Supporting a Belgian basic income - An experimental study on the mediating role of political knowledge on the framing impact of metaphors

The framing effect of political discourses has long been attested for. Metaphors in particular are known to ease the understanding of complex concepts. Yet the impact of metaphors is likely to depend on the characteristics of the receivers. Political metaphors would impact citizens differently depending on the extent to which they are acquainted with politics. Based on an experimental design, we test a potentially key mediating variable that has been hitherto left out in the study of metaphors: political knowledge. We hypothesise that the marginal effect of metaphors as cognitive shortcuts decreases when political knowledge increases. Our experiment aims at determining to what extent the confrontation of individuals to metaphors illustrating the abstract idea of the basic income does impact the way they apprehend the implementation of basic income policy in Belgium. We conclude that political knowledge is critical in order to understand the framing effect of metaphors, especially when it goes about very low or very high levels of political knowledge. Our results suggest that the insertion of metaphors in political discourses may easily succeed in rallying individuals behind a given cause, but this would only work in function of their familiarity with the issue at stake.