Latinos Rising to the Challenge: Political Responses to Threat and Opportunity Messages

Abstract

Interest groups and campaigns intent on spurring political participation often focus on highlighting potential threats in order to engage their target audiences. However, the use of threat in this approach is at times immobilizing because it diminishes the extent to which people feel equipped to respond. In this study, I re-assess the hypothesis that exposure to threatening political messages is a necessary and sufficient condition to encourage one’s political activism among Latinos. I focus on Latinos in particular because the extant literature has focused almost exclusively on the role of restrictive immigration environments as the primary catalyst driving political participation within the Latino electorate, suggesting that threat best stirs the Latino “sleeping giant.” Political elites seeking to increase civic participation may be more likely to engage individuals if they couple threat with an opportunity frame that emphasizes policy initiatives a group can aspire to accomplish. My findings are based on an original online survey experiment of 1,015 Latino adults in the United States and secondary analyses of Latinos in the American National Election Study (2008, 2012). I find that a message combining elements of threat and opportunity is a significant catalyst of various forms of participation, including intended and observed forms of civic engagement. These effects are moderated by gender, with women being especially receptive to the coupled threat-and-opportunity message. In sum, there is room to delve more deeply into the motivating effects behind paired messaging alternatives within the field of political science where social movements, like that of immigration, give rise to a dynamic set of policy options, some of which may be more desirable and provide hope for the Latino electorate.