The Impression Management Tactics of an Immigration Think Tank

Abstract

Interest groups or “think tanks” influence how people and policymakers understand public policies in part by using impression management to enhance their credibility as information sources. Using immigration policy as a case study, this research examines the impression management tactics of one interest group (the Center for Immigration Studies), compares its coverage of immigration issues to that of large-circulation U.S. newspapers, and determines the extent to which it has spread its messages across various news outlets. Although the organization’s positions on immigration represent a negative outlier in the debate, it has entered the dominant political discourse. The study offers a new methodological and conceptual framework for analyzing the behavior and impact of think tanks, as well as for studying impression management more generally.

Notes

¹ Rhetorical analysis is a preferred method when the task is to illustrate the meanings of specific, subtle, or highly complex messages (Hijmans 1996; McCroskey 1993). Such messages can often be found in CIS’s repertoire of impression management strategies, as well as in the mistakes and disruptions in its intended communication.

² See a transcript of the press conference on the CIS Web site at: http://cis.org/PanelTranscripts/Immigration-SPLC.

³ As a further example, Tanton’s questioning of the “educability” of Hispanics found support, according to Kammer, in Latinos: A Biography of the People by the distinguished journalists and social critic Earl Shorris (Kammer 2010: 18–19).

⁴ The “publications” sections of the CIS Web site includes policy briefs, op-eds, full-length news articles, as well as research reports offering statistical analysis on immigration issues.

⁵ Given the greater availability of the CIS documents, the units were sampled from a longer time period than the units in the newspaper sample. However, as it pertains to the use of at least one negative frame, there was not a significant difference between the CIS units published within the newspaper sample’s time frame and the CIS units published outside this period (χ² = 1.90, p = .137).

⁶ The “illegality frame” included any mention of undocumented or illegal immigration, or references to an immigrant having incomplete or fake documentation. The “criminal frame” included mentions of immigrants committing other crimes or being prone to criminal behavior, aside from violations of immigration laws. The “terrorism frame” included any mention, direct or indirect, that associates immigration or immigrants with terrorism, threats of terrorism or threats to national security. The “economic threat” frame refers to a wide variety of statements that associate immigrants with negative economic outcomes for non-immigrants, such as job loss or lower wages. Finally, the “cultural threat” frame encompasses the discussion of immigration as a threat to American culture or traditions; this category contains a range of controversial claims, such as concerns about immigrants’ English language acquisition and other aspects of assimilation, and critical comments about immigrants’ attitudes, beliefs, rituals, or moral qualities. Complete drafts of the codebook and protocol are available upon request.

⁷ To determine the size of newspapers, we used circulation figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation (see http://www.auditbureau.org). In 2012, this organization changed its name to the Alliance for Audited Media, which continued to report circulation figures (see http://auditedmedia.com/). We accessed the newspaper articles using Lexis Nexis. Some newspapers with large circulations, such as the Los Angeles Times, were not available in Lexis Nexis. In such cases, we selected the next largest newspaper for our sample. It should be noted that we do not assume that these newspapers, especially the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, approximate public opinion on immigration in the United States. Audiences for these papers tend to have higher levels of income and education than the average citizen and may hold distinct views on immigration (Schudson 2011; Shoemaker and Reese 2014).

⁸ Compared to other acceptable reliability coefficients, such as Cohen’s Kappa, Scott’s Pi is a more conservative measure, and Alpha levels of .80 or higher indicate adequate reliability (Krippendorff 1978; Riffe, Lacy, and Fico 2005).

⁹ The concept of the success of impressions derives from Black’s (2000) conception of the success of ideas.

¹⁰ To represent a range of sources we sampled within the various papers and networks. To represent a range of time periods, we stratified our sample into an early period (1986–1999) and late period (2000–2012) and when possible sought about 30 cases from each time period for each source. For networks and time periods having a small population of cases (less than 30) in the LexisNexis database, we took a census of all available cases. For those with more than 30 cases, we used systematic sampling.

¹¹ For example, in one case the CIS research director is introduced as a “critic” of immigration, in contrast to the immigration “advocate” quoted in the previous paragraph (Kershaw 2007).

¹² Of the sampled networks, NBC was least likely to convey an impression of bias, doing so in 7 percent of 27 cases. Fox News was most likely to convey an impression of bias, doing so in 29 percent of 21 cases.

¹³ For example: the Times quotes one official as saying “It is really a subversion of national independence for people who break into your country then to demand that their kids be U.S. citizens” (Preston 2010); ABC’s Nightline features executive director Krikorian arguing that those most affected by labor competition with immigrants lack political influence (2004) and the executive director invokes the human rights of immigrants themselves by calling a visa program for workers a form of “indentured servitude” (McGeehan and Berntsein 2008).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joshua Woods

Joshua Woods is an associate professor of sociology at West Virginia University. His research areas include social psychology, media studies, risk and threat perception, and political sociology. He is the author of Freaking Out: A Decade of Living with Terrorism.

Jason Manning

Jason Manning is an assistant professor at West Virginia University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. His research focuses on moral conflict, especially on violent and self-destructive ways of handling conflict. His theories of suicide and homicide-suicide have appeared in Sociological Forum and Homicide Studies. His most recent work, published with Bradley Campbell in Comparative Sociology, further pursues his interest in how people manipulate social information to win support for a cause.

Jacob Matz

Jacob Matz is a graduate research assistant at Northeastern University in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. His research interests include environmental sociology and environmental health and justice issues pertaining to energy extraction. Working with the Northeastern University Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute, he is exploring the role of citizen-based environmental health monitoring around shale gas activities in the Marcellus shale region.