Publication Type: Paper/Poster Proposal
Abstract: Research has consistently shown that the news media’s tendency to use exemplars in relaying news stories has a demonstrable effect on audiences’ perceptions of incidence rates. Viewers ignore the more reliable base-rate information, which reports actual rates of occurrence, and concentrate on the more vivid, detailed and concrete pictures and information presented in exemplars. When considering occurrence rates, viewers’ judgments often reflect the information presented in exemplars rather than the base-rate information. Although exemplification has been shown to occur within experimental settings, it has not been as thoroughly explored using observational data. Furthermore, the implications of exemplification for viewers’ policy positions are largely unknown. This paper addresses these issues by examining the effects of the murder of four civilian contractors in Iraq. In April 2004, when United States civilian contractors were violently killed in Fallujah, Iraq, news media organizations reported graphic descriptions of the killings and published pictures of the event. In this paper, secondary data analysis is performed on a Pew Center for People and the Press survey in which respondents were asked if they saw the pictures, their perceptions about the war, and their support for various policy issues regarding the war. The study suggests that not only does the news media’s tendency to rely heavily on exemplars have a large effect on audiences’ perceptions of incidence rates but it also has implications for the way viewers’ express their policy positions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper argues that Iraq is already in the midst of a low-intensity civil war and the challenge is not building democracy so much as arresting and reversing the dynamics of polarization, state weakness, growth of militias, and increasing violence that grease the slide into a much larger-scale civil war. The social, economic, institutional, culutural and regional factors all make democracy in Iraq formidably difficult to develop in the near term. Still, it is possible to argue that Iraq could gradually become a democracy, after passing through a long period of turbulent and corrupt semi-democracy, if it could at least solve the most urgent problem of political order in the country: defining a structure of the post-war Iraqi state that all major groups could accept. This would require a power-sharing arrangement at the center and a broadly acceptable federal bargain for the country as a whole, devolving power in a way that would give each group a “fair” share of the oil resources and some control over their own affairs. Getting this constitutional bargain and building up a viable state, with security forces that transcend ethnic and sectarian divisions and control, are now vital to averting a large-scale civil war in Iraq. This requires intense, international mediation, involving not only the US but the UN, the EU, and the Arab League. The United States lacks the time, the legitimacy, the knowledge and the leverage to successfully mediate these complex negotiations on its own.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper considers the socio-demographic changes between the American public’s support for the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq War in 2003. Various characteristics of respondents are expected to change on the basis of past research, including gender, age, race, income, education, and party affiliation. In nearly every instance, support decreased from 1991 to 2003. The only demographics that increased in their support for the use of military force were respondents who earned less than $10,000 per year, had less than a high school education, and were Republican affiliated. Women were less supportive of force than men, but both genders decreased their support between the two conflicts. African-Americans were less supportive than other minorities, who were in turn less supportive than Whites—still, all races decreased in their overall support in 2003. Less income was associated with less support. Those with lower educational attainment and higher attainment were the least supportive, with the greatest support in both wars coming from those with associate degrees. Support for force tended to decrease with age. Republicans were, predictably given the Republican presidents during both wars, more supportive than Democrats and Independents. Regression analysis showed there was a significant change in support for force between the two years even when holding constant all demographic variables. Thus, as the Iraq War was aimed at changing the governmental regime of Iraq and the Persian Gulf War only aimed at forcing Iraq from Kuwait, there is some credence to the argument that the nature of a war could have an effect on popular support.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Using a database of every terrorist/insurgent event in the Diyala province of Iraq, this paper seeks to explain the trends in the frequency, type and targeting strategies of terrorist acts. By applying a rational choice model to the data, we are able to show that terrorists are both rational actors, and that they are encouraged or deterred by the success and failure of prior events. The effectiveness of counter-terrorism and democraticizing strategies are explored, as well as some findings on the sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shia'a groups.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Media coverage before, during and after the 2006 midterm elections portrayed the election as a referendum on Iraq. At the same time, the theory of deliberate priming -- taken from the recent literature on campaign professionals -- suggests that candidates will structure their campaigns around issues that are winners for their candidacies. In 2006 Iraq should have been such an issue for Democrats. Our analysis of 452 candidate TV ads from competitive races shows that Iraq was far less central an issue than the media's portrayal suggests. However, we see significant differences in the way the Iraq issue was used by candidates that supports the overall theory of deliberate priming.