Re-examining the media-policy link: A social psychology study of government elites and climate change in Peru

The influence of the mass media on public opinion, and its subsequent influence on policy making, has been the subject of intensive studies during the last century. On the other hand, the study of direct media effects on politicians has been quite limited. Those studies of media effects and politicians have exclusively focused on the political agenda setting power of the media. Few studies have attempted to understand framing effects on policy makers, and fewer have incorporated concepts from environmental psychology to understand individual level processes. This study is motivated by this gap in the literature, as well as the lack of media coverage studies of environmental issues in developing countries. This study seeks to understand the effects of mass media coverage of climate change on the levels of knowledge, environmental beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors of national legislators in Peru. Additionally, it focuses on the circumstances that allow such effects to occur. A mixed methods approach is used to answer the research questions presented, including a survey of national legislators, in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of legislators involved in environmental issues, and a content analysis of media coverage of climate change. This in-depth case study uses an innovative social-psychological perspective rooted in environmental psychology research to provide insights into the communication and psychological processes involved in the emerging area of study of political agenda setting. The results show that the media can have a substantive effect at the individual level when formal and reliable sources of policy information are not available. Additionally, the mixed results concerning the relationships between sources of policy information (including the media) and the social psychological variables observed, point towards the need to further explore these interactions and to look beyond the exogenous factors that have dominated this area of study.