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5 - The challenge of trying to make a difference using media messages
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- By Sharon Dunwoody, University of Wisconsin–Madison
- Edited by Susanne C. Moser, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Lisa Dilling, University of Colorado, Boulder
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- Book:
- Creating a Climate for Change
- Published online:
- 20 August 2009
- Print publication:
- 01 February 2007, pp 89-104
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Summary
When social problems erupt, one classic response of governments and organizations is to wade in with an information campaign. From automobile seat belts to AIDS to recycling, policy-makers wage war on our inappropriate behaviors with newspaper stories, brochures, and public service announcements.
The goals are often noble ones, the dollars spent gargantuan, and the outcomes all too predictable: Messages seem to change the behaviors of some people some of the time but have almost no discernible impact on most people most of the time (McGuire, 1986; Hornik, 1989).
The situation has so discouraged policy-makers in the past that the pattern was given its own, dismal label: minimal effects (for perhaps the earliest articulation of this name, see Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet, 1944). If media messages have no impact, policy-makers opined, why bother?
Today's communication scholars would agree with yesterday's policy-makers that media messages are often poor catalysts for behavior change, but many would disagree with that “minimal effects” label. Mediated messages can have pronounced effects, they would suggest, just not the ones envisioned by those who design them.
As countries around the globe face the prospect of encouraging massive behavior changes in order to try to prevent or, at the least, cope with climate change, it will be tempting to resort to information campaigns. I would urge us to succumb to that temptation; after all, media campaigns offer dramatic economies of scale by reaching large audiences at relatively low cost with potentially useful information.
7 - Judgmental Heuristics and News Reporting
- Edited by Rajeev Gowda, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Jeffrey C. Fox, Catawba College, North Carolina
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- Book:
- Judgments, Decisions, and Public Policy
- Published online:
- 11 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 20 December 2001, pp 177-198
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Summary
A kind of cultural folklore has grown up around the practice of news reporting to explain how journalists do their job. It's a vibrant and enduring set of stories, spurred largely by the intersection of two factors. One is that, although news products are ubiquitous features of the cultural landscape, the processes that underlie these products are hidden from the users. Despite the fact that viewers can often see the newsroom looming behind well-groomedanchor people duringTVnewscasts, they are never permitted to see news actually being constructed. The second is that our culture (as well as others) regards the effects of media messages as both powerful and problematic. That is, we are much more likely to worry about the negative impacts of media messages than to celebrate the positive ones. Legends build rapidly around any process that combines mystery with the potential for evil.
These folkloric explanations are summoned to provide reasons for what people see when they attend to news. More specifically, they serve to rationalize people's perceptions that their media diet is awash in flawed accounts. Here are a few of the explanations that we hear from friends and family:
Generating the largest audience possible is the primary goal of a journalist, and he or she will accomplish this by selecting stories that pander to the “lowest common denominator.”
Entertaining is more important than educating, so journalists will “sensationalize” information with few moral qualms.
Social responsibility will always play second fiddle to the economic bottom line; journalists are out to “sell newspapers,” not to provide a public service.