Watching viewers watch TV: Processing live, breaking, and emotional news in a naturalistic setting

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 83, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 511-529

  Miller, Andrea ^a  

^a LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

MASS MEDIA; MEDIA ROLE; TELEVISION;

EID: 33846050055     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900608300303     Document Type: Article

References (79)

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14. Annie Lang, "The Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Message Processing," Journal of Communication 50 (winter 2000): 46-70.
15. Andrea Miller and Glenn Leshner, "Processing Breaking, Live, and Emotional Television News," Media Psychology (in press).
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25. Newhagen and Reeves, "The Evening's Bad News: Effects of Compelling Negative Television News Images on Memory," 25-41.
26. Lang, Newhagen, and Reeves, "Negative Video as Structure: Emotion, Attention, Capacity, and Memory," 460-77;
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31. Robert Zajonc, "On the Primacy of Affect," American Psychologist 39 (February 1984): 117-23.
32. Lang, Dhillon, and Dong, "The Effects of Emotional Arousal and Valence on Television Viewer's Cognitive Capacity and Memory";
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35. Reeves et al., "Negative and Positive Television Messages: Effects of Message Type and Context on Attention and Memory," 679-94;
36. Newhagen and Reeves, "The Evening's Bad News: Effects of Compelling Negative Television News Images on Memory," 25-41;
37. Esther Thorson and Marian Friestad, "The Effects of Emotion on Episodic Memory for Television Commercials.," in Advertising and Consumer Psychology, ed. Alice Tybout and Patricia Cafferata (New York: Lexington Press, 1989), 305-25.
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39. Lang, Dhillon, and Dong,"The Effects of Emotional Arousal and Valence on Television Viewer's Cognitive Capacity and Memory," 313-327;
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48. Faith Gleicher and Richard Petty, "Expectations of Reassurance Influence: The Nature of Fear-Stimulated Attitude Change," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 28 (January 1992): 86-100.
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50. Richard Lazarus, Emotion and Adaptation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
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56. Newhagen, "TV News Images That Induce Anger, Fear, and Disgust: Effects on Approach-Avoidance and Memory," 265-77.
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58. Shoemaker, "Hardwired for News: Using Biological and Cultural Evolution to Explain the Surveillance Function."
59. Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978).
60. Farhi, "Going Live";
61. Tuggle, Huffman, and Rosengard, "Live News Reporting: How a Young Demographic Views It."
62. Ronald Snoelier, Claes H. de Vreese, and Holli A. Semetko, "The Effects of Live Television Reporting on Recall and Appreciation of Political News," European Journal of Communication 17 (March 2002): 85-102.
63. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition.
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66. David Tewksbury, Andrew J. Weaver, and Brett Maddex, "Accidentally Informed: Incidental News Exposure on the World Wide Web," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (autumn 2001): 533-54.
67. Esther Thorson, "Using Eyes on Screen as a Measure of Attention to Television," in Measuring Psychological Responses to Media, ed. Annie Lang (Hillsdale, NJ: LEA, 1994), 65-84.
68. Several design features of the experiment were put in place to reduce experimental contamination. First, the majority of the students were communication, business, and sociology majors. No journalism students were allowed to participate. After the experiment during debriefing, participants were asked if they were suspicious of the stimuli in the waiting room. Only one person admitted thus and was omitted from analysis. Also, participants were told not to discuss with anyone the details of the experiment. Finally, participants had to make individual, scheduled appointments because the experiment allowed for only one person to participate at a time.
69. A pretest videotape with twenty-five stories depicting a wide range of live coverage was prepared. Stories were selected for the pretest that contained video segments that included images of destruction, injury, and suffering. The tape was shown to thirty-nine undergraduate students. Students rated the stories using a pencil and paper questionnaire on two five-point Likert response scales, one each for fear and disgust. Stories were chosen for inclusion in this experiment using comparative mean analysis, where stories that had mean ratings high on disgust, but low on fear, were candidates for the disgust condition, and vice versa for the fear condition.
70. Voice-overs were the only story format tested in order to control for confounds such as differences in sourcing or reporter preference. In the future, other styles of stories could be tested to see if they have an effect on attention.
71. Rotation was necessary to control for order effects, such as primacy and recency.
72. If the participants were not watching television, almost 70% of the time they were reading a magazine; another 26% of the time they were checking their e-mail; while the remaining 4% of the time participants studied, ate or drank, or talked on the cell phone.
73. Thorson, "Using Eyes on Screen as a Measure of Attention to Television," 65-84.
74. Stephen Levi and Daniel Anderson, "The Development of Attention," Journal of Communication 26 (spring 1976): 126-35.
75. Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, and Provost, "PsyScope: A New Graphic Interactive Environment for Designing Psychology Experiments."
76. Glenn Cameron and David Frieske, "The Time Needed to Answer: Measurement of Memory Response Latency," in Measuring Psychological Responses to Media, ed. Lang, 149-64.
77. The problem of omitting information in the initial stage of the experiment was weighed against the problem of artificiality that experiments often create. The decision was made that in order to measure how news presentation and emotionality affect attention and memory in a realistic environment with distractions present, it was necessary to omit information. The necessity of incidental exposure was why informed consent could not be obtained prior to EOS implementation. In such a setting, participants should be unaware that they are being videotaped and that testing will occur immediately following the viewing experience. If the participants had known memory testing would occur, the results would have been skewed. Therefore, the university's Institutional Review Board granted a waiver of consent provided that the participants would be fully debriefed at the conclusion of the experiment.
78. The accuracy variables for Live and Traditional were transformed by taking the square root of both before the t-test analysis occurred to improve normality.
79. Miller and Leshner, "Processing Breaking, Live, and Emotional Television News."