Vane-Kalvas 2012 Effect of Focusing 29-6-2012_final

7/31/2019 Vane-Kalvas 2012 Effect of Focusing 29-6-2012_final

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Focusing Events and Their Effect on Agenda-Setting 1

Jan Vn, Frantiek Kalvas2

University of West Bohemia, Faculty of Philosophy and Arts, Pilsen, Czech Republic

Abstract

We examine role of media coverage of focusing events in the process of public agenda-setting.We defined focusing events according to Kingdon (1995) as events that call attention to

problems and issues. Scholars have introduced several typologies of media coverage in thelong tradition of agenda-setting research. But no one examined differences of effects amongnews items mentioning (a) mere issue, (b) focusing event only, and (c) both an issue andrespective focusing event. Our research question stands as follows: Does referring to a

focusing event strengthen the effect of a news item on the way the respective issue is set onpersonal agendas of members of public?

T l h h h h h d


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T l h h i h h i i i h d i

This paper concentrates on the effect and role that focusing events play in the agenda-setting

process. We would like to explore particularly how the frequency of news items that mention

the particular focusing event influences respondents personal agenda. The role of focusing

events is commonly studied by scholars who concentrate on policy agenda-setting (see Kingdon

1995; Birkland 1997; Birkland 2007; Wolfensberger 2004) or media agenda-setting processes

(e.g. Dearing and , Rogers 1996). The role of focusing events in the process of public agenda

setting, however, has not yet been studied thoroughly, the only exception being Kwamena

Kwansah-Aidoo (2003) at Swinburne University of Technology. Since media coverage

generally influences the publics preferences regarding salient issues we think it is very

important to know if the issues are set on public agenda by accenting focusing event or mere

issue.


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cause of both political and societal discord, jeopardizing the stability of any government that

has tried to tackle it.

We use panel data that map the development of respondent preferences concerning the

most important events between April and May 2008. We combined these panel data with the

results of a content analysis that monitored, day by day, the frequency of news items concerning

the problem of Church property restitutions and the trial of St. Vitus Cathedral as the focusing

event. We shall demonstrate that the effect of news items concerning Church property

restitutions is stronger if they simultaneously refer to the focusing event.

The Agenda Setting Theory and the Concept of Focusing Events

A d i


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longer as pressing as it was when it entered the agenda, because society has gotten used to it

(and, hence, no more considers it as urgent), or because other problems since appeared that are

even more urgent and to which means need to be allocated. An agenda is not a concept that

applies not just to society as a whole; various subsystems also have their own agendas (Dearing

and, Rogers 1996: 12). If we were to break down the system into small parts, the last link

would be individuals. They, too, have their own agendas (lets call them personal agendas)

(McLeod et al., Becker, Byrnes (1974) 1991). In order to solve priority issues, subsystems

either strive to find their own resources or try to push their agenda onto the agenda of society

and by doing so to engage all of society in the process of solving it.

The agenda-setting theory applies to three key subsystems: media, the public and

politics. All three have their own agendas, interlinked through dense relationship

networks[dense networks]. These three agendas are also influenced by events taking place in

the real (i.e. not mediated) world, by the actors personal experience and by interpersonal


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subsystems more thoroughly[do not break down these subsystems further]. Nevertheless, it is

still necessary to explain how the agenda-setting theory defines where a particular issue will be

placed on the media or public agenda. The intensity of attention given to a particular problem is

a common denominator that defines the position of a problem on any kind of agenda. The

media agenda is usually defined as the number of news items devoted to a particular

cause[problem/issue].Public attention is usually defined as the proportion of people who

consider the problem to be one of the most important lately (Dearing and, Rogers 1996: 58).

Research projects working with micro-level data (as ours, for example) also refer to the

personal agenda: the agenda of a particular individual reflecting the public issues that he/she

considers to be important (Kalvas 2009: 33, 4041; Roslek 2011). The definitions above will

also apply in this text (for further details on methodology, please see below).

Focusing events


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disasters form policies and howpolicy-makers react to them (Birkland 1997, 1998, 2004a,

2004b). In this kind of research, the notion of a focusing event must not go beyond the narrowly

defined boundaries (otherwise it would become worthless): a broader definition would be

matched by a number of events related to the studied issue, the role of which, however, is not of

interest here.

If, on the other hand, we stick to the narrow definition of a focusing event, outside crises

and disasters, we risk leaving out a whole range of events that play an important role even

though they do not have the character of crises and disasters. Birkland (2007) implicitly admits

this when, in a paper chapter describing a broader application of the concept, he wrote about the

O. J. Simpson murder case or Rodney Kings beating by L.A. police officers. These, no doubt,

are not catastrophic events: their major significance consists in the fact that they call attention

to the problem ([Kingdon 1995: 94-95].).

John Kingdon (1995: 96), he invented the term focusing event, talks about two basic


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Birklands narrow definition. But if we focus on members of the public, the notion will expand

dramatically while maintaining its purpose[retaining its main point?]. It will, first of all, be

enriched by the personal experience of members of the public, the study of which has a long

tradition in the social sciences, dating back to Raye G. Funkhousers classic writings (1973). It

will, furthermore, be enriched by events related to strong symbols: the influence of such

focusing events has to date been researched on only two occasions (Kwansah-Aidoo 2003;

Walker and, Waterman 2008).

Until recently, however, to the best of our knowledge no research (except for the one

we are presenting here[except for the one at hand]) has been conducted on what effect the

intensity of media coverage of events related to strong symbols has on the introduction of an

issue onto a personal or public agenda.

The principle according to which focusing events influence the public and personal

agenda-setting process corresponds to the principle that (according to Kingdon 1995) governs


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news items that refer to such events will be more efficient[effective/influential] in the agenda-

setting process.

Regardless of whether we can explain the effectNo matter whether we will explain the

effect of a focusing event through its capacity to reduce the abstractness and issue complexity

or through its capacity to draw more attention to the issue,[?Regardless of whether we can

explain the effect??], we can formulate the following hypothesis:

H1: News items that refer to the focusing event are more instrumental in putting an issue on the

personal agenda than news items that talk about the issue but that do not refer to the relevant

focusing event.

In the analytical part of this text, we will look at an issue (Church property restitutions)

related to a focusing event (St. Vitus Cathedral trial). At the time this research was conducted,

this issue had been attracting the Czech publics attention for 16 years. This dispute also

represents what is fundamentally at the heart of the Church property restitutions problem in the


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whether a news item referring to the focusing event has an independent effect or whether a

reference to the event only strengthens the effect of referring to a particular issue. We assume

that news items referring to the focusing event have an independent, net effect (no theory

postulates or justifies that it is necessary to explicitly refer to an issue in order to get a

functioning focusing event). Our belief (i.e. referring to a focusing event has an autonomous

effect) should be backed, in our analysis, by the following proof: news items that refer to the

Cathedral but do not mention Church property restitutions will be both factually and statistically

significant.

H2: News items referring to a focusing event help to put the issue on the personal agenda even

when they do not explicitly refer to the particular issue.


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Before the Czech Republic was founded in 1993 following the split of Czechoslovakia,

the Federal Parliament introduced a Church Restitution Bill, but at that time it failed to pass by

several votes. Another attempt to settle the issue of the Church property restitutions was made

in 1996/1997: the Czech government then offered to implement a free-of-charge transfer of

specified real estate to Churches and ecclesiastical legal entities, but it was blocked by the

Social Democratic opposition. The period between 1997 and 2007 was characterized by

episodic attempts to solve the problem. The most powerful impetus to bring an end to the

deadlock came, paradoxically, from the municipalities, which, unable to take care[to afford the

maintenance] of originally Church property, were frustrated.

In 2004, the so-calledeick callwas issued, in which the mayors of 43 municipalities

demanded that the situation be solved, since they are not able to take proper care of the original

Church property, which is blocked by the law.3In 2005, a coalition committee drafted an

agreement according to which Church property restitutions would be settled by paying the


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of Deputies asked that the bill be completed and established, on June 13, 2008, a temporary

committee to have it reviewed and commented[?nevim co tady: Deputies submitted the bill

for review and comments?]. On April 27, 2009, the committee recommended rejecting the bill

(Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, 2009).

The case of St. Vitus Cathedral is an event that draws the publics attention to the case

of Church property restitutions, as the source of which is a 1954 government decree which

deemed that the Cathedral belongs to all the Czechoslovak people.

On December 30, 1992, the Religious Fund (Nboensk matice4) issued a declaratory

action[the Religious Fund filed a lawsuit against the state?] (St. Vitus Cathedral versus the

Office of the President of the Republic). The first ruling came on December 19, 1994: the

Prague 1 District Court ruled that the Cathedral belongs to the Catholic Church. A series of

legal wranglings ensued, at the end of which, on January 31, 2007, the Supreme Court threw out

the previous rulings of both the Prague 1 District Court and the Prague Municipal Court (both


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with the attention they have paid to the Cathedral during the period under observation

(April/May 2008).

We believe that this focusing event is somewhat specific, representing all three

dimensions of the Church property restitutions issue that were being taken into consideration by

the media during the period in which we analysed our data. Frantiek Kalvas et al., Jan Vn,

Martina tpkov and Martin Kreidl (2012) have revealed the following three dimensions of the

Church restitutions issue: (a) the Church felt morally entitled to have its property returned, (b)

politicking, (c) the dispute over what criteria should be applied to decisions about what property

to be returned and about what sum should be paid for the property that would not be given back

to the Church.

The dispute over the Cathedral iis a good illustration of thentegrates various points of

view on Church restitutions, which are otherwise isolated[co jsou izolovany?/vymazat?].. [k

cemu se vztahuji ty cisla? Jsou to points of view? Points of view such as: ] (1) The the question


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published in various media targeting the problem of Church property restitutions. The CVVM

survey provided data on how often the respondents mentioned Church property restitutions the

frequency with which the issue of Church property restitutions was discussed/was mentioned as

important [musi byt neco, kdyz tam mate frequency [ceho?]] (how oftentalking about the

above- mentioned issue was referred to as an important event concerning society as a whole)

and data on the socio-demographic characteristics of respondents. The media analysis provided

data on the media exposure of the theme of Church property restitutions and the St. Vitus

Cathedral trial.

The panel survey covered a total of 658 citizens of the Czech Republic over the age of

18. The data covered a period of 12 weeks (April 20, 2008 July 6, 2008). The sample was

constructed as a simple random sample (for more information on the construction of the panel

(survey), see Vinopal 2009). Respondents were asked to fill in a questionnaire every Sunday

over the course of the 12 weeks of the study and return it by mail to the address given by the


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important topic in the previous wave of polling. For table frequencies of the variable mentions

of restitutions and previous mentions of restitutions, see Annex No.1.7

Now we shall explain why we are using a joint variable that combines mention of Church

property restitutions and the Cathedral trial (both in the current and the previous wave of

polling). The initial coding key does not make too much difference between these topics, but

when we look at the data we see that in the original (untreated) data file the Cathedral trial was

directly mentioned only 24 times (7%), while Church restitutions were mentioned 319 times

(93%). This is a considerable disparity, one that in our opinion stems from the fact that in the

mental image respondents had developed the two causes overlap. For this reason we created a

variable that aggregates them.

We should note here that all the analysis described below was also carried out using a

dependent variable constructed solely on the basis of respondents indications of Church

property restitutions as important (so not taking into account answers in which respondents said


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first wave of the polling only, so they are the same for the entire survey. For the frequency of

individual socio-demographic variables, see Appendix No.2, for their detailed description, see

Appendix No.4.

Variables describing the frequency of news items on Church property restitutions come

from the content analysis carried out by the InnoVatio, o.s. association. In this content analysis,

the Association gathered data from the following media: Blesk, Hospodsk noviny, Lidov

noviny, MF Dnes and Prvo (national daily papers), ro 1 Radiournl and Impuls (radio

broadcasters) and T1, TV Prima and TV Nova (prime-time TV news) in the period between

March 24, 2008, and July 14, 2008. We also monitored, on a daily basis, the number of news

items within the Church property restitutions and Church and State relationship categories.

However, since the St. Vitus Cathedral trial is not,sensu stricto, a part of the Church

restitutions issue, we cannot consider it to be about the relationship between the Church and the

State, so we complemented the content analysis carried out by Inno Vatio with our own survey.


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because Wanta and Hu demonstrated that the agenda-setting effect may be visible as soon as

within one week (in the case of national TV news; when it comes to other media, the effect is

slower; for weekly journals, for example, it is as many as eight weeks) (Wanta and, Hu 1994).

In the main section of the analysis we also broke down the media total variable into

three groups of variables, the criterion being whether the particular variable refers solely to

restitutions, solely to the Cathedral or to both. The restitutions only variable assigns to each

respondent, in each polling wave, a precise number of news items that mention only the issue

itself (Church restitutions) within the seven days preceding completion of the questionnaire.

The Cathedral only variable assigns to each respondent, in each polling wave, a precise

number of news items mentioning the Cathedral trial only within the seven days preceding

completion of the questionnaire. And the last of the group of three variables (Cathedral and

restitutions) assigns to each respondent in each wave of polling a precise number of news items

mentioning both Church property restitutions and the Cathedral trial within the seven days


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Furthermore, we discarded respondents who did not fill in their personal data, those who

did not respond in all five polling waves and those who did not stick to the survey calendar. 8

The number of news items (the total media, Cathedral only and

Cathedral and restitutions variables) were assigned to respondents day by day so they

are not influenced by the shift of the questionnaire completion time. Having made the above-

mentioned adjustments to the sample, we were left with a data file comprising 369 respondents

who completed all five questionnaires in full.9

The representativeness of both the original and the final file is therefore a bit. The final

file includes a smaller share of men, persons under 30 and persons with elementary education

than the shares of such people in the Czech Republics population.

Method and results of the analysis


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types of news items: (1) those mentioning both the issue and the focusing event, (2) those

mentioning Church restitutions, only or (3) those mentioning the Cathedral trial only.

The factual as well as statistical significance of the effect of the media total variable

helped us to carry out a rough test of the agenda-setting hypothesis: if this effect is not

statistically significant, it means that the agenda-setting hypothesis is not applicable when it

comes to the Church restitutions issue at the respondent level.

If this effect is statistically significant but not factually significant, it means that it

exercises, at the individual level, a factually insignificant influence. In the case of statistical or

factual insignificance, we are ready to test our agenda-setting hypothesis: we use aggregated

data in order to confirm or refute the validity of this hypothesis at the public level. We can say

now that our analysis confirmed that the media total variable was both statistically and

factually significant (see Table 1). It is therefore not necessary to carry out the aggregated-data

test (if significance is proved on individual data, it is certain that it would be proved on


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by those news items that not only refer to the issue but also mention the focusing event. In other

words, neither the focusing event nor the problem has the capacity to influence the public on

their own: their effect does not become apparent unless they are mentioned together, in the

framework of a single news item.

If two or three variables are statistically significant (possibilities 1, 2, 3) and the

intensity of their effect differs, we will have 16 possible configurations of two-item and three

item variables. It is beyond the scope of space we have here to describe all these variants in

detail, but if any of the 16 constellations appears in our data, we will of course discuss it.

It may turn out that (5) the restitutions only and Cathedral only joint variables are

significant, that (6) the Cathedral only variable alone is significant, or that (7) the restitutions

only variable alone is significant. We have not anticipated any interpretation for such a result

because we assume that the news items either have a positive effect (enhancing the acceptance

of the problem on the personal agenda) or zero effect (having no effect on the respondent).


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observations. It is important to point out that the answers given by a particular respondent

across the time span of the survey resemble more than[resemble more/are much like the]

answers given by various respondents. Multilevel models have the capacity, unlike classical

linear or logistic regression, to take this similarity into consideration, which means that

coefficients and, especially, standard error may be estimated more precisely (Kalvas et al.

2009).

Since multilevel modelling methods having not quite settled down[are not yet fully ???

established/developed?], we follow Paul Allisons advice (1999: chapter 8) to combine several

methods (each of which has different advantages and disadvantages). In order to model what

influence our macro- and micro-variables have on the odds that a particular respondent will

mention Church property restitutions as an important issue, we use the population-averaged

(GEE) models and conditional logistic regressions. The conditional logistic regression is a very

convenient statistical tool for our type of analysis: it explains the variability of the dependent


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program (xtlogit command). In the case of marginal models, we speculated on the basis of a

serial correlated error with first-order auto-correlation.

Results

We assessed a total of nine patterns models (for an assessment of the suitability of the

statistical tools measures and detailed characteristics, see the Table 2 below). The Table 1

summarizes the values of the assessed effects for all nine models. First three of them[First, three

of them/The first three of them] explore what influence the media total variable exercises on

the willingness of respondents to mention Church restitutions as an actual social topic. (Model 1

is a model of conditional logistic regression, Model 2 is the marginal model checking the

influence exercises by macro-variables, and Model 3 is a marginal model checking the

influence of both macro- and micro-variables). These models do not test directly any of our

hypotheses, but they give us a framework image about the influence of the number of news


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restitutions issue appear in the media within the last seven days, the chance that a person will

cite Church property restitutions as an important event will double (logit 0.7 = 0.05 * 14 resp.

0.72 = 0.04 * 18, resp. 0.69 = 0.03 * 23). These (or higher) are the values reached[produced] by

the media exposition[b by media exposure] during the third, fourth and sixth polling waves (see

Appendix 3). During the second and fifth wave of polling, the media exposition has a

statistically significant effect, which, however, is not significant factually since the media did

not present, in these periods, enough news items that would be able to at least double the chance

that the Church property restitutions would reach the personal agenda of respondents.

Now we are coming to the core of our analysis. The first hypothesis is tested in Models

4 6. (Model 4 is the conditional logit model, Models 5 and 6 are marginal models). Through


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contact has on the recipients doubles if a minimum of 7 news items according to the Model

for[in the case of Model 4?] (or 5 items in the case of Models 5 and 6) contain both a reference

to the restitutions issue and to the Cathedral trial. This frequency with these news items

occurred was observed during the third and fourth waves of polling. The other waves recorded

such a low frequency of news items referring to both Church property restitutions and the

Cathedral trial that any factually significant effect is impossible.

Models 7 9 (Model 7 is a conditional logit model, Models 8 and 9 are marginal

models) were created by adding the Cathedral only variable to Models 4 6. Models 7 9 test

the second hypothesis, in which we explore whether a news item referring only to the focusing

event (and not mentioning the issue itself) has an effect. Models 7 9 monitor whether the

Cathedral only variable is factually and statistically significant and whether, having been

added to Models 4 6, these will significantly improve. If the significance of the Cathedral

only variable is confirmed and Models 4 6 are demonstrably improved as a result of its


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Conclusions and Discussion

The results produced by Models 4 6 fully reflect (support) hypothesis no. 1: both the

statistical and factual significance of the restitutions only and the Cathedral and restitutions

variables, and the statistical and factual significance of the differences of their effects match.

Our analysis thus proved that the ability of news items to agenda-set issues increases whenthese news items at the same time refer to afocusing event. On the other hand, hypothesis no. 2

(positing that the Cathedral only variable has a significant effect) is refuted by Models 7 9;

Models 4 6 are not improved by this variable. This part of the analysis proved that news items

referring to the focusing event along do not help to put the given problem on a recipients

personal agenda.

We can therefore conclude that referring to a focusing event impacts the public only if

the relevant news item refers also to the relevant issue. When the issue is not mentioned in the


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When we look at hypothesis no. 2 (about the impact of news items referring just to the

focusing event and not the relevant issue), we find the opposite situation, in which case our

hypothesis must be rejected. Generalization, however, is problematic in this case for the very

reason that the connection between Church property restitutions and the St. Vitus Cathedral trial

is quite loose. We do know that at least in the studied case such news items do not have the

studied impact. However, we cannot rule out the possibility, for example, that news items

referring to an airplane crash would not help to put the issue of air transportation safety on the

public agenda: the general validity of this hypothesis should be assessed by further research that

would concentrate on focusing events that have a much tighter connection to the relevant issue.

It must be pointed out that the fact that our analysis demonstrated the strong role of the

focusing event could also be due to the coincidence of certain historical circumstances in the

Czech Republic in spring 2008. The Parliamentary sessions during which the Church property

restitutions bill was discussed overlapped with the period in which the Court handed down its


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JAN VN earned his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Arts of the Masaryk University in Brno in 2007,

after also studying at the doctoral level at Leibniz Univeristt Hannover in Germany. He

currently works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology of the University of

West Bohemia in Pilsen. He concentrates on the sociology of religion and social theory.

FRANTIEK KALVAS earned his Ph.D. in ethnology at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts of the

University of West Bohemia in Pilsen in 2008 and passed his rigorosum exam in sociology at

the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Charles University in Prague (PhDr. 2009). He currently

works as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology at the University of West

Bohemia in Pilsen. He specialises in the methodology of social research and the sociology of

public opinion, focusing mainly on the agenda-setting theory.


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Table 1Estimated coefficients and (standard errors) of multi-level models concerning the occurrence of church property restitutions on personal agenda.

Model 1(CL)

Model 2(GEE)

Model 3(GEE)

Model 4(CL)

Model 5(GEE)

Model 6(GEE)

Model 7(CL)

Model 8(GEE)

Model 9(GEE)

News in preceding 7 days

Media in total0.05***

(0.004)0.03***

(0.003)0.04***

(0.003)

Restitutions only0.04***

(0.006)0.01*

(0.004)0.01**

(0.004)0.03***

(0.007)0.01

(0.005)0.01*

(0.005)

Cathedral and restitutions0.15***

(0.017)0.17***

(0.014)0.18***

(0.015)0.29*

(0.117)0.24*

(0.096)0.23*

(0.097)

Cathedral only-0.15

(0.118)-0.07

(0.079)-0.06

(0.097)

Previous mentioning of restitutions-3.25***

(0.339)-2.26***

(0.418)-2.27***

(0.359)-2.84***

(0.368)-0.00

(0.274)-0.82**

(0.306)-2.89***

(0.372)-0.03

(0.275)-0.82**

(0.305)Respondents gender

Man0.22

(0.187)0.21

(0.180)0.21

(0.180)Woman (reference category)

Respondents age

18-30-1.80***

(0.364)

-1.68***

(0.349)

-1.67***

(0.349)31-51

-1.19***

(0.205)-1.13***

(0.199)-1.13***

(0.198)52-71 (reference category)

72-920.08

(0.314)0.15

(0.299)0.15

(0.299)Respondents education

Basic-1.14*

(0.575)-1.18*

(0.565)-1.17*

(0.564)

Vocational school-0.19

(0.201)-0.17

(0.194)-0.17

(0.194)Secondary school (reference category)

University0.21

(0.241)

0.22

(0.231)

0.22

(0.231)Respondents religion

Christian0.47**

(0.177)0.46**

(0.171)0.46**

(0.171)Other (reference category)

Constant-3.42***

(0.182)-3.23***

(0.248)-3.48***

(0.192)-3.27***

(0.251)-3.51***

(0.198)-3.30***

(0.256)Nmacro(Nmicro)

170(850)

369(1845)

369(1845)

170(850)

369(1845)

369(1845)

170(850)

369(1845)

369(1845)

Note: * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001.

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Table 2Statistics of estimated multi-level models concerning the occurrence of church property restitutions on personal agenda.

Test statistics

Indication and description of modelWald chi2/

LR chi2d.f. Nmacro Nmicro p-value

M1: Media in total, previous answer (conditional logit) 274.4 2 170 850 < 0.001M2: Media in total, previous answer (GEE) 153.3 2 369 1845 < 0.001M3: Media in total, previous answer, characteristics of respondent (GEE) 192.2 10 369 1845 < 0.001

M4: Restitutions only, Restitutions and cathedral, previous answer (conditional logit) 283.9 3 170 850 < 0.001M5: Restitutions only, Restitutions and cathedral, previous answer (GEE) 182.8 3 369 1845 < 0.001M6: Restitutions only, Restitutions and cathedral, previous answer, characteristics of respondent (GEE) 221.9 11 369 1845 < 0.001M7: Restitutions only, Restitutions and cathedral, Cathedral only, previous answer (conditional logit) 285.5 4 170 850 < 0.001M8: Restitutions only, Restitutions and cathedral, Cathedral only, previous answer (GEE) 181.4 4 369 1845 < 0.001M9: Restitutions only, Restitutions and cathedral, Cathedral only, previous answer, characteristics ofrespondent (GEE)

221.1 12 369 1845 < 0.001

Contrasts

Extension with Restitutions only, and Restitutions and cathedral

M4 M1 9.5 1 170 850 = 0.002

M5 M2 29.5 1 369 1845 < 0.001M6 M3 29.7 1 369 1845 < 0.001

Extension with Cathedral only

M7 M4 1.6 1 170 850 = 0.206M8 M5 -1.4 1 369 1845 = 1.000M9 M6 -0.8 1 369 1845 = 1.000

Extension with characteristics of respondent

M3 M2 38.9 8 369 1845 < 0.001M6 M5 39.1 8 369 1845 < 0.001M9 M8 39.7 8 369 1845 < 0.001

Note: Respondents characteristics are: gender, age (3 dummy variables), religion (Christian vs. other), and education (3 dummy variables).

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Appendix 1Number of respondents who indicated the restitutions of church property or the dispute over the ownership of St. Vitus Cathedral as an important event inthe present or previous wave according to individual waves of research (N=369).

2nd wave (25.-28.4.) 3rd wave (2.-5.5.) 4th wave (9.-12.5.) 5th wave (16.-19.5.) 6th wave (23.-26.5.)Mentioning of restitutionsNumber 20 121 39 8 15Percentage 5.4 % 32.8 10.6 2.2 4.1Previous mentioning of restitutions

Number 0 20 121 39 8Percentage 0% 5.4 32.8 10.6 2.2

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Appendix 2Respondents according to gender, age, education, and religion.

Analyzed sample (N=369) Original sample (N=658)

Number Percentage Number PercentageGenderMen 123 33.3 % 230 34.9 %Women 246 66.7 425 64.6

Unascertained 0 0.0 3 0.5

Age18-30 55 14.9 114 17.331-51 136 36.9 246 37.452-71 155 42.0 249 37.872-92 23 6.2 46 7.0Unascertained 0 0.0 3 0.5

Education

Basic 19 5.2 44 6.7Vocational 128 34.7 232 35.3Secondary school 155 42.0 277 42.1University 67 18.2 102 15.5Unascertained 0 0.0 3 0.5

ReligionChristian 144 39.0 401 38.6Others 225 61.0 254 60.9Unascertained 0 0.0 3 0.5

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Appendix 3Number of media news which respondents were exposed to in seven previous days, according to reference to the restitutions, reference to the Cathedral trial,and the precise date of the questionnaire being filled out.Date Cathedral only Restitutions only Cathedral and restitutions Media in total2nd wave25.4.2008 0 1 3 426.4.2008 0 3 3 627.4.2008 0 7 2 9

28.4.2008 0 8 2 103rd wave2.5.2008 11 38 9 583.5.2008 12 40 13 654.5.2008 12 40 14 665.5.2008 12 46 14 724th wave9.5.2008 2 69 8 7910.5.2008 1 68 4 7311.5.2008 1 69 4 74

12.5.2008 1 65 4 705th wave16.5.2008 0 15 1 1617.5.2008 0 12 1 1318.5.2008 0 7 0 719.5.2008 0 4 0 46th wave23.5.2008 0 22 0 2224.5.2008 0 22 0 2225.5.2008 0 24 0 24

26.5.2008 0 24 0 24

http://www.mkcr.cz/assets/ministerstvo/knihovna/sbornik-2korekt.pdf

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Appendix 4Detailed description of control variables

Gender is a dichotomous variable. We created fourage categories, which were defined on the basis of what periods in the history of the relationship between

the Church and the State the respondents lived in and were therefore influenced by in terms of their responsiveness to the issue of Church property

restitutions.

The oldest age group is people age 72 and over. These people were 12 (or more) at the time of the coup in 1948. The Communist coup was followed

by a period of State terror and property confiscations that lasted through the 1950s and up to the late 1960s (when there was a slight thaw).

The second age group comprises people between the ages of 52 and 71 who were at least 12 years old in 1968. The third age group is made up of

people who were ages 31-51 at the time of the survey. These people were at least 12 years old in 1989, which means that they experienced (at age 12 or

more) the beginning of the discussions about restituting seized Church property. The youngest age group is of people ages 30 and under and comprises

people who did not reach the age of 12 until the 1990s.

As for the education variable, we also divided the sample into four categories according to the maximum level of education attained: elementary

(basic) school, vocational training, secondary school with a graduation certificate, university degree. Religion, which in the original survey was divided into

seven categories, was reduced for the purpose of our study to a dichotomic variable of Christian faith or other. The Christian faith variant includes those

respondents who declared they belonged to a Catholic, Protestant or Orthodox Church.

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Appendix 5Interpretation of control variables results

Let us now look at the effect of sociodemographic characteristics, i.e. Models 3, 6 and 9 (all of them represent marginal models). We did not find any

significant differences between men and women, but statistically significant differences were recorded (for all three models) when we sorted the data

according to age. People in the two oldest age groups (age 72 and over; ages 52 71) (other influences in the model were controlled for) include the Church

property restitutions issue on their agenda at a similar rate, while in younger groups its presence falls sharply.

The chance that respondents in the 31 51 age group will cite (all other conditions remaining the same) Church property restitutions13 as important is

approximately three times lower (than chance of respondents in the reference category? (age 52 71...) and the chance of the same for the youngest group

(ages 18 30) is even approximately five or six times lower.14

We can therefore state that age factor (whether or not the respondent was at least twelve years old in 1968, i.e. was born before 1957) plays a crucial

role. This means that there is a 1/3 to 1/5 chance that a respondent born in 1957 or later will in spring 2008 consider Church property restitutions as

important.

When we sorted our data according to education, we found that from the factual perspective only persons with elementary education differed. Unlike

the other groups, the chance that they will consider Church property restitutions as important is 1/3 [there is one-third likelihood that they will consider

Church property restititutions important].15 This factual difference is significant also from the statistical point of view. Another characteristic, religion,

proved to be statistically significant for all three models, but this effect is not very significant from the factual point of view: a person identifying him/herself

with the Christian faith has approximately a 1.5 times higher chance that he/she will consider the Church property restitutions as important. 16

13 Logits: -1.19 (M3), -1.13 (M6) and -1.13 (M9).14 Logits: -1.80 (M3), -1.68 (M6) and -1.67 (M9).15 Logits: -1.14 (M3), -1.18 (M6) and -1.17 (M9).16 Logits: 0.47 (M3), 0.46 (M6) and 0.46 (M9).

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