The Political Effects of Opioid Addiction Frames

• In Event: Framing and Priming with Political Issues

Abstract

It is important to explore public opinion on opioid addiction, given increasing opioid use and overdose deaths in the United States. In contrast to previous drug epidemics, the contemporary opioid crisis is often portrayed as disproportionately affecting whites and discourse is often sympathetic to those affected. In addition, policies designed to assist those afflicted garner widespread support. How does the racial and sympathetic framing of the opioid crisis influence policy views? To date, no study has explored the causal impact of the race of drug users or the valence of news stories on public opinion. This study seeks to separate the racial and sympathy factors and gauge their independent and interactive impact on public support for government policy responses. Using survey experiments, we test the impact of a white versus African American “face” of the crisis, across sympathetic and unsympathetic coverage. This allows us to vary the mechanism that may explain racial bias in public opinion – the sympathetic framing of addicts. In line with the hypothesis that race matters, this study focuses on the responses of white Americans and examines whether negative racial predispositions moderate these effects. The design varies the valence frame and the race of the afflicted drug users in a hypothetical news story, with five conditions: two race treatments (“white” or “African American”) crossed with two valence treatments (“sympathetic” or “unsympathetic”), and a pure control condition. The treatments draw on actual news stories and their reader commentaries. We test the effects on emotional responses to drug addiction, support for more or less punitive policy responses to opioid use, and for willingness to spend on these policies.

Authors

• Tanika Raychaudhuri, University of Houston

• Tali Mendelberg, Princeton University