September 14, 2016
Vanessa Cruz Nichols
My research aims to re-assess the common belief that threat mobilizes people to participate in the American political system. A frequently used tactic of political activists is to frame the policy issues that they wish to challenge as potential threats or attacks to people’s personal interests. The underlying theory suggests that the use of threat tactics shake people out of their political apathy.
While it might seem intuitive that people would be more mobilized if they are alerted to a crisis that would jeopardize their interests, it may be counter-productive to only emphasize the crisis at hand. For instance, in the field of persuasive communication, fear appeals were found to be unsuccessful unless an effective remedy was offered as an alternative. Instead of using the alarm-only approach as seen in previous threat appraisal studies, it is important to couple one’s sense of urgency with alternative messages pointing to opportunities or policy initiatives individuals or groups can aspire to accomplish. By using this two-pronged approach of threat and opportunity cues, people are more likely to believe their contribution makes a difference. To test the causal inference of my hypotheses, I rely on an original online survey experiment with 1,001 Latino adults in the U.S. and their exposure to single-cue and simultaneous threat and opportunity immigration policy messages. I find that those jointly exposed to threat and opportunity frames yield greater levels of intended and observed political participation. Combining threat messages with more opportunity-based policy alternatives may be the most ideal strategy to mobilize a group to rise, and not succumb, to the challenge before them.