Competitive Framing. Dennis Chong and Druckman have developed a theory of how citizens form political opinions, and how political and media elites affect these opinions. They are working on an application of that theory to the study of “elite-issue framing.” Framing occurs when in the course of describing an issue or event, a speaker’s emphasis on a subset of potentially relevant considerations causes individuals to focus on these considerations when constructing their opinions. For example, if a speaker describes a hate-group rally in terms of free speech, then the audience will subsequently base their opinions about the rally on free speech considerations and support the right to rally. In contrast, if the speaker uses a public safety frame, the audience will base their opinions on public safety considerations and oppose the rally. Nearly all previous work studies the situation where citizens receive either one frame or the other—despite the fact that most political situations involve competition between frames. They are interested in what makes a given frame successful in such competitive environments; they seek to isolate the causal forces behind rhetorical success.

Campaigns in a New Media Age: How Candidates Use the World Wide Web to Win Elections.Martin Kifer, Michael Parkin, and Druckman are studying the impact of the Internet on electoral politics. Specifically, they have developed a theoretical framework for studying politicians’ campaigns on the Web that accounts for political strategic aspects of Web-based campaigns and novel technical elements. They use the framework to guide a content analysis of over 700 candidates’ Web sites and three election cycles. They complement these data with information on candidate and district characteristics to study a number of dynamics including how candidates’ campaign on the Web, how Web campaign strategies differ from other types of media campaigning, why candidates’ Web sites differ from one another, how campaign Web sites have changed over time, and what effect Web campaigns might have in the future.

The Strategic Collection and Use of Public Opinion Information.Larry Jacobs and Druckman are styding the impact of public opinion on American policymakers. They are using the public statements, private polls, memoranda, and other archival materials from three presidents (Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan) to explore how politicians conceive of and use public opinion when making their decisions.

Public Knowledge, Attitudes, and Support for Energy Policy Despite an abundance of rhetoric on energy policy from both political parties, critics maintain that the U.S. lacks a national energy strategy. Part of developing such a strategy lies in understanding public attitudes about different sources of energy, whether those opinions change as the public becomes more informed about energy alternatives, what types of energy policies the public is willing to support, and what the public is willing to do as far as making lifestyle choices to meet the long-term energy demands of our society. Along with Fay Cook and Toby Bolsen, Druckman is working on a project to forward just this understanding by examining Americans’ changing knowledge and attitudes about traditional energy sources, alternative sources of energy, and lifestyle choices that affect energy production and consumption.