Presidential PR efforts and Foreign Policy
19
more quickly than the effect of public opinion on the media. That is, the media and
public opinion will affect each other, but the effect of the media on public opinion will
take less time than the effect of public opinion on the media. This hypothesis was
supported. A two-way relationship was found between public opinion and the media.
The cross correlations suggest a causal link.
The cross-lagged correlations between public opinion and president (Table 12) or
president and news media (Table 13) also revealed significant correlations.
Table 11
Cross-lagged Correlations of Media with Public Opinion
_____________________________________________________________
Cross
Lag
Correlation
Relationship
_____________________________________________________________
-6 .269*
Public opinion precedes Media
-5 .321*
-4 .351*
-3 .354*
-2 .414*
-1 .445*
0
.501*
Synchronous
1
.471*
Public opinion follows Media
2
.281*
3
.260*
4
.238*
5
.262*
6
.251*
_____________________________________________________________
*p < .05
As Table 12 indicates, the strongest significant cross-lagged correlation between
television news coverage of the foreign policy and presidential public relations efforts is
at the +3 time lag. However, this is a negative correlation. No other correlations between
Convention