Chronic Accessibility and Individual Cognitions: Examining the Effects of Message Frames in Political Advertisements

This study examines the effects of media framing on voter cognitions and how such effects can be moderated by voters' chronically accessible schemas. Participants in this study were exposed to political ads that have been systematically framed as either issue oriented or character oriented. Results indicated that, although message frames could indeed prime audiences and generate related mental activations in political evaluations, these effects varied among those with different political schemas. When message frames were consistent with individual schemas, audiences were more likely to be affected than when message frames were inconsistent. They suggest that identifying individual-level factors in the study of framing effects might be an important link in understanding the dynamic relationship between media frames and audience responses.