels previous research (e.g., Althaus & Coe, 2011;
Gartner & Segura, 1998) and because it mirrors the length of the cumulative news mea-
sures used in much of the analysis (discussed below). The total casualty count for the year,
plus the preceding 28 days used to calculate the initial marginal rates, was 799 U.S. deaths;
the weekly mean was 14.27 (SD = 9.57).
Analysis of News Coverage
The sample of news coverage consists of the primary evening news programs from each
of the top broadcast news networks. Thus, the programs used were ABCs World News
Tonight with Peter Jennings, CBSs Evening News with Dan Rather, and NBCs Nightly
News with Tom Brokaw. Full-text transcripts of the three programs were accessed via the
Nexis database. To identify segments that focused on the war, transcripts were searched
using the string of Iraq* anywhere in the document. Using such a broad term ensured
that all relevant segments would be recalled by the search. To increase precision (see
Stryker, Wray, Hornik, & Yanovitzky, 2006), returned segments were included in the
sample only if they mentioned substantive information about Iraq. The few excluded sto-
ries mentioned Iraq only in passing, such as to introduce or close a story about something
else. Neither introductions to the news broadcasts nor previews of upcoming segments/
programs were included in the analysis. A program was randomly assigned to the first day
of the period; after that the programs were alternated in a cycle such that ABC would be
used one day, CBS the next, NBC the third, and so on. The news programs were some-
times preempted for other programming (usually sporting events). In these cases, the
remaining available network was taken instead of the assigned network. If two networks
were available, a coin flip determined which was used. This procedure yielded 1,017 segments
(ABC = 266; CBS = 349; NBC = 402).
2
Computer-assisted content analysis (CCA) was necessary to analyze such a large sam-
ple of texts. CCA has a long history in political communication research and is used regu-
larly by social scientists in various disciplines (see West, 2001). Two programs were used:
TextQuest (www.textquest.de/eindex.html) and Concordance (www.concordancesoftware.
co.uk). To conduct the analysis, the six most common rationales for war (discussed below;
see Coe, 2009) were operationalized into a series of terms and phrases drawn directly from
the sample of news coverage. I began by generating a list of every distinct word that televi-
sion news used during the period of analysis (15,567 distinct words; 446,611 total words).
I read this list carefully, identifying any word that could potentially represent one of the six
rationales for war. When necessary I looked at the words in context (facilitated by the
Concordance program) to determine if their use in the text consistently represented one of
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Coe 9
the rationales. In cases where words were sometimes used to represent that rationale and
sometimes used to mean something else, multiple-word phrases were selected to isolate the
relevant uses. This procedure produced a comprehensive coding dictionary for each of the
six rationales. This detailed approach ensured that the coding categories were grounded
entirely in the actual wartime discourse, and that the presence of each rationale could be
precisely measured. The final coding dictionaries together consisted of more than 500
terms and phrases. Brief descriptions and examples of each rationale follow, with full dic-
tionaries available from the author on request.
Eliminating a threat. This dictionary consisted of language stating that America, its allies,
or civilization itself faced a threat to its security or way of life. Examples included danger,
peril, tinderbox, threat, and WMD. Enemies, forces, or events that might implicitly suggest
threat (e.g., Osama Bin Laden, September 11) were not included in the coding unless the
speaker made explicit the threat they posed. To account for the differing degree to which
the speakers emphasized threat, modifiers such as deadly and grave were counted
when they preceded relevant terms. Thus, danger received one code, whereas grave
danger received two. This approach was used for all of the coding categories.
Confronting evil. This dictionary consisted of language stating that the enemy was evil,
savage, aggressive or cowardlyin nature or behavior. Examples included barbaric, cold
blooded, cowardly, evil, and sadistic. Enemies, forces, or actions that might implicitly sug-
gest evil (e.g., Saddam Hussein, murder) were not included in the coding unless the speaker
made explicit the evil they represented.
Advancing freedom. This dictionary consisted of language promoting the value of free-
dom and democracy. Examples included democracy, freedom, liberty, liberators, and self-
governance. Language suggesting the opposite of freedom (e.g., dictatorship, tyranny,
oppression) was also included in this dictionary because speakers consistently used these
points of contrast to trumpet the value of freedom.
Promoting peace. This dictionary consisted of language stating that America sought to
avoid war and/or achieve peace. Examples included cease-fire, dtente, olive branch,
peace, and truce. General statements about war being a terrible thing were not taken; speak-
ers needed to talk specifically about avoiding or ending the war for the language to be
coded.
Supporting the troops. This dictionary consisted of language that referred to the troops
(including Veterans) or their sacrifice. Examples included Arlington National Cemetery,
fighting men, heroes, Marines, and service members.
Keeping the faith. This dictionary consisted of explicit references to God and language
stating the enemy was shunning God or denigrating religion. This rationale was rarely
present. Examples included God, Lord, and theocracy.
Two procedures were used to ensure the validity of the coding. First, numerous exclu-
sion terms and phrases were included to further specify which terms and phrases the com-
puter should or should not code. For example, casualties was taken as a term to represent
Supporting the Troops, but Iraqi casualties, no American casualties, and the like were
excluded. Second, TextQuests interactive coding feature was used. This feature allows
each of the computers codes to be seen in the full context of the text, then either accepted
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10 Communication Research XX(X)
or rejected. This type of test is necessary because there will always be unexpected instances
in computer coding where a certain term or phrase is used atypically and therefore does not
adequately represent the coding category. I interactively coded approximately 10% of the
texts and recorded the percentage of valid codes for each category (i.e., the percentage of
codes that accurately captured the coding category). For each of the dictionaries, validity
exceeded 90%. Specifically, the validity scores were Threat (90%), Evil (96%), Freedom
(94%), Peace (95%), Troops (99%), and Faith (91%).
To be clear, then, these six rationales for waras emphasized in television news
constitute this studys primary independent variables. Each of the six is measured by track-
ing the number of times it was used in television news during the period immediately
preceding a survey respondent being asked if the Iraq War was worth it. To offer the
broadest possible test, the initial regression model presented in the results section tracks
each of these six variables at three different cumulative lags: 7-day, 14-day, and 28-day.
So, for example, the 7-day measure for the freedom rationale is the total number of times
that news stories used freedom terms in the 7 days prior to the survey being conducted.
Recent research (e.g., Althaus & Coe, 2011; Althaus & Kim, 2006) has demonstrated that,
outside of the laboratory, the effect of news exposure is often a cumulative process. Testing
three different lag lengths will help ensure that this study is able to capture any measurable
effect of television news on public support for war.
Results
In the year leading up to the presidential election of 2004, the Iraq War was a regular topic
in network television news coverage. Of the 364 days of news considered here, 348 con-
tained at least one segment that mentioned Iraq. In this coverage, television news regularly
presented many of the common rationales for war. Troops was far and away the dominant
theme, used on average 111.23 times per week (SD = 70.22). It dwarfed even the com-
bined presence of the other themes. Threat (M = 17.44; SD = 10.75) also had a consider-
able presence, whereas Freedom (M = 6.56; SD = 6.33), Peace (M = 3.08; SD = 3.46), and
Evil (M = 2.08; SD = 2.52) were used less regularly. Faith (M = .63; SD = .97) was all but
absent from television news during this period. The high standard deviations of all of the
themes reveal the wide variation that existed in use of these rationales. Often a program
would use numerous rationales on a single eveningas, for example, when the program
quoted heavily from a presidential speech about the warand then that rationale would
disappear for the next few days. Given that each of the six rationales did have at least some
presence in television news, we can consider the central question of interest here: Did
these rationales influence public support for the war?
To begin answering this question, it is useful to consider how public support for the Iraq
War rose and fell during this period. Figure 1 shows, by week from the beginning of
November 2003 to the end of October 2004, the percentage of respondents who said the
war was worth it. As the figure makes clear, support for the war began and ended this
period in nearly the same place, with roughly 48% of the public voicing support. Over the
course of the year, though, this support varied noticeably, from a high of more than 55% in
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mid-December immediately after the capture of Saddam Hussein, to a low of 39% in mid
to late June just before the U.S. transferred power to the newly formed Iraqi government.
The sharpest change that occurred is the 11-point drop in the last week of March. This was
the week following the 9/11 commission hearings, which included Richard Clarkes much-
discussed criticism of Bush (see Clarke, 2004). In general, the trend after an early spike
was downward until a midsummer reversal began a slow ascent that continued for the
remainder of the period.
To determine whether news rationales accounted for any of this movement, I used logis-
tic regression to test the extent to whichafter controlling for a host of variables typically
thought to influence support for warnews emphasis on each rationale in the weeks pre-
ceding a respondent being surveyed predicted that the respondent would say the Iraq War
was worth it.
3
Table 1 presents the results of the initial regression analysis, using the
three different cumulative lag measures discussed in the method section. All of the control
variables prove to be significant predictors of war support in understandable ways. Being
a Republican predicted increased support, whereas being a Democrat predicted decreased
support. Men were more supportive than women. Being non-White, being older, and hav-
ing a college degree all predicted decreased support. In addition, consistent with prior
research, a higher marginal casualty rate predicted decreased support.
H1a to H1f predicted that, even after accounting for these known determinants, news
emphasis on wartime rationales would predict support. The results show that some of
the media rationales did reach statistical significance. Troops was the most consistent
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Figure 1. Respondents Saying Iraq was Worth It
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12 Communication Research XX(X)
predictor, increasing support at all three measurement lengths. This means that the more
that news coverage mentioned the troops, the higher support for the war went. Threat also
predicted increased support. Freedom and Evil both predicted decreased support but
showed up at only one of the three measurement lengths. Because logistic regression coef-
ficients are difficult to interpret, the impact of these rationales can be better gauged by
considering the change in predicted probability of supporting the war when use of the news
rationale varies from low to high, holding the values of all other independent variables
constant. This way of presenting the results is especially useful in this case because the
high number of cases included in the analysis makes statistical significance fairly easy to
reach. Thus, some of the differences in Table 1 might be statistically significant but not
substantively meaningful.
Table 2 presents the findings in this manner, showing the change in predicted probabil-
ity of support when each rationale is varied from two standard deviations below the mean
to two standard deviations above the mean.
4
In other words, Table 2 shows the strongest
effect that increasing the presence of a given rationale in television news was likely to have
on a respondent saying the Iraq War was worth fighting. The results show that none of the
rationales produced a substantively meaningful change in predicted support. Looking at the
bold numbers in particular, which show those cases where the corresponding logistic
regression coefficients reached statistical significance (see Table 1), confirms that statisti-
cal significance did not actually indicate the presence of a meaningful difference in
Table 1. Predicting Support for the Iraq War From Television News Rationales
7-Day 14-Day 28-Day
Republican 1.705 (0.031) 1.705 (.031) 1.706 (.031)
Democrat 0.940 (0.029) 0.942 (.029) 0.943 (.029)
Male 0.179 (0.025) 0.178 (.025) 0.178 (.025)
Non-White 0.811 (0.037) 0.810 (.037) 0.812 (.037)
Age 0.010 (0.001) 0.010 (.001) 0.010 (.001)
College degree 0.360 (0.025) 0.360 (.025) 0.361 (.025)
Casualty rate 0.370 (0.074) 0.432 (.087) 0.333 (.103)
Freedom 0.018 (0.256) 0.168 (.172) 0.308 (.147)
Peace 0.274 (0.455) 0.277 (.328) 0.067 (.256)
Troops 0.080 (0.024) 0.046 (.014) 0.025 (.008)
Threat 0.238 (0.124) 0.218 (.079) 0.180 (.053)
Evil 1.291 (0.583) 0.670 (.414) 0.627 (.325)
Faith 0.593 (1.280) 0.657 (.895) 0.541 (.719)
Constant 0.550 (0.061) 0.527 (.064) 0.510 (.074)
Model
2
9556.4 9563.4 9578.4
Cox & Snell R
2
.233 .233 .234
N 35,974 35,974 35,974
Note: Bold coefficients are significant at the p < .05 level. Cells contain logistic regression coefficients
with standard errors in parentheses.
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predicted probability of support. In the case of troops, for instance, which was the most
influential rationale of the group, moving from 2SD to +2SD increased the probability of
support by only four percentage points. So far, then, these results indicate that news ratio-
nales neither uniformly influenced support for the Iraq War nor had sizable effects. Given
the small magnitude of these effects and the inconsistent direction of influence, H1a to H1f
are rejected.
Importantly, however, different subgroups of people are likely to respond to wartime
rationales in different ways. The broad analysis conducted to test H1a to H1f might there-
fore mask more substantive effects that occurred only among particular groups. To explore
this possibility and test H2, I reran the analysis by party affiliation: self-identified
Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. Further, given that high users of television
news would be more likely than low users to encounter these rationales (and thus more
likely to be influenced), I split out each partisan group by high or low television news use
to test H3. Because the 28-day cumulative measure provided the best model fit in the
previous series of regressions, I used that measure for this analysis. Table 3 presents the
results. The included control variables remain generally consistent predictors of support,
with two noteworthy differences: the effect of education disappears for Republicans, and
casualties turn out to influence only Democrats. More importantly, the results confirm that
war rationales influence different subgroups of the population in different ways.
To clarify the magnitude of these effects, I again calculated the change in predicted
probability of support when each rationale is varied from two standard deviations below
the mean to two standard deviations above the mean. As discussed above, this way of look-
ing at the data better illustrates meaningful impact than does statistical significance alone.
Table 4 presents this analysis. The results do not support H2. Republicans proved to be the
group least influenced by rationales for war, perhaps reflecting greater stability in their
attitudes about the war. In partial support of H3, higher exposure to news predicted stron-
ger effects. Four of the six significant effects were present among high news groups, as
were four of the five largest effects. However, as in the broader analysis, the direction of
the effects was inconsistent. Further, as above and as expected, the effects generally proved
to be modest. The largest change occurred for the troops theme among high news Democrats,
Table 2. Change in Probability of Support for the Iraq War
7-Day 14-Day 28-Day
Freedom .00 .01 .03
Peace .00 .01 .00
Troops .04 .03 .04
Threat .02 .03 .03
Evil .02 .01 .02
Faith .00 .00 .01
Note: Bold numbers indicate that the corresponding coefficients in the logistic regression analysis used
to produce these predicted changes (see Table 1) were significant at p < .05.
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14 Communication Research XX(X)
increasing the probability of support by 11 points. Freedom was the other theme that pre-
dicted noticeable changes, dropping support among high news Republicans and Democrats.
With relatively small effects such as these, one must be careful to avoid overinterpreta-
tion. Still, it does seem plausible that Democrats, who in general were skeptical of the war
and thus likely to reject media rationales, might find in an emphasis on troops a reason for
enhanced support. It is common to hear that people support the troops but oppose the war.
For some, this distinction might in fact be difficult to draw; hearing about the troops
might therefore encourage increased support. As for the effect of the freedom rationale, it
Table 3. Predicting Support for the Iraq War Among Different Groups
Democrats Independents Republicans
Low High Low High Low High
Male 0.203 (0.063) 0.173 (0.069) 0.223 (0.057) 0.147 (0.063) 0.262 (0.069) 0.092 (0.074)
Non-White 0.748 (0.079) 0.834 (0.095) 0.842 (0.088) 0.702 (0.101) 1.142 (0.110) 1.010 (0.149)
Age 0.009 (0.002) 0.022 (0.002) 0.004 (0.002) 0.014 (0.002) 0.005 (0.002) 0.018 (0.002)
College degree 0.957 (0.069) 0.630 (0.074) 0.426 (0.058) 0.251 (0.063) 0.070 (0.071) 0.061 (0.075)
Casualty rate 0.682 (0.272) 0.964 (0.290) 0.418 (0.238) 0.403 (0.265) 0.193 (0.284) 0.163 (0.304)
Freedom 0.360 (0.371) 1.045 (0.417) 0.127 (0.335) 0.202 (0.366) 0.186 (0.425) 1.145 (0.424)
Peace 0.759 (0.688) 0.723 (0.708) 0.402 (0.585) 0.120 (0.661) 0.370 (0.707) 0.930 (0.777)
Troops 0.064 (0.021) 0.087 (0.022) 0.023 (0.019) 0.045 (0.021) 0.024 (0.022) 0.029 (0.024)
Threat 0.111 (0.129) 0.009 (0.145) 0.420 (0.121) 0.187 (0.136) 0.289 (0.155) 0.082 (0.163)
Evil 0.496 (0.837) 0.050 (0.911) 0.381 (0.741) 0.989 (0.830) 1.035 (0.927) 0.823 (0.940)
Faith 2.930 (1.809) 1.378 (2.003) 1.665 (1.642) 1.246 (1.866) 1.536 (2.025) 1.428 (2.176)
Constant 0.055 (0.186) 0.308 (0.211) 0.230 (0.165) 0.600 (0.195) 1.398 (0.205) 2.590 (0.232)
Model
2
324.9 248.6 194.2 122.1 128.6 117.7
Cox & Snell R
2
.055 .041 .036 .027 .019 .026
N 5,718 5,972 5,290 4,381 6,554 4,480
Note: Bold coefficients are significant at the p < .05 level. Cells contain logistic regression coefficients with standard
errors in parentheses. All rationale measures are 28-day cumulative.
Table 4. Change in Probability of Support for the Iraq War Among Different Groups
Democrats Independents Republicans
Low High Low High Low High
Freedom .03 .08 .01 .02 .01 .09
Peace .04 .03 .03 .01 .01 .05
Troops .10 .11 .05 .09 .03 .04
Threat .01 .00 .05 .02 .02 .01
Evil .02 .00 .02 .04 .03 .03
Faith .04 .01 .03 .02 .01 .02
Note: Bold numbers indicate that the corresponding coefficients in the logistic regression analysis used
to produce these predicted changes (see Table 3) were significant at p < .05. All rationale measures are
28-day cumulative.
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is possible that among Democrats and Republicans who were following the news closely
an emphasis on freedom was a regular reminder that a truly democratic Iraq was an elusive
goal. Consider that in July 2004 only 22% of the public believed that the new Iraqi govern-
ment would be a model which will help spread freedom and democracy in the Middle
East (Bowman, 2008). In general, though, the story of these data is that media rationales
during this period had little effect on public support. Even when focusing strictly on narrow
subgroupsthe most liberal test we might undertakethe statistically significant effects
are in most cases substantively modest.
Discussion
This study tested a widely held assumption that had largely avoided empirical scrutiny:
that rationales for war circulating in mass media influence public support for war. Pairing
precise measures of television news content with daily public opinion data during an
important yearlong period of the Iraq War, the studys results run counter to popular
wisdom. In a series of regression models, demographic characteristics and casualty rate
predicted opinion change in ways consistent with prior research (e.g., Berinsky, 2009;
Gartner & Segura, 1998; Jacobson, 2007; Wilcox et al., 1996). Importantly, however, very
few of the rationales present in television news were statistically significant predictors of
change in levels of public support. What is more, even the strongest predictor among these
rationalestroops, which increased support among Democrats and high news-use
Independentsonly modestly increased the probability that respondents would support
the war. Put simply, rationales for war present in television news do not appear to have the
substantial impact on public attitudes that some have suggested (e.g., Fritz et al., 2004;
Isikoff & Corn, 2006; Rich, 2006)
In part, these findings may be the result of the chosen period of analysis. If rationales
for war matter for public opinion, it may well be the case that they matter more in the early
stages of the conflict than in the later stages. Once the war has progressed for some time,
peoples attitudes crystallize, and they tend to interpret new information about the war as
supportive of their preexisting attitudes (Gaines et al., 2007). Additionally, because people
filter new information through preexisting views, rationales for war are not likely to affect
the public in uniform or predictable ways. Recall that in this case an increased news empha-
sis on freedom, a concept which most people view favorably, decreased support rather than
increased it. It is possible, then, that news rationales during Iraq mattered more than they
were shown to here, but that these effects were suppressed because different people were
reacting in different ways. Splitting out the analysis by party and quantity of news exposure
helped control for this, but the possibility remains.
Further, if public attitudes about specific rationales were changing at all over the course
of the year, these changes could have limited the effects that media emphasis on the ratio-
nales was able to generate. As an example, consider the rationale of threat, the only one of
the six rationales examined here for which there was consistent polling data throughout this
period of the war. In December of 2003, 62% of the public believed that the war had con-
tributed to the long-term security of the United States. This number steadily declined over
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16 Communication Research XX(X)
the course of the year, however, such that by December 2004 only 51% still agreed with
the statement (see Bowman, 2008). Thus, the number of individuals likely to increase their
level of war support based on hearing the threat rationale was steadily declining during the
period of analysis. It is possible that during this time public attitudes about the other ratio-
nales were shifting as well, thereby limiting the opportunity for effects to arise.
With these caveats in mind, these results must nonetheless be viewed as generally con-
sistent with the limited effects paradigm (e.g., Klapper, 1960). As discussed above, the
extant literature has come to mixed conclusions about the ability of news content to shift
public attitudes through framing. Although it is clear that news frames are capable of influ-
encing attitudes under certain conditions (Kellstedt, 2000; Nelson et al., 1997; Terkildsen
& Schnell, 1997), these effects may also be relatively short-term outcomes that are less
likely to arise outside of a laboratory (Druckman, 2004; Druckman & Nelson, 2003). This
study contributed to this debate, in part, by closely tracking news content and comparing it
to survey dataan approach that is still relatively uncommon in studies of media effects,
which tend to favor experiments. In this case, the effects of news discourse were indeed
limited. It appears that if news coverage influences public support for war, it does not do
so primarily or substantially via the rationales it communicates. It may be, as Althaus and
Coe (2011) suggest, that the content of wartime news coverage is less important in moving
opinion than is the sheer quantity of coverage and the latent patriotism that coverage stirs
among the public.
It would be inaccurate to conclude from the initial test undertaken here that wartime
rationales circulated in news media do not matter. Rather, what we might conclude is that
observers must avoid assuming that wartime rationales inevitably influence public opinion.
The better approach, which I attempted to take here, is to produce as detailed measures of
content as possible and to then compare these measures to opinion data that will allow
effects to emerge in those cases when they are indeed present. Baum and Potter (2008), in
attempting to synthesize the complex relationships that exist between political leaders,
mass media, and public opinion about foreign policy, argue that the media influence
nearly every aspect of the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy (p. 40).
This may be true, but more research that focuses close attention on news content will be
needed before we are able to draw this conclusion comfortably.
Importantly, because this study relied on secondary analysis of survey data, it is limited
in the causal claims it can make. Even if a survey study demonstrates a correlation between
two variables, it cannot rule out the possibility that a third variable might explain the rela-
tionship. For example, the regression models illustrated a relationship between media
emphasis on troops and support for war among Democrats, such that as media emphasis
increased so too did support. Based on framing theory, I speculated that this finding might
point to a causal relationship: Exposure to media emphasis on troops stirs positive feelings
about American soldiers and these feelings translate into increased support for war. This
explanation is plausible, but is not demonstrated definitively by the preceding analysis. It
is possible that the relationship between media emphasis on troops and increased war sup-
port is caused by another variable, such as the occurrence of major battles or the passage of
time. Only experimental work can fully demonstrate causal relationships and capture some
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of the attitudinal processes that might be at work among news audiences. All of this studys
findings should be considered with this limitation in mind, and future work should devise
experiments that might further illuminate the patterns identified here.
Future research in this area should also make a point to carefully measure elite discourse
if it hopes to understand its role in shaping public attitudes during wartime. Carefully track-
ing the actual content of news coverage is what provides the leverage necessary to measure
the wide range of effects that may be present. Even if the specific themes present in news
coverage turn out not to be a primary determinant of support for war, good measures of
content will be necessary to ultimately accept this null hypothesis. Further, working with
individual-level opinion data will allow for important subpopulations (for example, the
partisans and heavy news viewers considered here) to be examined separatelya crucial
approach given the tendency of different individuals to react differently to the same mes-
sage (Gaines et al., 2007; Klapper, 1960). The tremendous amount of opinion polling done
on the Iraq War, along with the growing databases of news content, should provide the data
necessary for scholars to adopt these approaches and improve our understanding of the role
that elite discourse plays during wartime.
Acknowledgments
The author thanks Scott Althaus for sharing the casualty data used in this analysis and for his
helpful suggestions.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Notes
1. The NAES data provide a wide range of analysis options. My approach herein is to treat the data as
one massive cross-section, which provides me with a large enough sample to test hypotheses about
relatively small subsets of the population (high news-use Democrats, low news-use Independents, etc.).
This is a useful approach, one anticipated by those who designed the NAES (see Romer et al., 2006). Of
course, such an approach is valid only if the assumed independence of the standard errors holds true in
the regression model (i.e., if there is no serial correlation). In this case, that assumption does hold true.
An autocorrelation plot of the residuals at 16 different lags revealed that all of them fell within the 95%
confidence bands around zero.
2. News broadcasts that ran during the 4 Monday-to-Sunday weeks prior to the 52-week period analyzed
here (October 6, 2003, through November 2, 2003) were also coded to facilitate measures of 4-week,
3-week, and 2-week lag news coverage used in the analysis of public opinion. Except for these mea-
sures, however, analysis of news coverage in this paper focuses just on the 52-week period from
November 3, 2003, through Sunday, October 31, 2004.
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18 Communication Research XX(X)
3. The NAES also included a question asking if respondents approved of Bushs handling of Iraq.
Responses to this question were highly correlated with the worth it question (r = .70, p < .01). Run-
ning the analysis using this question instead of the worth it question did not substantively alter the
findings.
4. To conduct this analysis I ran the regressions first with the low value and then the high value of each
variable of interest, keeping all other variables constant (using the coefficients from Table 1). I then dif-
ferenced the means of the predicted probabilities produced with the high and low values. This simulation
procedure parallels Althaus (2003).
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Bio
Kevin Coe (PhD 2008, University of Illinois) is assistant professor of communication at the
University of Arizona. His research focuses on the interaction of American political discourse,
news media, and public opinion. His work has appeared in such journals as Communication
Monographs, Journal of Communication, and Political Communication.
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