David Lassen and Dr. Christopher Karpowitz, Political Science

Main Text

Consumers of media during the past ten years have seen a dramatic shift in the way information is presented to the American public. With technical innovations associated with the Internet and the cultural adaptations that have accompanied them, modern American media has become increasingly interactive. Responding to these changes, many television networks such as CNN and MSNBC have begun to alter the visual format of their content to more closely resemble online sources of information. It is not uncommon, for example, for a modern news broadcast to include information on multiple stories simultaneously, including some information that may even be provided by viewers. Yet, little is known about the way in which these presentation changes are affecting civic learning, recall, and subsequent application of media information in America. In my ORCA funded project I began to examine some of these questions and lay the groundwork for larger, related, more rigorous projects I hope to complete in the near future.

Key to understanding civic and political learning is recognition of the centrality of cognitive processes and limitations. In this project I incorporated these elements by using the limited capacity model of mediated message processing (Lang et al. 2000). This model suggests three active processes in information processing: encoding, storage, and retrieval. Lang posits that these processes are simultaneously active, competing for limited resources and thereby limiting cognitive ability based on a number of variables. Several strains of interdisciplinary research support this model. For example, studies indicate that presenting a large amount of information that varies in type of presentation and/or subject may inhibit learning (encoding and storage) and subsequent recall (retrieval) by overwhelming an individual brain’s capacity to process and store information (Grimes 1992; Lang, et al. 1999; Fox, et al. 2004).

Other research also indicates, however, that neural pathways in the brain (Graber 2001, Mandler 1984) are created based on how interesting and/or useful an individual perceives a piece of information to be. Therefore, though the above studies suggest that as the number and type of media sources present on an individual screen increase, general recall and learning will decrease, this negative association may have a lesser effect on individuals who have high political interest, high political knowledge, or a high self-conception as a knowledgeable individual. My project began to test these theories as they relate to political learning from news media in the increasingly interactive digital era. The main dependent variable in my experiment was factual recall and learning among participants. The main control variable of interest in my project was content format (Craig and Bolls 2003; Ansolabehere, Behr, and Iyengar 1993).
To begin to examine the theories of learning presented above in a modern information environment, I presented more than 30 randomly selected BYU student volunteers with video content designed to mimic selected aspects of familiar television news programming. Video content was presented to participants in one of three, randomly assigned formats. Participants in Group One were presented with only audio and video of news stories and reporters without any

additional on-screen text. Participants in Group Two viewed the same audio-video content as those in Group One, but were also presented with textual information about other news stories as streaming headlines in a news ticker along the bottom of the screen similar to that seen on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or other major television news broadcast. Finally, participants in Group Three saw the same material as those in Group Two, but with the addition of a continuous stream of textual statements along the top of the screen presented as comments from other viewers.

I independently gathered all content for presentation from publicly available sources. Audio-visual content was collected from online CNN archives, news ticker headlines were gathered from major wire services, and viewer comments were selected from a random selection of topically relevant Twitter posts. Material was selected in order to both maximize relevance (topics that had recently been reported in the news were preferred over topics that had not recently been discussed by major news broadcasts) and minimize sensationalism (material that was exceptionally unusual, sensational, or otherwise noteworthy was avoided in order to better represent the reaction of a typical news viewer consuming typical news content). Additionally, many randomly selected Twitter posts and some randomly selected CNN archival content was discarded in order to avoid potentially offensive language and images. Finally, in order to avoid arousing feelings associated with specific news organizations, all references to CNN and other news organizations included in the content were deleted.

Prior to viewing prepared material, participants also completed a preliminary survey focusing on their media interests and habits as well as their perceptions of their own political knowledge. Participants were asked to record both their entertainment preferences and behavior. This initial survey was administered via email and utilized Qualtrics survey software.

Ultimately, because of the limited sample size associated with this project all empirical conclusions are preliminary and require further verification. Because of the unique opportunity I was afforded by ORCA funds to design and administer a sophisticated laboratory experiment as an undergraduate, however, I have already begun designing and preparing for a similar, much larger project I will likely complete as a Political Science graduate student. Even after extensive planning and discussions with my faculty mentor, many unforeseen obstacles arose as I administered this project. The lessons I learned during this initial research experience will thus prove invaluable in my future experimental studies of this timely and important subject.

Works Cited

• Ansolabehere, Stephen, Roy Behr, and Shanto Iyengar. 1993. The Media Game: American Politics in the Television Age. New York: MacMillan Publishing.
• Craig, Tracey, and Paul D. Bolls. 2003. “Cognitive and Emotional Correlates of Social Comparison and Cognitive Dissonance During Exposure to TV Ads.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, San Diego, California.
• Fox, Julia R., Annie Lang, Yongkuk Chung, Seungwhan Lee, Nancy Schwartz, and Deborah Potter. 2004. “Picture This: Effects of Graphics on the Processing of Television News.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 48 (4) 646-74.
• Graber, Doris Appel. 2001. Processing Politics: Learning from Television in the Internet Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Grimes, Tom. 1992. “Mild Auditory-Visual Dissonance in Television News May Exceed Viewer Attentional
  Capacity.” Human Communication Research 18 (2): 268-98.
• Lang, Annie, Paul D. Bolls, Robert F. Potter, and Karlynn Kawahara. 1999. “The Effects of Production Pacing and Arousing Content on the Information Processing of Television Messages.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 43 (4): 451-75.
• Lang, Annie, Shuhua Zhou, Nancy Schwartz, Paul D. Bolls, and Robert F. Potter. 2000. “The Effects of Edits on Arousal, Attention, and Memory for Television Messages: When an Edit is an Edit can an Edit be Too Much?” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44 (1): 94-109.
• Mandler, Jean. 1984. Stories, Scripts, and Scenes: Aspects of Schema Theory. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.