Ideology Matters: The Influence of Competing Message Framings on Public Attitudes toward Humanitarian Interventions

Abstract

This study assessed the effects of different message framing strategies on average Americans’ attitude towards interventions in humanitarian crises abroad. Two survey experiments were conducted via Amazon MTurk between late 2019 and early 2020, where participants were randomly assigned to read a mock news story about a foreign humanitarian crisis written using one of the three framing techniques. Results of both studies indicated that the framing effect on respondents’ support for intervention interacted with ones’ political ideology and prompted distinctive reactions among different populations. Most intriguingly, the results of Study 2, which employed a non-student sample and a secondary frame, suggested that the specific order of message framings also influences public opinion towards humanitarian intervention. These findings contribute to the growing body of literature on the persuasiveness of message design and framing in the context of military humanitarian interventions (MHI). Accordingly, news organizations and policymakers are encouraged to consider these findings in specific contexts.