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When political actors debate the merits of a public policy, they often focus on the consequences of a bill or legislative proposal, with supporters and opponents making stark but contradictory predictions about the future. Building upon the framing literature, I examine how rhetoric about a policy's consequences influences public opinion. I show that predictive appeals work largely by altering people's beliefs about the impact of a policy. Following in the tradition of recent framing research, this article also examines how opinions are influenced when people are exposed to opposing predictions. The analysis focuses on two strategies that are common in real‐world debates—the direct rebuttal (in which an initial appeal is challenged by a statement making the opposite prediction) and the alternate frame (which counters an initial appeal by shifting the focus to some other consequence). There are important differences in the effectiveness of these two strategies—a finding that has implications for the study of competitive framing and the policymaking process more generally.

Conventional wisdom and scholarly research indicate that to win a policy debate political actors should frame the issue strategically-that is, selectively highlight considerations that mobilize public opinion behind their policy position. Engaging the opponent in a dialogue (i.e., focusing on the same considerations) is portrayed as a suboptimal strategy because political actors forfeit the ability to structure the debate. Using over 40 public opinion polls and a detailed content analysis of news stories, I examine the use of framing and engagement strategies during the 1993-94 debate over health care reform. The analysis shows that engagement was more effective at increasing support for reform than framing. This study is the first to document the role of engagement in a policy debate, and it extends work showing that this strategy is more common in election campaigns than scholars once suspected. Adapted from the source document.

This study examines the extent & consequences of press independence in the realm of problem definition. Beginning with an experiment, the analysis shows that many of the words & phrases used in the 1998 to 1999 Social Security reform debate were misleading in the sense that they caused citizens to draw incorrect inferences about the financial problems facing Social Security. Next, the study compares the prevalence of these same expressions in the mass media & in transcripts of political speeches & press releases. Contrary to theories of indexing, reporters & journalists exhibited considerable independence in how they described Social Security's financial problems. Ironically, however, this meant that media accounts had more misleading rhetoric than the actual statements of government officials. Tables, Figures, References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2006 by the President and the Fellows of Harvard College.]

This study examines the extent and consequences of press independence in the realm of problem definition. Beginning with an experiment, the analysis shows that many of the words and phrases used in the 1998 to 1999 Social Security reform debate were misleading in the sense that they caused citizens to draw incorrect inferences about the financial problems facing Social Security. Next, the study compares the prevalence of these same expressions in the mass media and in transcripts of political speeches and press releases. Contrary to theories of indexing, reporters and journalists exhibited considerable independence in how they described Social Security's financial problems. Ironically, however, this meant that media accounts had more misleading rhetoric than the actual statements of government officials.