THINK ABOUT HIM THIS WAY: PRIMING, NEWS MEDIA, AND SOUTH KOREANS' EVALUATION OF THE PRESIDENT

Abstract

This study examines the effect of news priming, which refers to the media's influence on the standards by which the public evaluates political figures. Linking survey data to an analysis of issue coverage, we look into whether television news in South Korea affects the way citizens evaluate the president. Our findings provided support for the priming hypothesis. There was a close correspondence between prominent issues in the news and important dimensions of presidential evaluation among the respondents. We also found that priming effects were largely a function of recent, rather than cumulative, news coverage. Finally, findings indicated that people with different levels of news exposure were responding to the media within different time frames.