UMaine professor invited to present work at conference

ORONO – Amy Fried, an associate professor of political science at the University of Maine, has been invited to present her work at a conference organized by the Centre for the Understanding of Society and Politics at Kingston University in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England, July 11-12.

The theme of the conference is “Changing Minds: The Politics of Influence, the Influence of Politics,” and it aims to examine the ways in which politicians, parties and the political process set out to change deep and long-term values, mindsets and political allegiances of citizens. The international event will gather scholars representing a number of academic disciplines.

Fried, who is well known for her work on the politics of public opinion, will present the paper “The Seance, the Snapshot and the Futures Market: American Conservatives’ Strategic Use of Time Frames.”

The paper builds on Fried’s earlier examinations of the ways in which politicians and the media have influenced public opinion about events such as the Iran-Contra scandal, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the Earth Day movement. It was Fried’s treatment of those and other topics that prompted the conference organizers to extend an invitation.

“There are many different ways to try and change people’s minds, and attempting to influence public opinion is just one of them. If the people are subject to manipulative strategies by their political leaders, in some way democracy is weakened. On the other hand, there are appropriate ways to influence public opinion that any political figure should engage in, such as explaining their beliefs about issues and trying to convince others of their merits. It’s important for citizens to be able to discern between manipulation and principled argument,” Fried said.

In her paper, Fried argues that one way to influence political debate and its outcomes is to affect what is believed about the public. To that end, public opinion and the public is frequently defined and described in terms of a time frame: what the public believed (past), believes (present) or will believe (future). Using the seance, snapshot and futures market as metaphors applied to the three time frames, Fried gives examples of how American conservatives have employed these strategies.

For instance, during the Lewinsky scandal, conservatives’ references to the past frequently focused on the views of the founders of the nation and discussed the meaning of the constitutional provision about impeachment.

It was argued that there were higher standards of morality in the past and that those standards have decayed. Thus, conservatives implied that the founders and the citizens of the past would have favored impeachment in the hope that the current public would adopt the same view.

When it comes to the present, conservatives have recently argued that public opinion is fickle and should be overlooked. For example, when present public opinion was stable – such as President Clinton’s high approval ratings during the Lewinsky scandal – conservatives argued that public opinion should not be the main factor for determining if Clinton should be impeached. In this case, conservatives presented public opinion as undeserving of command, arguing that Clinton had “poisoned the well of public opinion, cynically manipulating polling in a way designed to make it more difficult for Congress to fulfill its constitutional obligations,” Fried said.

Finally, conservatives have attempted to construct future public opinion by trying to ensure that their message reaches future generations.

For instance, the conservative organization, the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, seeks to promote respect and honor for Reagan’s ideologies by naming significant public landmarks in the United States and abroad for him.

There are many more examples of the use of time frames to influence public opinion, and the strategy is not limited to conservatives, Fried said. The political left employed similar strategies in its campaigns for the establishment of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Earth Day. Fried hopes to devote future research to the use of time frames by both conservatives and liberals, and to determine if conservatives and liberals use the strategy with the same frequency.

“When political figures invoke the past, claim that public opinion will change or try to affect future publics, they are making arguments based on principle and political calculation. As with other constructions of public opinion, these presentations may or may not affect citizens’ views. However, even if they do not, time-oriented presentations of public opinion form a portion of elite discourse that is politically consequential. This elite public deliberation affects how current policies are debated and implemented,” Fried said.

Fried’s teaching and research interests include public opinion, the media, gender, political culture, political psychology, political participation and political theory. Her book, “Muffled Echoes: Oliver North and the Politics of Public Opinion,” was published in 1997. Her research on the elites’ strategic efforts to promote distrust in government, the political and media dynamics of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, political participation and other topics has appeared as a number of journal articles and as chapters in several edited volumes. Fried has been at UMaine since 1997.