ABSTRACT
To personalize news and make it appear timely, media professionals tend to construct stories in episodic terms, focusing on specific instances and individuals, rather than presenting issues in their larger thematic context. Such episodic and strategic framing of news has been shown to influence citizens' information processing and political judgments, altering the criteria used to evaluate politicians and shaping assessments of governmental effectiveness and responsiveness. There are two overarching sets of values used by political elites to justify their policy stands: ethical values, which often become most explicitly apparent in discourse about rights, morals, and basic principles; and material values, which are often manifest in discussions of economics, pragmatics, and practicality. Tetlock argued that individuals' reasoning about political issues is "powerfully shaped by the fundamental values they are trying to advance in particular policy domains".
