Hi everyone,
This Friday (1/4) from 15:00 – 16:00 there will be another Hot Politics Lab meeting. During this session, Rune Slothuus (Aarhus University) will give a talk titled
“What’s in a Cue? How Citizens Use Party Cues to Learn About Policy”. See below the abstract of his talk.
The talk will be followed by a Q&A, and everybody is welcome to join via Zoom:
https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/96492065253 or join the live session in the Common Room (REC-B9.22) at 3pm (CET).
Talk abstract: An enduring concern among scholars of public opinion is that cues from political parties lead citizens to ignore substantive information about policy. In this article, we
provide theory and evidence on the reverse perspective: that citizens use party cues to get informed about the substance of policy [to learn about the content of policy]. We argue that when political parties have clear policy reputations – when they are known
for advocating certain values and promoting specific social groups – citizens will use party cues to make inferences about the substantive meaning of policy. Across six experiments conducted in two different national contexts, with multiple party sponsors
and on various policy areas, we show that party cues lead citizens to form substantively different understandings of specific policies depending on the reputation of the party sponsor. Our results imply that parties might play a more constructive and informative
role in democracy than they are usually credited for in existing research.
Note that the next lab meeting will be May 13th, due to several conferences and holidays. You can check out the program on our
website. You can also watch any of the previous online hot politics lab meetings via the labs
archive.
Have a great rest of the week and hope to see you Friday!
Best,
Maaike
Maaike Homan
PhD Candidate at the Political Science Department
Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research
University of Amsterdam
Room B10.01
