RESEARCH NOTES EXPLORING THE PERCEPTUAL GAP IN PERCEIVED EFFECTS OF MEDIA REPORTS OF OPINION POLLS

This paper tackles, in two studies, one specific aspect of the perceptual processes in public opinion: how people assess the effects of media reports of opinion polls. There are several reasons to address this question empirically. First, opinion polls, as a mass feedback mechanism (Mutz, 1994), influence individuals ’ perceptions of mass opinion or the opinion of the generalized other (Fields & Schuman, 1976; Glynn, Ostman, & McDonald, 1995; Mutz, 1998). However, how news reports are perceived as having effects received research attention only recently (e.g., de Vreese & Semetko, 2002). Second, reporting opinion polls has become a steady feature of political coverage of the news media (Frankovic, 1998; Patterson, 1993), making poll reports a distinct type of media message. Political actors often take actions (e.g. to spin poll results) predicated on perceived effects of such messages (Mutz, 1995). As a result, how individuals perceive the effects of news reports of polls constitutes part of the overall influence of polls in public opinion processes. Third, there is evidence of widespread public ambivalence toward the proliferation of polls in news coverage of politics (de Vreese & Semetko, 2002; Lavrakas, Holley, & Miller, 1991), which may lead to not only biased estimates o