Media Content and Political Behavior in Observational Research: A Critical Assessment

This article discusses possible issues of how media content and exposure were linked in previous research. It argues that the original conclusions of the article ‘Who's Afraid of Conflict? The Mobilizing Effect of Conflict Framing in Campaign News’ do not hold due to the chosen operationalization. It also demonstrates that using the proposed methodology, both exposure to conflictual and non-conflictual news yield the same substantive conclusion. In addition to re-evaluating the role of conflict, the article contributes to the discussion on how to integrate media and individual-level measures in the study of electoral behavior.