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Public opinion in the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War presents a puzzle. Despite the fact that domestic political elites publicly voiced little opposition to the invasion, large numbers of Americans remained opposed to military action throughout the pre-war period, in contrast to the predictions of existing theory. We argue that some rank-and-file Democrats and independents expressed opposition because of the widely reported antiwar positions staked out by foreign, not domestic, elites. Merging a large-scale content analysis of news coverage with public opinion surveys from August 2002 through March 2003, we show that Democrats and independents—especially those with high levels of political awareness—responded to dissenting arguments articulated in the mass media by foreign officials. Our results, which constitute the first empirical demonstration of foreign elite communication effects on U.S. public opinion, show that scholars must account for the role played by non-U.S. officials in prominent foreign policy debates.

In Influence from Abroad, Danny Hayes and Matt Guardino show that United States public opinion about American foreign policy can be shaped by foreign leaders and representatives of international organizations. By studying news coverage, elite debate, and public opinion prior to the Iraq War, the authors demonstrate that US media outlets aired and published a significant amount of opposition to the invasion from official sources abroad, including British, French, and United Nations representatives. In turn, these foreign voices - to which millions of Americans were exposed - drove many Democrats and independents to signal opposition to the war, even as domestic elites supported it. Contrary to conventional wisdom that Americans care little about the views of foreigners, this book shows that international officials can alter domestic public opinion, but only when the media deem them newsworthy. Their conclusions raise significant questions about the democratic quality of United States foreign policy debates.

In Influence from Abroad, Danny Hayes and Matt Guardino show that United States public opinion about American foreign policy can be shaped by foreign leaders and representatives of international organizations. By studying news coverage, elite debate, and public opinion prior to the Iraq War, the authors demonstrate that US media outlets aired and published a significant amount of opposition to the invasion from official sources abroad, including British, French, and United Nations representatives. In turn, these foreign voices - to which millions of Americans were exposed - drove many Democrats and independents to signal opposition to the war, even as domestic elites supported it. Contrary to conventional wisdom that Americans care little about the views of foreigners, this book shows that international officials can alter domestic public opinion, but only when the media deem them newsworthy. Their conclusions raise significant questions about the democratic quality of United States foreign policy debates.

This book shows that US public opinion about American foreign policy can be shaped by foreign leaders and representatives of international organizations. US media outlets aired a significant amount of opposition to the invasion from official sources abroad, driving many Democrats and independents to signal opposition to the war.

Research demonstrates that news media can shape mass opinion on specific public policy issues in politically consequential ways. However, systematic and critical empirical analysis of the ideological diversity of such news coverage is rare. Scholars have also illuminated how and why U.S. economic and social welfare policy has shifted rightward in recent decades, but they have failed to consider media's role in shaping public opinion to democratically legitimate this major reorientation of political economy to favor business and upper-income constituencies. I combine neo-Gramscian theorizations of hegemony, popular common sense and articulation with social scientific research on framing, priming and psychological ambivalence to examine mainstream news coverage of two key policy debates during the neoliberal era: 1) the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and 2) the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Quantitative content analyses of network television and mass-market print news indicates that: 1) coverage focused on a procedural, strategic and tactical narrative that relied overwhelmingly on official sources and included little policy substance. This discourse normalized an elite-centered politics that resonates with and confirms strands of American common sense that support popular civic disengagement, and 2) neoliberal-New Right themes valorizing market imperatives and demonizing social provision dominated alternative frames. Qualitative textual analyses of key artifacts of political discourse shows how such hegemonic messages deployed a conservative-populist rhetoric to effectively obscure corporate and upper-income prerogatives by depicting these policy moves as commonsensical projects that advanced ordinary people's material interests and cultural values. Potentially counter-hegemonic interpretations that drew on culturally resonant fragments of common sense to offer strong challenges to the center-right elite consensus were propagated, but mainstream news virtually ignored these messages. As a result, citizens lacked effective access to a diverse range of messages and to critical information that might have generated more opposition to the right turn in opinion polls. In an experiment, I show that exposure to strongly hegemonic news treatments can cause even low- and middle-income people and those with egalitarian tendencies to express support for neoliberal-New Right economic policies, and that less strongly hegemonic coverage can prompt significantly more opposition.

It was March 20, 2003. The United States was at war. Three nights earlier, in a prime-time address to the nation, President George W. Bush had issued Saddam Hussein an ultimatum: leave Iraq within forty-eight hours or face the prospect of an invasion “commenced at the time of our choosing.” Hussein, the Iraqi dictator, had refused to flee.And then, at 10:15 pm on the East Coast, Bush made good on the threat. He announced that he had ordered an attack on Baghdad. The U.S. military machine’s “shock and awe” campaign had begun, the first salvo in a conflict that would prove bloodier and costlier than most Americans had anticipated, and whose political and economic consequences likely would be felt generations down the line.Despite the inherent dangers and uncertainty that attend any military conflict, mainstream media coverage in the days surrounding the invasion highlighted the aura of national solidarity. With polls showing roughly seven in ten citizens endorsing military action, “Americans have rallied strongly around President Bush and accepted his call for war as the only practical way to remove Saddam Hussein and end the threat posed by his weapons of mass destruction,” led a Chattanooga Times Free Press story.

Nearly one month before U.S. forces began their assault on Baghdad in the spring of 2003, then-eighty-five-year-old Robert Byrd took the Senate floor to scold his colleagues for failing to debate the looming preemptive war on Iraq. Asserting that while ordinary Americans were talking at home about this historic military confrontation and its potential consequences for their security and prosperity, the West Virginia Democrat said with characteristic rhetorical flourish: This chamber is for the most part ominously, dreadfully silent. You can hear a pin drop. Listen. You can hear a pin drop. There is no debate. There is no discussion. There is no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.Ticking off the names of hallowed signatories of the Declaration of Independence and delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Byrd suggested that Democrats and Republicans alike were tarnishing their institutional legacy by failing to thoroughly discuss momentous national decisions: “We stand passively mute in the Senate today, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. This is no small conflagration that we contemplate. It is not going to be a video game.”