Do Constructed Explanations Persist? Reframing of the 1994 Republican Takeover of Congress

摘要

Immediately after an election, candidates, activists, and journalists work to learn the reasons for voters’ choices in order to advance their careers. The answers are usually in contention. Election results tell us who won but not why the voters made their choices. Even exit polls often provide no more than a range of possible explanations. Yet research shows that soon after Election Day, long before systematic analysis is available, journalists and their sources converge on one or a few widely accepted explanations (or frames) for the election results. If they persist, the substance of these explanations is likely to affect office-holders’, activists’, and journalists’ perceptions and subsequent behavior. Do these frames or constructed explanations in fact persist over time, or are they reinterpreted in response to more recent political stimuli, thus changing their impact? This article uses content analysis of coverage in opinion-leading newspapers to determine whether the explanations constructed for the 1994 Republican sweep continued to dominate references to 1994 in coverage of the 1998, 2002, and 2006 elections.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07343469.2011.570613