Texas governor race : how media framing affects the perception of Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis.

Abstract

This study examines the effects of framing found in a series of online videos that relate to Republican Greg Abbott and Democrat Wendy Davis in their campaigns for the 2014 Texas gubernatorial election. Both candidates are powerful political figures. Abbott is a well-established candidate running from the position of Texas state attorney general. His opponent, Davis, attained national fame for her filibuster of an abortion bill. She ran from the position of Texas state senator. Framing theory was utilized to compare how YouTube videos affect potential voters’ opinions. It was a 3 x 2 factorial design experiment, with pairs of positive, neutral, and negative videos, split by political party. All subjects appeared to evaluate candidates by the same criteria. Tone and framing was found to affect overall candidate impression and voter intention, with more support for positively framed candidates and less support for negatively framed candidates.