"Split screens" and "spin rooms": debate modality, post-debate coverage, and the new videomalaise.(Report)

The sizable body of research on presidential debates has confirmed that debate viewing "largely reinforces existing predispositions rather than substantially changing previously held images of candidates, issue orientations, or voting intentions" (Sigelman & Sigelman, 1984, p. 624; see also Katz & Feldman, 1962; Lanoue, 1992; Sears & Chaffee, 1979; Yawn, Ellsworth, Beatty, & Kahn, 1998; Zhu, Milavsky, & Biswas, 1994). Since conventional wisdom suggests that general election debates have little impact on political attitudes and judgments, scholars have shifted their attention to a broader set of debate effects. This second wave of scholarship has found that debates boost political knowledge and heighten issue salience (Carlin, 1992; Druckman, 2003; Kraus, 1988). Still, the focus has remained on campaign learning and issue alignment (Abramowitz, 1978; Benoit, Hansen, & Verser, 2003; Lemert, 1993).

One early effort to broaden this focus can be found in the work of Wald and Lupfer (1978) who studied whether the first televised presidential debate in the 1976 general election campaign affected general attitudes and basic orientations toward the legitimacy and trust of the political system. They predicted that exposure to debates would function as a "civics lesson," but instead found that watching the debate increased cynicism and reduced trust. This is not surprising given the structure and content of debates, for as they write, "after a debate devoted primarily to a criticism of present and proposed government policy, [it is] little wonder that viewers did not show an increased sympathy for government" (Wald & Lupfer, 1978, p. 351).

Mutz and Reeves (2005) found similar effects outside the context of presidential debates. These scholars asked whether incivility in political discourse can reduce evaluations of the legitimacy of political institutions. Holding the substantive policy conflict constant, they found that in response to the contentiousness, or incivility, of televised disputes in political talk shows, voters have reduced trust in government. Referring to these effects of viewing as the "new videomalaise," Mutz and Reeves (2005, p. 13) asserted that "not only were attitudes toward politicians and Congress affected, but levels of support for institutions of government themselves were also influenced." Equally important, some effects were amplified when a close-up camera shot was used in place of a medium range shot, suggesting that production choices in presenting televised political exchanges can impact viewers' evaluations (Mutz & Holbrook, 2003).

Although studied in the context of political talk shows, the current research has at least two important implications for the study of presidential debates. First, consistent with earlier work by Wald and Lupfer (1978), Mutz and colleagues (2003, 2005) hinted at the possibility that debate watching may influence not only viewer learning and evaluation of candidates, but also judgments of the legitimacy of the political system. The "new videomalaise" observed by Mutz and Reeves may also have implications for judgments of the credibility of news media, because spirals of cynicism stemming from conflict in the news spur negative evaluations of government and the press (Cappella & Jamieson, 1997). Indeed, judgments of news media may be especially influenced by these efforts to highlight the "game" or "contest" of politics because they are the source of "manufactured contentiousness." Second, the results of Mutz et al. (2003, 2005) suggested that the presentation modes of presidential debates may produce unique effects on viewers, above and beyond the content of the debates (e.g., what candidates say, and how they perform in the debates). Yet potential effects of subtleties in broadcast productions have received little attention in the scholarly research on televised campaign debates.

Recognizing this, the current experiment attempts to expand the work by Mutz et al. to the study of presidential debates by examining the effects of journalistic practices in covering presidential debates--the presentation format of televised debates and spin in post-debate commentary--on viewer evaluations. Specifically, this experiment investigates the direct and interactive effects of debate presentation format (single-screen or split-screen) and post-debate spin (policy focused or performance focused) on judgments of candidate character, government trust, and news credibility. Further, drawing on previous research that indicated the role political discussion plays in shaping individual perceptions of news bias (Eveland & Shah, 2003), the possibility that such effects of media format and content are conditioned by how much people talk about presidential debates is also explored.

The Crisis of Confidence

Although the conceptualization and operationalization of government trust and news credibility have been characterized by a lack of coherence, it is largely agreed upon that public evaluations of both have declined sharply over the last four decades (Burgoon, 1976; McCroskey & Young, 1981; Moy & Pfau, 2000; Singletary, 1976; Watts, Domke, Shah, & Fan, 1999). Given this decline, there is a tendency to focus on erosion and loss when labeling the general phenomena under study. Research on political trust used terms such as "political cynicism," "political disaffection," and "political alienation" to characterize the general decline in confidence in government and politicians (see Moy & Pfau, 2000; Pinkleton & Austin, 2001). Likewise, work on news credibility--usually defined in terms of judgments of trustworthiness and accuracy--can also be found under the rubric of "media mistrust" and "news bias" (Jones, 2004; Kenney & Simpson, 1993; Kiousis, 2001). Understanding the causes of this crisis of confidence in government and the press is the one concern this work shares.