Opinion Polls and the Media

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Opinion Polls and the Media Reflecting and Shaping Public Opinion Edited by

Christina Holtz-Bacha University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany

and

Jesper Strömbäck Mid Sweden University, Sweden

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Christina Holtz-Bacha and Jesper Strömbäck 2012 Individual chapters © Contributors 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-27889-9 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their right to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-1-349-32664-8 DOI 10.1057/9780230374959

ISBN 978-0-230-37495-9 (eBook)

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12

This book is dedicated to the memory of Lynda Lee Kaid, an extraordinary scholar, friend and mentor.

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Contents

List of Tables

ix

List of Figures

x

Notes on Contributors

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1 The Media and Their Use of Opinion Polls: Reflecting and Shaping Public Opinion Jesper Strömbäck

1

Part I Theoretical and Methodological Approaches 2 Public Opinion and Opinion Polling: Contradictions and Controversies Slavko Splichal 3 Regulation of Opinion Polls: A Comparative Perspective Thomas Petersen 4 Methodological Trends and Controversies in the Media’s Use of Opinion Polls Michael Traugott

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Part II The Media’s Publication of Opinion Polls 5 Opinion Polls and the Media in Germany: A Productive but Critical Relationship Christina Holtz-Bacha

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6 Opinion Polls and the Media in the United States Kathleen A. Frankovic

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7 Opinion Polls and the Media in Brazil Flávia Biroli, Luis Felipe Miguel and Fernanda Ferreira Mota

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8 Opinion Polls and the Media in Australia Stephen Mills and Rodney Tiffen

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9 Opinion Polls and the Media in South Africa Robert Mattes

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10 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Public Opinion Polling in Taiwan Lars Willnat, Ven-hwei Lo and Annette Aw

198

Part III Effects and Consequences of Published Opinion Polls 11 Attitudinal and Behavioral Consequences of Published Opinion Polls Patricia Moy and Eike Mark Rinke

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12 Published Opinion Polls, Strategic Party Behavior and News Management Jesper Strömbäck

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13 Polls, Media and the Political System Christina Holtz-Bacha

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Index

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Tables 1.1 Normative models of democracy and their central mechanisms for securing the common good 2.1 (Re)conceptualizations of key dimensions in public opinion and opinion polls 3.1 Legal restrictions on the publication of pre-election polls in 69 countries 6.1 Number of questions in Roper Center archives containing the words ‘presidential election’ and ‘today’ by decade 7.1 Percentage of surveys and polls published with no indication of methodology, per year of election 10.1 Gaps in polls between Chen Shui-bian (DPP) and Lien Chan (KMT) in the 2004 presidential election (%) 10.2 Deviations from election results in polls conducted during the 2006 mayoral election in Taipei (%) 10.3 Focus of polls in the China Times and the United Daily News, 1999–2009 (%) 10.4 Conductor of polls in the China Times and the United Daily News, 1999–2009 (%) 10.5 Sponsor of polls in the China Times and the United Daily News, 1999–2009 (%) 10.6 Method of polls in the China Times and the United Daily News, 1999–2009 (%) 10.7 Percentages of stories reporting methodological information, 1999–2009

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4 33 57

125 148 207 209 213 214 216 216 218

Figures 3.1 Restrictions on the publication of pre-election polls 3.2 Percentages of countries with substantial legal restrictions in different regions 3.3 Reasons for legal restrictions 3.4 Legal restrictions on the publication of exit polls 9.1 Stories discussing public opinion data, 2004 and 2009 election campaigns (average number of stories per media outlet) 9.2 News stories reporting public opinion data, 2002–2010 (average annual number of stories per media outlet) 9.3 Stories reporting public opinion data annually, 2002–2010 (average number by type of media) 9.4 Stories reporting public opinion data annually, 2002–2010 (total stories by three influential media) 10.1 Changes in the Taiwanese/Chinese identity of Taiwanese, 1992–2010 10.2 Changes in unification–independence stances of Taiwanese, 1994–2010 10.3 Number of poll stories in the China Times and the United Daily News, 1999–2009

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58 58 60 61

189 189 190 191 203 204 215

Notes on Contributors

Annette Aw is Associate Professor at the University of Maryland University College, Maryland, USA. She is also an adjunct lecturer for Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, USA, and a full-time research consultant focusing on media-related studies for private businesses, trade associations and government agencies. Her current research concentrates on the impact of social media on public relations in Asia. Her most recent book is Political Communication in Asia (2009), co-edited with Lars Willnat. Flávia Biroli is Professor at the Institute for Political Science, University of Brasília, Brazil, and a researcher for the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development in Brazil. Her research focuses on gender and on media and politics. She is the editor, with Luis Felipe Miguel, of Revista Brasileira de Ciência Política. Her publications include Caleidoscópio convexo: mulheres, política e mídia (2011), co-authored with Luis Felipe Miguel, and Midia, representação e democracia (2011), co-edited with Luis Felipe Miguel. Kathleen A. Frankovic spent more than three decades at CBS News. She retired as Director of Surveys and Producer in 2009 but remains Election and Polling Consultant for CBS and other companies. She is a former academic with a PhD in political science. Most recently she has written chapters about election and opinion polling for the Market Research Handbook (2007), The SAGE Handbook of Public Opinion Research (2008) and the ‘Sample Surveys’ volume of the Handbook of Statistics (2009). She has also written about women and public opinion polls for Voting and the Gender Gap (2008). She has served as President of both the World Association for Public Opinion and the American Association for Public Opinion. Some of her work can be found on her website at www.kathyfrankovic.com. Christina Holtz-Bacha is Professor of Communication at the School of Economics, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. She received her PhD from the University of Münster, Germany, and did her xi

xii Notes on Contributors

postdoctoral dissertation (habilitation) in Hannover. Prior to her current position, she taught at the universities of Munich, Bochum and Mainz. In 1986 she was a visiting scholar at the University of Minnesota, USA. In 1999 she was a research fellow at the Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, USA, and in 2011 a guest researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has published widely in the area of political communication. Her most recent publications as editor include Encyclopedia of Political Communication, 1 & 2 (2008), The Sage Handbook of Political Advertising (2006), Medienpolitik für Europa (Media Policy for Europe, 2006) and Frauen—Medien—Politik (Women—Media—Politics, 2008), and she has written Medienpolitik für Europa II (Media Policy for Europe II, 2011). She is co-editor of the German journal Publizistik, associate editor for the International Communication Association’s Communication Yearbook and a member of the editorial boards of several international journals. Her main research interests are in political communication and media policy. Ven-hwei Lo is Professor in the School of Journalism, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining the Chinese University, he taught at the National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, for 24 years. His research interests include news media performance and the effects of mass media. He is the author of seven books, and his recent publications have appeared in, for example, Asian Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Media Psychology, the Chinese Journal of Communication and the Harvard International Journal of Press/ Politics. Robert Mattes is Professor of Political Studies and Director of the Democracy in Africa Research Unit, in the Centre for Social Science Research, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He is also Senior Adviser to, and a co-founder of, Afrobarometer, a ground-breaking regular survey of public opinion in 20 African countries. He has helped to launch and run other major research projects, such as the South African National Election Study (principal investigator) and the African Legislatures Project (co-principal investigator). He is co-author (with Michael Bratton and E. Gyimah-Boadi) of Public Opinion, Democracy and Markets in Africa (2005) and has authored or co-authored articles in journals such as American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, World Development, Journal of Democracy, Democratization

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and Party Politics. He holds a PhD (1992) in political science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. Luis Felipe Miguel is Professor at the Institute for Political Science, University of Brasília, Brazil, and a researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technological Development in Brazil. His research focuses on political representation, gender and the political influence of mass media. His publications include Mito e discurso político (2000), Política e mídia no Brasil (2002) and, with Flávia Biroli, Caleidoscópioconvexo: mulheres, política e mídia (2011). Stephen Mills lectures at the Graduate School of Government at the University of Sydney, Australia. Previously he was a senior political journalist on the personal staff of Prime Minister Bob Hawke and a corporate affairs specialist in the financial services sector, including for the Australian Stock Exchange. He is currently undertaking doctoral research on the development of Australian political parties’ head offices and election campaigning. He is the author of the influential book The New Machine Men: Polls and Persuasion in Australian Politics. Fernanda Ferreira Mota is taking her master’s degree in political science at the University of Brasília, Brazil. Her research and publications are focused on the connections between gender, media and politics. Patricia Moy is the Christy Cressey Professor of Communication and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. She is Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online: Communication and Associate Editor of Public Opinion Quarterly. Thomas Petersen is Project Director at the Allensbach Institute für Public Opinion Research, Germany. He is also an associate lecturer at the universities of Dresden and Krems, Past-President of the World Association for Public Opinion Research and Chair of the Visual Communication Division of the German Society for Communication Research (DGPuK). He has published numerous books and articles in journals and handbooks. Eike Mark Rinke is a doctoral student and research associate in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Mannheim, Germany.

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Slavko Splichal is Professor of Communication and Public Opinion in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; Fellow of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts; and Director of the European Institute for Communication and Culture, as well as Editor of its journal, Javnost–The Public. His primary areas of research include communication theory, public opinion and the public sphere, political communication and communication research methods. His most recent publication is Transnationalization of the Public Sphere and the Fate of the Public (2011). Jesper Strömbäck is Professor of Media and Communication and Ludvig Nordström Professor and Chair in Journalism, Mid Sweden University, Sweden. He is also Research Director at the Center for Political Communication Research, Mid Sweden University. He has published numerous articles in journals such as Journal of Communication, International Journal of Press/Politics and Political Communication. His most recent books include Political Public Relations: Principles and Applications, co-edited with Spiro Kiousis (2011), and Political Communication in European Parliamentary Elections, co-edited with Lynda Lee Kaid and Michaela Maier (2011). Rodney Tiffen is Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, Australia. He is the author or co-author of seven books and editor of three books as well as of more than 60 academic articles and book chapters. Many of these have been on Australian media and politics, including News and Power (1989) and Scandals: Media, Politics and Corruption in Contemporary Australia (1999). Michael Traugott is Professor of Communication Studies and Political Science and Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. He is the author or editor of 12 books and of more than 90 journal articles. His most recent books are The Voter’s Guide to Election Polls, co-authored with Paul Lavrakas, and the Handbook of Public Opinion Research, co-edited with Wolfgang Donsbach. Lars Willnat is Professor in the School of Journalism at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, USA. Before joining Indiana University in 2009, he taught at the George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA, and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include media effects on political attitudes, theoretical aspects

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of public opinion formation and international communication. He has published articles in journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Political Communication and Journalism. His most recent book is The Global Journalist in the 21st Century (2011), co-edited with David Weaver.