Amber Wichowsky said:Around the WI primary, I expressed frustration about how media framing might be widening partisan divides in opinions about Covid-19 How should we interpret partisan gaps?
To explore this question, my students and I decided to field a survey experiment: randomly assign subjects to a media frame about partisanship and concern about Covid-19. Our study was conducted April 22 on MTurk. We block (PID) randomized subjects to treatment condition
[Concern over coronavirus in the U.S. reflects significant partisan differences / There is substantial concern about coronavirus in the U.S. across party lines.] The rest of the vignette was the same (reporting same set of poll numbers for Republicans and Democrats)
Post-treatment, we asked subjects: “do you think the decision to close schools and businesses, and to restrict the size of public gatherings is an appropriate response to the coronavirus outbreak or is it an overreaction that will do more harm than good?”
The results were consistent with our hypothesis. The partisan divide in opinion is wider among those assigned to the partisan frame condition, with both Democrats and Republicans appearing to take cues from the partisan framing.
As I said previously, the people with sane opinions about it either way can be all over the place politically, and yes, most people regardless of politics agree with the lockdown to some extent. I don’t think it is until you start seeing some extreme views on it that the political lines become apparent. You probably won’t find any “coexist” bumperstickers on many of the gridlock protestors’ cars. You probably won’t see any Gadsden flags among the counter-protestors. And as I’ve said before, it is those with the more extreme views that are getting all the bandwidth. It’s not the rational conversations between people of different viewpoints going viral. It’s the videos of the vitriolic confrontations and people donning medical garb (incorrectly) to make a point, blocking the protesters way.
