A “regional halo effect”: Media use and evaluations of America's strategic relationships with five Middle East countries

Abstract

Countries in the Middle East go to considerable lengths using mass media to try to maintain or improve their images among the U.S. public. The same countries often engage in negative media campaigns in the U.S. against each other, attempting to bring down public support for regional rivals. This study examined diplomatic evaluations of five Middle East countries—rating Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine, Qatar, and UAE as an ally, neutral, or enemy of the U.S.—among a large, representative sample of U.S. adults ( N = 2059), and assessed measures of news use, social media use, political partisanship, and demographic variables as predictors of the evaluations. News use and other media use predicted little variance in diplomatic ratings; the strongest predictors of positive ratings of a given country were having rated one or more of the other countries positively also—what we term a “regional halo effect.” A key implication of this study is that attempting to harm public perceptions of a regional rival may be self-defeating for a given country, as negative attitudes toward the former country are associated with poor attitudes toward the latter.