Identities and issue opinions : learning from climate change

In this dissertation, I explore the formation of issue-specific opinions, in particular public opinion about climate change in the United States. More specifically, I analyze whether people use social groups and identities as mental "shortcuts" in order to form an opinion about complicated political topics such as climate change. I study three identity-related factors that may drive people's opinions about particular issues: partisan media content; the interests of social in-groups; and opinion cues from fellow partisans. Overall, I find that partisan identities are likely to have important effects through the media content that they expose Americans to. Other, more direct pathways for the opinion effects of identity, however, turn out to be surprisingly weak. I find no evidence that Americans' opinions are motivated by the material interests of their in-groups; nor that Americans change their opinions to align with the consensus among their in-party members.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Vandeweerdt, Clara.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Andrea Louise Campbell.

• Political Science.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128631

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/128631