Do citizens care whether their government breaches international law, or are other imperatives more influential? We consider this question in the human rights arena, asking whether and how it matters how abuses are framed. In a novel survey experiment, we ask Australians about their attitudes toward restrictive immigration policy, holding the underlying breaches constant but varying how they are framed. We find that people most strongly oppose policy that violates international law. Emphasizing moral considerations has smaller but still notable impacts on attitudes, whereas reputational frames have the weakest effects. We also find that translating attitudes into political action is challenging: most who learn of current policy's legal, moral, or reputational dimensions and in turn become more critical do not subsequently express greater interest in trying to do something about it. Nonetheless, there are interesting differences across frames. Appealing to international law or moral considerations is more effective at spurring mobilization than emphasizing reputational harm, though via different mechanisms. Framing this debate in international reputational terms consistently has the weakest impacts on interest in political action, and may be worse than saying nothing at all.

公民是否关心他们的政府是否违反国际法，或者是否有其他更有影响力的命令？我们在人权领域考虑这个问题，询问虐待的构成是否重要以及如何重要。在一项新颖的调查实验中，我们询问澳大利亚人他们对限制性移民政策的态度，保持潜在的违规行为不变，但改变他们的框架方式。我们发现人们最强烈反对违反国际法的政策。强调道德考虑对态度的影响较小但仍然显着，而声誉框架的影响最弱。我们还发现，将态度转化为政治行动具有挑战性：大多数了解当前政策的法律、道德、或声誉方面，并反过来变得更加挑剔，但随后并没有表现出更大的兴趣尝试对此做些什么。尽管如此，帧之间还是存在有趣的差异。诉诸国际法或道德考虑比强调名誉损害更能有效地刺激动员，尽管通过不同的机制。以国际声誉的术语来组织这场辩论对政治行动的兴趣始终是最微弱的，而且可能比什么都不说更糟糕。