Understanding Audiences

Learning To Use the Media Constructively

Robert H. Wicks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2000
• ISBN:
  9781135656263
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Media & Communications Industry
• Index: Business

Understanding Audiences helps readers to recognize the important role that media plays in their lives and suggests ways in which they may use media constructively. Author Robert H. Wicks considers the relationship between the producers and the receivers of media information, focusing on how messages shape perceptions of social reality. He analyzes how contemporary media--including newspapers, film, television, and the Internet--vie for the attention of the audience members, and evaluates the importance of message structure and content in attracting and maintaining the attention of audiences. Wicks also examines the principles associated with persuasive communication and the ways in which professional communicators frame messages to help audiences construct meaning about the world around them. Among other features, this text:
* describes the processes associated with human information processing;
* presents an analysis of the principles associated with social learning in children and adults and explores the possibility that media messages may cultivate ideas, attitudes, and criticisms of this perspective;
* explains how most media messages are framed to highlight or accentuate specific perspectives of individuals or organizations--challenging the notion of objectivity in media information messages;
* considers the effects of media exposure, such as whether the contemporary media environment may be partially responsible for the recent rash of school violence among young people;
* analyzes the Internet as an interactive medium and considers whether it has the potential to contribute to social and civic disengagement as it substitutes for human interaction; and
* evaluates the principles of the uses and gratifications approach as they apply to the new media environment, including traditional media as well as popular genres like talk shows and developing media systems such as the Internet. Intended for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students who need to understand the nature of the media and how they interact with these messages, Understanding Audiences promotes the development of media literacy skills and helps readers to understand the processes associated with engaging them in media messages. It also offers them tools to apply toward the shaping of media in a socially constructive way.

III
USING Media Messages

In the first two parts of this volume, we considered the extent to which people interact with media. We evaluated the strategies that producers of media messages employ to attract an audience and persuade people to behave in a certain way. Finally, we analyzed communication messages that frame information to accentuate and highlight certain features of the information. In Part III of this volume, our focus shifts to consumers of media products. We begin by exploring the principles of human information processing. We then consider principles associated with social learning in children. We explore the possibility that media messages may cultivate ideas and attitudes and criticisms of this perspective. Finally we apply the principles of the uses and gratifications approach to the new media environment.

6
Fundamentals of Media Information Processing

SUMMARY

• Memory processes include the long-term and short-term stores and working memory.
• Attention to messages may or may not produce lasting memories.
• Interpreting media information is accomplished either through automatic or controlled processing.
• Processing interpreted in the context of preexisting attitudes, opinions, and beliefs (i.e., top- own processing) guides message interpretation.
• Media messages access related stored information.
• Accessing stored information may produce common knowledge.
• Networks of associated ideas contained in schemas facilitate construction of common knowledge.
• Schemas are instrumental in helping process media messages.
• Message structure and content influence how successfully and effectively we process media messages.
• Media practices and norms influence the ways in which professional communicators construct messages.

RECEIVNG AND PROCESSING MEDIA MESSAGES

This chapter considers what happens psychologically when people receive media messages. As already seen, the media play an important role in assembling messages that people read, hear, or see. Individuals also play a critical role in the process of deciphering these messages. People interpret information in the context of their life experiences. Many of these experiences are stored in memory and drawn on to make sense of new information. We begin by analyzing the specific processes that take place when we encounter entertainment or information messages.

MEMORY PROCESSES

To explain the process of meaning, theories associated with attending to, and retention of, media messages are reviewed. Although psychologists have yet to agree on a universal memory theory certain principles are widely accepted. Memory is dependent on stimuli affecting the sensory organs such as eyes and ears (Broadbent, 1958; Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Kellermann, 1985). Variously called the sensory register (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968a, 1968b), the sensory store (Wyer & Srull, 1980, 1981), or the sensory buffer (Hastie & Carlston, 1980), this region of the brain receives and interprets external stimuli such as sights, sounds, or smells.

Most memory theorists propose the presence of short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) subsystems within the overall memory system of the brain (J.R.Anderson, 1983; Eich, 1982; Guillund & Shiffrin, 1984; Hintzman, 1986; Murdock, 1961, 1982; Ratcliff, 1978; Ratcliff & McCoon, 1989). The STM contains a region known as working memory (WM) where current thinking is believed to occur. The STM is believed to have limited capacity because memories within it decay quite rapidly (Baddeley, 1976; J. Brown, 1958; Peterson & Peterson, 1959). The LTM is capable of storing information for indefinite periods of time, even for a lifetime.

In the past, assimilating information into memory was believed to involve a series of discrete stages (Craik & Lockhart, 1972). The preliminary stages involve the evaluation of sensory or physical stimuli such as lines, angles, brightness, pitch, and loudness or perceptual stimuli such as sounds, sights, and smells. If these stimuli generate little cognitive activity, the processing is shallow. If the stimuli generate attention on the part of the perceiver, however, a deeper form of processing occurs. At some threshold, the stimuli may initiate a search whereby the new stimuli are matched against stored abstractions. The individual may deduce new meaning from the search process. Deeper processing leads to elaboration, which triggers associations between new information and information based on the individual’s past experience. This new meaning is stored in a relatively permanent fashion in long-term memory as trace.

More recent models of memory (e.g., Basil, 1994; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986) challenge the Craik and Lockhart (1972) memory model. These newer models, such as multiple resource theory (e.g., Basil, 1994) or the limited capacity model (e.g., Lang, Newhagen, & Reeves, 1996), argue in favor of processing in which distinct mental tasks are performed simultaneously rather than in a specified order. Specifically humans possess limited informationprocessing resources but are capable of shifting ting these resources as needed to assist in processing information. The requirements of the processing task dictate whether resources are concentrated on encoding, decoding, or retrieval of stored information. Audience members shift resources as needed to attend to and process media messages. Television programmers also appear to recognize that people are adept at monitoring multiple streams of information (see Box 6.1).

BOX 6.1. Using Multiple Streams of Information

During the third week of August 1998, weather forecasters began to notice the formation of the first hurricane of the season off the East Coast of the United States. News accounts on Monday August 24, indicated that the path of Hurricane Bonnie was so slow and wobbly that it was not clear when or even if the storm would hit land. By Tuesday night, the storm was centered about 200 miles south of Outer Banks of North Carolina. It reached speeds of 115 miles per hour causing the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. By Wednesday, Hurricane Bonnie became a major news story receiving ongoing coverage by CNN and the Weather Channel.

CNBC, which defines the daytime target audience segment as viewers of financial and stock market news, chose to present ongoing live coverage of the storm. As the eye of Hurricane Bonnie moved closer to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, a CNBC reporter at the beach explained that hurricane force winds and torrential rains were approaching the North Carolina coast. As the hurricane report continued, simultaneous video images revealed that the Dow Jones Industrial was down 93.46 points, the Standard and Poors Index was down 9.00, and Nasdaq was down 27.43. Two crawls on the bottom of the screen presented individual stock quotes from the American and the New York Stock exchanges. With the mute button depressed, text of the report on Hurricane Bonnie appeared on the top of the television screen. Seven independent streams of information provided viewers of CNBC with information about the financial markets and a storm in North Carolina.

Audience members also turned to newer media sources to stay informed. When Hurricane Bonnie was at her mightiest, traffic volume was sky high at the Weather Channel’s homepage (http://www.weather.com). Todd Walrath, vice president for online services at the Weather Channel, said the Web site received about 40 million page views, including 10 million on August 26, when the hurricane swept into North Carolina. On a normal day, the site received about 3 million hits (Richtel, 1998).

Working and Short-Term Memory

The WM is a subsystem of the STM. The WM contains the thoughts or ideas that are actively engaged—those we are currently using (Baddeley, 1986; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1993). Psychologists once thought that people could (metaphorically speaking) maintain about seven chunks of information in an active state at a given time (Bower, 1970; 1972a, 1972b, 1975; Bower & Springston, 1970; Kellermann, 1985; Miller, 1956; Murdock, 1961; Simon, 1974; Sperling, 1960). A chunk is theorized to be a finite set of information such as words or images that decays in 20 to 30 seconds. The problem with this conceptualization of memory is that it does not acknowledge that people are capable of monitoring many environmental stimuli simultaneously (Anderson, 1990; Basil, 1994; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986).

Consider that one can simultaneously drive a vehicle through city traffic, listen to news on the radio, hear sounds, smell aromas, and plan out activities for the day The issue is not lack of capacity, but rather the inability to maintain a great amount of information in a high state of activation. The information (e.g., thoughts or ideas) that is in a high state of activation is that which is currently in the WM (Baddeley 1986; Kintsch, 1972). However, all of the environmental stimuli to which we are exposed comprise the repertoire of information in the STM. Hence, a television news bulletin with surprising or interesting information can catch and shift our attention from the conscious or STM into the WM. Bulletins on the vote by Congress to impeach the president or the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City are examples of events that may prompt us to shift to WM.

Theorists believe that concepts in the working memory can activate a set of related concepts and associations within the long-term memory. The principles of such activation were well established in a variety of theoretical perspectives, including spreading activation theory by Collins and Loftus (1975), the associative network model of social memory by Hastie, (1986) and the connectionist network model of knowledge by Rumelhart and McClelland (1986). These theories assume that processing one news item in WM may lead to accessing other memories of related news items. Therefore, context is supplied, enabling the media user to make sense of new information. This process may add new content to a schema, which will refine the frame through which interpretation of information occurs.

Long-Term Memory

The long-term memory (LTM) subsystem contains the semantic longterm memory (SLTM) and the episodic long-term memory (ELTM); Rumelhart, Lindsay, & Norman, 1972; Tulving, 1972). The SLTM stores general knowledge that has been accumulated through repeated exposure to information or situations. A weathercaster who predicts rain during the evening newscast may cause an individual to remember to bring an umbrella to work the next day because the individual has fallen into such a habit. By contrast, the ELTM contains information about specific events or episodes. The same weather report predicting rain may prompt another individual to decide to give away tickets to a college football game. In short, the ELTM involves using information to address specific issues. ELTM is constantly changing to accommodate new events and information. The SLTM remains more stable because it pertains to general events, principles, or ideas.

Shortly after exposure to media, humans tend to draw on episodic memory (Bower, Black, & Turner, 1979). As time passes, memory processes become more abstract and constructive as inferential associations and linkages are made between new and stored information (Spiro, 1980). This is because we integrate new information into schemas, which represent general knowledge rather than memories about specific incidents (Branford, 1979; Kintsch, 1978; Neisser, 1976; Royer, 1977).

Reconstructing knowledge implies interpreting new information in the context of stored knowledge. Reconstruction may result in conclusions or interpretations that are incorrect because individuals may not remember where they initially received the facts (Brosius, 1993). For example, people may forget that information about one political candidate did not come from television news or newspapers but rather from an attack advertisement produced by an opposing candidate (Biocca, 1991; Jamieson, 1992; Kern & Wicks, 1994).

A common misconception about memory of media information has to do with attention to messages. Attention often does, but does not necessarily lead to recall (Collins, 1983; Grimes & Meadowcroft, 1995; Kahneman, 1973; Meadowcroft & Reeves, 1989; Reeves, Newhagen, Maibach, Basil, & Kurz, 1991). Rather, rehearsing or thinking about information in the working memory may lead to the development of stronger and more durable memories. Strong memories are those that are well learned and relatively easy to retrieve from the LTM because they have been regularly rehearsed (Baddeley 1986).

Automatic and Controlled Processing of Media Messages

People attend to media in either an automatic or controlled way. Automatic processes are unconscious, unintentional, involuntary effortless, autonomous, and outside awareness (Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977; Shiffrin & Schneider, 1977). They are unintentional because they do not require a specific goal and are effortless because they do not consume significant amounts of processing capacity. Once initiated, they do not need to be controlled because they occur unconsciously (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Leaving the television turned to CNN while reading, attending to chores, or engaging in conversation represents an example of automatic processing. The viewer may be monitoring the news without much attention or effort.

Certain television programs may require controlled processing if the viewer is to receive benefits from the viewing experience. Consider cooking or carpentry television programs that teach the basics of making a soufflé or building a deck. These programs, which are specifically intended to demonstrate how to execute a task, afford viewers only one opportunity to absorb the material. They must pay careful attention. Thus, controlled processing implies an intense focus on media messages rooted in a motivation to learn. It should be noted, however, that automatic processing implies the presence of active audience members, although the degree to which people attend to the message may be considerably lower.

In summary if an item encountered in the media is capable of attracting a viewer’s attention, and the content presented is maintained in a high state of activation in the WM, the item is more likely to be remembered. This heightened state of activation implies rehearsal, such as thinking about the content or discussing it with other people. The longer the content remains in an activated state, the greater the likelihood that elaboration occurs (i.e., the new information is compared to previously stored knowledge), which increases the likelihood that linkages will develop between new and previously stored knowledge.

DEVELOPING COMMON KNOWLEDGE

Understanding how we interact with media involves the use of cognitive schemas, constructs, cognitive maps, and scripts that contribute to the creation of meaning through the interaction of new and stored information (Nimmo, 1977). Such a perspective argues in favor of the acquisition of common knowledge. Common knowledge is obtained by actively monitoring the information environment with the intent of selectively isolating and abstracting bits and pieces of seemingly novel, important, useful, or interesting information (Graber, 1988, 1990; Neuman, Just, & Crigler, 1992). Integration of information takes place in WM, and the act of rehearsing information strengthens memories as mental pathways between the LTM and WM are deepened producing durable trace (J.R., Anderson, 1990; Baddeley, 1976; Roediger & Challis, 1989; Roediger, Payne, Gillespie, & Lean, 1982; Roediger & Thorpe, 1978 ). Memories that were stored for quite some time may be summoned if the proper cues are encountered or primed (Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1980, 1981; Vanderwart, 1984).

Rehearsing and presenting proper cues are two mechanisms that lead to accelerated recall of stored information (Wicks, 1992a, 1995). These processes are fundamentally psychological in nature. Specifically, they suggest that:

1. Active processing guides attention and reception of media messages.
2. Top-down processing guides message interpretation.
3. Membership within cultural, social, demographic, or psychographic groups may influence meaning construction.
4. Message structure and content can interact to influence meaning construction.
5. Institutional norms and practices at media organizations can influence the production of media messages.

INFLUENCES ON THE PROCESSING OF MEDIA MESSAGES

Active Processing Guides Attention and Reception of Media Messages

Theorists have long attempted to determine whether differences in processing between textual and visual media exist. In the debate, television has often been considered a mindless activity because we simply receive it. Noble (1983) suggested that television viewing is passive because it taps the emotions rather than cognitions or thoughts. Singer (1980) asserted that the process of simultaneously encoding visual and audio channels that may or may not be in consonance (i.e., visual and auditory redundancy) present viewers with a formidable processing challenge. Because people are not presumed to be up to the processing challenge, television viewing tends to be passive.

Some communication theorists believe that reading text forces people to create mental images, whereas visual media such as television and films provide the images to viewers. As a result, human beings expend cognitive energy to interpret text. Visual images are ignored or absorbed depending on motivational circumstances of the individual audience members. However, the process of constructing mental images is not necessarily confined to the print medium. Hoijer (1989) asserted that as we encounter scenes or sequences from television, we must also create mental representations. These mental representations are not photocopies but rather interpretations and impressions that are the result of interaction with cognitive structures in memory In addition, interpretation may be influenced by affective states of mind or emotions that are tapped during the viewing experience (Zillmann, 1983b). This process of making sense and attaching meaning to incoming stimuli is basically what is meant by comprehension.

It is also possible that people simply perceive reading to be active and viewing to be passive (Clark, 1983). Because children either directly or implicitly are taught to believe that reading is more difficult than watching television, they come to assume this is the case. Salomon (1979) found that children expect reading to be more difficult so they expend more mental effort. As a result of the added processing effort, memory for text may be better than memory for v...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• I: Beyond Media Effects to Constructing Social Reality
• II: Constructing Media Messages
• III: USING Media Messages
• References