Political Scandals: Framing Strategies to Preserve Political Trust
Laura Gambarin Student Number: 11679581
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Masters’ Program Communication Science
Track: Political Communication
Thesis’ Supervisor: Lukas Otto
2 Abstract
Political trust represents one of the main foundations of democracies, and research has shown how in Europe trust in institutions, governments, and politicians is gradually decreasing. Political scandals contribute to the declining levels of trust, and effective communication strategies need to be used by political parties to preserve their reputation aftermath a scandal. Frames represent one of the most common strategies used in political communication. Therefore, through the analysis and comparison of two types of political scandals, the corruption scandal and the sex scandal, framed within three different frames, the minimization, disassociation and reaffirmation frame, the study aims at understanding how the implementation of these choices affects voters’ political trust towards the political party involved. Results of the experiment show that the best strategy is to outdistance the party from the politicians involved in the scandal, even if more in case of a corruption scandal. In the same way, minimizing the seriousness of the scandal helps preserve political trust better than focusing on reaffirming one’s own image, which however might be more successful in case of a sex scandal.
Introduction
Voters’ trust in government, political institutions and politicians represents one of the main foundations of democracy: low political trust among the citizenry is often translated into the
perception that politicians are driven by self-interests (Moy & Scheufele, 2000), instead of knowing that they are serving the society as a whole. Although a system where citizens completely trust the institutions seems to be a paradox for democracy, citizens’ political support helps politicians use efficiently the power they have been given, by placing the interests of the society first. As Levi and Stoker outlined (2000), a certain degree of distrust is necessary for political accountability, but when skepticism turns into cynicism, the political system as a whole might lose its efficiency and democracy might be at risk.
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Many studies proved how in western democracies political trust is decreasing, (Halmburger,
Rothmund, & Schulte, 2012), and that often public figures have a role in it. Politicians are the main actors in the public arena, and their conduct (or misconduct) drives public opinion towards positive or negative evaluations of the institutions as a whole. Moreover, citizens have normative
expectations towards public figures (Grönlund & Setälä, 2017), and when those expectations fail to be met, the whole evaluation of the public figure is affected. The scenario where politicians betray those normative expectations is defined as a political scandal, which forces politicians to try to save their damaged image and restore trust in their political role. Political scandals are defined by
Thompson (2000) as a situation where a politicians’ misconduct becomes known. As it will be discussed later on in this study, there are many different types of political scandals: scandals differ according to the violated norm, to the entity of the misconduct, and to the role of the politician in it. These characteristics may all have different outcomes in terms of the public perception of the scandal, of citizens’ opinion about it and ultimately in terms of voters’ political trust. Indeed, this research aims at understanding the effects of political scandals on citizens’ political trust towards the political party involved.
Most importantly, what connects the political scandal to public evaluations is how the scandal is presented, namely how those involved in the scandal chose to frame the situation. Framing, in Entman’s words, means “selecting some aspects and make them more salient” (Entman, 1993, p.52), it means crafting and organizing an idea that points towards the right angle of interpretation (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987) and it also means emphasizing the positive or the negative aspects of a situation (Salovey, Schenider, & Apanovitch, 2002). Previous research largely focused on the framing process in the media. Thompson (2000) refers to political scandals as a “trial by media”, highlighting the amount of influence that media have in leading the public opinion, which represents politicians’ jury when it comes to their trustworthiness; also Kepplinger, Geiss and Siebert (2012) explain how voters tend to behave as the media suggest them to.
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On the other hand, the framing process often occurs within the political context, by the political party or by politicians themselves: the “indexing theory” (Bennett, 1990), illustrates how media very often rely on government officials as their main source for political news, leading to media adopting the “official frame” provided by the government itself. Moreover, the “cascading
activation model” as presented by Entman (2003) illustrates how frames are “activated” at the top level of a political system (the government) and spread down to the lower steps of the hierarchy, to the news organizations and ultimately to the public itself. In light of these observations, it becomes clear how frames can be constructed by politicians themselves.
As for now, no study provided a comparison between different types of frames and different types of scandals. Through the analysis and comparison of two types of political scandals, the corruption scandal and the sex scandal, presented within three different frames, the minimization,
disassociation and reaffirmation frame, this study aims at understanding how the implementation of these choices affects voters’ political trust towards the political party involved. Therefore, the research question on which this study is based on is:
RQ: To what extent are different types and frames of political scandals affecting citizens’ political trust towards the political party involved?
This research will contribute to provide scientific evidence on why the choice of a frame might have different outcomes compared to another. From politicians’ point of view, the desire and the efforts of preserving their image and assuring themselves a political future are understandable and even necessary. However, these contributions might rise ethical implications when citizens’ point of view is considered. Being so vulnerable to the kind of frame presented, is something that in the political context is used to push people in the wanted direction, instead of leading them towards their own choices. As it will be discussed later on, citizens very often judge politicians’ misconduct based on their emotions (Bowler & Karp, 2004), rather than on facts, and political actors are well aware of
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that while framing a political scandal. The ethical implications will be further discussed also to provide some critical reflections about this study’s contributions.
Theoretical Framework
A short insight on the concept of political trust will open the theoretical section. Two sections about political scandals and framing will follow, where the hypotheses and research questions of the study will be presented.
Political Trust
Research has shown how trust in institutions, governments, and politicians is gradually decreasing (Zmerli, 2012; van der Meer, 2017; Foster & Frieden, 2017). When a citizen decides to trust a political institution or a political actor, he or she is taking a relational decision. Levi and Stoker (2000) define the choice as “relational” because individuals voluntarily decide to make themselves vulnerable to an institution that might serve them or betray them. In light of this observation, it becomes clear how responsible the institutions are in maintaining citizens’ trust, and also how easily citizens might lose trust when feeling betrayed by a politician. In this sense, political scandals might betray citizens’ trust in different ways: a negative reaction might occur in case of a perceived immorality or incompetence (Dekker & Meijerink, 2012), which seem to perfectly refer to the two types of scandals chosen for the purposes of this research.
The importance of maintaining political trust can be further proved by many different explanations. When citizens perceive their government and politicians as trustworthy, the democratic systems works and provides a social cohesion: laws are perceived as more fair and are thus obeyed, voters become more interested in politics, and ultimately the citizenry as a whole contributes to the social and political function of the society (Zmerli, 2012). Citizens, on one hand, need to trust the
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institutions and politicians, on the other hand, have to remain accountable and trustworthy, in order to be able to fulfill their duty and take decisions.
However, this does not seem the trend that politics in the European Union has experienced lately: according to van der Meer (2017), political trust is decreasing since decades, and Foster and Frieden (2017) studied how European citizens’ trust towards institutions has dropped since the 2009 crisis. According to many researchers, the problem is that the declining levels of political trust are going hand in hand with rising levels of political cynicism, which is often considered as the counter part of trust in politics. Political cynicism can be defined, in Schwartz’s words as the “perception that political authorities […] violate prescriptive standards for their behavior” (Schwartz, 1975; in Dekker & Meijerink, 2012, p.33). The distrust coming from the “perceived immorality or incompetence” (Dekker & Meijerink, 2012) of a single individual or of a single political group, might easily spread to the entire political system, grow and thus lead to a general political cynicism. Dekker and Meijerink (2012) consider that political cynicism might stand at the end of a continuum measuring political trust, and therefore representing political distrust. Political skepticism is healthy for democracy, because it maintains political actors accountable, but political cynicism is often defined as “corrosive” (Cappella & Jamieson,1996). These observations testify the importance of considering political trust as a value at risk when it comes to political scandals, whose different features will be furtherly discussed in the following section.
Political Scandals
Political scandals largely damage political trust towards institutions, but the way the trust is affected differs according to the scandal. A sex scandal and a corruption scandal might trigger different reactions, since the norms betrayed are different. Following the “appraisal theory” (Nerb & Spada, 2001), Kepplinger et al. (2012) go through some of the characteristics of a scandal that might lead to different reactions, such as the entity of the consequences, the awareness of the actions or the opportunities to avoid the bad behavior. However, the most important element that distinguishes a
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sex scandal from a corruption scandal in terms of the public’s reactions is the presence of an abuse of power. In case of public figures, the abuse of power is the extent to which the scandal is related to their job position. Doherty, Dowling and Miller (2011) examined the differences between a sex scandal and a corruption scandal in terms of negative reactions among the public, and their findings show how the sex scandal was perceived as less serious because less related to the job position, but more with the person behind the politician. On the contrary, a corruption scandal is more negatively evaluated because it relates more to the role of the politicians themselves. This assumption is also supported by Ares and Hernàndez’ study (2017): in their research they show how people may feel that the betrayal occurred in a corruption scandal affects the society more than a sex scandal, which might only affect the people closer to the actor.
Since previous research largely supports the distinction provided by the abuse of power, this study tests whether the same applies if both types of scandals include an abuse of power. Indeed, in this study also the sex scandal will refer to a scenario where a politician abuses the power given by his job position. Since now, researchers have always relied on well-known sex scandals occurred throughout history: very often a sex scandal in politics involves infidelity and extra marital relations. Instead, in light of the most recent political scenarios and in the wake of the scandals fought by the “Me too” movement, this study aims at filling a gap in the literature, as well as providing empirical evidence on the different perceptions that occur according to the elements that define the scandal itself. Therefore, it can be assumed that:
H1: People exposed to the corruption scandal will have lower political trust than those exposed to the sex scandal.
This assumption might, however, be differently evaluated by men and women. Doherty et al. (2011) illustrated how, when a scandal does not involve an abuse of power, the sex and corruption scandal are equally evaluated by women as “poor job performances”. However, the sex scandal in this study
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will involve an abuse of power as well, therefore the evaluation might differ. Hence, it can be expected that:
H1a: Gender moderates the effects of the type of scandal on political trust.
Framing Political Scandals
In the political context, framing a political issue means adopting a strategy, and trying to have control over the public discussion that will follow (Wojcieszak & Schuck, 2018). People very often rely on emotional criteria when they have to evaluate a political scandal (Bowler & Karp, 2004) and their attention is mostly triggered by news about the power elite or soft news, two of the most common news values (Harcupp & O’Neill, 2017). When it comes to citizens’ evaluations, relying on emotional criteria rather than facts means that the way in which the scandal is presented – or framed- counts way more than the actual facts. In their study about political campaigns and framing done by media, Cappella and Jamieson (1996), underline a connection between how political issues are presented, and the levels of citizens’ distrust: in their study, strategic frames are proved to trigger voters’ cynicism.
As mean of comparison in this study, the strategies that will be discussed consist of three frames: the minimization of the scandal, the disassociation from the actors involved in the scandal and the reaffirmation of the party’s image: all these frames come from the work of Rowling, Jones and Sheets (2011; 2013). The reason why these frames are considered effective strategies to use
aftermath a scandal is because they reduce the tendency, among the media and the public, to openly criticize the political actors involved (Rowling, Jones, & Sheets 2011). According to the “cognitive dissonance theory” (Festinger, 1957; Rowling, Sheets, & Jones, 2013) individuals tend to
rationalize their bad behaviors in order to reduce the risk of critical evaluations: using these frames as techniques for justifying, displaying the blame or reaffirming the image of the party represents for politicians the best way to rationalize a bad behavior, and thus to reduce the risk of being criticized. In the study by Rowling et al. (2011) the frames used best protected US national identity
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aftermath a scandal, but this study’s context might change the way the frames are employed as well as their consequences in terms of loss of political trust.
The minimization frame consists in depicting the scandal as a non-serious behavior: it involves the suggestion that what happened was something isolated, it minimizes the entity of the behavior and also its damaging consequences (Rowling et al., 2011). The minimization effect is also discussed by Ahluwalia (2000) in the resistance to persuasion context: minimizing the scandal means isolating the seriousness of the behavior and considering it distant from the whole representation of the actor involved. The minimization frame was proved to be very successful in terms of preserving national identity in the study by Rowling et al. (2013): this study will test whether the same applies to political trust.
Instead, the disassociation frame consists in distinguishing the group from the deviant individuals, who are the ones to blame for the scandal: the adoption of this frame helps underlying that the misconduct does not characterize the political party as a whole (Rowling et al., 2011). Hinterleitner and Sager (2016), talk about the so called “blame game” when it comes to political scandals: in particular, one of the strategies used by politicians is the “reactive blame game”, which occurs when a scandal is already known and actors have to defend themselves. The strategy consists in deflecting the blame to those who should be held accountable. In the same way, the disassociation frame implies appointing the blame to the ones involved, and out distant the whole party from the single event. According to Rowling et al. (2011), the disassociation frame was widely used by the US administration, but it was not as successful as minimizing the impact: it is interesting to test whether the same applies to the context of political scandals.
Finally, the reaffirmation frame consists in focusing the attention on successful outcomes achieved by the political party, in order to shift the focus from the scandal to the positive attributes of the group (Rowling et al., 2011). President Clinton’s successful speech after the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke out is an example: he largely focused on his administration accomplishments,
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describing how many positive outcomes they reached (Zaller, 1998). However, Clinton’s speech has to be considered together with the historical background: Zaller (1998) argues that the good economy of the time, for example, had an impact on how the public evaluated the scandal.
Moreover, it can be argued that the reaffirmation frame is often the one that concludes the speech in a multiple-step strategy to rebuild reputation. Brown, Brown and Billings (2013) consider in their research the “image repair theory” as discussed by Benoit (1995). According to this theory, there are five stages to follow, or frames to use, in order to repair a reputation: after reducing the
connection with the scandal, and the entity of the consequences, the last step consists in focusing on pro-active behaviors to repair the image. Therefore, the reaffirmation frame, even if effective, is here considered the least successful in limiting the loss of political trust, compared to the others. Hence, it can be expected that:
H2: a-People exposed to the reaffirmation frame will have lower political trust than those exposed to the minimization and disassociation frames; b- People exposed to the disassociation frame will have lower political trust than those exposed to the minimization frame.
Moreover, political trust might be affected by both the frame and the scandal: the following hypotheses will consider the interaction effect, and aim at testing whether the usage of a frame to effectively preserve citizens’ political trust also depends on the type of scandal. A frame might not be “better than others” in preserving the trust in absolute terms, but only in the context of a
particular scandal. As previously discussed, the minimization frame is here considered the most successful strategy, followed by the disassociation and reaffirmation frame. However, it is
interesting to test whether the same hierarchy of frames’ efficiency holds when different scandals are taken into consideration. The minimization frame combined with the sex scandal should result in higher levels of political trust. Indeed, a sex scandal in politics might be better faced with stronger frames such as the minimization or the disassociation: it seems easier to reduce the
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other hand, Doherty, Dowling and Miller (2011) and Ares and Hernàndez (2017) showed how corruption scandals are generally perceived more negatively in politics, and being the reaffirmation frame the weakest among the frames, the combination between the two should result in the lowest levels of political trust. Hence:
H3: a- People exposed to the reaffirmation frame will have lower political trust than those exposed to the minimization and disassociation frame, and the effect is stronger for those exposed to the corruption scandal compared to those exposed to the sex scandal; b- People exposed to the disassociation frame will have lower political trust than those exposed to the minimization frame, and the effect is stronger for those exposed to the corruption scandal, compared to those exposed to the sex scandal.
Method
Research Design and Stimulus Material
In order to the test the above-mentioned hypotheses, a 2 by 3 between groups true factorial
experimental design was conducted, with Type of scandal as first factor (corruption scandal and sex scandal) and Type of frame as second factor (minimization frame, disassociation frame and
reaffirmation frame). The experiment was conducted online and a questionnaire followed the exposure to the different experimental conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to the six different experimental conditions. The aim of the research is to compare the effects between the frames, therefore, no control group was added for the purposes of the study. Hence, the research design appears as follows:
12 Figure 1- Graphic representation of the experimental groups of the present study.
The stimulus material presented to respondents in the online questionnaire was a news article about
a fake political scandal occurred within the European Parliament. Six articles were specifically crafted for the purposes of this research: three articles about a sex scandal, and three articles about a corruption scandal. The article about the corruption scandal was about few politicians from a fake political party (PLE) who illegally used public funds for personal expenses; on the other hand, the sex scandal referred to politicians of the PLE asking for sexual favors in return for a job position. Each scandal was then framed within the three different frames: in the minimization condition, the article reported politicians stating that the scandal itself represented an “isolated incident”. In the disassociation condition, politicians tried to separate the entire PLE party from the guilty ones, who represented “few bad apples”. Lastly, in the reaffirmation frame condition, politicians focused the attention on their party’s accomplishments, stating that one episode should not “overshadow all the positive achievements of the party”. Attention was paid in order to make the articles as comparable as possible: the structure, the layout and the name of the fake political party were kept the same. For a better understanding of the stimulus material and to see how the articles were constructed, see Appendix A.
The choice of the EU as the context for this study has multiple advantages. First of all, previous research on political scandals and framing largely focus on the US context, including the studies of Rowling et al. (2011;2013) from which the frames were retrieved. In addition, choosing the EU context instead of a national one, allows a wider collection of respondents of different nationalities,
Factor 1: Type of Scandal Factor 2: Type of Frame Corruption
Scandal
Sex Scandal
Minimization Frame Group 1 Group 4
Disassociation Frame Group 2 Group 5
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limiting therefore the risk of having a narrow generalization of the findings. Citizens are usually more knowledgeable when it comes to national politics: setting the political scandal in the EU context might lead to more difficulties in realizing the scandal was specifically crafted for the purposes of this research, limiting the bias of the answers.
The articles were also translated in Italian, since the questionnaire was conducted in two languages (Italian and English). Every article was first pre-tested to see whether respondents understood the frame and the scandal as intended: after the pre-test was considered successful, the collection of data started.
Sample
Participants were collected by sending the link of the questionnaire via WhatsApp to a circle of family and friends and by posting the link on different social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Participants shared the questionnaire with other relatives and friends, therefore the selection consisted in a convenience sample, more specifically a snowball sample, rather than a random sample. With the employment of the G*Power Software (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang & Buchner, 2007), a power analysis was performed to calculate the minimum sample size necessary for the purposes of this research. The calculation was made knowing an ANOVA test will be employed in the analysis and that the design counted six experimental groups; moreover, an α probability error of .05 and a β probability error of .20 were indicated, and the effect size expected from the analysis was a medium effect of 0.3. This effect size was based on the partial 𝑒𝑡𝑎2 which Halmburger et al. (2012) found in their analysis when testing for the effects of a norm violation by a politician on respondents’ political trust. In their study, the effect size was quite big (partial 𝑒𝑡𝑎2= .50), hence the choice of being slightly more conservative and choose an effect size of .30. The G*Power Software calculated a minimum sample size of N= 190 participants for the purposes of the research.
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The online questionnaires used for the experiment were officially posted on the 25th of November 2018 and were kept open until the 9th of December. During these two weeks a total sample of N=320 participants was collected. However, few changes needed to be applied to the sample. First of all, since the context of the study is the European Union, a total of n=11 respondents were excluded from the study because non- European citizens who do not vote in the European Parliamentary Elections; and n=2 respondents were deleted because younger than 18 years old. Moreover, participants who did not complete the questionnaire and dropped out the study were also excluded from the analysis: n=44 respondents from the Italian questionnaire were deleted for this reason, and n=34 from the English questionnaire. Therefore, a final sample of N= 240 participants was considered for the analysis. In the final sample, 40% of participants was male and 60% female; 78.3% was Italian and 21.7% non-Italian; moreover, mean age of participants was M=34.34
(SD=15.34, Min= 18 and Max= 74). In addition, respondents on a scale from 1(left) to 10(right), seemed more left-wing, M= 4.51 (SD=2.07), and on a scale from 1 to 10 measuring the attitude towards the EU, participants showed an average support for the EU of M= 7.84 (SD=2.12).
Operationalization of Political Trust
Measuring the latent concept of “political trust” is considered an important, yet difficult procedure (see also: Seyd, B., 2016). In order to develop items that could properly measure the concept of political trust, the European Social Survey (ESS) and the American National Election Studies (ANES) were considered. In these surveys, concepts such as “honesty”, “trustworthiness”,
“reliability” were frequently used, and therefore here included as items to measure political trust. However, research showed how political cynicism might be placed at the end of a continuum measuring political trust, and representing therefore its opposite (Dekker & Meijerink, 2012). Following this line of reasoning, concepts such as “looking out for their own interests” and “ethical conduct”, all originally pertaining to the measurement of cynicism, were also included as items to measure political trust. Moreover, a reference to the scandal was included before every item (e.g.
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“Despite the scandal in which it was involved, the PLE party can be trusted”). Items were tested with a 7-point agreement scale, ranging from 1 (“Completely disagree”) to 7 (“Completely agree”). To test the reliability of the items measuring political trust a reliability test was conducted: results showed a Cronbach’s alpha of α= .90, therefore every item was included in a new scale variable computed through the mean for Political Trust. For a better understanding of the items used to measure political trust see Appendix B.
Manipulation Check and Randomization Check
To test whether respondents perceived the frame and the type of scandal they read as intended, a manipulation check was conducted. The Chi-square test showed a significant result, 𝜒2(4,
N=240)=.183.85, p<.001, meaning that participants were able to identify the right frame after being exposed to the stimulus material. Interestingly, the same applies to the identification of the type of scandal: results showed that participants were also able to understand the right scandal to which they were exposed to, 𝜒2(1, N=221)=.186.80, p<.001.
Findings of the randomization check for Type of Scandal with Age showed that there is a non-significant effect, t(238)=1.04, p=.300, 95% CI [-1.84, 5.96], meaning that age is comparable across the two conditions. The randomization check for Type of Scandal and Gender also provided a non-significant effect, 𝜒2(1, N=240)=.278, p=.598, meaning that also gender is comparable across the
two conditions. Randomization check for Type of Scandal and Political Leaning showed a non-significant effect, t(238)=1.04, p=.686, 95% CI [-.63, .42]: therefore political leaning is also comparable among the conditions.
In addition, the variable Type of Frame was tested to see whether the three conditions are
comparable according to respondents’ age, gender and political leaning. First of all, results of the ANOVA testing the randomization for Age, showed a non-significant result, F(2, 237)= .690, p= .502, meaning that there are no significant differences in terms of respondents’ age among the
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conditions. The three conditions of the variable Type of Frame are comparable also in terms of respondents’ political leaning, because the randomization check through an ANOVA showed a non-significant effect, F(2, 237)= 1.04, p= .356. Finally, the three experimental groups are comparable also in terms of gender: results of the Chi-square test showed a non-significant result of 𝜒2(2, N=240)=2.75, p=.253.
Analysis and Results
To test the hypotheses of this study, a multi-way ANOVA test was run. The first hypothesis aimed at testing whether participants exposed to a corruption scandal have less political trust than those exposed to a sex scandal. Moreover, H1a assumed that gender could moderate the effect of the scandal on political trust. Results of the ANOVA with Type of Scandal and Gender as independent variables and Political Trust as dependent variable showed, first of all, that there is no significant difference in political trust according to the type of scandal to which respondents were exposed, F(1, 239)= 320, p= .575, meaning that a corruption scandal is not perceived more negatively than a sex scandal. Indeed, political trust is quite low in both conditions: participants in the corruption scandal condition showed an average political trust of M= 3.56 (SD=1.07) which is not significantly different from trust of participants in the sex scandal condition, M= 3.65 (SD=1.01). Moreover, the effect of gender according to the type of scandal was proved to be not significant, F(1, 239)= 1,28, p= .260, meaning that, when taking into consideration the type of scandal, men do not have a significantly different political trust (M= 3.62, SD= 1.03) than women (M=3.59, SD= 1.04).
Hypothesis 2a and b aimed at testing whether there are different levels of political trust according to the type of frame respondents were exposed to. Results of the ANOVA with Type of Frame as independent variable and Political Trust as dependent variable showed a significant effect, F(2, 239)= 12.61, p<.001, meaning that there are significantly different levels of political trust among
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respondents, according to the frame presented. First of all, there is a significant difference between respondents exposed to the minimization frame and respondents exposed to the disassociation frame (p<.001): the latter shows a higher political trust, M= 4.03 (SD= .98) than the former, M= 3.24 (SD=.94), meaning that the scandal framed within the disassociation frame was more positively perceived by respondents compared to the minimization frame. This interesting finding contradicts the direction of H2b, whose implications will be better discussed in the following section.
Moreover, there is a significant difference between respondents exposed to the disassociation frame and those exposed to the reaffirmation frame (p=.005): again, participants in the disassociation frame condition showed more political trust, M=4.03 (SD=.98) than participants in the reaffirmation frame condition, M=3.54 (SD=1.05). These findings partially support H2a, because the
reaffirmation frame was proved to be less successful than the disassociation frame as predicted, but there is no significant result that can attest the significant difference from the minimization frame. Overall, these findings show that when a scandal is framed within the disassociation frame, respondents lose less political trust, compared to the minimization or reaffirmation frame; moreover, the minimization frame is still more successful than the reaffirmation frame.
To test hypotheses 3a and 3b a multiway ANOVA test with Type of Scandal and Type of Frame as independent variables and Political Trust as dependent variable was run. Results show that the interaction is significant, F(2, 239)= 5.09, p=.007. From the plot provided by the ANOVA it can be seen that political trust is higher when people are exposed to a sex scandal rather than a corruption scandal, but only when the scandal itself is framed within the minimization frame or the
disassociation frame. Indeed, when the scandal is framed within the reaffirmation frame the effect is the opposite: political trust is higher in case of a corruption scandal compared to a sex scandal (see Table 2). More specifically, when exposed to the disassociation frame trust is higher in the sex scandal condition (M=4.29, SD=.82) than in the corruption scandal condition (M=3.74, SD=1.06). The same applies to the minimization frame: trust is higher in the sex scandal condition (M=3.28,
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SD=.83) than in the corruption scandal condition (M=3.20, SD=1.05). On the other hand, in the reaffirmation frame condition, political trust is higher in the corruption scandal condition (M=3.71, SD=1.04), rather than in the sex scandal condition (M=3.33, SD=1.03). Therefore, Hypothesis 3a is partially supported: the reaffirmation frame leads indeed to lower political trust than the other two frames, but this is the only case where the effect is stronger for the corruption scandal condition. Hypothesis 3b can be partially accepted: trust is higher in the sex scandal condition as predicted, but the disassociation frame works better when it comes to maintain voters’ trust, compared to the minimization frame. These interesting results indicate that, despite the type of scandal per se showed no significant difference on political trust (H1a and H1b), there are some effects when also the frame is taken into consideration. From the political communication point of view, these results introduce interesting findings, whose implications will be furtherly discussed in the following section1.
Table1- Multi-way ANOVA testing H1; H1a; H2a-b and H3a-b Sum of
Squares
df Mean Square F Sig. Eta sq.
Type of Scandal .304 1 .304 .320 .572
Gender 1.212 1 1.212 1.277 .260
Type of Scandal*Gender .058 1 .058 .061 .804
Type of Frame 23.937 2 11.968 12.609 .000*** .09
Type of Scandal*Type of Frame 9.661 2 4.830 5.089 .007** .04
Error 216.411 228 .949
Total 3382.424 240
Corrected Total 257.006 239
Note: Results of the multi-way ANOVA. * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.
1 A further analysis tested whether there are differences in terms of political trust according to respondents’ political
leaning. Indeed, Ahluwalia (2000) explains through the “biased assimilation process” theory, how individuals tend to consider attitude-consistent information more valid rather than attitude-inconsistent information. Following this line of reasoning, left-wing people “lose less trust” if the political party is also left-wing. Unfortunately, the political party chosen for this study was a fake and “neutral” one: the political leaning of the party involved in the scandal was not specified, leading to some difficulties in holding the assumption. A regression analysis was run anyway to see if respondents’ political leaning affected their political trust, but the analysis showed no significant results, F(2, 239)= .480, p= .620: therefore, political leaning cannot be used to predict respondents’ political trust, b*=.048, t= .744, p=.457, 95% CI [-.04, .09].
19 Table 2- Interaction Effect of Type of Scandal and Type of Frame on Political Trust
Note: Interaction Effect of the multi-way ANOVA with Type of Scandal and Type of Frame as independent variables
and Political Trust as dependent variable.
Discussion
More specific considerations about the results will be discussed here. Attention will then be paid to some limitations of the present study, with suggestions for future research on how to overcome them. Finally, some critical reflections will follow, in order to discuss the general and ethical implications of the study.
When testing for the differences in terms of political trust according to the type of scandal presented, no significant results were found. Previous research (Doherty et al., 2011; Ares & Hernàndez, 2017) showed how the “abuse of power” was an important element that made the corruption scandal be perceived as worse than a sex scandal. In this study, the sex scandal also included an “abuse of power” to see whether the same relation applied. The non-significant result means that when the abuse of power is taken into consideration, a scandal is not perceived more negatively than the other, but they are rather perceived as equally negative: the “abuse of power” element lowered the sex scandal at the same negative level of the corruption scandal. Indeed, the average political trust of respondents, besides not being significantly different, was also very low in
0 1 2 3 4 5
Corruption Scandal Sex Scandal
P o liti ca l T ru st
20
both cases. We can assume therefore, that the abuse of power is what makes the scandal perceived as a moral and ethical violation, regardless the type of scandal itself.
On the other hand, political trust was significantly affected by the type of frame respondents were exposed to, meaning that the communication strategy plays an important role. Indeed, results revealed that the disassociation frame is the best choice when it comes to preserve political trust aftermath a scandal, even compared to the minimization frame, considered the most “successful” one in the study by Rowling et al. (2011). Outdistancing the party from the guilty politicians
involved “saves” the party from a scandal that might damage its entire reputation. Indeed, questions measuring the attitude towards the party referred to the trustworthiness of the party as a whole, which, according to the results, should not be affected when only few politicians are involved. On the other hand, the reaffirmation frame was the least successful, as predicted. Referring to the scandal and trying to minimize its impact, as done with the minimization frame, appears to be smarter than shifting completely the attention and avoiding talking directly about the scandal itself. Respondents have probably perceived the reaffirmation frame as a poor attempt to make people forget about what happened, which appears to be difficult in case of a political scandal. Moreover, the reaffirmation frame is usually a strategy used at the end of a speech that involves one of the other two frames first: focusing on the positive achievements may be a smart conclusion, but only after minimizing the scandal or disassociate the party from it.
What is even more interesting, is that the effects of the frames have significant differences also according to the type of scandals, which did not have any effect per se. Political trust was higher in the sex scandal condition than in the corruption scandal condition, but only when the scandal was framed within the minimization frame or the disassociation frame. Minimizing the impact or disassociating the party from the scandal do not appear as the most strategic frames when it comes to a corruption scandal. Citizens might find easier to logically connect the corrupted politician to the party he works for: corruption in politics is something that can easily spread throughout a party. On
21
the other hand, despite the seriousness of a sex scandal that involves an abuse of power, the
scenario is more restricted to the guilty actors, making it easier for citizens to believe that the blame and the seriousness should be minimized or deflected to the one accountable. The reaffirmation frame has instead the opposite effect: it seems to work better with a corruption scandal than with a sex scandal (see Table 2). Reaffirming the image means focusing the attention on other difficult situations when the party proved to be accountable, and to underline that one episode cannot damage the entire reputation of a political group that always well-behaved. Therefore, it might be easier to use examples to prove one’s own integrity aftermath a corruption scandal, because it is easier to refer to similar moments where the party proved to be accountable.
Limitations and Conclusion
Some limitations of the present study should be considered. First of all, a non-representative sample in terms of respondents’ nationality was collected. As previously discussed, the final sample
counted many more Italian (78,3%) than Italian (21,7%) respondents, leading to two non-comparable groups. In addition, non-Italian respondents were considered all together, whereas there might be interesting differences if other European countries would have been considered.
The non-representative sample may have affected the results of hypotheses H1 and H1a. When testing for the differences in terms of scandals on political trust (H1 and H1a), no significant result was found. However, Italian and non-Italian respondents appeared to have different levels of political trust: more specifically, non-Italian respondents have a higher trust in case of sex scandal rather than corruption scandal, a difference that is not that pronounced for Italian respondents 2.
2 A further analysis tested the differences among Italian and non-Italian respondents. The ANOVA with Type of Frame, Type of Scandal and Nationality as independent variables and Political Trust as dependent variable was not included in
the results section because no hypothesis or research question was formulated. The present study did not focus on differences pertaining the nationality of respondents, but it was interesting to provide an insight on why this could represent a limitation of the research. Indeed, the analysis provided significant results: a significant effect was found between the variables Type of Scandal and respondents’ Nationality, F(1, 239)= 7.43, p= .007: in the corruption scandal condition, Italian respondents have a higher political trust (M=3.75, SD=1.04) than non-Italian respondents (M=2.89,
SD=.90); on the other hand, in the sex scandal condition, trust is lower for Italians (M=3.67, SD=1.05) and higher for
non-Italian respondents (M=3.59, SD=.86). These findings prove that a bigger sample in terms of nationality could have led to significant results also when testing for hypotheses H1 and H1a. For the complete analysis and tables see Appendix C.
22
Since the sample has a majority of Italians, this might have affected the results of H1. Future studies should consider a wider range of respondents in terms of nationality: the European Union was an interesting and new setting for this type of research, but a more equal representation of European countries may lead to different effects of the type of scandals presented and to a stronger external validity.
Another aspect that should be considered is the way the articles, and therefore the scandals, were constructed. If, on one hand, the construction of the frames followed the ones used by Rowling et al. (2011), the scandals were specifically crafted for the purposes of this research. First of all, the sex scandal included on purpose an “abuse of power” element, making the story similar to a “Me too” episode: the public discussion that followed the recent sex scandals have to be taken into consideration, because respondents might have already had an opinion at the time when the questionnaire was taken. Future research should consider including in the same study two types of sex scandals, one with an abuse of power and one without. Indeed, the present study has showed that the “abuse of power” element lowered a sex scandal’s seriousness at the same negative level of a corruption scandal, but the comparison is not as strong as it would be if both scenarios would have been included in the same experiment.
Moreover, few choices made with regards to the corruption scandal should be considered. The story presented was about a politician who spent public funds for personal expenses: few respondents, after having completed the questionnaire, doubted that the scandal was really about corruption. In the collective imagination, corruption is often something more related to bribery or to political favors in return for money. The way the story was crafted represents a rational choice, rather than a limitation, but it should be considered how these choices may have affected the outcomes. It would be interesting for future studies to test these effects in case of other types of scandals, taking
23
Overall, the study provided some interesting results, especially from the political communication point of view. Political campaigns are based on an effective and persuasive communication, and frames represent a very common strategy used to drive the public opinion and ultimately to gain voters’ support and political trust. Politicians and political parties should know when and how to use those strategies in the smartest and most strategic way possible. In light of these observations, this research might contribute to the practical knowledge of political advisors and of so-called spin doctors. The role of spin doctors is often negatively perceived, since they are able to present (or frame) under a favorable light unpopular news or decisions (Collins, 2010). If, on one hand, political campaigns work through an effective use of communication strategies, which also means framing to drive the public opinion, on the other hand, this practice raises ethical concerns, and so does this study’s contribution.
When it comes to politics, the public interest and ethical obligations towards voters are at stake. Therefore, communication strategies in politics are often seen as something negative, aimed at misleading the citizenry. However, this study’s findings might also serve as an attempt to make the audience more aware of political strategies. Knowing and understanding the mechanisms behind political actions or declarations might lead to more informed voters. The use of words in politics and the way public speeches are framed is not only fascinating, but sometimes helps involving more people in politics. Being aware of the strategies used makes people more informed, increasingly able to take decisions, and to vote with a better understanding of what is happening in the public arena. Nothing explains this view better than the words used by David Greenberg (2016) who thinks that “spin” is actually good for democracy: “In a time of cynicism, audiences need to find ways to take pleasure in politics. Democracy requires objective information for voters to make informed judgments. But it also needs lively argument. Spin, even when we’re fully aware of its partisan nature and strategic purposes, leads us to argue and think about what’s at stake in our politics.”
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27 Appendix A: Stimulus Material
28 Table 5- English/Corruption/Reaffirmation: Table 6- English/Sex/Minimization:
29 Table 7- English/Sex/ Disassociation: Table 8- English/Sex/ Reaffirmation:
30 Table 9- Italian/Corruption/ Minimization: Table 10- Italian/ Corruption/ Disassociation:
31 Table 11- Italian/Corruption/Reaffirmation: Table 12- Italian/Sex /Minimization:
32 Table 13- Italian/ Sex/ Disassociation: Table 14- Italian/Sex /Reaffirmation:
Appendix B: Operationalization of Political Trust
The following items to measure Political Trust were randomly presented to participants, after the exposure to the stimulus material.
English
1. Despite the scandal in which it was involved, the PLE party can be considered honest. 2. Despite the scandal in which it was involved, the PLE party can be trusted.
3. Despite the scandal in which it was involved, the PLE party acts ethically.
4. Considering the scandal in which it was involved, I think PLE party tends to look after their own interests
5. Considering the scandal in which it was involved, I think PLE party cannot be considered reliable 6. Considering the scandal in which it was involved, I think PLE party is betraying its voters’ trust 7. I feel the way PLE party responded to the scandal was a distortion of facts to save their image
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8. I feel the way PLE party responded to the scandal was a rightful explanation of their involvement 9. I feel the way PLE party responded to the scandal proved their credibility
10. I feel the way PLE party responded to the scandal was a poor justification 11. I believe that this scandal should not harm PLE’s reputation
12. I believe that after this scandal I would doubt about PLE’s trustworthiness Italian
1. Nonostante lo scandalo in cui è stato coinvolto, il PLE può essere considerato onesto. 2. Nonostante lo scandalo in cui è stato coinvolto, il PLE è degno di fiducia.
3. Nonostante lo scandalo in cui è stato coinvolto, il PLE si comporta eticamente.
4. Considerando lo scandalo in cui è stato coinvolto, penso che il PLE pensi solo ai suoi interessi 5. Considerando lo scandalo in cui è stato coinvolto, penso che il PLE non possa essere considerato
affidabile.
6. Considerando lo scandalo in cui è stato coinvolto, penso che il PLE stia tradendo la fiducia dei suoi elettori
7. Penso che il modo in cui il PLE ha risposto allo scandalo sia una distorsione dei fatti volta a salvaguardare la loro immagine
8. Penso che il modo in cui il PLE ha risposto allo scandalo sia una legittima spiegazione sul loro coinvolgimento
9. Penso che il modo in cui il PLE ha risposto allo scandalo sia una prova della loro credibilità 10. Penso che il modo in cui il PLE ha risposto allo scandalo sia una giustificazione mediocre 11. Penso che questo scandalo non debba danneggiare la reputazione del partito PLE.
12. Penso che dopo questo scandalo, dubiterei dell’affidabilità del partito PLE.
Factor Analysis for the items measuring Political Trust
In order to create a scale variable for political trust, the twelve items measuring political trust were first tested in a Factor analysis. Results show that the main assumptions of the analysis are met: KMO Measure of Sampling Adequacy shows a value of .921 and Barlett’s test of sphericity shows a significant value of p<.001. One Factor was extracted with an Eigenvalue above 1
(Eigenvalue=5.99), which explains the 49.98% of the variance. To test the reliability of the items measuring political trust a reliability test was conducted: the 12 items were included in the analysis, and those negatively framed were first recoded. Results show a Cronbach’s alpha of α= .90,
therefore every item was included in a new scale variable for Political Trust. The new scale
variable, created through the mean, was then tested to see the average of respondents’ political trust, which is quite low, M= 3.61 (SD=1.04).
34 Appendix C: The Effect of Respondents’ Nationality on Political Trust, taking Type of Frame and Type of Scandal into consideration.
Table 15- Multi-way ANOVA with Nationality, Type of Frame and Type of Scandal on Political
Trust
Sum of Squares
df Mean Square F Sig.
Nationality (Italian vs. Non-Italian) 9.125 1 9.125 10.153 .002** Type of Scandal*Nationality 6.676 1 6.676 7.427 .007** Type of Frame*Nationality .234 2 .117 .130 .878 Error 204.929 228 .899 Total 3382.424 240 Corrected Total 257.006 239 Note: * p <.05. ** p <.01. *** p <.001.
Table 16- Multi-way ANOVA interaction effect. Type of Scandal and Respondents’
Nationality.
Note. Significant interaction effect between Type of Scandal and Respondents’ Nationality. 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 4
Corruption Scandal Sex Scandal
A v er ag e P o liti ca l T ru st Italian Non-Italian
