Political News with a Personal Touch

Human Interest Framing and Its Effect on Political Attitudes

Many studies on the topic of human interest in news coverage focused on the topics of news items: do news items deal with issues of political or societal relevance or do they report on human interest topics such as celebrities, sports, leisure activities, or violence? ¹¹ This study investigates human interest news from another perspective, by focusing on how news stories are framed. Many different definitions of news frames have been put forward, ¹² mostly sharing the view that frames place “an emphasis in salience of certain aspects of a topic.” ¹³ Emphasizing a particular aspect of a topic with a news frame makes this element more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable and therefore more accessible and applicable in audience interpretations of the topic. ¹⁴ This in turn may influence the overall attitude toward the topic, ¹⁵ for example, with regard to governmental actions. ¹⁶

The human interest frame is one of the most commonly used generic news frames. ¹⁷ At the core of most definitions of human interest framing is that a broader issue is explained by portraying one or more specific persons who are personally involved with that issue. Exemplification theory explains how human interest-framed news may affect citizens’ attitudes. ¹⁸ Exemplification applies to news stories in which individuals and their personal experiences are used by journalists to illustrate a broader societal issue, with the aim of bringing a personal angle to the story. ¹⁹ These individuals are dubbed “exemplars” and have been found to strongly affect the perceptions of political issues: human examples in news stories mislead recipients to believe that certain problems are occurring more frequently than is the case ²⁰ and, consequently, to perceive these problems as being more severe. ²¹ The reason is that people tend to generalize exemplar information to broader judgments, ²² which increases the perceived seriousness of a situation and eventually may influence people’s attitudes. ²³

Exemplifying information has been proven to be stronger than statistical information and general statements, ²⁴ and information from politicians. ²⁵ There are various reasons why information based on human exemplars is so persuasive. First, messages from fellow citizens are often more vivid and concrete than statistical information or interviews with politicians. ²⁶ As a result, these messages attract more attention, are easily comprehended, and are more accessible when making judgments. ²⁷ Second, message integrity plays a role ²⁸ : human exemplars are relatively similar to viewers, they speak from their heart, and they most often do not have an overt political agenda. Hence, they may be trusted more than politicians and official sources. ²⁹ Furthermore, citizens who are personally confronted with an issue on a daily basis could be perceived to have more expertise about that particular issue than statistical sources or politicians.

Human interest-framed news may thus strongly affect citizens’ attitudes in a way congruent with the statements of the employed personal exemplar. Little research has investigated this assumption with regard to political attitudes. Episodic framing, however, has frequently been shown to influence people’s perceptions of political issues. ³⁰ Episodically framed stories depict issues in terms of specific instances by focusing on certain individuals or specific events. ³¹ Human interest frames thus share with episodic frames the focus on specific examples to portray a broader issue ³² but differ on the aspect that human interest frames solely focus on personal exemplars while episodically framed stories may focus both on individuals as well as on events.

Exposure to episodically framed news has repeatedly been shown to cause attribution of individual responsibility: perceiving a portrayed person as being responsible for his own problems, not society. ³³ The reasoning is that when people are explicitly confronted with one particular case, they are less likely to consider the bigger picture and to perceive the issue as a society-wide phenomenon. ³⁴ Accordingly, episodic framing evokes the perception that society is to a lesser degree considered responsible for solving the portrayed problem. When, by contrast, people see news covered with a focus on the political or societal context (thematic framing), they are more likely to attribute responsibility to society and to perceive the government as being responsible.

The individuals in episodically framed news items of experimental studies often were not only particular in the sense that they portray a broader issue, but also in the sense that they were not ordinary citizens. Exemplars, for instance, were criminals, guiltless drug dealers, minority groups, and even a polar bear. ³⁵ Remarkably, when studies on the effects of episodic framing featured exemplars of “ordinary citizens” (e.g., poor or unemployed people, or a boyfriend with a foreign girlfriend) the findings were ambiguous. In these cases, effects on attribution of responsibility were either insignificant or congruent with the message of the exemplar. ³⁶

In sum, extant research relied on two related and well-established theories, which lead to different expectations. ³⁷ Episodic framing theory expects personal exemplars to cause individual responsibility attribution, but it has only shown to do so with not-so-common people. Exemplification theory, by contrast, predicts a strong persuasive power of ordinary personal exemplars, but it has not been applied yet to the question of responsibility attribution. Following exemplification theory, however, one would expect that if journalists employ exemplars to illustrate broader issues, this would increase responsibility attribution to the government, because exemplification evokes the perception that exemplars’ problems are very severe. With these opposing expectations, a research question is formulated first:

Even though it is well established that news frames can affect the attribution of responsibility, few studies have gone beyond this and looked at the effects on attitudes. This, however, is very relevant, because it gives insight into how human interest-framed news can affect public opinion, which eventually may have consequences for vote decisions and perceived legitimacy of government. ³⁸ Therefore, this study not only investigates how human interest framing affects attribution of responsibility, but also whether this subsequently affects people’s attitude toward a proposed governmental policy change.

Returning to the theoretical backdrop, which suggests that human interest framing may affect responsibility attribution of societal problems, next it was posited that this could affect people’s attitude toward a plan of the government to help or not help the citizens involved in the portrayed problem. Perceiving the responsibility not to lie with individuals, but rather in society, intensifies people’s belief that the individuals involved should be helped by government programs and that more public money should be spent on the issue. ³⁹

The attribution–affect–action model gives further ground to this expectation ⁴⁰ : more empathy will be evoked when individuals are perceived as not being responsible for their problems, which in turn increases support for societal help and government spending. Thus, as people attribute more responsibility to the government for a problem rather than to the individuals involved, they will have a more positive attitude toward a government’s plan to help these individuals and vice versa. Building on the research question, the following was expected:

H1: If human interest framing causes attribution of responsibility to the government, then attitudes toward governmental assistance programs will positively be affected by exposure to such framing; if, by contrast, human interest framing causes attribution of responsibility to individuals, then this will negatively affect these attitudes.

In sum, when people see a human interest-framed news item, this may increase the attribution of responsibility to either the portrayed person (according to episodic framing theory) or to the government (according to exemplification theory). Subsequently, attributing responsibility to individuals will negatively affect attitudes toward governmental help, while responsibility attribution to the government will positively affect attitudes toward such governmental support. So, an indirect effect was expected of human interest framing on citizens’ attitude via the attribution of responsibility, but the direction of it is still uncertain.

Method

Results

To keep models parsimonious and in line with the experimental logic, control variables were not included in the analyses as randomization made these redundant. ⁵³ An ANOVA tested whether participants in the four experimental conditions showed different intentions when attributing responsibility of problems caused by ADHD. The ANOVA findings are based on ten thousand bootstrap samples, ⁵⁴ and yielded a main effect on the attribution of responsibility, F(3,238) = 2.76, p = .043, η² = 0.04. Table 1 shows the estimated means per condition for the assessment of responsibility attribution.

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Table 1.

Means and Standard Deviations of the “Attribution of Responsibility” Variable (1-7) in the Experimental Conditions.

Condition	M	(SE)	95% CI
Control condition	3.66a,b	(0.11)	[3.45, 3.88]
No human interest frame condition	3.56 a	(0.12)	[3.33, 3.79]
Weak human interest frame condition	3.93 b	(0.10)	[3.72, 4.14]
Strong human interest frame condition	3.95 b	(0.13)	[3.70, 4.20]

Note. Means that do not share a common superscript letter were found to be significantly different at p < .05 by Bonferroni bias-corrected post hoc tests based on ten thousand bootstrap samples. CI = confidence interval. Higher scores indicate that more responsibility is attributed to the government.

Participants attributed more responsibility to the government in the conditions with human interest-framed information (strong and weak human interest frame condition) than in the conditions where participants were not exposed to human interest-framed information (no human interest frame condition and control condition). This difference was significant between the strong human interest frame condition and the no human interest frame condition, as well as between the weak human interest frame condition and the no human interest frame condition. ⁵⁵ Though the two conditions that showed human interest elements (strong and weak human interest frame condition) did not differ significantly from the control condition at α = .05, there was a similar trend at α = .10 that more responsibility was attributed to individuals when participants were not exposed to human interest-framed information. ⁵⁶

Next, it was analyzed how variation in responsibility attribution affected the attitudes of participants toward the plan of the government. A linear regression analysis showed that these two variables were strongly correlated (B = −1.21, SE = 0.28, 95% CI [−1.87, −0.57], p < .001). The more people attributed responsibility to the government, the less they supported the government’s plan to reduce public spending on ADHD medication for children and adolescents.

The two significant direct effects described above gave reason to investigate whether human interest framing indirectly affected attitudes toward the plan of the government. The analyses of this indirect effect were based on bias-corrected estimates of ten thousand bootstrap samples. ⁵⁷ However, as there were four experimental conditions, and regression techniques cannot properly deal with nominal variables, dichotomized variables were made representing contrasts of one condition versus another condition (e.g., no human interest frame condition = 0 vs. strong human interest frame condition = 1). Hence, the indirect effects were analyzed one by one. The indirect effects were tested in a simple mediation model ⁵⁸ as represented in Figure 1: one direct effect of the dichotomized condition variable on attitude toward the government’s plan (B₁) and an indirect effect via the attribution of responsibility variable on attitude toward the plan (B_2×3).

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Figure 1.

The mediation model to test the indirect effect of human interest framing on attitude toward the plan of the government via attribution of responsibility.

Starting with the two main conditions of this study, the indirect effect of the no human interest frame condition (0) relative to the strong human interest frame condition (1) was analyzed first. Just as with the ANOVA, a direct effect on the mediating variable “attribution of responsibility” was found (B₂): participants in the strong human interest frame condition on average attributed 0.39 points more responsibility to the government than participants who saw the item without human interest-framed information. Once again, it was found that this attribution of responsibility significantly and negatively related to the attitude toward the government’s plan (B₃): those who attributed 1 point more responsibility to the government had 1.08 points less support for its plan to cut spending on children’s ADHD medication. Hence, the analysis showed that exposure to the strong human interest frame condition indirectly and significantly decreased the attitude toward the government’s plan compared with the no human interest frame condition via responsibility attribution with 0.42 points (B_2×3). The condition to which participants were assigned had no significant direct effect on attitudes toward the plan (B₁).

How and whether the attitude toward the government’s plan was affected in other contrasts of conditions is shown in Table 2. This table shows the strength and significance of the direct effect of experimental conditions on support for the government’s plan (B₁, which was never significant) and on the mediating variable “attribution of responsibility” (B₂), the direct effect of “attribution of responsibility” on the attitude toward the government’s plan (B₃), and the indirect effect of the experimental condition on the attitude toward the government’s plan via the attribution of responsibility (B_2×3). Findings show that the weak human interest frame condition relative to the no human interest frame condition indirectly decreased the attitude toward the plan of the government in a similar way as the strong human interest frame condition.

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Table 2.

Direct and Indirect Effects of Human Interest Framing on Attitude toward the Government’s Plan and on Attribution of Responsibility.

	Experimental condition	Experimental condition	Attribution of responsibility	Experimental condition
	↓	↓	↓	↓
Conditions that are compared	Attitude toward government’s plan	Attribution of responsibility	Attitude toward government’s plan	Attitude toward government’s plan (Indirect effect)
Dichotomized experimental condition variable	B1 (SE)	B2 (SE)	B3 (SE)	B2×3 (SE), 95% CI
Control (0) vs. strong human interest frame (1)	−0.38 (0.71)	0.29 (0.17)*	−1.00 (0.38)***	−0.29 (0.23), [−0.98, 0.01]*
No HIF (0) vs. strong human interest frame (1)	−0.43 (0.73)	0.39 (0.17)**	−1.08 (0.37)***	−0.42 (0.27), [−1.14, −0.04]**
Weak HIF (0) vs. strong human interest frame (1)	−0.08 (0.76)	0.02 (0.17)	−1.37 (0.43)***	−0.03 (0.24), [−0.56, 0.43]
Control (0) vs. weak human interest frame (1)	−0.21 (0.74)	0.27 (0.15)*	−1.32 (0.44)***	−0.35 (0.26), [−1.10, 0.00]*
No HIF (0) vs. weak human interest frame (1)	−0.23 (0.77)	0.37 (0.16)**	−1.39 (0.43)***	−0.51 (0.29), [−1.25, −0.07]**
Control (0) vs. no human interest frame (1)	0.07 (0.69)	−0.10 (0.16)	−1.02 (0.38)***	0.10 (0.19), [−0.17, 0.67]

Note. Cells contain OLS unstandardized (B) regression coefficients with standard errors (SE) in parentheses. Standard errors and 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals of indirect effect are based on ten thousand bootstrap samples. HIF = human interest frame; OLS = Ordinary least squares; CI = confidence interval.

*

p < .10. **p < .05. ***p < .01 (two-tailed).

When the strong human interest frame condition and the weak human interest frame condition were compared with the control condition, a similar negative indirect effect was visible as when these two conditions were compared with the no human interest frame condition. Although the direct effects on attribution of responsibility were not significant, their directionality suggests that the conditions with human interest-framed information may have led to more responsibility attribution to the government than the control condition. The indirect effects had 95% confidence intervals of which the upper bounds fluctuated marginally above or exactly on zero, which indicates that the strong human interest frame and weak human interest frame conditions via their effect on responsibility attribution indirectly caused a decrease in support for the government’s plan relative to the control condition.

Finally, exposure to the strong and the weak human interest frame items led to almost an identical responsibility attribution; accordingly, there was no indirect effect on the attitude toward the government’s plan between these two conditions. Participants reacted similarly to the strong human interest frame item as to the condition with a mix of human interest-framed and substantive political information (weak human interest frame). Participants also reacted similarly to the no human interest frame condition and the control condition: exposing people to an item without a human interest frame did not change their responsibility attribution, nor indirectly their attitude toward the government’s plan compared with seeing no news about this topic.

Discussion

Three conclusions emerged from this study that investigated the effect of human interest framing on citizens’ political attitudes. First, human interest framing of a news item caused attribution of responsibility to the government. Second, attribution of responsibility to the government decreased support for the government’s plan to cut budget on children’s ADHD medication. In a nutshell, this means that human interest framing indirectly affected people’s political attitudes via the way they attributed responsibility of a problem. Testing this specific indirect effect helped to understand the mechanism behind the effect of human interest framing and adds detail to the causal sequence it commences. ⁵⁹ Third, it has been shown that there were no differences in effectiveness between the strong human interest frame item and the weak human interest frame item; both items were equally compelling. As long as people saw some of the human interest-framed information, they were more likely to attribute responsibility to the government, and this effect was not stronger when the human interest frame was presented more intensely.

The first two conclusions support exemplification theory, which predicts a strong persuasive power of human exemplars. The human exemplar expressed the problem she experienced and claimed not to be blamable for her child’s problems. The people who were exposed to this personal exemplar attributed more responsibility to the government for this particular problem. Accordingly, this also means that this study’s findings are not in line with the literature on episodic framing. Episodic framing studies mainly showed that focusing a news story on one individual exemplar caused responsibility attribution to individuals rather than to government. Episodic framing studies, however, mainly focused on not-so-common examples (e.g., criminals, minorities, or a person who was wrongly imprisoned). ⁶⁰ The expectations regarding effects of episodic framing have not been confirmed by previous studies that used ordinary people as episodic information, just as has been done in this study. ⁶¹ It would be interesting to dig deeper into this dissonance between episodic framing and exemplification theory by manipulating exemplars’ commonness in further research as this commonness may be key to the generalization process hypothesized in exemplification theory. After all, it seems unlikely to generalize uncommon exemplars to a broader population.

Exposure to human interest-framed news, thus, caused attribution of responsibility to the government. According to exemplification theory, this may be because viewing the mother expressing her problems may cue viewers to believe that this is an example of a broader problem and hence to overestimate the proportion of the population that is negatively affected by the reported health care reform. Additional explanations may be that people felt sympathetic to the struggles of this parent or that they more easily identified with the mother than with the politician who also opposed the government’s plan. Future research is necessary to draw more detailed conclusions about the mechanisms underlying the effect of human interest framing on responsibility attribution by measuring potentially mediating variables as perceived problem severity, identification with, and sympathy for the displayed actors.

The second conclusion states that effects of human interest frames on attributions of responsibility are consequential and eventually affect political attitudes toward the government’s plan: exposure to the news items with weak or strong human interest-framed information indirectly decreased support for the reduction of government spending on children’s ADHD medicines compared with the conditions without human interest-framed information. As human interest framing has become a common feature of current news coverage, ⁶² one can speculate this is not particularly helpful for governments to generate public support for their policies. Especially in times when governments are challenged to reduce public spending, this kind of reporting may decrease support for governments and their plans.

This study thus yielded an indirect effect of human interest framing via responsibility attribution on the attitude toward the government’s plan; however, the overall impact of human interest framing was insignificant in this case. ⁶³ Further research is needed to know why framing did not have a total effect in spite of its indirect effect. It may, for example, be that framing of the news item also affected the attitude via other indirect ways that operated in the opposite direction to the indirect effect that has been established in this study. Another possible explanation is the number of exemplars per news story. This seems a valid assumption, as the studies that found an overall effect on attitudes used more than one exemplar in the stimuli, ⁶⁴ while this study employed only one exemplar.

The current study advances most previous research by investigating framing effects in the context of television rather than in printed materials. It is, therefore, not certain whether the same stories in a print format would have yielded the same findings, which limits the comparability with most existing works. Using participants with different ages and educational backgrounds makes it relatively unlikely that sample-specific effects have been found. That said, the sample was not fully representative of the Dutch adult population, but the key interest of this study was to investigate the causal mechanisms related to human interest framing rather than making general claims about public opinion.

A limitation of the study was the source difference between the strong human interest frame item and the no human interest frame item: the mother and politician were not the same person. Hence, the question may rise whether additional features, such as gender, credibility, attractiveness, or likeability, affected the results. This is an issue in most experimental studies that employ broadcast-based news stimuli, because it is very difficult to create such materials that are both internally and externally valid. ⁶⁵ Future research should be attentive to this, for example, by hiring an actor to play the different roles or by including a condition that only shows the baseline information of the item without any interview. Another limitation of this study is that effects of only one manipulated news story were assessed. This limits the ability to generalize the findings as it is not sure whether a human interest-framed story on a different topic would have yielded the same findings.

In conclusion, this study has shown that human interest framing of a news item plays an important role for the way people perceive a topic and consequently form opinions about political issues. Journalists should be aware of this and realize that their selection of exemplars, though perhaps only meant to brighten up news stories, may have important consequences for the way audiences perceive and respond to the issues reported on in the news. The findings of this study also imply that to avoid negative public opinion on their reforms, ministers and members of parliament (MPs) of government parties should be readily available to journalists so these may turn less to exemplars. MPs of the opposition, on the other hand, would be most effective if they can refer to or motivate journalists to find appealing personalized narratives of common people that contradict the view of the government.