Reevaluating News and Opinion Dynamics in the Iraq War

New Evidence for Social Identification Effects

Bibliographic Data

ID22763582
AuthorsZachary Jablow (0000-0003-0819-771X, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, US; and Visiting Lecturer, Department of Political Science, Bryn Mawr College , Bryn Mawr, PA), Scott L Althau (0000-0002-7020-9649, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
Year2026
Publication date2026-07-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePublic Opinion Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-362X • E-ISSN: 1537-5331
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/poq/nfag055
OpenAlexW7169015595
LanguageEN
References cited14

What causes changes in popular support for American wars? Competing theories posit that either the tone and content of wartime news or social identity cues conveyed through mass media should play the larger role. We offer new evidence in this debate by analyzing a novel set of rolling cross-sectional opinion data collected continuously over 13 months during an early phase of the Iraq War and pairing it with data on news intensity and the evaluative tone of news coverage during that same period. Contrary to conventional information updating explanations of war support but consistent with a social identification process, we find that greater intensity of wartime news coverage is associated with increases in aggregate support even after controlling for the evaluative tone of that news coverage.

Identification (biology) · Identity (music) · Public opinion · Set (abstract data type) · Social identity theory · Social media · Survey data collection · Tone (literature) · Media Influence and Politics · Media Studies and Communication · Misinformation and Its Impacts

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