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orcid.org/0000-0001-6724-7559
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Publications
Journal Articles
Merkley,E. and Stecula, D.A. (2018). "Party Elites or Manufactured Doubt? The Informational Context of Climate Change Polarization," Forthcoming in Science Communication.
Wlezien, C., Soroka, S.N. and Stecula, D.A. (2017). "A Cross-National Analysis of the Causes and Consequences of Economic News," Social Science Quarterly 98(3), 1010–1025.
Soroka, S.N., Stecula, D.A. and Wlezien, C. (2015). "It's (Change in) the (Future) Economy, Stupid: Economic Indicators, the Media, and Public Opinion," American Journal of Political Science 59(2), 457-474.
Thrall, A.T., Stecula, D.A. and Sweet, D. (2014). "May We Have Your Attention Please? Human Rights NGOs and the Problem of Global Communication," The International Journal of Press/Politics 19(2), 135-159.
- Journal version
- Commentary based on the article in Washington Post (Monkey Cage)
- Article in Slate
- Article on Harvard's Journalist's Resource
Book Chapters
Thrall, A.T. and Stecula, D.A. (2017) "All the World’s a Stage: The Rise of Transnational Celebrity Advocacy for Human Rights" in Howard Tumber and Silvio Waisbord (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Media and Human Rights, Oxford: Routledge.
Thrall, A.T., Stecula, D.A., and Moyer, R. (2014). Building a Better Boomerang? Human Rights, NGOs and the New Media ; Forthcoming in Franziska Oehmer (Ed.), Politische Interessenvermittlung und Medien. Funktionen, Formen und Folgen medialer Kommunikation von Parteien, Verbänden und sozialen Bewegungen (eng. Political Interest Representation and the Media. Functions, Forms and Follow-up of online and mass communication of Parties, Interest Groups and Social Movements), Nomos Publisher.
Current Research Projects
My current work revolves around a few projects that involve the subfields of political communication and political psychology. My dissertation explores the nature of coverage of politics in the United States and how it contributes to polarization. Another string of my work, mostly done in collaboration with Eric Merkley, deals with the nature of coverage and its effects on public opinion of scientific topics, like climate change, childhood vaccinations and genetically engineered organisms. I am also currently conducting studies on source credibility in the new media landscape and the role graphs play in understanding information. Some more details on selected projects are below.
The Dynamics of Polarization: How the Media and Party Elites Facilitated the Growth of Climate Skepticism with Eric Merkley
Abstract:
Commentators are often perplexed about American polarization on issues where there is scientific consensus. One such issue is climate change. This article explores how the dynamics of climate change news media coverage contributed to polarizing the American public. We show that climate skepticism has been on the rise in America by constructing a “mood” measure going back to 1992 using the Roper Centre polling archive. We use automated and human content analysis of nearly 12,000 news articles published by the New York Times, Washington Post and the USA Today over a 34 year period (1980-2014) to show that journalistic “balance” in climate coverage has declined overtime, while politicization has steadily increased. We provide evidence using simple time series models that rising skepticism is primarily a result of party elite-driven persuasion facilitated by a proliferation of party cues in media coverage. Democratic cues, higher in volume and more consistent in direction, appear to drive public skepticism rather than being primarily influenced by Republican elites. The results conform to Berinsky’s elite cue theory and suggest we should see climate change polarization as a more typical case of public opinion formation.
Prepared for presentation at the APSA Annual Conference 2016 in Philadelphia.
Jenny McCarthy or Jim Inhofe? Understanding the Media's Role in Supporting Pseudo-Scientific Public Attitudes with Eric Merkley
Prepared for presentation at the APSA Annual Conference 2015 in San Francisco. The conference paper can be found here.
Public Opinion and Democracy in Poland
Abstract:
If representation is one of the most important aspects of representative democracy, then a precondition for representation is a rational public. Without a public that holds rational and stable policy preferences, there would be nothing for elected officials to represent. The public opinion and representation literature has so far focused mainly on developed Western democracies, finding not only rational public opinion, but also a fair amount of representation. Post-communist literature, on the other hand, focuses very little on aggregate public opinion and representation and offers mixed conclusions. Following the footsteps of Page & Shapiro (1992), the focus of this thesis is an analysis of aggregate Polish public opinion using an original dataset of public opinion encompassing the years 1981-2011. Additionally, a brief analysis of representation is conducted, utilizing long-term trends in policy preferences among Poles. The findings are presented not only in light of current debates in the post-communist and public opinion and representation literatures, but also within the broader debates about democracy.
You can find the link to my thesis here.
My current work revolves around a few projects that involve the subfields of political communication and political psychology. My dissertation explores the nature of coverage of politics in the United States and how it contributes to polarization. Another string of my work, mostly done in collaboration with Eric Merkley, deals with the nature of coverage and its effects on public opinion of scientific topics, like climate change, childhood vaccinations and genetically engineered organisms. I am also currently conducting studies on source credibility in the new media landscape and the role graphs play in understanding information. Some more details on selected projects are below.
The Dynamics of Polarization: How the Media and Party Elites Facilitated the Growth of Climate Skepticism with Eric Merkley
Abstract:
Commentators are often perplexed about American polarization on issues where there is scientific consensus. One such issue is climate change. This article explores how the dynamics of climate change news media coverage contributed to polarizing the American public. We show that climate skepticism has been on the rise in America by constructing a “mood” measure going back to 1992 using the Roper Centre polling archive. We use automated and human content analysis of nearly 12,000 news articles published by the New York Times, Washington Post and the USA Today over a 34 year period (1980-2014) to show that journalistic “balance” in climate coverage has declined overtime, while politicization has steadily increased. We provide evidence using simple time series models that rising skepticism is primarily a result of party elite-driven persuasion facilitated by a proliferation of party cues in media coverage. Democratic cues, higher in volume and more consistent in direction, appear to drive public skepticism rather than being primarily influenced by Republican elites. The results conform to Berinsky’s elite cue theory and suggest we should see climate change polarization as a more typical case of public opinion formation.
Prepared for presentation at the APSA Annual Conference 2016 in Philadelphia.
Jenny McCarthy or Jim Inhofe? Understanding the Media's Role in Supporting Pseudo-Scientific Public Attitudes with Eric Merkley
Prepared for presentation at the APSA Annual Conference 2015 in San Francisco. The conference paper can be found here.
Public Opinion and Democracy in Poland
Abstract:
If representation is one of the most important aspects of representative democracy, then a precondition for representation is a rational public. Without a public that holds rational and stable policy preferences, there would be nothing for elected officials to represent. The public opinion and representation literature has so far focused mainly on developed Western democracies, finding not only rational public opinion, but also a fair amount of representation. Post-communist literature, on the other hand, focuses very little on aggregate public opinion and representation and offers mixed conclusions. Following the footsteps of Page & Shapiro (1992), the focus of this thesis is an analysis of aggregate Polish public opinion using an original dataset of public opinion encompassing the years 1981-2011. Additionally, a brief analysis of representation is conducted, utilizing long-term trends in policy preferences among Poles. The findings are presented not only in light of current debates in the post-communist and public opinion and representation literatures, but also within the broader debates about democracy.
You can find the link to my thesis here.