Communication Theory and Methodology 1999 Abstracts
Communication Theory and Methodology Division
Re-thinking the Role of Information in Diffusion Theory: An Historical Analysis With an Empirical Test • Eric Abbott and J. Paul Yarbrough, Iowa State University • The 1930-1960 period, during which much of communication theory began to develop, was a time of “rediscovery” of the group-the idea that the group serves as the interface between the individual and society. In the case of diffusion theory, this rediscovery engendered a “dominant paradigm” focusing on group processes interpersonal communication, and influence-informed by a spurt in empirical research and several new conceptual leaps-that shaped and was itself influenced by researchers whose funding base and interests were practical and applied.
Pleasant Company And The Construction Of Girlhood: Cultural Studies Theory And Methodology, A Case Study • Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Georgia
Young Adults’ Processing of Messages in Alcohol-Related Public Service Announcements and Advertising • Julie L. Andsager, Erica Weintraub Austin and Bruce E. Pinkleton, Washington State University • This study’s purpose is to determine how a primary audience for anti-drinking public service announcements and advertisements evaluates those messages. Evaluations of 246 college-age respondents to 10 alcohol-related ads and PSAs produced differences in quantitative and qualitative responses. Results indicated that perceived realism is an important factor in PSAs’ persuasiveness. Respondents rated PSAs as more realistic than ads, but questioned their realism and relevance. More research is needed regarding young adults’ processing of persuasive messages.
The Operationalization Of “Political Knowledge” In Communication And Political Science Research • Raymond N. Ankney, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Few studies examine what the construct “political knowledge” actually means and how it should be measured. This paper reviews the operationalization of political knowledge in scholarly research over the past eight years. One hypothesis was that even though the political knowledge questions are used to measure how effectively the media transmit political information, researchers will rarely use a content analysis or review news stories to develop the knowledge questions. This hypothesis was supported.
The Media and Smoking: Predicting Attitudes and Norms in the Theory of Reasoned Action • Michael Antecol, Stanford, Esther Thorson, Missouri and Andrew Mendelson, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville • In this paper, we examined how exposure and attention to different mass media predict attitudes and norms that individuals have regarding smoking. It is our belief that the mass media play a pivotal role in creating individual attitudes and subjective norms regarding smoking. The results showed that, while neither the news media attention variable nor the PSA attention variable predicted attitudes and norms, these two variables did interact in an unexpected, yet consistent way.
The Relationship of Parental Reinforcement of Media Messages to College Students’ Alcohol-Related Behaviors, Age of Experimentation and Beliefs About Alcohol • Erica Weintraub Austin and Yin Ju Chen, Washington State University • Alcohol consumption is a problem on the college campus, but beliefs and behaviors predictive of alcohol use are in development in children as young as third grade and develop partially in response to interpretations of media messages, for which parents can have an influence. As a result. this study examined whether college students’ recollections of parental reinforcement of media messages were associated with alcohol-related beliefs and behaviors. Recalled positive mediation was negatively associated with skepticism, and positively associated with desirability and expectancies.
In the Public’s Interest or Interesting to the Public? • Clyde H. Bently, Oregon • The concept of what constitute “news” is basic to journalism. Nevertheless, there is little consensus about who “owns” the definition-the journalist or the audience. This paper explores the literature on the definition of news, outlining a schism between those who believe news is information provided to the audience in the public’s best interest and those who believe news is information the audience finds interesting and useful.
Don’t Look At Me! Third-person Effects and TV Violence • Lois A. Boynton, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper assesses the role of third-person effects-how people overestimate influences mass communications have on others-on attitudes toward television violence. A statewide poll measured respondents’ estimated impacts of television violence and investigated demographic and sociopolitical factors that shape people’s attitudes and reaction toward television violence. Results indicate that people perceive a greater degree of influence on others than themselves; discriminant analysis of third-vs. first-person effects did not yield conclusive findings.
An Efficacy Model of Electoral Campaigns: The 1996 Presidential Election • Mahoud A.M. Braima, Southern and A&M, Thomas J. Johnson and Jayanthi Sothirajah, Southern Illinois-Carbondale • This study developed and empirically tested a conceptual model of political efficacy during an electoral campaign. We used structural equations to simultaneously assess 12 causal links between campaign interest, political news exposure, political ads exposure, internal and external efficacy, political participation and voting intention. Data from a survey of 362 adult residents of Pulaski County in Arkansas provided support for the hypotheses that campaign interest leads to exposure to information-rich sources which, in turn, political efficacy.
Attention To Counter-Attitudinal Messages In Tile 1998 Election Campaign • Steven Chaffee, Melissa Nichols Saphir, Joseph Graf, Christian Sandvig and Kyu Sup Hahn, Stanford University • Attention to counter-attitudinal political messages is worthy of study even though previous research following the “selective exposure” model has focused on avoidance of such messages. Surveys of youth (N = 417) and parents (N = 432) examine attention to newspaper, television and Web messages about candidates. While there is slightly more attention to consistent messages, forms of political involvement (knowledge, curiosity, discussion) that predict consistent attention also predict counter-attitudinal attention.
Forestry Referendum and the Press in Oregon: The Role of Demographics, Attitudes and Priming in Voting Behavior • Kuang-Kuo Chang, Michigan State • The role of demographics, environmental attitudes, political attitudes, communication channels and priming effect in voting behavior regarding Oregon’s defeated forestry regulation, proposed to ban clear-cutting and pesticide use by the logging industry, is investigated using content analysis and two-stage regression. The research revealed that age, in addition to media use and interpersonal communication, is a strong predictor for the priming effect and certain voting behavior. But, individuals’ long-held environmental attitude was the greatest indicator for voting decision.
The Influence Of Mass Media And Other Culprits On The Projection Of Personal Opinion • Cindy T. Christen and Albert C. Gunther, Wisconsin-Madison • The study reported here analyzed the relative predictive power of four theoretical models that have been widely and variously tested as explanations for the projection bias – the tendency for people to see others’ opinions as much like their own. Our analysis focused particularly on audience processing of information in mass media, and in doing so we proposed a revision of the standard logical information processing model. We tested this set of hypotheses using data from a random telephone sample of over 600 U.S. residents who answered opinion items about four current science, environment and health issues.
News Media, Racial Perceptions, And Political Cognition • David Domke, Kelley McCoy, and Marcos Torres, Washington • This study examines the linkages among news media, racial perceptions, and citizens’ political cognitions. We theorize that news coverage of political issues not only influences people’s thinking about the issue, but also activates associated racial or ethnic stereotypes held by individuals and then influences whether these perceptions are applied in politically meaningful ways, such as in the formation of issue positions or evaluations about whether certain political, economic, or legal outcomes are positive for U.S. society.
Impact of Order on the Third-person Effect • Michel Dupagne and Michael B. Salwen, Miami and Bryant Paul, California-Santa Barbara • A nationwide telephone survey was conducted to investigate the impact of question order on the. perceptual and behavioral hypotheses of the third-person effect. Key questions included estimated effects of media issues on self, perceived effects on others, and support for restrictions on the media. Four question-order conditions (restrictions-others-self, restrictions-self-others, others-self-restrictions, self-others-restrictions) were tested with three issues (television violence, televised trials, and negative political advertising). In line with past research, the order of the self, others, and restrictions questions did not affect the perceptual hypothesis.
The Third-Person Effect and the Hierarchy of Communication Effects: The Perceived Persuasive Power of Public Relations • Martin Eichholz, Syracuse University • This study is the first to link the third-person effect with theories of hierarchical communication effects and to use the public relations domain to test the third-person effect. Results of a regional telephone survey (n=368) support the notion that people perceive others to be more strongly affected by public relations messages than themselves. while the perceived effects of public relations on self follow the traditional communication effects hierarchy, the perceived effects of public relations on others follow an alternative sequence.
The Power of the Story: Narrative Analysis As A Tool For Studying The News • Christopher Hanson, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper discusses how narrative analysis – a branch of rhetorical study that focuses on story lines and why they resonate – can best be applied to the analysis of news reports. The paper surveys several strands of narrative analysis, including mythic study, which posits that some modern story-lines resonate powerfully because they evoke the plot-lines of ancient myths. It describes how each of these strands can provide insights into the power and resonance of news texts.
The Third-Person Effect: Social Cognition or Academic Creation? • Yu-Wei Hu, National Taiwan Normal University • While most studies of the third-person effect assumed that people naturally think about the influence of media while they are exposed to media presentations, this study provides evidence to show that this assumption may not always be true. Some individuals may have never considered the impact of media on others until researchers ask them to make a judgment. In this case, their third-person perception is actually an elicited social comparison rather than a spontaneous social cognition.
A Reconceptualization Of Cultivation As A “Good Theory” With Help From The “Thin Ideal” • LeeAnn Kahlor, Bradley W. Gorham and Eileen Gilligan, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper tries to argue for a refinement of cultivation based on critiques lodged against it for the past 30 years. If a reconceptualization, including an acknowledgment of varying content and psychological processing, for example, can be considered, cultivation could fit into the realm of “good theory.” The “thin ideal” is used as a model case for applying this broadened approach to cultivation as a working, explanatory theory.
Setting the Proximity Frame: Distance as an Affective Attribute in Reporting Terrorism Events • Kenneth Killebrew, South Florida • This research examined proximity as an element at the second or attribute level of agenda setting theory. Using two nations, the United States and Great Britain, the study examined potential correlations between distance and how stories were reported. VBPro, a verbatim text computer analysis program, was used successfully in identifying and counting selected terms for observation. While the hypotheses were not confirmed, there were findings that are encouraging for future studies on affective attributes.
Opinion Expression As A Rational Behavior • Sei-Hill Kim, Cornell • This study understands individuals’ opinion expressions as a rational behavior based on a conscious calculus of expected benefits and costs. The influences of “issue benefit”; “opinion congruence”; and “issue knowledge”, as sources of benefits and costs, on opinion expression were hypothesized and tested. This study also examined the interaction effects of those factors and the types of opinion expression. For the tests, 171 university students were surveyed in 1997 regarding their willingness to express opinions on the issue of “doctor-assisted suicide.”
Looking Beyond Job Approval: How Media Coverage of the Monica Lewinsky Scandal Influenced Public Opinion of the Presidency • Spiro Kiousis, Texas • Last year’s Executive scandal involving Monica Lewinsky perplexed many media experts because a story of such magnitude would normally be expected to heavily sway public opinion of the presidency, yet most media accounts described minimal fluctuations. Anchored in agenda setting, priming, and the elaboration likelihood model of attitude change, the purpose of this paper was to, over time, trace and compare media coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal to public opinion of the presidency.
Does Media Publicity Matter? An Analysis of the Knowledge Gap Hypothesis across Issues with Differential Degrees of Media Publicity • Nojin Kwak, Wisconsin-Madison • This study was an attempt to analyze the role of differential degree of media publicity in the knowledge gap phenomena, and has investigated three main issues: (1) whether differential levels of media publicity influence the education-based knowledge gap; (2) whether the extent of publicity given to issues results in a differential relationship between education and motivation in the context of the knowledge gap hypothesis; and (3) whether differential effects of newspaper news use and television news use on the education-based knowledge gap vary across issues with different levels of media publicity.
Emotional Experience and Physiological Arousal During Violent Video Game Playing: Gender, Experience, and Presence Matter • Annie Lang, Indiana University; Edd Schneider, Instructional Systems Technology and Rick Deitz, Indiana University • This paper examines the effects of action required by the game, gender, and experience on violent video game players strategic, physiological and emotional responses. Results show that playing violent video games is a positive, arousing, and dominant activity. Experience increases dominance and decreases arousal. Gender has no effect on dimensional emotional experience. When comparing types of action (hunt, see, fight, kill) results show physiological arousal increases over game playing for fighting and decreases for hunting.
Contesting “Lie Significance Of A Global Media Event: The Case Of Hong Kong’s Handover • Chin-Chuan Lee, Minnesota and Joseph Man Chan, Zhongdang Pan, and Clement Y. K. So, Chinese University of Hong Kong • The world media had expected to cover Hong Kong’s handover with various constructed scenarios of major conflicts that did not happen. The media spectacle became as important as the event itself. Hong Kong’s handover, as a media event, was treated as a coronation. The journalistic community could only try to “hype” the event as if to make up for deficiency in conflict, drama and theatricality. International news discourse, however, represents ideological contestation over the significance of nationalism versus colonialism, democracy versus authoritarianism, and capitalism versus socialism.
Personal Involvement as a Mediating Variable in the Agenda-setting Process • Yulian Li, Minnesota • This study examines personal involvement as a mediating variable that affects the agenda-setting effect. It content analyzes both newspaper and television coverage of obtrusive and unobtrusive issues and finds a dichotic phenomenon: Newspapers, with their verbal information, tend to have a stronger agenda-setting effect on people with a high level of personal involvement, while television, with its visual images, tends to have stronger influence on those with a low level of personal involvement.
How Sexual Strategies Theory, Gender, and the Third-Person Effect, Explain Attitudes About Pornography • Ven-hwei Lo, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan, and Anna Paddon, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • The inter-relationship of the factors that influence attitudes in support of restrictions on pornography are explored using third-person effects theory and sexual strategies theory, which contrasts the sexual pairing behaviors of males and females. From survey data of Taiwan high school students a model was constructed depicting these relationships. All subjects perceived pornography to have greater negative influence on others than on themselves, but females had a lower level of past exposure to pornography and perceived greater negative effects of it on themselves and others.
Behind The Third-Person Effect: How People Generate Media Impact Assessments And Link Them To Support For Censorship • Douglas McLeod, Delaware, Benjamin H. Detenber, Nanyang and William P. Eveland, Jr., California-Santa Barbara • This study investigated factors related to two types of judgments that make up the third-person perception: media effects on others and effects on self Specifically, separate regression path models revealed that estimates of effects on others are based on a relatively naive schema for media effects that is similar to the “magic bullet” model of media effects (i.e., more exposure leads to greater effects). On the other hand, assessing effects on self involves a more complex, conditional effects model.
Understanding Community: A Closer Look at the Categorization and Complexity of Citizens’ Understanding of Community • Jack M. McLeod, Dietram A. Scheufele, Jessica Hicks, Nojin Kwak, Weiwu Zhang and R. Lance Holbert, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper explicates individual-level perceptions of community and their role in communicatory and participatory processes. A strong emphasis is based on a meaning analysis of the construct that we label “understanding of community,” including both the breadth and depth of people’s understanding of community. We also differentiate this more individual-level, cognitive variable from more objective, structural links that individuals have to their communities. In a second step, we explicate measures of different dimensions of understanding of community.
Mass and Interpersonal Communication Effects On Public Deliberation • Patricia Moy, Washington • This study examines the extent to which engagement in the public deliberation process is influenced by three distinct groups of antecedents: demographics, interpersonal influences, and mass communication. Analyses of data from a Midwestern city (n=416) indicate that demographics exert no influence. The diversity of one’s discussion network and political discussion enhanced the likelihood of engaging in public deliberation, and the only media effect to emerge was for newspaper reading. Implications for civic journalism and democracy are discussed.
Influence of Political Campaign Advertising • Michael Pfau, R. Lance Holbert, Erin Alison Szabo and Kelly Kaminski, Wisconsin-Madison • Spending on soft-money-sponsored issue advocacy advertising has grown dramatically in recent years and, in some campaigns, now approaches levels of candidate-sponsored advertising. However, the question of the influence of soft-money-sponsored issue advocacy advertising on the electorate or its indirect influence on democratic processes has received scant attention in political communication research. This investigation examined the influence of soft-money-sponsored issue advocacy advertising in House and Senate campaigns, comparing its effects with candidate-sponsored positive and negative advertising on candidate preferences and matters intrinsic to democratic processes.
Sounds Exciting! !: The Effects of Auditory Complexity on Listeners’ Attitudes and Memory for Radio Promotional Announcements • Robert F. Potter and Coy Callison, Alabama • This experiment tested the ability of a limited-capacity model of cognition to predict listener reactions to changes in the structural complexity of radio promotional announcements. Past research shows that certain auditory structural features cause listeners to automatically allocate cognitive resources to message encoding. This study shows that increasing the number of such features in promos leads to better recognition, free recall, delayed free recall, and more positive attitudes about promos and the stations that produce them.
Opinion Leadership And Social Capital The Role Of Dispositional And Informational Variables In The Production Of Civic Participation • Dietram A. Scheufele and Dhavan V. Shah, Wisconsin-Madison • In recent years, a number of scholars has bemoaned declining levels of social trust and civic engagement in our society. A decline in trust, some have argued, is reciprocally linked to a decrease in civic engagement and vice versa. Our study examines the processes through which social capital is maintained. We differentiate three dimensions of social capital: social trust, life satisfaction, and civic engagement. Further, we examine the influence of demographic variables, opinion leadership, political interest, and informational variables on these dimensions of social capital.
A Systematic Approach To Analyzing The Structure Of News Texts • Michael Schmierbach, Wisconsin-Madison • Despite increasing research examining media texts, there is no systematic approach to news discourse. This paper considers some of the issues raised by work in framing and discourse analysis and then suggests a systematic approach to analyzing media texts – such an approach could provide data that would be more useful for the development of theories about how the structure of news discourse influences audiences, authors and the texts themselves.
The Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Gun Control: Framing Campaign Issues and Voter Decision-Making Strategies • Dhavan V. Shah, Wisconsin-Madison, David Domke, Washington and Daniel B. Wackman, Minnesota • This study examined the relationships among cognitive and affective media frames of gun control, voters’ interpretations of this issue as well as their emotional arousal about it, and patterns of decision-making. Subjects were presented newspaper articles about a simulated election contest and asked to make a candidate choice. Within issue environments containing candidate stands on four issues, the textual frame of a single issue, gun control, was altered within a 2 x 2 design.
Does Social Accountability Ameliorate Television’s Effects on Social Reality? • Michael A. Shapiro, Cornell University • The meaning of relationships between television viewing and social reality estimates continues to be controversial. Less attention has been paid to whether television’s putative distortions of social reality influence real-world decision making. Many, if not most, decisions are made in a social environment in which people feel somehow accountable to others. In an experiment, shopping mall participants who anticipated discussing their social reality answers with an expert whose viewpoint was uncertain or an expert who believed that people usually overestimate, gave lower social reality estimates than participants assured their answers were completely private.
The Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model: A Framework for Theoretical Development in Persuasion and Message Effects • Michael D. Slater, Colorado State University • This paper overviews the Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model, and reviews recent research supportive of the theory’s claims. The Extended ELM argues that involvement should be conceptualized in terms of message recipient’s goals in processing the message and the resulting processing strategies. Based on this premise, propositions about processing of persuasive content across message genres including entertainment narrative, news, and persuasive messages have been articulated and tested.
When Evaluation Design Affects Results: Meta-Analysis of Evaluations of Mediated Health Communication Campaigns • Leslie B. Snyder and Mark A. Hamilton, Connecticut • To examine how methodological choices and artifacts of evaluations affect the likelihood of detecting health behavior changes in media campaigns, we meta-analyzed 48 mediated health campaigns. Effect sizes were greater when evaluations maintained experimental control, used a cross-sectional sample, measured close to the end of the campaign, and used more equivalent intervention and control communities. Using a self-selected sample inflated effect sizes. The results are useful for evaluators and researchers to understand the precise impact of methodological factors.
Cognitive Filtration of Crime and Violence News • Esther Thorson, Missouri-Columbia and Michael Antecol, Stanford University • The study examines the impact of news media consumption and attention on knowledge of and attitudes concerning crime and violence. Crime and violence coverage in news is argued misrepresent reality in a variety of ways. The more people watch local television news and read a local newspaper, the more they overestimate the occurrence of violent crime, the more they fear victimization by crime, the less likely they are to know crime has decreased in their city, and the more they support punitive and reject preventive solutions to crime.
Challenging the ‘Mobilization Model’ of Agenda Setting • John Bentley Zibluk, Arkansas State University • Agenda-setting researchers often assume an underlying “mobilization model” of mass communication in which citizens supply story ideas to media outlets. The resulting stories serve as catalysts for change in politics and society. However, in the last decade some studies have questioned that model. By revealing who influences or controls the agenda presented to the readers of three small daily newspapers in Northwest Ohio regarding local school coverage, this paper examines that model.
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