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Cover image of the book Charlie’s Reform: A Motion Picture Drama on the Schoolhouse Social Center
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Charlie’s Reform: A Motion Picture Drama on the Schoolhouse Social Center

Author
Clarence A. Perry
Ebook
Publication Date
5 pages

About This Book

This booklet discusses a film about the use of the schoolhouse as a social center and explains how to obtain the film and make it effective.

CLARENCE A. PERRY was an urban planner, sociologist, and educator.

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Cover image of the book A Modern St. George: The Growth of Organized Charity in the United States
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A Modern St. George: The Growth of Organized Charity in the United States

Author
Jacob A. Riis
Ebook
Publication Date
30 pages

About This Book

This article from Scribner’s Magazine was reprinted with permission by the Russell Sage Foundation. It discusses the growth of charity organizations in the United States. A note from the foundation indicates that the original article was illustrated and contained a sketch of New York City social agencies and tributes to the founders of those organizations.

JACOB A. RISS (1849–1914) was a journalist and social reformer.

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A Modern St. George: The Growth of Organized Charity in the United States

Author
Jacob A. Riis
Ebook
Publication Date
30 pages

About This Book

This article from Scribner’s Magazine was reprinted with permission by the Russell Sage Foundation.  It discusses the growth of charity organizations in the United States. A note from the foundation indicates that the original article was illustrated and contained a sketch of New York City social agencies and tributes to the founders of those organizations.

JACOB A. RISS (1849–1914) was a journalist and social reformer.

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Cover image of the book Stable Condition
Books

Stable Condition

Elites' Limited Influence on Health Care Attitudes
Author
Daniel J. Hopkins
Paperback
$39.95
Add to Cart
Publication Date
6 in. × 9 in. 332 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-028-7

About This Book

"The elite-level battle over the Affordable Care Act has consumed a decade, the ACA has transformed millions of lives—mostly for the better—and yet Daniel Hopkins’s brilliant new book, Stable Condition, shows that all this has barely moved a polarized public. What does this ‘stable condition’ mean for politicalscience and policymaking alike? Read this fascinating book to find out."
—JACOB S. HACKER, Stanley B. Resor Professor of Political Science, Yale University

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), the sweeping health care reform enacted by the Obama Administration in 2010, continues to be a contentious policy at the center of highly polarized political debates. Both before and after the law’s passage, political elites on both sides of the issue attempted to sway public opinion through two traditional approaches: messaging and policymaking itself.  They operated under the assumption that the public’s personal experiences toward the law would make them more favorable. Yet these tried-and-true methods have had limited influence on public attitudes toward the ACA. Public opinion towards the ACA remained stable from 2010 to 2016, with more Americans opposing the law than supporting it. It was only after Donald Trump was elected in 2016 and the prospect of the law being repealed became a reality that public opinion swung in favor of the ACA. If traditional methods of influencing public opinion had little impact on attitudes towards the ACA, what did? In Stable Condition, political scientist Daniel J. Hopkins draws on survey data from 2009 to 2020 to assess how a variety of factors such as personal experience, political messaging, and partisanship did or did not affect public opinion on the ACA.

Hopkins finds that although personal experience with the ACA’s Medicaid expansion increased favorability among low-income Americans, it did not have a broader overall impact on public opinion. Personal experience with the Health Insurance Marketplace did not increase wider support for the ACA either. Due to the complex nature of the law, users of the Marketplace often did not realize they were benefiting from the ACA. Therefore, perceptions of the Marketplace were shaped by high-profile issues with the enrollment website and opposition to the individual mandate. These experiences ultimately offset one another, resulting in little discernable change in public opinion overall. Hopkins argues that political polarization was also responsible for elite’s limited influence and that public opinion on the ACA was largely determined by partisanship and political affiliation. Americans quickly aligned with their party’s stance on the law and were resistant to changing their beliefs despite the efforts of political elites.

Stable Condition is an illuminating examination of the limits of elites’ influence and the forces that shaped public opinion about the Affordable Care Act.

DANIEL J. HOPKINS is a professor of political science at University of Pennsylvania.

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Cover image of the book Building a Popular Movement
Books

Building a Popular Movement

A Case Study of the Public Relations of the Boy Scouts of America
Author
Harold P. Levy
Ebook
Publication Date
167 pages

About This Book

An examination of the public relations administration of the Boy Scouts of America, the second in a series of public relations case studies published by the Russell Sage Foundation. Topics include the use of symbols and slogans, relations with the community, publicity programs, and a general history and annual reports of the Boy Scouts.

Harold P. Levy, research associate, with an introduction by Mary Swain Routzahn, director, Department of Social Work Interpretation, Russell Sage Foundation.

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Cover image of the book Over the Wire and on TV
Books

Over the Wire and on TV

CBS and UPI in Campaign '80
Authors
Michael J. Robinson
Margaret A. Sheehan
Hardcover
Add to Cart
Publication Date
6 in. × 9 in. 348 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-722-4
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About This Book

First the press became the media, and now the media have become the Imperial Media—or have they? In this timely and comprehensive analysis, Michael Robinson and Margaret Sheehan examine how the news media behaved (or misbehaved) in covering the 1980 presidential campaign.

Using the media's own traditional standards as a guide, Robinson and Sheehan measure the level of objectivity, fairness, seriousness, and criticism displayed by CBS News and United Press International between January and December of 1980. Drawing on statistical analyses of almost 6,000 news stories and dozens of interviews with writers and reporters, the authors reach convincing and sometimes surprising conclusions. They demonstrate, for example, that both CBS and UPI strictly avoided subjective assessments of the candidates and their positions on the issues. Both gave the major parties remarkably equal access. But the media seem to give more negative coverage to front-runners, treating serious challengers less harshly. Perhaps the most surprising finding is that networks were not more superficial than print; CBS attended to the issues at least as often as UPI.

Robinson and Sheehan find television coverage more subjective, more volatile, and substantially more negative than traditional print. But CBS behaved neither imperially nor irresponsibly in Campaign '80. The networks did, however, emulate the more highly charged journalism of the eastern elite print press.

By blending the quantitative techniques of social science and the tools of Washington-based journalism, Robinson and Sheehan have produced a book that will be essential reading for students and practitioners of politics, public opinion research, journalism, and communications. Lively and readable, it should also appeal to anyone interested in the role of the news media in contemporary politics.

MICHAEL J. ROBINSON is associate professor of politics at Catholic University and director of the Media Analysis Project at George Washington University.

MARGARET A. SHEEHAN is research analyst for a law firm in Washington, D.C.

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Cover image of the book Framing Immigrants
Books

Framing Immigrants

News Coverage, Public Opinion, and Policy
Authors
Chris Haynes
Jennifer Merolla
S. Karthick Ramakrishnan
Paperback
$32.50
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Publication Date
6 in. × 9 in. 300 pages
ISBN
978-0-87154-533-6
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About This Book

Winner of the 2019 Western Social Science Association Best Book Award

“Immigration is a topic that frequently frustrates social scientists: we revere careful data analysis but such analysis seems to have little impact on popular perspectives and public policy. Along comes this gem of a volume to help us understand why: frames matter as much as facts. Drawing on a wealth of research as well as their own analysis of media content and opinion surveys, the authors offer a remarkably nuanced view of the cues and wordings that shift public attitudes to be more or less favorably disposed to immigrants and immigration reform. With results that are sometimes surprising but always informative, Framing Immigrants will be required reading for anyone hoping to break through America’s immigration policy stalemate.”

—MANUEL PASTOR, professor of sociology, American studies, and ethnicity and director, Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration, University of Southern California

“Immigration and immigrants are topics about which many people have strong opinions paired with misinformation or no knowledge. Thus media framing can have an outsize impact, for both good and ill. Chris Haynes, Jennifer Merolla, and Karthick Ramakrishnan do a terrific job of sorting out what impact the media have on the politics of immigration, when, how, why, and to what effect. An exemplary piece of research.”

—JENNIFER HOCHSCHILD, Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Framing Immigrants delivers an authoritative account of the power of frames. Combining content analysis of news coverage with original survey experiments, the authors show that not only do frames differ starkly across news organizations in ways that reveal their political stripes, but also that frames matter. The ways in which the media frames immigrants—and especially unauthorized immigrants—significantly affects public opinion, preferences, support for the Dream Act, the deportation of unauthorized immigrants, and comprehensive immigration reform. Chris Haynes, Jennifer Merolla, and Karthick Ramakrishnan take the readers along a compelling and surprising journey, and provide a rich, interdisciplinary resource that will inspire future generations of immigration researchers.”

—JENNIFER LEE, Chancellor’s Fellow and Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

While undocumented immigration is controversial, the general public is largely unfamiliar with the particulars of immigration policy. Given that public opinion on the topic is malleable, to what extent do mass media shape the public debate on immigration? In Framing Immigrants, political scientists Chris Haynes, Jennifer Merolla, and Karthick Ramakrishnan explore how conservative, liberal, and mainstream news outlets frame and discuss undocumented immigrants. Drawing from original voter surveys, they show that how the media frames immigration has significant consequences for public opinion and has implications for the passage of new immigration policies.

The authors analyze media coverage of several key immigration policy issues—including mass deportations, comprehensive immigration reform, and measures focused on immigrant children, such as the DREAM Act—to chart how news sources across the ideological spectrum produce specific “frames” for the immigration debate. In the past few years, liberal and mainstream outlets have tended to frame immigrants lacking legal status as “undocumented” (rather than “illegal”) and to approach the topic of legalization through human-interest stories, often mentioning children. Conservative outlets, on the other hand, tend to discuss legalization using impersonal statistics and invoking the rule of law. Yet, regardless of the media’s ideological positions, the authors’ surveys show that “negative” frames more strongly influence public support for different immigration policies than do positive frames. For instance, survey participants who were exposed to language portraying immigrants as law-breakers seeking “amnesty” tended to oppose legalization measures. At the same time, support for legalization was higher when participants were exposed to language referring to immigrants living in the United States for a decade or more.

Framing Immigrants shows that despite heated debates on immigration across the political aisle, the general public has yet to form a consistent position on undocumented immigrants. By analyzing how the media influences public opinion, this book provides a valuable resource for immigration advocates, policymakers, and researchers.

CHRIS HAYNES is assistant professor of political science at the University of New Haven.

JENNIFER MEROLLA is professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside

S. KARTHICK RAMAKRISHNAN is professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside.

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