WRTG 101Writing Assignment #3: Research-Supported Essay
400 POINTS: 40% OF THE FINAL GRADE
Writing Assignment #3 will be a research-supported essay.
Courses that fulfill the General Education Requirements (GERs) at UMUC all have a common theme—technological transformations. In following this theme throughout this semester in WRTG 101, we have read the analysis of one author, Neil Postman, on the impact of technology, particularly of television, on various aspects of society. In this essay, you will continue this theme.
You have four choices for your essay topic. Please choose one of the four choices.
You might analyze one or more of the following. These are just examples. Many approaches are possible for this topic.
You might analyze any one or more of the following. These are just examples. Many approaches are possible for this topic.
For example, you might analyze any one of the following. These are just examples. Many approaches are possible for this topic.
This option represents a more general approach to the essay. You may or may not find that the Postman book is helpful for this choice.
Some examples might be the following. These are just examples. Many approaches are possible for this topic.
Outline for the essay
The essay should have the following elements:
Define any terms necessary for the reader.Provide a historical background on your topic if desirable, perhaps using references from Postman to help the reader understand the impact of technology on the area on which you are writing.
The sources and citation format for this essayAt least six sources are required for this essay. One of the sources may be Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.
At least four sources must be acquired through the databases subscribed to by UMUC’s Information and Library Services. In addition, at least three sources are to come from scholarly journals.
If the sources are scholarly, the argument you make in the paper will be more persuasive. For this reason, feel free to use all scholarly sources if you can.
In addition, you may cite more than six sources. Seven or eight sources (or more) could be necessary to establish your argument and defend your thesis.
Please cite your sources and list them at the end of your paper using APA format.
Length: 1300-1500 words
The strategy for this essay:
This essay can be a persuasive essay, in which you try to persuade the reader of a particular position. Or it can be an expository essay that synthesizes material, an essay in which you give information to the reader and synthesize the different viewpoints on an issue. The following examples help illustrate these two approaches.
For a persuasive essay, you could take the position that video games should be integrated into school science curricula to teach middle school students. You would cite articles that demonstrate research studies and other pieces of evidence to support the claim that video games can enhance instruction in science classes and will help middle school students learn science more effectively.
If you write a persuasive essay, please follow one of the following three options for organization:
More information on these three styles is given in the following video tutorial:
For an expository essay, you could synthesize information on this topic, one that summarizes and analyzes the evidence for and against using video games in school curricula.
Impact of Internet on Journalism
Crystal Jefferson
June 23, 2013
WRTG 101
Annemarie J Chiarini
Impact of internet on journalism
Network news is perceived as the first electronic media to understand the necessity of establishing its presence in the internet. Following the development of these sites, various major news websites have established themselves as the most trusted online news sites, which are largely accessed for online news information. Many online users accessing news over the internet consider these online broadcasters as more credible as compared to the parent news companies. Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Which sites? Take this claim a few beats further Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Is this your opinion or is it from a source? If it’s your opinion, support the assertion with evidence. If from a source, cite the source. Or is it your thesis? If so, you need to revise it, so it is a clear statement. These resources may help as you revise the thesis:
http://classweb.gmu.edu/rnanian/ThesisGuidelines.html
http://www.cws.illinois.edu/workshop/writers/tips/thesis/
http://faculty.mdc.edu/nleon/Thesis%20Handout
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/724/01/
Also, check in with the EWC for suggestions on how to craft a strong thesis.
There have been questions raised about the credibility of online news following accusation of bias, sensationalism and misplaced priorities in delivery of news using various media. Events such as the overplay of the Monica Lewinsky and Chandra Levy story or the misplacement of the 2000 presidential elections supports this argument about credibility concerns that has led to news media being brought to public scrutiny on how it affects discourse and formation of personal and public opinion. Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: 2 separate incidents – need a plural Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: 1 incident – no plural Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: revise this, so your word choice is more precise and accurate.
Journalism is currently at the point where ideology has been replaced by image and cosmetics. In the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, Neil Postman insert year of publication here shows his worries about technology particularly its effect on journalism and culture. Multimedia related media is inferior when compared to print media as a result of bias in reporting information in electronic news platforms due to journalists being evasive or selective when it comes to delivery in order to make the news entertaining. In print media, a reader is required to understand, ingest then think logically about what the writer wished to argue before supporting or criticizing the information (Postman, 2005). Many newspapers these comprise of an online newspaper in addition to print product counterpart. Statistics show that there are at least 1200 newspapers offered in websites with an approximately 178 million people accessing the internet at least once every week. These internet dailies mean that people no longer require the traditional media to be informed on issues such as campaigns, education, sports, or economic issues. Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Book titles are italicized Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Replace with more accurate words Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: This is a very long, yet nonspecific sentence. You need to be very clear what electronic news platforms you are referring to…or that Postman is referring to. Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Word missing? Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Cite this source
Many online websites provide users with a filtering method to access a wide range of news selectively. These classifications consist of content-based technique and collaborative filter technique. In content-based technique, a user enters specific keywords or chooses a preferred news section to access a customized online newspaper or television channels such as CNN or BBC online news. In collaborative filter technique, a news platform employs another person’s opinion (Knobloch-Westerwick, Sharma, Hansen & Alter, 2005) Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: So? Is this bad? Good? What’s the significance of the source? How does it move your argument forward?
These internet news websites provide journalists and the public options in terms of discourse and making decisions. About 38 out of 57 editors claim that their websites offered or had links for the users to actively engage in sociopolitical discourse. About 43% of people accessing online political news confirmed that it had an effect on their voting decision (Singer, 2003). A recent statistics showed that in March 2007, at least 210 million people had access to the internet in America alone. In another study conducted by Pew Internet & American Life, 37% of the American adult population (75 million) used the internet to access political information during the 2004 election. According to findings from this study, 18% confirmed that the internet was their source of information that determined their vote (Kim, 2008). Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Not sure what you mean. Needs an explanation. Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Watch plurals Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: Again – what’s the significance? Is this a bad thing? A good thing? Why?
Currently many media houses use electronic media as entertainment with an aim of raising their rating instead of focusing on proving people with reliable and trusted news. This is a major effect of internet on journalism that Postman argues in the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, when the author depicts television (media) as entertainment instead of being a source of reliable news. When people let themselves to electronic media, they lose the ability to be involved in rational and meaningful social affairs. Technological media such as the internet or television used in delivering news is now changing public discourse with the news reporters and the public being accomplices as confirmed by the title of the book “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, which has changed how members of the public perceive information delivered in the news.
According to Postman, there is a difference between technology and medium. Technology refers to a “machine” while “medium” refers to the intellectual and social environment that is developed by a machine. Television as a technology is a media when it determines or dictates how this machine including its information is going to be used by the public in the society. Public discourse of information from multimedia whether religion, politics, safety, education or culture has been changed to some type of show business where the main objective and or priority is entertainment. According to Singer (2003) studies conducted on the 1996 elections revealed that political candidates avoided interaction with voters due to fear that their message will be lost as a result of message control in television. Comment by Annmarie Chiarini: You jump around from television to Internet to print, which is very confusing. Maintain chronology by discussing Postman’s points first then bring in more advanced technology. Also, be very clear what form of tech you are referring to throughout.
Postman is concerned that television has entertainment as the method of representing information and experiences. This factor has shaped people’s discourse which is entirely based on entertainment an aspect the author calls “supra-ideology of all discourse on television” (Postman ).The potential or depth of any piece of information or story is on the basis of the entertainment value of a program. As a medium, television has demanded that information in a news story be delivered using images, and not through rational discourse.
In the journal “Campaign Contribution: Online Newspaper Coverage of Election”, Singer (2003) quotes an online newspaper editor saying “We were trying to beat the TV stations at their game, and we succeeded with better live coverage. We also scooped them on the biggest local race.”Many television companies understand that news consumption forms an important aspect in the survey and interpretation of social environment. As a result, these online news platforms are increasingly incorporating collaborative filters like most emailed article or rating associated with a news article to indicate what online news is being consumed. It is though such techniques that news editors choose what information will be published or broadcasted (Knobloch-Westerwick, Sharma, Hansen & Alter, 2005).
According to Postman, people no longer communicate with one another in a normal life setting instead they entertain one another. During such talks the author states that images and not ideas are exchanged. According to Postman, the average time a news story takes is 45 seconds, which suggests that these stories are assumed not to have any significant effect on the lives of the viewers. Newscasters have a habit of avoiding tonal commentary in the images displayed or the news story they are broadcasting, which is intended to appeal to the audience and entertain them instead of informing the audience. This comes after a new culture has been developed in television whereby if news is not entertaining, the information does not receive attention or traction from the public.
Postman notes states that many producers are usually under a lot of pressure to produce a show that will have a large audience. As a result, they identify attractive individuals who have the potential to sell these credibility ideas. Postman supports this argument by citing the case of Christine Craft who got fired after affecting the acceptance of viewers which the author interprets as being “not adequately attractive or not believable” (Postman, 2005).In a study conducted by Gibson, Gan, Hill, Hoffman, and Seigler on exemplars (people without any expertise or representative appearing on U.S television news reports), found that approximately half of the newspapers had at least a single exemplar. This population has increased from 27% to 37% in Belgium between 2003 to 2007. This trend has shifted towards ordinary individuals in countries like Netherlands, Canada, France and Turkey while in the U.S, Germany and Ireland, television is featuring people who are not common. In this study which involved a sample of 11 countries, Norway was the only country to regularly feature popular exemplars. Televisions choosing to use exemplars suggest that the viewers support or share the opinions from the exemplars (Lefevere, De Swert & Walgrave, 2012).
In a study to identify the effects of exemplars with base-rate information on personal opinions, Perry and Gonzenbach (1997) found that perception and opinion varied positively with how exemplars were distributed in television. This argument is supported by Graber (cited in Lefevere, De Swert&Walgrave, 2012) whose research showed that respondents claimed image helped them to form opinion. According to “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, the author states how surprising it is that perception concerning the truth of a story depend on the person telling or delivering the news. Television has brought back a past epistemology that states a teller’s credibility serves as the test for the proposition of a piece of information.
Studies have shown that featuring popular or unpopular people popularly (exemplars) to illustrate what is described in a news broadcast has an effect on news delivery and discourse on the viewers. These exemplars affect opinion formation of the public as compared to the base-rate information effect on statistics and official information. It has been found that even when information or news broadcasted in television is greatly representative and valid, viewers’ discourse tend to depend on the illustrative information and image of the exemplars they see in televisions or online news platforms when forming their opinions. This argument is supported by an online survey by Scarborough Research that found about 50% of the respondents reported to have a computer and television in the same room. An estimate from Dataquest had 52 million telewebbers in 2001 from 27 million in 1999. This population is largely composed of 18-34 years telewebbers who are found to likely opt for the internet to access news (Bucy, 2003).Network news companies are increasingly adjusting their broadcast services as a result of new technology and competitive pressure from other online news platforms. These news companies believe that increasing news audience depends on the internet and television.
Reference
Bucy, E. P. (2003). Journalism & Mass Communication Quartely. Vol. 80 Issue 2, p247-264.
Kim, Y. M. (2008). Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.Vol. 52 Issue 4.
Knobloch-Westerwick, S., Sharma, N., Hansen, D. L., & Alter, S. (2005). Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Vol 49 Issue 3, p296-313.
Lefeyere, J., De, S. K., Walgrave, S. (2012). Communication Research. Vol. 39 Issue 1, p 103 – 119.
Postman, N. (2005).Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin Books.
Singer, J. B. (2003). Journalism & Mass Communication Quaterly. Vol. 80 Issue 1, p 39-56
Crystal, There is a lot of good information here. The main area of concern is your lack of a strong thesis. Without a thesis, the essay and reader have no clear path to follow. I wasn’t able to see the connection between some of your points or visualize where your discussions were taking me. I suggest you perform a reverse outline of your essay – http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/689/1/ this will show you what you have already written and the organization of your ideas, so you can add or take away and/or reorganize s you see necessary. Also, once you perform the reverse outline, you can craft a strong thesis based on the points you have made in the essay. I also urge you to submit your paper to the EWC for assistance before submitting it for a grade.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
by
Neil Postman
PENGUIN books
AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH
Neil Postman–critic, writer, educator, and communications theorist–is
chairman of the Department of Communication Arts at New York University
and founder of its program in Media Ecology. Educated at the State
University of New York and Columbia University, he is holder of the
Christian Lindback Award for Excellence in Teaching and is also editor
of Et Cetera, the journal of general semantics. His books include
Technopoly and How To Watch TV News (with Steve Powers).
He is married and has three children and lives in Flushing, New York.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Nell Postman
PENGUIN books
PENGUIN books Published by the Penguin Group Penguin books USA Inc., 375
Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin books Canada Lid, I0 AIcom Avenue, Toronto. Ontario, Canada M4V
3B2
Penguin books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin Inc.
1985 Published in Penguin books 1986
23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Copyright stman, 1985 All rights reserved.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the New York Times Company for
permission to reprint from “Combining the books, Computers” by Edward
Fiske, which appeared in the August 7, 1984, issue of the New York
Times. Copyright the New York times Company.
A section of this book was supported by a commission from the Annenberg
Scholars Program, Annenberg School of Communications, University of
Southern California.
Specifically, portions of chapters six and seven formed part of a paper
delivered at the Scholars Conference, “Creating Meaning: Literacies of
Our Time,” February 1984.
Library of Congress Catalog Information Postman, Neill..
Amusing ourselves to death.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Mass media — Influence. I. Title.
P94.P63 1986 302.2’34 86-9513
ISBN 0 14 00.9438 5
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Linotron Meridien
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise distributed without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which
it is published and without a similar condition including this condition
being imposed on the subsequent purchase
Contents
Foreword
Part I
the Medium Is the Metaphor
Media as Epistemology
Typographic America
the Typographic Mind
the Peek-a-Boo World
Part II
the Age of Show Business
“Now… This”
Shuffle Off to Bethlehem
Reach Out and Elect Someone
Teaching as an Amusing Activity
the Huxleyan Warning
Notes Bibliography
Foreword
We were keeping our eye on .1984. When the year came and the prophecy
didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. the
roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had
happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was
another–slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling:
Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among
the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell
warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But
in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of
their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to
love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their
capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared
was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no
one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of
information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we
would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth
would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in
a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some
equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal
bumblepuppy. As Huxley re
marked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and
rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take
into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984,
Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New
World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell
feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love
will ruin us.
This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
Part I.
the Medium Is the Metaphor
At different times in our historY, different cities have been the focal
point of a radiating American spirit. In the late eighteenth centurY,
for example, Boston was the center of a political radicalism that
ignited a shot heard round the world–a shot that could not have been
fired any other place but the suburbs of Boston. At its report, all
Americans, including Virginians,, became Bostonians at heart. In the
mid-nineteenth centurY, New York became the symbol of the idea of a
melting-pot America–or at least a non-English one–as the wretched
refuse from all over the world disembarked at Ellis Island and spread
over the land their strange languages and even stranger ways. In the
early twentieth centurY, Chicago, the city of big shoulders and heavy
winds, came to symbolize the industrial energy and dynamism of America.
If there is-a statue of a hog butcher somewhere in Chicago, then it
stands as a reminder of the time when America was railroads, cattle,
steel mills and entrepreneurial adventures. If there is no such statue,
there ought to be, just as there is a statue of a Minute Man to recall
the Age of Boston, as the Statue of Liberty recalls the Age of New York.
Today, we must look to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of
our national character and aspiration, its symbol a thirty-foot-high
cardboard picture of a slot machine and a chorus girl. For Las Vegas is
a city entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment, and as such
proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public discourse
increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, religion,
news, athletics, education and
commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business,
largely without protest or even much popular notice. the result is that
we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death. As I write,
the President of the United States is a former Hollywood movie actor.
One of his principal challengers in 1984 was once a featured player on
television’s most glamorous show of the 1960s that is to say, an
astronaut. Naturally, a movie has been made about his extraterrestrial
adventure. Former nominee George McGovern has hosted the popular
television show “Saturday Night Live.” So has a candidate of more recent
vintage, the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Meanwhile, former President Richard
Nixon, who once claimed he lost an election because he was sabotaged by
makeup men, has offered Senator Edward Kennedy advice on how to make a
serious run for the presidency: lose twenty pounds. Although the
Constitution makes no mention of it, it would appear that fat people are
now effectively excluded from running for high political office.
Probably bald people as well. Almost certainly those whose looks are
not significantly enhanced by the cosmetician’s art. Indeed, we may
have reached the point where cosmetics has replaced ideology as the
field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control.
America’s journalists, i.e., television newscasters, have not missed the
point. Most spend more time with their hair dryers than with their
scripts, with the result that they comprise the most glamorous group of
people this side of Las Vegas. Although the Federal Communications Act
makes no mention of it, those without camera appeal are excluded from
addressing the public about what is called “the news of the day.” Those
with camera appeal can command salaries exceeding one million dollars a
year. American businessmen discovered, long before the rest of us, that
the quality and usefulness of their goods are subordinate to the
artifice of their display; that, in fact, half the principles of
the Medium Is the Metaphor
capitalism as praised by Adam Smith or condemned by Karl Marx are
irrelevant. Even the Japanese, who are said to make better cars than
the Americans, know that economics is less a science than a performing
art, as Toyota’s yearly advertising budget confirms. Not long ago, I saw
Billy Graham join with Shecky Green Red Buttons, Dionne Warwick, Milton
Berle and other theologians in a tribute to George Burns, who was
celebrating himself for surviving eighty years in show business. the
Reverend Graham exchanged one-liners with Burns about making
preparations for Eternity. Although the Bible makes no mention of it,
the Reverend Graham assured the audience that God loves those who make
people laugh. It was an honest mistake. He merely mistook NBC for God.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer is a psychologist who has a popular radio program
and a nightclub act in which she informs her audiences about sex in all
of its infinite variety and in language once reserved for the bedroom
and street corners. She is almost as entertaining as the Reverend Billy
Graham, and has been quoted as saying, “I don’t start out to be funny.
But if it comes out that way, I use it. If they call me an entertainer,
I say that’s great. When a professor teaches with a sense of humor,
people walk away remembering.” She did not say what they remember or of
what use their remembering is. But she has a point: It’s great to be an
entertainer. Indeed, in America God favors all those who possess both a
talent and a format to amuse, whether they be preachers, athletes,
entrepreneurs, politicians, teachers or journalists. In America, the
least amusing people are its professional entertainers. Culture watchers
and worriers–those of the type who read books like this one–will know
that the examples above are not aberrations but, in fact, clichs. There
is no shortage of critics who have observed and recorded the dissolution
of public discourse in America and its conversion into the arts of show
business. But most of them, I believe, have barely begun to tell the
story of the origin and. meaning of this descent into a vast
triviality. Those who have written vigorously on the matter tell us, for
example, that what is happening is the residue of an exhausted
capitalism; or, on the contrary, that it is the tasteless fruit of the
maturing of capitalism; or that it is the neurotic aftermath of the Age
of Freud; or the retribution of our allowing God to perish; or that it
all comes from the old stand-bys, greed and ambition. I have attended
carefully to these explanations, and I do not say there is nothing to
learn from them. Marxists, Freudians, Levi-Straussians, even Creation
Scientists are not to be taken lightly. And, in any case, I should be
very surprised if the story I have to tell is anywhere near the whole
truth. We are all, as Huxley says someplace, Great Abbreviators,
meaning that none of us has the wit to know the whole truth, the time to
tell it if we believed we did, or an audience so gullible as to accept
it. But you will find an argument here that presumes a clearer grasp of
the matter than many that have come before. Its value, such as it is,
resides in the directness of its perspective, which has its origins in
observations made 2,300 years ago by Plato. It is an argument that
fixes its attention on the forms of human conversation, and postulates
that how we are obliged to conduct such conversations will have the
strongest possible influence on what ideas we can conveniently express.
And what ideas are convenient to express inevitably become the important
content of a culture.
I use the word “conversation” metaphorically to refer not only to speech
but to all techniques and technologies that permit people of a
particular culture to exchange messages. In this sense, all culture is
a conversation or, more precisely, a corporation of conversations,
conducted in a variety of symbolic modes. Our attention here is on how
forms of public discourse regulate and even dictate what kind of content
can issue from such fOrmS. To take a simple example of what this means,
consider the
primitive technology of smoke signals. While I do not know exactly what
content was once carried in the smoke signals of American Indians, I can
safely guess that it did not include philosophical argument. Puffs of
smoke are insufficiently complex to express ideas on the nature of
existence, and even if they were not, a Cherokee philosopher would run
short of either wood or blankets long before he reached his second
axiom. You cannot use smoke to do philosophy. Its form excludes the
content. To take an example closer to home: As I suggested earlier, it
is implausible to imagine that anyone like our twenty-seventh President,
the multi-chinned, three-hundred-pound William Howard Taft, could be put
forward as a presidential candidate in today’s world. the shape of a
man’s body is largely irrelevant to the shape of his ideas when he is
addressing a public in writing or on the radio or, for that matter, in
smoke signals. But it is quite relevant on television. the grossness
of a three-hundred-pound image, even a talking one, would easily
Overwhelm any logical or spiritual subtleties conveyed by speech. For
on television, discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery,
which is to say that television gives us a conversation in images, not
words. the emergence of the image-manager in the political arena and
the concomitant decline of the speech writer attest to the fact that
television demands a different kind of content from other media. You
cannot do political philosophy on television. Its form works against the
content. To give still another example, one of more complexity: the
information, the content, or, if you will, the “stuff” that makes up
what is called “the news of the day” did not exist–could not exist–in
a world that lacked the media to give it expression. I do not mean that
things like fires, wars, murders and love affairs did not, ever and
always, happen in places all over the world. I mean that lacking a
technology to advertise them, people could not attend to them, could not
include them in their daily business. Such information simply could not
exist as
part of the content of culture. This idea–that there is a content
called “the news of the day”–was entirely created by the telegraph (and
since amplified by newer media), which made it possible to move
decontextualized information over vast spaces at incredible speed. the
news of the day is a figment of our technological imagination. It is,
quite precisely, a media event. We attend to fragments of events from
all over the world because we have multiple media whose forms are well
suited to fragmented conversation. Cultures without speed-of-light
media-let us say, cultures in which smoke signals are the most efficient
space-conquering tool available–do not have news of the day. Without a
medium to create its form, the news of the day does not exist. To say
it, then, as plainly as I can, this book is an inquiry into and a
lamentation about the most significant American cultural fact of the
second half of the twentieth century: the decline of the Age of
Typography and the ascendancy of the Age of Television. This change-over
has dramatically and irreversibly shifted the content and meaning of
public discourse, since two media so vastly different cannot accommodate
the same ideas. As the influence of print wanes, the content of
politics, religion, education, and anything else that comprises public
business must change and be recast in terms that are most suitable to
television. If all of this sounds suspiciously like Marshall McLuhan’s
aphorism, the medium is the message, I will not disavow the association
(although it is fashionable to do so among respectable scholars who,
were it not for McLuhan, would today be mute). I met McLuhan thirty
years ago when I was a graduate student and he an unknown English
professor. I believed then, as I believe now, that he spoke in the
tradition of Orwell and Huxley–that is, as a prophesier, and I have
remained steadfast to his teaching that the clearest way to see through
a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation. I might add that
my interest in this point of view was first stirred by a prophet far
more
formidable than McLuhan, more ancient than Plato. In studying the Bible
as a young man, I found intimations of the idea that forms of media
favor particular kinds of content and therefore are capable of taking
command of a culture. I refer specifically to the Decalogue, the Second
Commandment of which prohibits the Israelites from making concrete
images of anything. “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, any
likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth
beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth.” I wondered then, as
so many others have, as to why the God of these people would have
included instructions on how they were to symbolize, or not symbolize,
their experience. It is a strange injunction to include as part of an
ethical system unless its author assumed a connection between forms of
human communication and the quality of a culture. We may hazard a guess
that a people who are being asked to embrace an abstract, universal
deity would be rendered unfit to do so by the habit of drawing pictures
or making statues or depicting their ideas in any concrete,
icono-graphic forms. the God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and
through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest
order of abstract thinking. Iconography thus became blasphemy so that a
new kind of God could enter a culture. People like ourselves who are in
the process of converting their culture from word-centered to
image-centered might profit by reflecting on this Mosaic injunction. But
even if I am wrong in these conjectures, it is, I believe, a wise and
particularly relevant supposition that the media of communication
available to a culture are a dominant influence on the formation of the
culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations. Speech, of course, is
the primal and indispensable medium. It made us human, keeps us human,
and in fact defines what human means. This is not to say that if there
were no other means of communication all humans would find it equally
convenient to speak about the same things in the same way. We know
enough about language to understand that variations in the
structures of languages will result in variations in what may be called
“world view.” How people think about time and space, and about things
and processes, will be greatly influenced by the grammatical features of
their language. We dare not suppose therefore that all human minds are
unanimous in understanding how the world is put together. But how much
more divergence there is in world view among different cultures can be
imagined when we consider the great number and variety of tools for
conversation that go beyond speech. For although culture is a creation
of speech, it is recreated anew by every medium of communication–from
painting to hieroglyphs to the alphabet to television. Each medium,
like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by
providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for
sensibility. Which, of course, is what McLuhan meant in saying the
medium is the message. His aphorism, however, is in need of amendment
because, as it stands, it may lead one to confuse a message with a
metaphor. A message denotes a specific, concrete statement about the
world. But the forms of our media, including the symbols through which
they permit conversation, do not make such statements. They are rather
like metaphors, working by unobtrusive but powerful implication to
enforce their special definitions of reality. Whether we are
experiencing the world through the lens of speech or the printed word or
the television camera, our media-metaphors classify the world for us,
sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, color it, argue a case for
what the world is like. As Ernst Cassirer remarked:
Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic
activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is
in a sense constantly conversing with himself. He has so enveloped
himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or
religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the
interposition of [an] artificial medium.
What is peculiar about such interpositions of media is that their role
in directing what we will see or know is so rarely noticed. A person
who reads a book or who watches television or who glances at his watch
is not usually interested in how his mind is organized and controlled by
these events, still less in what idea of the world is suggested by a
book, television, or a watch. But there are men and women who have
noticed these things, especially in our own times. Lewis Mumford, for
example, has been one of our great noticers. He is not the sort of a
man who looks at a clock merely to see what time it is. Not that he
lacks interest in the content of clocks, which is of concern to everyone
from moment to moment, but he is far more interested in how a clock
creates the idea of “moment to moment.” He attends to the philosophy of
clocks, to clocks as metaphor, about which our education has had little
to say and clock makers nothing at all. “the clock,” Mumford has
concluded, “is a piece of power machinery whose ‘product’ is seconds and
minutes.” In manufacturing such a product, the clock has the effect of
disassociating time from human events and thus nourishes the belief in
an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences. Moment to
moment, it turns out, is not God’s conception, or nature’s. It is man
conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he
created. In Mumford’s great book Technics and Civilization, he shows
how, beginning in the fourteenth century, the clock made us into
time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers. In the
process, we have learned irreverence toward the sun and the seasons, for
in a world made up of seconds and minutes, the authority of nature is
superseded. Indeed, as Mumford points out, with the invention of the
clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human
events. And thus, though few would have imagined the connection, the
inexorable ticking of the clock may have had more to do with the
weakening of God’s supremacy than all the treatises produced by the phi-
losophers of the Enlightenment; that is to’ say, the clock introduced a
new form of conversation between man and God, in which God appears to
have been the loser. Perhaps Moses should have included another
Commandment: Thou shalt not make mechanical representations of time.
That the alphabet introduced a new form of conversation between man and
man is by now a commonplace among scholars. To be able to see one’s
utterances rather than only to hear them is no small matter, though our
education, once again, has had little to say about this. Nonetheless,
it is clear that phonetic writing created a new conception of knowledge,
as well as a new sense of intelligence, of audience and of posterity,
all of which Plato recognized at an early stage in the development of
texts. “No man of intelligence,” he wrote in his Seventh Letter, “will
venture to express his philosophical views in language, especially not
in language that is unchangeable, which is true of that which is set
down in written characters.” This notwithstanding, he wrote voluminously
and understood better than anyone else that the setting down of views in
written characters would be the beginning of philosophy, not its end.
Philosophy cannot exist without criticism, and writing makes it possible
and convenient to subject thought to a continuous and concentrated
scrutiny. Writing freezes speech and in so doing gives birth to the
grammarian, the logician, the rhetorician, the historian, the
scientist–all those who must hold language before them so that they can
see what it means, where it errs, and where it is leading. Plato knew
all of this, which means that he knew that writing would bring about a
perceptual revolution: a shift from the ear to the eye as an organ of
language processing. Indeed, there is a legend that to encourage such a
shift Plato insisted that his students study geometry before entering
his Academy. If true, it was a sound idea, for as the great literary
critic Northrop Frye has remarked, “the written word is far more
powerful than simply a reminder: it re-creates the past in the present,
and gives
us, not the familiar remembered thing, but the glittering intensity of
the summoned-up hallucination.” 3 All that Plato surmised about the
consequences of writing is now well understood by anthropologists,
especially those who have studied cultures in which speech is the only
source of complex conversation. Anthropologists know that the written
word, as Northrop Frye meant to suggest, is not merely an echo of a
speaking voice. It is another kind of voice altogether, a conjurer’s
trick of the first order. It must certainly have appeared that way to
those who invented it, and that is why we should not be surprised that
the Egyptian god Thoth, who is alleged to have brought writing to the
King Thamus, was also the god of magic. People like ourselves may see
nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange
and magical it appears to a purely oral people–a conversation with no
one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one
encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more
metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every
writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that
an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand? I bring all of this
up because what my book is about is how our own tribe is undergoing a
vast and trembling shift from the magic of writing to the magic of
electronics. What I mean to point out here is that the introduction
into a culture of a technique such as writing or a clock is not merely
an extension of man’s power to bind time but a transformation of his way
of thinking–and, of course, of the content of his culture. And that is
what I mean to say by calling a medium a metaphor. We are told in
school, quite correctly, that a metaphor suggests what a thing is like
by comparing it to something else. And by the power of its suggestion,
it so fixes a conception in our minds that we cannot imagine the one
thing without the other: Light is a wave; language, a tree; God, a wise
and venerable man; the mind, a dark cavern illuminated by knowledge. And
if these
metaphors no longer serve us, we must, in the nature of the matter, find
others that will. Light is a particle; language, a river; God (as
Bertrand Russell proclaimed), a differential equation; the mind, a
garden that yearns to be cultivated. But our media-metaphors are not so
explicit or so vivid as these, and they are far more complex. In
understanding their metaphorical function, we must take into account the
symbolic forms of their information, the source of their information,
the quantity and speed of their information, the context in which their
information is experienced. Thus, it takes some digging to get at them,
to grasp, for example, that a clock recreates time as an independent,
mathematically precise sequence; that writing recreates the mind as a
tablet on which experience is written; that the telegraph recreates news
as a commodity. And yet, such digging becomes easier if we start from
the assumption that in every tool we create, an idea is embedded that
goes beyond the function of the thing itself. It has been pointed out,
for example, that the invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth century not
only made it possible to improve defective vision but suggested the idea
that human beings need not accept as final either the endowments of
nature or the ravages of time. Eyeglasses refuted the belief that
anatomy is destiny by putting forward the idea that our bodies as well
as our minds are improvable. I do not think it goes too far to say that
there is a link between the invention of eyeglasses in the twelfth
century and gene-splitting research in the twentieth. Even such an
instrument as the microscope, hardly a tool of everyday use, had
embedded within it a quite astonishing idea, not about biology but about
psychology. By revealing a world hitherto hidden from view, the
microscope suggested a possibility about the structure of the mind. If
things are not what they seem, if microbes lurk, unseen, on and under
our skin, if the invisible controls the visible, then is it not possible
that ids and egos and superegos also lurk somewhere unseen? What else
is psychoanalysis but a microscope of
the mind? Where do our notions of mind come from if not from metaphors
generated by our tools? What does it mean to say that someone has an IQ
of 126? There are no numbers in people’s heads. Intelligence does not
have quantity or magnitude, except as we believe that it does. And why
do we believe that it does? Because we have tools that imply that this
is what the mind is like. Indeed, our tools for thought suggest to us
what our bodies are like, as when someone refers to her “biological
clock,” or when we talk of our “genetic codes,” or when we read
someone’s face like a book, or when our facial expressions telegraph our
intentions. When Galileo remarked that the language of nature is written
in mathematics, he meant it only as a metaphor. Nature itself does not
speak. Neither do our minds or our bodies or, more to the point of this
book, our bodies politic. Our conversations about nature and about
ourselves are conducted in whatever “languages” we find it possible and
convenient to employ. We do not see nature or intelligence or human
motivation or ideology as “it” is but only as our languages are. And
our languages are our media. Our media are our metaphors. Our
metaphors create the content of our culture.
Media as Epistemology
It is my intention in this book to show that a great media-metaphor
shift has taken place in America, with the result that the content of
much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense. With this
in view, my task in the chapters ahead is straightforward. I must,
first, demonstrate how, under the governance of the printing press,
discourse in America was different from what it is now–generally
coherent, serious and rational; and then how, under the governance of
television, it has become shriveled and absurd. But to avoid the
possibility that my analysis will be interpreted as standard-brand
academic whimpering, a kind of elitist complaint against “junk” on
television, I must first explain that my focus is on epistemology, not
on aesthetics or literary criticism. Indeed, I appreciate junk as much
as the next fellow, and I know full well that the printing press has
generated enough of it to fill the Grand Canyon to overflowing.
Television is not old enough to have matched printing’s output of junk.
And so, I raise no objection to television’s junk. the best things on
television are its junk, and no one and nothing is seriously threatened
by it. Besides, we do not measure a culture by its output of
undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant. Therein
is our problem, for television is at its most trivial and, therefore,
most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as
a carrier of important cultural conversations. the irony here is that
this is what intellectuals and critics are constantly urging television
to do. the trouble
with such people is that they do not take television seriously enough.
For, like the printing press, television is nothing less than a
philosophy of rhetoric. To talk seriously about television, one must
therefore talk of epistemology. All other commentary is in itself
trivial. Epistemology is a complex and usually opaque subject concerned
with the origins and nature of knowledge. the part of its subject
matter that is relevant here is the interest it takes in definitions of
truth and the sources from which such definitions come. In particular,
I want to show that definitions of truth are derived, at least in part,
from the character of the media of communication through which
information is conveyed. I want to discuss how media are implicated in
our epistemologies. In the hope of simplifying what I mean by the title
of this chapter, media as epistemology, I find it helpful to borrow a
word from Northrop Frye, who has made use of a principle he calls
resonance. “Through resonance,” he writes, “a particular statement in a
particular context acquires a universal significance.” Frye offers as an
opening example the phrase “the grapes of wrath,” which first appears in
Isaiah in the context of a celebration of a prospective massacre of
Edomites. But the phrase, Frye continues, “has long ago flown away from
this context into many new contexts, contexts that give dignity to the
human situation instead of merely reflecting its bigotries.” 2 Having
said this, Frye extends the idea of resonance so that it goes beyond
phrases and sentences. A character in a play or story–Hamlet, for
example, or Lewis Carroll’s Alice–may have resonance. Objects may have
resonance, and so may countries: “the smallest details of the geography
of two tiny chopped-up countries, Greece and Israel, have imposed
themselves on our consciousness until they have become part of the map
of our own imaginative world, whether we have ever seen these countries
or not.” 3 In addressing the question of the source of resonance, Frye
concludes that metaphor is the generative force–that is, the
power of a phrase, a book, a character, or a history to unify and invest
with meaning a variety of attitudes or experiences. Thus, Athens
becomes a metaphor of intellectual excellence, wherever we find it;
Hamlet, a metaphor of brooding indecisiveness; Alice’s wanderings, a
metaphor of a search for order in a world of semantic nonsense.
I now depart from Frye (who, I am certain, would raise no objection) but
I take his word along with me. Every medium of communication, I am
claiming, has resonance, for resonance is metaphor writ large. Whatever
the original and limited context of its use may have been, a medium has
the power to fly far beyond that context into new and unexpected ones.
Because of the way it directs us to organize our minds and integrate our
experience of the world, it imposes itself on our consciousness and
social institutions in myriad forms. It sometimes has the power to
become implicated in our concepts of piety, or goodness, or beauty. And
it is always implicated in the ways we define and regulate our ideas of
truth.
To explain how this happens–how the bias of a medium sits heavy, felt
but unseen, over a culture–I offer three cases of truth-telling.
the first is drawn from a tribe in western Africa that has no writing
system but whose rich oral tradition has given form to its ideas of
civil law.4 When a dispute arises, the complainants come before the
chief of the tribe and state their grievances. With no written law to
guide him, the task of the chief is to search through his vast
repertoire of proverbs and sayings to find one that suits the situation
and is equally satisfying to both complainants. That accomplished, all
parties are agreed that justice has been done, that the truth has been
served. You will recognize, of course, that this was largely the method
of Jesus and other Biblical figures who, living in an essentially oral
culture, drew upon all of the resources of speech, including mnemonic
devices, formulaic expressions and parables, as a means of discovering
and revealing truth. As Walter Ong points out, in
oral cultures proverbs and sayings are not occasional devices: “They are
incessant. They form the substance of thought itself. Thought in any
extended form is impossible without them, for it consists in them.”
To people like ourselves any reliance on proverbs and sayings is
reserved largely for resolving disputes among or with children.
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.”
“First come, first served.”
“Haste makes waste.” These are forms of speech we pull out in small
crises with our young but would think ridiculous to produce in a
courtroom where “serious” matters are to be decided. Can you imagine a
bailiff asking a jury if it has reached a decision and receiving the
reply that “to err is human but to forgive is divine”? Or even better,
“Let us render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which
is God’s”? For the briefest moment, the judge might be charmed but if a
“serious” language form is not immediately forthcoming, the jury may end
up with a longer sentence than most guilty defendants.
Judges, lawyers and defendants do not regard proverbs or sayings as a
relevant response to legal disputes. In this, they are separated from
the tribal chief by a media-metaphor. For in a print-based courtroom,
where law books, briefs, citations and other written materials define
and organize the method of finding the truth, the oral tradition has
lost much of its resonance–but not all of it. Testimony is expected to
be given orally, on the assumption that the spoken, not the written,
word is a truer reflection of the state of mind of a witness. Indeed,
in many courtrooms jurors are not permitted to take notes, nor are they
given written copies of the judge’s explanation of the law. Jurors are
expected to hear the truth, or its opposite, not to read it. Thus, we
may say that there is a clash of resonances in our concept of legal
truth. On the one hand, there is a residual belief in the power of
speech, and speech alone, to carry the truth; on the other hand, there
is a much stronger belief in the authenticity of writing and, in
particular, printing. This second belief
has little tolerance for poetry, proverbs, sayings, parables or any
other expressions of oral wisdom. the law is what legislators and
judges have written. In our culture, lawyers do not have to be wise;
they need to be well briefed.
A similar paradox exists in universities, and with roughly the same
distribution of resonances; that is to say, there are a few residual
traditions based on the notion that speech is the primary carrier of
truth. But for the most part, university conceptions of truth are
tightly bound to the structure and logic of the printed word. To
exemplify this point, I draw here on a personal experience that occurred
during a still widely practiced medieval ritual known as a “doctoral
oral.” I use the word medieval literally, for in the Middle Ages
students were always examined orally, and the tradition is carried
forward in the assumption that a candidate must be able to talk
competently about his written work. But, of course, the written work
matters most.
In the case I have in mind, the issue of what is a legitimate form of
truth-telling was raised to a level of consciousness rarely achieved.
the candidate had included in his thesis a footnote, intended as
documentation of a quotation, which read: “Told to the investigator at
the Roosevelt Hotel on January 18, 1981, in the presence of Arthur
Lingeman and Jerrold Gross.” This citation drew the attention of no
fewer than four of the five oral examiners, all of whom observed that it
was hardly suitable as a form of documentation and that it ought to be
replaced by a citation from a book or article. “You are not a
journalist,” one professor remarked. “You are supposed to be a
scholar.” Perhaps because the candidate knew of no published statement
of what he was told at the Roosevelt Hotel, he defended himself
vigorously on the grounds that there were witnesses to what he was told,
that they were available to attest to the accuracy of the quotation, and
that the form in which an idea is conveyed is irrelevant to its truth.
Carried away on the wings of his eloquence, the candidate argued further
that there were more than three hundred references to published works in
his thesis and
that it was extremely unlikely that any of them would be checked for
accuracy by the examiners, by which he meant to raise the question, Why
do you assume the accuracy of a print-referenced citation but not a
speech-referenced one?
the answer he received took the following line: You are mistaken in
believing that the form in which an idea is conveyed is irrelevant to
its truth. In the academic world, the published word is invested with
greater prestige and authenticity than the spoken word. What people say
is assumed to be more casually uttered than what they write. the
written word is assumed to have been reflected upon and revised by its
author, reviewed by authorities and editors. It is easier to verify or
refute, and it is invested with an impersonal and objective character,
which is why, no doubt, you have referred to yourself in your thesis as
“the investigator” and not by your name; that is to say, the written
word is, by its nature, addressed to the world, not an individual. the
written word endures, the spoken word disappears; and that is why
writing is closer to the truth than speaking. Moreover, we are sure you
would prefer that this commission produce a written statement that you
have passed your examination (should you do so) than for us merely to
tell you that you have, and leave it at that. Our written statement
would represent the “truth.” Our oral agreement would be only a rumor.
the candidate wisely said no more on the matter except to indicate that
he would make whatever changes the commission suggested and that he
profoundly wished that should he pass the “oral,” a written document
would attest to that fact. He did pass, and in time the proper words
were written.
A third example of the influence of media on our epistemol-ogies can be
drawn from the trial of the great Socrates. At the opening of Socrates’
defense, addressing a jury of five hundred, he apologizes for not having
a well-prepared speech. He tells his Athenian brothers that he will
falter, begs that they not interrupt him on that account, asks that they
regard him as they
would a stranger from another city, and promises that he will tell them
the truth, without adornment or eloquence. Beginning this way was, of
course, characteristic of Socrates, but it was not characteristic of the
age in which he lived. For, as Socrates knew full well, his Athenian
brothers did not regard the principles of rhetoric and the expression of
truth to be independent of each other. People like ourselves find great
appeal in Socrates’ plea because we are accustomed to thinking of
rhetoric as an ornament of speech–most often pretentious, superficial
and unnecessary. But to the people who invented it, the Sophists of
fifth-century B.c. Greece and their heirs, rhetoric was not merely an
opportunity for dramatic performance but a near indispensable means of
organizing evidence and proofs, and therefore of communicating truth. It
was not only a key element in the education of Athenians (far more
important than philosophy) but a preeminent art form. To the Greeks,
rhetoric was a form of spoken writing. Though it always implied oral
performance, its power to reveal the truth resided in the written word’s
power to display arguments in orderly progression. Although Plato
himself disputed this conception of truth (as we might guess from
Socrates’ plea), his contemporaries believed that rhetoric was the
proper means through which “right opinion” was to be both discovered and
articulated. To disdain rhetorical rules, to speak one’s thoughts in a
random manner, without proper emphasis or appropriate passion, was
considered demeaning to the audience’s intelligence and suggestive of
falsehood. Thus, we can assume that many of the 280 jurors who cast a
guilty ballot against Socrates did so because his manner was not
consistent with truthful matter, as they understood the connection. the
point I am leading to by this and the previous examples is that the
concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of
expression. Truth does not, and never has, come unadorned. It must
appear in its proper clothing or it is not acknowledged, which is a way
of saying that the “truth” is a kind
of cultural prejudice. Each culture conceives of it as being most
authentically expressed in certain symbolic forms that another culture
may regard as trivial or irrelevant. Indeed, to the Greeks of
achieveressays.com’s time, and for two thousand years afterward, scientific truth
was best discovered and expressed by deducing the nature of things from
a set of self-evident premises, which accounts for achieveressays.com’s believing
that women have fewer teeth than men, and that babies are healthier if
conceived when the wind is in the north. achieveressays.com was twice married
but so far as we know, it did not occur to him to ask either of his
wives if he could count her teeth. And as for his obstetric opinions,
we are safe in assuming he used no questionnaires and hid behind no
curtains. Such acts would have seemed to him both vulgar and
unnecessary, for that was not the way to ascertain the truth of things.
the language of deductive logic provided a surer road. We must not be
too hasty in mocking achieveressays.com’s prejudices. We have enough of our own,
as for example, the equation we moderns make of truth and
quantification. In this prejudice, we come astonishingly close to the
mystical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers who attempted to submit
all of life to the sovereignty of numbers. Many of our psychologists,
sociologists, economists and other latter-day cabalists will have
numbers to tell them the truth or they will have nothing. Can you
imagine, for example, a modern economist articulating truths about our
standard of living by reciting a poem? Or by telling what happened to
him during a late-night walk through East St. Louis? Or by offering a
series of proverbs and parables, beginning with the saying about a rich
man, a camel, and the eye of a needle? the first would be regarded as
irrelevant, the second merely anecdotal, the last childish. Yet these
forms of language are certainly capable of expressing truths about
economic relationships, as well as any other relationships, and indeed
have been employed by various peoples. But to the modern mind,
resonating with different media-metaphors, the truth in economics is
believed to be best discovered and expressed in numbers. Perhaps it is.
I will not argue the point. I mean only to call attention to the fact
that there is a certain measure of arbitrariness in the forms that
truth-telling may take. We must remember that Galileo merely said that
the language of nature is written in mathematics. He did not say
everything is. And even the truth about nature need not be expressed in
mathematics. For most of human history, the language of nature has been
the language of myth and ritual. These forms, one might add, had the
virtues of leaving nature unthreatened and of encouraging the belief
that human beings are part of it. It hardly befits a people who stand
ready to blow up the planet to praise themselves too vigorously for
having found the true way to talk about nature.
In saying this, I am not making a case for epistemological relativism.
Some ways of truth-telling are better than others, and therefore have a
healthier influence on the cultures that adopt them. Indeed, I hope to
persuade you that the decline of a print-based epistemology and the
accompanying rise of a television-based epistemology has had grave
consequences for public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute.
And that is why it is necessary for me to drive hard the point that the
weight assigned to any form of truth-telling is a function of the
influence of media of communication. “Seeing is believing” has always
had a preeminent status as an epistemological axiom, but “saying is
believing,”
“reading is believing,”
“counting is believing,”
“deducing is believing,” and “feeling is believing” are others that have
risen or fallen in importance as cultures have undergone media change.
As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising,
its ideas of truth move with it. Every philosophy is the philosophy of
a stage of life, Nietzsche remarked. To which we might add that every
epistemology is the epistemology of a stage of media development. Truth,
like time itself, is a product of a conversation man has with himself
about and through the techniques of communication he has invented.
Since intelligence is primarily defined as one’s capacity to
grasp the truth of things, it follows that what a culture means by
intelligence is derived from the character of its important forms of
communication. In a purely oral culture, intelligence is often
associated with aphoristic ingenuity, that is, the power to invent
compact sayings of wide applicability. the wise Solomon, we are told in
First Kings, knew three thousand proverbs. In a print culture, people
with such a talent are thought to be quaint at best, more likely pompous
bores. In a purely oral culture, a high value is always placed on the
power to memorize, for where there are no written words, the human mind
must function as a mobile library. To forget how something is to be
said or done is a danger to the community and a’ gross form of
stupidity. In a print culture, the memorization of a poem, a menu, a
law or most anything else is merely charming. It is almost always
functionally irrelevant and certainly not considered a sign of high
intelligence.
Although the general character of print-intelligence would be known to
anyone who would be reading this book, you may arrive at a reasonably
detailed definition of it by simply considering what is demanded of you
as you read this book. You are required, first of all, to remain more
or less immobile for a fairly long time. If you cannot do this (with
this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from
hyperkinetic to undisciplined; in any case, as suffering from some sort
of intellectual deficiency. the printing press makes rather stringent
demands on our bodies as well as our minds. Controlling your body is,
however, only a minimal requirement. You must also have learned to pay
no attention to the shapes of the letters on the page. You must see
through them, so to speak, so that you can go directly to the meanings
of the words they form. If you are preoccupied with the shapes of the
letters, you will be an intolerably inefficient reader, likely to be
thought stupid. If you have learned how to get to meanings without
aesthetic distraction, you are required to assume an attitude of
detachment and objectivity. This includes your bringing to the task
what
Bertrand Russell called an “immunity to eloquence,” meaning that you are
able to distinguish between the sensuous pleasure, or charm, or
ingratiating tone (if such there be) of the words, and the logic of
their argument. But at the same time, you must be able to tell from the
tone of the language what is the author’s attitude toward the subject
and toward the reader. You must, in other words, know the difference
between a joke and an argument. And in judging the quality of an
argument, you must be able to do several things at once, including
delaying a verdict until the entire argument is finished, holding in
mind questions until you have determined where, when or if the text
answers them, and bringing to bear on the text all of your relevant
experience as a counterargument to what is being proposed. You must
also be able to withhold those parts of your knowledge and experience
which, in fact, do not have a bearing on the argument. And in preparing
yourself to do all of this, you must have divested yourself of the
belief that words are magical and, above all, have learned to negotiate
the world of abstractions, for there are very few phrases and sentences
in this book that require you to call forth concrete images. In a
print-culture, we are apt to say of people who are not intelligent that
we must “draw them pictures” so that they may understand. Intelligence
implies that one can dwell comfortably without pictures, in a field of
concepts and generalizations. To be able to do all of these things, and
more, constitutes a primary definition of intelligence in a culture
whose notions of truth are organized around the printed word. In the
next two chapters I want to show that in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, America was such a place, perhaps the most print-oriented
culture ever to have existed. In subsequent chapters, I want to show
that in the twentieth century, our notions of truth and our ideas of
intelligence have changed as a result of new media displacing the old.
But I do not wish to oversimplify the matter more than is necessary. In
particular, I want to conclude by making three
points that may serve as a defense against certain counterargu-ments
that careful readers may have already formed. the first is that at no
point do I care to claim that changes in media bring about changes in
the structure of people’s minds or changes in their cognitive
capacities. There are some who make this claim, or come close to it
(for example, Jerome Bruner, Jack Goody, Walter Ong, Marshall McLuhan,
Julian Jaynes, and Eric Havelock). 7 I am inclined to think they are
right, but my argument does not require it. Therefore, I will not
burden myself with arguing the possibility, for example, that oral
people are less developed intellectually, in some Piagetian sense, than
writing people, or that “television” people are less developed
intellectually than either. My argument is limited to saying that a
major new medium changes the structure of discourse; it does so by
encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain
definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind
of content–in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling. I will
say once again that I am no relativist in this matter, and that I
believe the epistemology created by television not only is inferior to a
print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist. the second
point is that the epistemological shift I have intimated, and will
describe in detail, has not yet included (and perhaps never will
include) everyone and everything. While some old media do, in fact,
disappear (e.g., pictographic writing and illuminated manuscripts) and
with them, the institutions and cognitive habits they favored, other
forms of conversation will always remain. Speech, for example, and
writing. Thus the epistemology of new forms such as television does not
have an entirely unchallenged influence. I find it useful to think of
the situation in this way: Changes in the symbolic environment are like
changes in the natural environment; they are both gradual and additive
at first, and then, all at once, a critical mass is achieved, as the
physicists say. A river that has slowly been polluted suddenly becomes
toxic; most of the fish perish; swimming becomes a danger to health. But
even then, the river may look the same and one may still take a boat
ride on it. In other words, even when life has been taken from it, the
river does not disappear, nor do all of its uses, but its value has been
seriously diminished and its degraded condition will have harmful
effects throughout the landscape. It is this way with our symbolic
environment. We have reached, I believe, a critical mass in that
electronic media have decisively and irreversibly changed the character
of our symbolic environment. We are now a culture whose information,
ideas and epistemology are given form by television, not by the printed
word. To be sure, there are still readers and there are many books
published, but the uses of print and reading are not the same as they
once were; not even in schools, the last institutions where print was
thought to be invincible. They delude themselves who believe that
television and print coexist, for coexistence implies parity. There is
no parity here. Print is now merely a residual epistemology, and it
will remain so, aided to some extent by the computer, and newspapers and
magazines that are made to look like television screens. Like the fish
who survive a toxic river and the boatmen who sail on it, there still
dwell among us those whose sense of things is largely influenced by
older and clearer waters. the third point is that in the analogy I have
drawn above, the river refers largely to what we call public
discourse–our political, religious, informational and commercial forms
of conversation. I am arguing that a television-based epistemology
pollutes public communication and its surrounding landscape, not that it
pollutes everything. In the first place, I am constantly reminded of
television’s value as a source of comfort and pleasure to the elderly,
the infirm and, indeed, all people who find themselves alone in motel
rooms. I am also aware of television’s potential for creating a theater
for the masses (a subject which in my opinion has not been taken
seriously enough). There are also claims that whatever power television
might have to-
undermine rational discourse, its emotional power is so great that it
could arouse sentiment against the Vietnam War or against more virulent
forms of racism. These and other beneficial possibilities are not to be
taken lightly. But there is still another reason why I should not like
to be understood as making a total assault on television. Anyone who is
even slightly familiar with the history of communications knows that
every new technology for thinking involves a tradeoff. It giveth and
taketh away, although not quite in equal measure. Media change does not
necessarily result in equilibrium. It sometimes creates more than it
destroys. Sometimes, it is the other way around. We must be careful in
praising or condemning because the future may hold surprises for us. the
invention of the printing press itself is a paradigmatic example.
Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed
the medieval sense of community and integration. Typography created
prose but made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of expression.
Typography made modern science possible but transformed religious
sensibility into mere superstition. Typography assisted in the growth
of the nation-state but thereby made patriotism into a sordid if not
lethal emotion. Obviously, my point of view is that the
four-hundred-year imperial dominance of typography was of far greater
benefit than deficit. Most of our modern ideas about the uses of the
intellect were formed by the printed word, as were our ideas about
education, knowledge, truth and information. I will try to demonstrate
that as typography moves to the periphery of our culture and television
takes its place at the center, the seriousness, clarity and, above all,
value of public discourse dangerously declines. On what benefits may
come from other directions, one must keep an open mind.
Typographic America
In the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, there appears a remarkable
quotation attributed to Michael Welfare, one of the founders of a
religious sect known as the Dunkers and a longtime acquaintance of
Franklin. the statement had its origins in Welfare’s complaint to
Franklin that zealots of other religious persuasions were spreading lies
about the Dunkers, accusing them of abominable principles to which, in
fact, they were utter strangers. Franklin suggested that such abuse
might be diminished if the Dunkers published the articles of their
belief and the rules of their discipline. Welfare replied that this
course of action had been discussed among his co-religionists but had
been rejected. He then explained their reasoning in the following
words:
When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God to
enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once
esteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had esteemed
errors, were real truths. From time to time He has been pleased to
afford us farther light, and our principles have been improving, and our
errors diminishing. Now we are not sure that we are arrived at the end
of this progression, and at the perfection of spiritual or theological
knowledge; and we fear that, if we should feel ourselves as if bound and
confined by it, and perhaps be unwilling to receive further improvement,
and our successors still more so, as conceiving what we their elders and
founders had done, to be something sacred, never to be departed from.
Franklin describes this sentiment as a singular instance in the history
of mankind of modesty in a sect. Modesty is certainly the word for it,
but the statement is extraordinary for other reasons, too. We have here
a criticism of the epistemology of the written word worthy of Plato.
Moses himself might be interested although he could hardly approve. the
Dunkers came close here to formulating a commandment about religious
discourse: Thou shalt not write down thy principles, still less print
them, lest thou shall be entrapped by them for all time. We may, in any
case, consider it a significant loss that we have no record of the
deliberations of the Dunkers. It would certainly shed light on the
premise of this book, i.e., that the form in which ideas are expressed
affects what those ideas will be. But more important, their
deliberations were in all likelihood a singular instance in Colonial
America of a distrust of the printed word. For the Americans among whom
Franklin lived were as committed to the printed word as any group of
people who have ever lived. Whatever else may be said of those
immigrants who came to settle in New England, it is a paramount fact
that they and their heirs were dedicated and skillful readers whose
religious sensibilities, political ideas and social life were embedded
in the medium of typography. We know that on the Mayflower itself
several books were included as cargo, most importantly, the Bible and
Captain John Smith’s Description of New England. (For immigrants headed
toward a largely uncharted land, we may suppose that the latter book was
as carefully read as the former.) We know, too, that in the very first
days of colonization each minister was given ten pounds with which to
start a religious library. And although literacy rates are notoriously
difficult to assess, there is sufficient evidence (mostly drawn from
signatures) that between 1640 and 1700, the literacy rate for men in
Massachusetts and Connecticut was somewhere between 89 percent and 95
percent, quite probably the highest concentration of literate males to
be found anywhere in the world at that time.2 (the literacy rate for
women in those colonies is estimated to have run as high as 62 percent
in the years 1681-1697.3) It is to be understood that the Bible was the
central reading matter in all households, for these people were
Protestants who shared Luther’s belief that printing was “God’s highest
and ex-tremest act of Grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is
driven forward.” Of course, the business of the Gospel may be driven
forward in books other than the Bible, as for example in the famous Bay
Psalm Book, printed in 1640 and generally regarded as America’s first
best seller. But it is not to be assumed that these people confined
their reading to religious matters. Probate records indicate that 60
percent of the estates in Middlesex County between the years 1654 and
1699 contained books, all but 8 percent of them including more than the
Bible? In fact, between 1682 and 1685, Boston’s leading bookseller
imported 3,421 books from one English dealer, most of these nonreligious
books. the meaning of this fact may be appreciated when one adds that
these books were intended for consumption by approximately 75,000 people
then living in the northern colonies. the modern equivalent would be
ten million books. Aside from the fact that the religion of these
Calvinist Puritans demanded that they be literate, three other factors
account for the colonists’ preoccupation with the printed word. Since
the male literacy rate in seventeenth-century England did not exceed 40
percent, we may assume, first of all, that the migrants to New England
came from more literate areas of England or from more literate segments
of the population, or both.6 In other words, they came here as readers
and were certain to believe that reading was as important in the New
World as it was in the Old. Second, from 1650 onward almost all New
England towns passed laws requiring the maintenance of a “reading and
writing” school, the large communities being required to maintain a
grammar school, as well. In all such laws, reference is made to Satan,
whose evil designs, it was supposed, could be
thwarted at every turn by education. But there were other reasons why
education was required, as suggested by the following ditty, popular in
the seventeenth century:
From public schools shall general knowledge flow, For ’tis the people’s
sacred right to know.
These people, in other words, had more than the subjection of Satan on
their minds. Beginning in the sixteenth century, a great
epistemological shift had taken place in which knowledge of every kind
was transferred to, and made manifest through, the printed page. “More
than any other device,” Lewis Mumford wrote of this shift, “the printed
book released people from the domination of the immediate and the
local;… print made a greater impression than actual events …. To
exist was to exist in print: the rest of the world tended gradually to
become more shadowy. Learning became book-learning.” 9 In light of
this, we may assume that the schooling of the young was understood by
the colonists not only as a moral duty but as an intellectual
imperative. (the England from which they came was an island of schools.
By 1660, for example, there were schools in England, one school
approximately every twelve miles. And it is clear that growth in
literacy was closely connected to schooling. Where schooling was not
required (as in Rhode Island) or weak school laws prevailed (as in New
Hampshire), literacy rates increased more slowly than elsewhere.
Finally, these displaced Englishmen did not need to print their own
books or even nurture their own writers. They imported, whole, a
sophisticated literary tradition from their Motherland. In 1736,
booksellers advertised the availability of the Spectator, the Tatler,
and Steele’s Guardian. In 1738, advertisements appeared for Locke’s
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Pope’s Homer, Swift’s A Tale of a
Tub and Dryden’s
Fables. 1 1 Timothy Dwight, president of Yale University, described the
American situation succinctly:
books of almost every kind, on almost every subject, are already written
to our hands. Our situation in this respect is singular. As we speak
the same language with the people of Great Britain, and have usually
been at peace with that country; our commerce with it brings to us,
regularly, not a small part of the books with which it is deluged. In
every art, science, and path of literature, we obtain those, which to a
great extent supply our wants.
de-
One significant implication of this situation is that no literary
aristocracy emerged in Colonial America. Reading was not regarded as an
elitist activity, and printed matter was spread evenly among all kinds
of people. A thriving, classless reading culture developed because, as
Daniel Boorstin writes, “It was diffuse. Its center was everywhere
because it was nowhere. Every man was close to what [printed matter]
talked about. Everyone could speak the same language. It was the
product of a busy, mobile, public society.” 3 By 1772, Jacob Duch could
write: “the poorest labourer upon the shore of the Delaware thinks
himself entitled to deliver his sentiment in matters of religion or
politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or scholar …. Such is
the prevailing taste for books of every kind, that almost every man is a
reader.” 14 Where such a keen taste for books prevailed among the
general population, we need not be surprised that Thomas Paine’s Common
Sense, published on January 10, 1776, sold more than 100,000 copies by
March of the same year.5 In 1985, a book would have to sell eight
million copies (in two months) to match the proportion of the population
Paine’s book attracted. If we go beyond March, 1776, a more awesome set
of figures is given by Howard Fast: “No one knows just how many copies
were actually printed. the most conservative sources place the figure
at something over 300,000 copies. Others place it just
under half a million. Taking a figure of 400,000 in a population of
3,000,000, a book published today would have to sell 24,000,000 copies
to do as well.” 16 the only communication event that could produce such
collective attention in today’s America is the Superbowl. It is worth
pausing here for a moment to say something of Thomas Paine, for in an
important way he is a measure of the high and wide level of literacy
that existed in his time. In particular, I want to note that in spite
of his lowly origins, no question has ever been raised, as it has with
Shakespeare, about whether or not Paine was, in fact, the author of the
works attributed to him. It is true that we know more of Paine’s life
than Shakespeare’s (although not more of Paine’s early periods), but it
is also true that Paine had less formal schooling than Shakespeare, and
came from the lowest laboring class before he arrived in America. In
spite of these disadvantages, Paine wrote political philosophy and
polemics the equal in lucidity and vitality (although not quantity) of
Voltaire’s, Rousseau’s, and contemporary English philosophers’,
including Edmund Burke. Yet no one asked the question, How could an
unschooled stay-maker from England’s impoverished class produce such
stunning prose? From time to time Paine’s lack of education was pointed
out by his enemies (and he, himself, felt inferior because of this
deficiency), but it was never doubted that such powers of written
expression could originate from a common man. It is also worth
mentioning that the full title of Paine’s most widely read book is
Common Sense, Written by an Englishman. the tagline is important here
because, as noted earlier, Americans did not write many books in the
Colonial period, which Benjamin Franklin tried to explain by claiming
that Americans were too busy doing other things. Perhaps so. But
Americans were not too busy to make use of the printing press, even if
not for books they themselves had written. the first printing press in
America was established in 1638 as an adjunct of Harvard
University, which was two years old at the time. 7 Presses were
established shortly thereafter in Boston and Philadelphia without
resistance by the Crown, a curious fact since at this time presses were
not permitted in Liverpool and Birmingham, among other English cities.
the earliest use of the press was for the printing of newsletters,
mostly done on cheap paper. It may well be that the development of an
American literature was retarded not by the industry of the people or
the availability of English literature but by the scarcity of quality
paper. As late as Revolutionary days, George Washington was forced to
write to his generals on unsightly scraps of paper, and his dispatches
were not enclosed in envelopes, paper being too scarce for such use. Yet
by the late seventeenth century, there was a beginning to a native
literature that turned out to have as much to do with the typographic
bias of American culture as books. I refer, of course, to the
newspaper, at which Americans first tried their hand on September 25,
1690, in Boston, when Benjamin Harris printed the first edition of a
three-page paper he called Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and
Domestick. Before he came to America, Harris had played a role in
“exposing” a nonexistent conspiracy of Catholics to slaughter
Protestants and burn London. His London newspaper, Domestick
Intelligence, revealed the “Popish plot,” with the result that Catholics
were harshly persecuted.2 Harris, no stranger to mendacity, indicated in
his prospectus for Publick Occurrences that a newspaper was necessary to
combat the spirit of lying which then prevailed in Boston and, I am
told, still does. He concluded his prospectus with the following
sentence: “It is supposed that none will dislike this Proposal but such
as intend to be guilty of so villainous a crime.” Harris was right about
who would dislike his proposal. the second issue of Publick Occurrences
never appeared. the Governor and Council suppressed it, complaining
that Harris had printed “reflections of a very high nature,”21 by which
they meant that they had no intention of admitting any impediments to
whatever villainy they wished to pursue. Thus, in the New World began
the struggle for freedom of information which, in the Old, had begun a
century before. Harris’ abortive effort inspired other attempts at
newspaper publication: for example, the Boston News-Letter, published in
1704, generally regarded as the first continuously published American
newspaper. This was followed by the Boston Gazette (in 1719) and the
New-England Courant (in 1721 ), whose editor, James Franklin, was the
older brother of Benjamin. By 1730, there were seven newspapers
published regularly in four colonies, and by 1800 there were more than
180. In 1770, the New York Gazette congratulated itself and other
papers by writing (in part):
‘Tis truth (with deference to the college) Newspapers are the spring of
Knowledge, the general source throughout the nation, Of every modern
conversation.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Reverend Samuel Miller boasted
that the United States had more than two-thirds the number of newspapers
available in England, and yet had only half the population of England.
In 1786, Benjamin Franklin observed that Americans were so busy reading
newspapers and pamphlets that they scarcely had time for books. (One
book they apparently always had time for was Noah Webster’s American
Spelling Book, for it sold more than 24 million copies between 1783 and
1843.)24 Franklin’s reference to pamphlets ought not to go unnoticed.
the proliferation of newspapers in all the Colonies was accompanied by
the rapid diffusion of pamphlets and broadsides. Alexis de Tocque-ville
took note of this fact in his Democracy in America, published in 1835:
“In America,” he wrote, “parties do not write books to combat each
other’s opinions, but pamphlets, which are circulated for a day with
incredible rapidity and then expire.” 25 And
38 Typegraphic America
he referred to both newspapers and pamphlets when he observed, “the
invention of firearms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of
battle; the art of printing opened the same resources to the minds of
all classes; the post brought knowledge alike to the door of the cottage
and to the gate of the palace.” 26 At the time Tocqueville was making
his observations of America, printing had already spread to all the
regions of the country. the South had lagged behind the North not only
in the formation of schools (almost all of which were private rather
than public) but in its uses of the printing press. Virginia, for
example, did not get its first regularly published newspaper, the
Virginia Gazette, until 1736. But toward the end of the eighteenth
century, the movement of ideas via the printed word was relatively
rapid, and something approximating a national conversation emerged. For
example, the Federalist Papers, an out-pouring of eighty-five essays
written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (all under
the name of Publius) originally appeared in a New York newspaper during
1787 and 1788 but were read almost as widely in the South as the North.
As America moved into the nineteenth century, it did so as a fully
print-based culture in all of its regions. Between 1825 and 1850, the
number of subscription libraries trebled.27 What were called “mechanics’
and apprentices’ libraries”–that is, libraries intended for the working
class–also emerged as a force for literacy. In 1829, the New York
Apprentices’ Library housed ten thousand volumes, of which 1,600
apprentices drew books. By 1857, the same library served three-quarters
of a million people?8 Aided by Congress’ lowering of the postal rates in
1851, the penny newspaper, the periodical, the Sunday school tract, and
the cheaply bound book were abundantly available. Between 1836 and
1890, 107 million copies of the McGuffey Reader were distributed to the
schools.29 And although the reading of novels was not considered an
altogether reputable use of time, Americans devoured them. Of Walter
Scott’s novels, published
between 1814 and 1832, Samuel Goodrich wrote: “the appearance of a new
novel from his pen caused a greater sensation in the United States than
did some of the battles of Napoleon. ?. . Everybody read these works;
everybody–the refined and the simple.” 3o Publishers were so anxious to
make prospective best sellers available, they would sometimes dispatch
messengers to incoming packet boats and “within a single day set up,
printed and bound in paper covers the most recent novel of Bulwer or
Dickens.” 3 There being no international copy-right laws, “pirated”
editions abounded, with no complaint from the public, or much from
authors, who were lionized. When Charles Dickens visited America in
1842, his reception equaled the adulation we offer today to television
stars, quarterbacks, and Michael Jackson. “I can give you no conception
of my welcome,” Dickens wrote to a friend. “There never was a King or
Emperor upon earth so cheered and followed by the crowds, and
entertained at splendid balls and dinners and waited upon by public
bodies of all kinds …. If I go out in a carriage, the crowd surrounds
it and escorts me home; if I go to the theater, the whole house… rises
as one man and the timbers ring again.” 32 A native daughter, Harriet
Beecher Stowe, was not offered the same kind of adoring attention–and,
of course, in the South, had her carriage been surrounded, it would not
have been for the purpose of escorting her home–but her Uncle Tom’s
Cabin sold 305,000 copies in its first year, the equivalent of four
million in today’s America. Alexis de Tocqueville was not the only
foreign visitor to be impressed by the Americans’ immersion in printed
matter. During the nineteenth century, scores of Englishmen came to
America to see for themselves what had become of the Colonies. All were
impressed with the high level of literacy and in particular its
extension to all classes.33 In addition, they were astounded by the near
universality of lecture halls in which stylized oral performance
provided a continuous reinforcement of the print tradition. Many of
these lecture halls originated as a result of the Lyceum Movement, a
form of adult education. Usually associated with the efforts of Josiah
Holbrook, a New England farmer, the Lyceum Movement had as its purpose
the diffusion of knowledge, the promotion of common schools, the
creation of libraries and, especially, the establishment of lecture
halls. By 1835, there were more than three thousand Lyceums in fifteen
states.3′ Most of these were located east of the Alleghenies, but by
1840, they were to be found at the edges of the frontier, as far west as
Iowa and Minnesota. Alfred Bunn, an Englishman on an extensive tour
through America, reported in 1853 that “practically every village had
its lecture hall.” 35 He added: “It is a matter of wonderment… to
witness the youthful workmen, the overtired artisan, the worn-out
factory girl… rushing… after the toil of the day is over, into the
hot atmosphere of a crowded lecture room.” 36 Bunn’s countryman J. F.
W. Johnston attended lectures at this time at the Smithsonian
Institution and “found the lecture halls jammed with capacity audiences
of 1200 and 1500 people.” 57 Among the lecturers these audiences could
hear were the leading intellectuals, writers and humorists (who were
also writers) of their time, including Henry Ward Beecher, Horace
Greeley, Louis Agassiz and Ralph Waldo Emerson (whose fee for a lecture
was fifty dollars).38 In his autobiography, Mark Twain devotes two
chapters to his experiences as a lecturer on the Lyceum circuit. “I
began as a lecturer in 1866 in California and Nevada,” he wrote. “[I]
lectured in New York once and in the Mississippi Valley a few times; in
1868 [I] made the whole Western circuit; and in the two or three
following seasons added the Eastern circuit to my route.” 39 Apparently,
Emerson was underpaid since Twain remarks that some lecturers charged as
much as $250 when they spoke in towns and $400 when they spoke in cities
(which is almost as much, in today’s terms, as the going price for a
lecture by a retired television newscaster). the point all this is
leading to is that from its beginning until
well into the nineteenth century, America was as dominated by the
printed word and an oratory based on the printed word as any society we
know of. This situation was only in part a legacy of the Protestant
tradition. As Richard Hofstadter reminds us, America was founded by
intellectuals, a rare occurrence in the history of modern nations. “the
Founding Fathers,” he writes, “were sages, scientists, men of broad
cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide
reading in history, politics, and law to solve the exigent problems of
their time.” A society shaped by such men does not easily move in
contrary directions. We might even say that America was founded by
intellectuals, from which it has taken us two centuries and a
communications revolution to recover. Hofstadter has written
convincingly of our efforts to “recover,” that is to say, of the
anti-intellectual strain in American public life, but he concedes that
his focus distorts the general picture. It is akin to writing a history
of American business by concentrating on the history of bankruptcies.
the influence of the printed word in every arena of public discourse was
insistent and powerful not merely because of the quantity of printed
matter but because of its monopoly. This point cannot be stressed
enough, especially for those who are reluctant to acknowledge profound
differences in the media environments of then and now. One sometimes
hears it said, for example, that there is more printed matter available
today than ever before, which is undoubtedly true. But from the
seventeenth century to the late nineteenth century, printed matter was
virtually all that was available. There were no movies to see, radio to
hear, photographic displays to look at, records to play. There was no
television. Public business was channeled into and expressed through
print, which became the model, the metaphor and the measure of all
discourse. the resonances of the lineal, analytical structure of print,
and in particular, of expository prose, could be felt everywhere. For
example, in how people talked. Tocqueville remarks on this in Democracy
in
America. “An American,” he wrote, “cannot converse, but he can discuss,
and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was
addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the
discussion, he will say ‘Gentlemen’ to the person with whom he is
conversing.” 42 This odd practice is less a reflection of an American’s
obstinacy than of his modeling his conversational style on the structure
of the printed word. Since the printed word is impersonal and is
addressed to an invisible audience, what Tocqueville is describing here
is a kind of printed orality, which was observable in diverse forms of
oral discourse. On the pulpit, for example, sermons were usually
written speeches delivered in a stately, impersonal tone consisting
“largely of an impassioned, coldly analytical cataloguing of the
attributes of the Deity as revealed to man through Nature and Nature’s
Laws.”43 And even when the Great Awakening came–a revivalist movement
that challenged the analytical, dispassionate spirit of Deism–its
highly emotional preachers used an oratory that could be transformed
easily to the printed page. the most charismatic of these men was the
Reverend George Whitefield, who beginning in 1739 preached all over
America to large crowds. In Philadelphia, he addressed an audience of
ten thousand people, whom he deeply stirred and alarmed by assuring them
of eternal hellfire if they refused to accept Christ. Benjamin Franklin
witnessed one of Whitefield’s performances and responded by offering to
become his publisher. In due time, Whitefield’s journals and sermons
were published by B. Franklin of Philadelphia.
But obviously I do not mean to say that print merely influenced the form
of public discourse. That does not say much unless one connects it to
the more important idea that form will determine the nature of content.
For those readers who may believe that this idea is too “McLuhanesque”
for their taste, I offer Karl Marx from the German Ideology. “Is the
Iliad possible,” he asks rhetorically, “when the printing press and even
printing machines exist? Is it not inevitable that with the emergence
of the press, the singing and the telling and the muse cease; that is,
the conditions necessary for epic poetry disappear?”45 Marx understood
well that the press was not merely a machine but a structure for
discourse, which both rules out and insists upon certain kinds of
content and, inevitably, a certain kind of audience. He did not,
himself, fully explore the matter, and others have taken up the task. I
too must try my hand at it–to explore how the press worked as a
metaphor and an epistemology to create a serious and rational public
conversation, from which we have now been so dramatically separated.
the Typographic Mind
the first of the seven famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen A. Douglas took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottowa, Illinois.
Their arrangement provided that Douglas would speak first, for one hour;
Lincoln would take an hour and a half to reply; Douglas, a half hour to
rebut Lincoln’s reply. This debate was considerably shorter than those
to which the two men were accustomed. In fact, they had tangled several
times before, and all of their encounters had been much lengthier and
more exhausting. For example, on October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois,
Douglas delivered a three-hour address to which Lincoln, by agreement,
was to respond. When Lincoln’s turn came, he reminded the audience that
it was already 5 p.m., that he would probably require as much time as
Douglas and that Douglas was still scheduled for a rebuttal. He
proposed, therefore, that the audience go home, have dinner, and return
refreshed for four more hours of talk. the audience amiably agreed, and
matters proceeded as Lincoln had outlined. What kind of audience was
this? Who were these people who could so cheerfully accommodate
themselves to seven hours of oratory? It should be noted, by the way,
that Lincoln and Douglas Were not presidential candidates; at the time
of their encounter in Peoria they were not even candidates for the
United States Senate. But their audiences were not especially concerned
with their official status. These were people who regarded such events
as essential to their political education, who took them to be an
integral part of their social lives, and who
were quite accustomed to extended oratorical performances. Typically at
county or state fairs, programs included many speakers, most of whom
were allotted three hours for their arguments. And since it was
preferred that speakers not go unanswered, their opponents were allotted
an equal length of time. (One might add that the speakers were not
always men. At one fair lasting several days in Springfield, “Each
evening a woman [lectured] in the courtroom on ‘Woman’s Influence in the
Great Progressive Movements of the Day.” “2) Moreover, these people did
not rely on fairs or special events to get their fill of oratory. the
tradition of the “stump” speaker was widely practiced, especially in the
western states. By the stump of a felled tree or some equivalent open
space, a speaker would gather an audience, and, as the saying had it,
“take the stump” for two or three hours. Although audiences were mostly
respectful and attentive, they were not quiet or unemotional. Throughout
the Lincoln-Douglas debates, for example, people shouted encouragement
to the speakers (“You tell ’em, Abe!”) or voiced terse expressions of
scorn (“Answer that one, if you can”). Applause was frequent, usually
reserved for a humorous or elegant phrase or a cogent point. At the
first debate in Ottowa, Douglas responded to lengthy applause with a
remarkable and revealing statement. “My friends,” he said, “silence
will be more acceptable to me in the discussion of these questions than
applause. I desire to address myself to your judgment, your
understanding, and your consciences, and not to your passions or your
enthusiasms.” 3 As to the conscience of the audience, or even its
judgment, it is difficult to say very much. But as to its
understanding, a great deal can be assumed. For one thing, its attention
span would obviously have been extraordinary by current standards. Is
there any audience of Americans today who could endure seven hours of
talk? or five? or three? Especially without pictures of any kind?
Second, these audiences must have had an equally extraordinary capacity
to comprehend lengthy and complex sentences aurally. In
Douglas’ Ottowa speech he included in his one-hour address three long,
legally phrased resolutions of the Abolition platform. Lincoln, in his
reply, read even longer passages from a published speech he had
delivered on a previous occasion. For all of Lincoln’s celebrated
economy of style, his sentence structure in the debates was intricate
and subtle, as was Douglas’. In the second debate, at Freeport,
Illinois, Lincoln rose to answer Douglas in the following words:
It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour, notice all
the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an hour and a
half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has said upon
which you would like to hear something from me, but which I omit to
comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an
impossibility for me to cover his whole ground.
It is hard to imagine the present occupant of the White House being
capable of constructing such clauses in similar circumstances. And if he
were, he would surely do so at the risk of burdening the comprehension
or concentration of his audience. People of a television culture need
“plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as
to require it in some circumstances by law. the Gettysburg Address
would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience.
the Lincoln-Douglas audience apparently had a considerable grasp of the
issues being debated, including knowledge of historical events and
complex political matters. At Ottowa, Douglas put seven interrogatives
to Lincoln, all of which would have been rhetorically pointless unless
the audience was familiar with the Dred Scott decision, the quarrel
between Douglas and President Buchanan, the disaffection of some
Democrats, the Abolition platform, and Lincoln’s famous “House divided”
speech at Cooper Union. Further, in answering Douglas’ questions in a
later debate, Lincoln made a subtle distinction between what he was, or
was not, “pledged” to uphold and what he actually believed, which he
surely would not have attempted unless he assumed the audience could
grasp his point. Finally, while both speakers employed some of the more
simple-minded weapons of argumentative language (e.g., name-calling and
bombastic generalities), they consistently drew upon more complex
rhetorical resources–sarcasm, irony, paradox, elaborated metaphors,
fine distinctions and the exposure of contradiction, none of which would
have advanced their respective causes unless the audience was fully
aware of the means being employed. It would be false, however, to give
the impression that these 1858 audiences were models of intellectual
propriety. All of the Lincoln-Douglas debates were conducted amid a
carnival-like atmosphere. Bands played (although not during the
debates), hawkers sold their wares, children romped, liquor was
available. These were important social events as well as rhetorical
performances, but this did not trivialize them. As I have indicated,
these audiences were made up of people whose intellectual lives and
public business were fully integrated into their social world. As
Winthrop Hudson has pointed out, even Methodist camp meetings combined
picnics with opportunities to listen to oratory. Indeed, most of the
camp grounds originally established for religious
inspiration–Chautauqua, New York; Ocean Grove, New Jersey; Bayview,
Michigan; Junaluska, North Carolina–were eventually transformed into
conference centers, serving educational and intellectual functions. In
other words, the use of language as a means of complex argument was an
important, pleasurable and common form of discourse in almost every
public arena. To understand the audience to whom Lincoln and Douglas
directed their memorable language, we must remember that these people
were the grandsons and granddaughters of the Enlightenment (American
version). They were the progeny of Franklin, Jefferson, Madison and Tom
Paine, the inheritors of
the Empire of Reason, as Henry Steele Commager has called
eighteenth-century America. It is true that among their number were
frontiersmen, some of whom were barely literate, and immigrants to whom
English was still strange. It is also true that by 1858, the photograph
and telegraph had been invented, the advance guard of a new epistemology
that would put an end to the Empire of Reason. But this would not
become evident until the twentieth century. At the time of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates, America was in the middle years of its most
glorious literary outpouring. In 1858, Edwin Markham was six years old;
Mark Twain was twenty-three; Emily Dickinson, twenty-eight; Whitman and
James Russell Lowell, thirty-nine; Thoreau, forty-one; Melville,
forty-five; Whittier and Longfellow, fifty-one; Hawthorne and Emerson,
fifty-four and fifty-five; Poe had died nine years before. I choose the
Lincoln-Douglas debates as a starting point for this chapter not only
because they were the preeminent example of political discourse in the
mid-nineteenth century but also because they illustrate the power of
typography to control the character of that discourse. Both the
speakers and their audience were habituated to a kind of oratory that
may be described as literary. For all of the hoopla and socializing
surrounding the event, the speakers had little to offer, and audiences
little to expect, but language. And the language that was offered was
clearly modeled on the style of the written word. To anyone who has
read what Lincoln and Douglas said, this is obvious from beginning to
end. the debates opened, in fact, with Douglas making the following
introduction, highly characteristic of everything that was said
afterward:
Ladies and Gentlemen: I appear before you today for the purpose of
discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public
mind. By an arrangement between Mr. Lincoln and myself, we are present
here today for the purpose of having a joint discussion, as the
representatives of the two great political parties of the
State and Union, upon the principles in issue between those parties, and
this vast concourse of people shows the deep feeling which pervades the
public mind in regard to the questions dividing us.
This language is pure print. That the occasion required it to be spoken
aloud cannot obscure that fact. And that the audience was able to
process it through the ear is remarkable only to people whose culture no
longer resonates powerfully with the printed word. Not only did Lincoln
and Douglas write all their speeches in advance, but they also planned
their rebuttals in writing. Even the spontaneous interactions between
the speakers were expressed in a sentence structure, sentence length and
rhetorical organization which took their form from writing. To be sure,
there were elements of pure orality in their presentations. After all,
neither speaker was indifferent to the moods of the audiences.
Nonetheless, the resonance of typography was ever-present. Here was
argument and counterargument, claim and counterclaim, criticism of
relevant texts, the most careful scrutiny of the previously uttered
sentences of one’s opponent. In short, the Lincoln-Douglas debates may
be described as expository prose lifted whole from the printed page.
That is the meaning of Douglas’ reproach to the audience. He claimed
that his appeal was to understanding and not to passion, as if the
audience were to be silent, reflective readers, and his language the
text which they must ponder. Which brings us, of course, to the
questions, What are the implications for public discourse of a written,
or typographic, metaphor? What is the character of its content? What
does it demand of the public? What uses of the mind does it favor? One
must begin, I think, by pointing to the obvious fact that the written
word, and an oratory based upon it, has a content: a semantic,
paraphrasable, propositional content. This may sound odd, but since I
shall be arguing soon enough that much of our discourse today has only a
marginal propositional content, I must stress the point here. Whenever
language is the principal medium of communication–especially language
controlled by the rigors of print–an idea, a fact, a claim is the
inevitable result. the idea may be banal, the fact irrelevant, the
claim false, but there is no escape from meaning when language is the
instrument guiding one’s thought. Though one may accomplish it from
time to time, it is very hard to say nothing when employing a written
English sentence. What else is exposition good for? Words have very
little to recommend them except as carriers of meaning. the shapes of
written words are not especially interesting to look at. Even the
sounds of sentences of spoken words are rarely engaging except when
composed by those with extraordinary poetic gifts. If a sentence
refuses to issue forth a fact, a request, a question, an assertion, an
explanation, it is nonsense, a mere grammatical shell. As a consequence
a language-centered discourse such as was characteristic of eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century America tends to be both content-laden and
serious, all the more so when it takes its form from print. It is
serious because meaning demands to be understood. A written sentence
calls upon its author to say something, upon its reader to know the
import of what is said. And when an author and reader are struggling
with semantic meaning, they are engaged in the most serious challenge to
the intellect. This is especially the case with the act of reading, for
authors are not always trustworthy. They lie, they become confused,
they over-generalize, they abuse logic and, sometimes, common sense. the
reader must come armed, in a serious state of intellectual readiness.
This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one’s
responses are isolated, one’s intellect thrown back on its own
resources. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed
sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of
either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious
business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.
From Erasmus in the sixteenth century to Elizabeth Eiseno stein in the
twentieth, almost every scholar who has grappled with the question of
what reading does to one’s habits of mind has concluded that the process
encourages rationality; that the sequential, propositional character of
the written word fosters what Walter Ong calls the “analytic management
of knowledge.” To engage the written word means to follow a line of
thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying,
inference-making and reasoning. It means to uncover lies, confusions,
and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense. It
also means to weigh ideas, to compare and contrast assertions, to
connect one generalization to another. To accomplish this, one must
achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact,
encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text. That is why a good
reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an
inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too
detached. I do not mean to imply that prior to the written word analytic
thought was not possible. I am referring here not to the potentialities
of the individual mind but to the predispositions of a cultural
mind-set. In a culture dominated by print, public discourse tends to be
characterized by a coherent, orderly arrangement of facts and ideas. the
public for whom it is intended is generally competent to manage such
discourse. In a print culture, writers make mistakes when they lie,
contradict themselves, fail to support their generalizations, try to
enforce illogical connections. In a print culture, readers make
mistakes when they don’t notice, or even worse, don’t care. In the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, print put forward a definition of
intelligence that gave priority to the objective, rational use of the
mind and at the same time encouraged forms of public discourse with
serious, logically ordered content. It is no accident that the Age of
Reason was coexistent with the growth of a print culture, first in
Europe and then in America. the spread of typography kindled the hope
that the world and
its manifold mysteries could at least be comprehended, predicted,
controlled. It is in the eighteenth century that the scientific method
preeminent example of the analytic management of knowledge–begins its
refashioning of the world. It is in the eighteenth century that
capitalism is demonstrated to be a rational and liberal system of
economic life, that religious superstition comes under furious attack,
that the divine right of kings is shown to be a mere prejudice, that the
idea of continuous progress takes hold, and that the necessity of
universal literacy through education becomes apparent. Perhaps the most
optimistic expression of everything that typography implied is contained
in the following paragraph from John Stuart Mill’s autobiography:
So complete was my father’s reliance on the influence of mankind,
wherever [literacy] is allowed to reach them, that he felt as if all
would be gained if the whole population were taught to read, if all
sorts of opinions were allowed to be addressed to them by word and in
writing, and if, by means of the suffrage, they could nominate a
legislature to give effect to the opinion they adopted.
This was, of course, a hope never quite realized. At no point in the
history of England or America (or anyplace else) has the dominion of
reason been so total as the elder Mill imagined typography would allow.
Nonetheless, it is not difficult to demonstrate that in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, American public discourse, being rooted in the
bias of the printed word, was serious, inclined toward rational argument
and presentation, and, therefore, made up of meaningful content. Let us
take religious discourse as an illustration of this point. In the
eighteenth century believers were as much influenced by the rationalist
tradition as anyone else. the New World offered freedom of religion to
all, which implied that no force other than reason itself could be
employed to bring light to the unbeliever. “Here Deism will have its
full chance,” said Ezra Stiles
in one of his famous sermons in 1783. “Nor need libertines [any] more
to complain of being overcome by any weapons but the gentle, the
powerful ones of argument and truth.” Leaving aside the libertines, we
know that the Deists were certainly given their full chance. It is
quite probable, in fact, that the first four presidents of the United
States were Deists. Jefferson, certainly, did not believe in the
divinity of Jesus Christ and, while he was President, wrote a version of
the Four Gospels from which he removed all references to “fantastic”
events, retaining only the ethical content of Jesus’ teaching. Legend
has it that when Jefferson was elected President, old women hid their
Bibles and shed tears. What they might have done had Tom Paine become
President or been offered some high post in the government is hard to
imagine. In the Age of Reason, Paine attacked the Bible and all
subsequent Christian theology. Of Jesus Christ, Paine allowed that he
was a virtuous and amiable man but charged that the stories of his
divinity were absurd and profane, which, in the way of the rationalist,
he tried to prove by a close textual analysis of the Bible. “All
national institutions of churches,” he wrote, “whether Jewish, Christian
or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to
terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.” 9 Because
of the Age of Reason, Paine lost his standing among the pantheon of
Founding Fathers (and to this day is treated ambiguously in American
history textbooks). But Ezra Stiles did not say that libertines and
Deists would be loved: only that with reason as their jury, they would
have their say in an open court. As indeed they did. Assisted by the
initial enthusiasms evoked by the French Revolution, the Deist attack on
churches as enemies of progress and on religious superstition as enemy
of rationality became a popular movement.s fought back, of course, and
when Deism ceased to attract interest, they fought among themselves.
Toward the mid-eighteenth century, Theodore Frelinghuysen and William
Tennent led a revivalist movement among Presbyterians. They were
followed by the
three great figures associated with religious “awakenings” in
America–Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and, later in the
nineteenth century, Charles Finney. These men were spectacularly
successful preachers, whose appeal reached regions of consciousness far
beyond where reason rules. Of Whitefield, it was said that by merely
pronouncing the word “Mesopotamia,” he evoked tears in his audience.
Perhaps that is why Henry Coswell remarked in 1839 that “religious mania
is said to be the prevailing form of insanity in the United States.” Yet
it is essential to bear in mind that quarrels over doctrine between the
revivalist movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the
established churches fiercely opposed to them were argued in pamphlets
and books in largely rational, logically ordered language. It would be
a serious mistake to think of Billy Graham or any other television
revivalist as a latter-day Jonathan Edwards or Charles Finney. Edwards
was one of the most brilliant and creative minds ever produced by
America. His contribution to aesthetic theory was almost as important
as his contribution to theology. His interests were mostly academic; he
spent long hours each day in his study. He did not speak to his
audiences extemporaneously. He read his sermons, which were tightly
knit and closely reasoned expositions of theological doctrine. Audiences
may have been moved emotionally by Edwards’ language, but they were,
first and foremost, required to understand it. Indeed Edwards’ fame was
largely a result of a book, Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of
God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, published in
1737. A later book, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections,
published in 1746, is considered to be among the most remarkable
psychological studies ever produced in America. Unlike the principal
figures in today’s “great awakening”–Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy
Swaggart, et all.–yesterday’s leaders of revivalist movements in
America were men of learning, faith in reason, and generous expository
gifts. Their
disputes with the religious establishments were as much about theology
and the nature of consciousness as they were about religious
inspiration. Finhey, for example, was no “backcountry rustic,” as he
was sometimes characterized by his doctrinal opponents. 3 He had been
trained as a lawyer, wrote an important book on systematic theology, and
ended his career as a professor at and then president of Oberlin
College. the doctrinal disputes among religionists not only were argued
in carefully drawn exposition in the eighteenth century, but in the
nineteenth century Were settled by the extraordinary expedient of
founding colleges. It is sometimes forgotten that the churches in
America laid the foundation of our system of higher education. Harvard,
of course, was established early–in 1636–for the purpose of providing
learned ministers to the Congregational Church. And, sixty-five years
later, when Congregationalists quarreled among themselves over doctrine,
Yale College was founded to correct the lax influences of Harvard (and,
to this day, claims it has the same burden). the strong intellectual
strain of the Congregationalists was matched by other denominations,
certainly in their passion for starting colleges. the Presbyterians
founded, among other schools, the University of Tennessee in 1784,
Washington and Jefferson in 1802 and Lafayette in 1826. the Baptists
founded, among others, Colgate (1817), George Washington (1821), Furman
(1826), Denison (1832) and Wake Forest (1834). the Episcopalians
founded Hobart (1822), Trinity (1823) and Kenyon (1824). the Methodists
founded eight colleges between 1830 and 1851, including Wesleyan, Emory,
and Depauw. In addition to Harvard and Yale, the Congregationalists
founded Williams (1793), Middlebury (1800), Amherst ( 1821 ) and Oberlin
(1833). If this preoccupation with literacy and learning be a “form of
insanity,” as Coswell said of religious life in America, then let there
be more of it. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, religious
thought and institutions in America were dominated
by an austere, learned, and intellectual form of discourse that is
largely absent from religious life today. No clearer example of the
difference between earlier and modern forms of public discourse can be
found than in the contrast between the theological arguments of Jonathan
Edwards and those of, say, Jerry Falwell, or Billy Graham, or Oral
Roberts. the formidable content to Edwards’ theology must inevitably
engage the intellect; if there is such a content to the theology of the
television evangelicals, they have not yet made it known. the
differences between the character of discourse in a print-based culture
and the character of discourse in a television-based culture are also
evident if one looks at the legal system. In a print-based culture,
lawyers tended to be well educated, devoted to reason, and capable of
impressive expositional argument. It is a matter frequently overlooked
in histories of America that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
the legal profession represented “a sort of privileged body in the scale
of intellect,” as Tocqueville remarked. Folk heroes were made of some
of those lawyers, like Sergeant Prentiss of Alabama, or “Honest” Abe
Lincoln of Illinois, whose craftiness in manipulating juries was highly
theatrical, not unlike television’s version of a trial lawyer. But the
great figures of American juris-prudence-John Marshall, Joseph Story,
James Kent, David Hoffman, William Wirt and Daniel Webster–were models
of intellectual elegance and devotion to rationality and scholarship.
They believed that democracy, for all of its obvious virtues, posed the
danger of releasing an undisciplined individualism. Their aspiration was
to save civilization in America by “creating a rationality for the law.”
4 As a consequence of this exalted view, they believed that law must not
be merely a learned profession but a liberal one. the famous law
professor Job Tyson argued that a lawyer must be familiar with the works
of Seneca, Cicero, and Plato.5 George Sharswood, perhaps envisioning the
degraded state of legal education in the twentieth century, remarked in
1854 that to read law exclusively will damage the
mind, “shackle it to the technicalities with which it has become so
familiar, and disable it from taking enlarged and comprehensive views
even of topics falling within its compass.” 16 the insistence on a
liberal, rational and articulate legal mind was reinforced by the fact
that America had a written constitution, as did all of its component
states, and that law did not grow by chance but was explicitly
formulated. A lawyer needed to be a writing and reading man par
excellence, for reason was the principal authority upon which legal
questions were to be decided. John Marshall was, of course, the great
“paragon of reason, as vivid a symbol to the American imagination as
Natty Bumppod. He was the preeminent example of Typographic
Man–detached, analytical, devoted to logic, abhorring contradiction.
It was said of him that he never used analogy as a principal support of
his arguments. Rather, he introduced most of his decisions with the
phrase “It is admitted …. “Once one admitted his premises, one was
usually forced to accept his conclusion. To an extent difficult to
imagine today, earlier Americans were familiar not only with the great
legal issues of their time but even with the language famous lawyers had
used to argue their cases. This was especially true of Daniel Webster,
and it was only natural that Stephen Vincent Bent in his famous short
story would have chosen Daniel Webster to contend with the Devil. How
could the Devil triumph over a man whose language, described by Supreme
Court Justice Joseph Story, had the following characteristics?
?. his clearness and downright simplicity of statement, his vast
comprehensiveness of topics, his fertility in illustrations drawn from
practical sources; his keen analysis, and suggestion of difficulties;
his power of disentangling a complicated proposition, and resolving it
in elements so plain as to reach the most common minds; his vigor in
generalizations, planting his own arguments behind the whole battery of
his opponents; his wariness and caution not to betray himself by heat
into untenable positions, or to spread his forces over useless ground.
I quote this in full because it is the best nineteenth-century
description I know of the character of discourse expected of one whose
mind is formed by the printed word. It is exactly the ideal and model
James Mill had in mind in prophesying about the wonders of typography.
And if the model was somewhat unreachable, it stood nonetheless as an
ideal to which every lawyer aspired. Such an ideal went far beyond the
legal profession or the ministry in its influence. Even in the everyday
world of commerce, the resonances of rational, typographic discourse
were to be found. If we may take advertising to be the voice of
commerce, then its history tells very clearly that in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries those with products to sell took their customers to
be not unlike Daniel Webster: they assumed that potential buyers were
literate, rational, analytical. Indeed, the history of newspaper
advertising in America may be considered, all by itself, as a metaphor
of the descent of the typographic mind, beginning, as it does, with
reason, and ending, as it does, with entertainment. In Frank Presbrey’s
classic study the History and Development of Advertising, he discusses
the decline of typography, dating its demise in the late 1860’s and
early 1870’s. He refers to the period before then as the “dark ages” of
typographical display. the dark ages to which he refers began in 1704
when the first paid advertisements appeared in an American newspaper,
the Boston News-Letter. These were three in number, occupying
altogether four inches of single-column space. One of them offered a
reward for the capture of a thief; another offered a reward for the
return of an anvil that was “taken up” by some unknown party. the third
actually offered something for sale, and, in fact, is not unlike real
estate advertisements one might see in today’s New York Times:
At Oysterbay, on Long Island in the Province of N. York. There is a
very good Fulling-Mill, to be Let or Sold, as also a Plantation, having
on it a large new Brick house, and another good house by it for a
Kitchen & workhouse, with a Barn, Stable a young Orchard and 20 acres
clear land. the Mill is to be Let with or without the Plantation;
Enquire of Mr. William Bradford Printer in N. York, and know further.
For more than a century and a half afterward, advertisements took this
form with minor alterations. For example, sixty-four years after Mr.
Bradford advertised an estate in Oyster Bay, the legendary Paul Revere
placed the following advertisement in the Boston Gazette:
Whereas many persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore-Teeth by
Accident, and otherways, to their great Detriment, not only in Looks,
but Speaking both in Public and Private:–This is to inform all such,
that they may have them re-placed with false Ones, that look as well as
the Natural, and Answers the End of Speaking to all Intents, by PauL
REVERE, Goldsmith, near the Head of Dr. Clarke’s Wharf, Boston.
Revere went on to explain in another paragraph that those whose false
teeth had been fitted by John Baker, and who had suffered the indignity
of having them loosen, might come to Revere to have them tightened. He
indicated that he had learned how to do this from John Baker himself.
Not until almost a hundred years after Revere’s announcement were there
any serious attempts by advertisers to overcome the lineal, typographic
form demanded by publishers.22 And not until the end of the nineteenth
century did advertising move fully into its modern mode of discourse. As
late as 1890, advertising, still understood to consist of words, was
regarded as an essentially serious and rational enterprise whose purpose
was to convey information and make claims in propositional
form. Advertising was, as Stephen Douglas said in another context,
intended to appeal to understanding, not to passions. This is not to
say that during the period of typographic display, the claims that were
put forward were true. Words cannot guarantee their truth content.
Rather, they assemble a context in which the question, Is this true or
false? is relevant. In the 1890’s that context was shattered, first by
the massive intrusion of illustrations and photographs, then by the
nonpropositional use of language. For example, in the 1890’s
advertisers adopted the technique of using slogans. Presbrey contends
that modern advertising can be said to begin with the use of two such
slogans: “You press the button; we do the rest” and “See that hump.” At
about the same time, jingles started to be used, and in 1892, Procter
and Gamble invited the public to submit rhymes to advertise Ivory Soap.
In 1896, HoO employed, for the first time, a picture of a baby in a high
chair, the bowl of cereal before him, his spoon in hand, his face
ecstatic. By the turn of the century, advertisers no longer assumed
rationality on the part of their potential customers. Advertising
became one part depth psychology, one part aesthetic theory. Reason had
to move itself to other arenas. To understand the role that the printed
word played in pro-riding an earlier America with its assumptions about
intelligence, truth and the nature of discourse, one must keep in view
that the act of reading in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had
an entirely different quality to it than the act of reading does today.
For one thing, as I have said, the printed word had a monopoly on both
attention and intellect, there being no other means, besides the oral
tradition, to have access to public knowledge. Public figures were
known largely by their written words, for example, not by their looks or
even their oratory. It is quite likely that most of the first fifteen
presidents of the United States would not have been recognized had they
passed the average citizen in the street. This would have been the case
as well of the great lawyers, ministers and scientists of that era. To
think about those men was to think about what they had written, to judge
them by their public positions, their arguments, their knowledge as
codified in the printed word. You may get some sense of how we are
separated from this kind of consciousness by thinking about any of our
recent presidents; or even preachers, lawyers and scientists who are or
who have recently been public figures. Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy
Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to
your mind is an image, a picture of a face, most likely a face on a
television screen (in Einstein’s case, a photograph of a face). Of
words, almost nothing will come to mind. This is the difference between
thinking in a word-centered culture and thinking in an image-centered
culture. It is also the difference between living in a culture that
provides little opportunity for leisure, and one that provides much. the
farm boy following the plow with book in hand, the mother reading aloud
to her family on a Sunday afternoon, the merchant reading announcements
of the latest clipper arrivals –these were different kinds of readers
from those of today. There would have been little casual reading, for
there was not a great deal of time for that. Reading would have had a
sacred element in it, or if not that, would have at least occurred as a
daily or weekly ritual invested with special meaning. For we must also
remember that this was a culture without electricity. It would not have
been easy to read by either candlelight or, later, gaslight. Doubtless,
much reading was done between dawn and the start of the day’s business.
What reading would have been done was done seriously, intensely, and
with steadfast purpose. the modern idea of testing a reader’s
“comprehension,” as distinct from something else a reader may be doing,
would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was
reading but comprehending? As far as we know, there did not exist such
a thing as a “reading problem,” except, of course, for those who could
not attend school. To attend school meant to learn to read, for without
that capacity,
one could not participate in the culture’s conversations. But most
people could read and did participate. To these people, reading was
both their connection to and their model of the world. the printed page
revealed the world, line by line, page by page, to be a serious,
coherent place, capable of management by reason, and of improvement by
logical and relevant criticism.
Almost anywhere one looks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
then, one finds the resonances of the printed word and, in particular,
its inextricable relationship to all forms of public expression. It may
be true, as Charles Beard wrote, that the primary motivation of the
writers of the United States Constitution was the protection of their
economic interests. But it is also true that they assumed that
participation in public life required the capacity to negotiate the
printed word. To them, mature citizenship was not conceivable without
sophisticated literacy, which is why the voting age in most states was
set at twenty-one, and why Jefferson saw in universal education
America’s best hope. And that is also why, as Allan Nevins and Henry
Steele Commager have pointed out, the voting restrictions against those
who owned no property were frequently overlooked, but not one’s
inability to read.
It may be true, as Frederick Jackson Turner wrote, that the spirit that
fired the American mind was the fact of an ever-expanding frontier. But
it is also true, as Paul Anderson has written, that “it is no. mere
figure of speech to say that farm boys followed the plow with book in
hand, be it Shakespeare, Emerson, or Thoreau.” 23 For it was not only a
frontier mentality that led Kansas to be the first state to permit women
to vote in school elections, or Wyoming the first state to grant
complete equality in the franchise. Women were probably more adept
readers than men, and even in the frontier states the principal means of
public discourse issued from the printed word. Those who could read
had, inevitably, to become part of the conversation.
It may also be true, as Perry Miller has suggested, that the religious
fervor of Americans provided much of their energy; or, as earlier
historians told it, that America was created by an idea whose time had
come. I quarrel with none of these explanations. I merely observe that
the America they try to explain was dominated by a public discourse
which took its form from the products of the printing press. For two
centuries, America declared its intentions, expressed its ideology,
designed its laws, sold its products, created its literature and
addressed its deities with black squiggles on white Paper. It did its
talking in typography, and with that as the main feature of its symbolic
environment rose to prominence in world civilization.
the name I give to that period of time during which the American mind
submitted itself to the sovereignty of the printing press is the Age of
Exposition. Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and
a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics we associate
with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the
strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to
think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of
reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for
detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response. Toward
the end of the nineteenth century, for reasons I am most anxious to
explain, the Age of Exposition began to pass, and the early signs of its
replacement could be discerned. Its replacement was to be the Age of
Show Business.
the Peek-a-Boo World
Toward the middle years of the nineteenth century, two ideas came
together whose convergence provided twentieth-century America with a new
metaphor of public discourse. Their partnership overwhelmed the Age of
Exposition, and laid the foundation for the Age of Show Business. One
of the ideas was quite new, the other as old as the cave paintings of
Altamira. We shall come to the old idea presently. the new idea was
that transportation and communication could be disengaged from each
other, that space was not an inevitable constraint on the movement of
information. Americans of the 1800’s were very much concerned with the
problem of “conquering” space. By the mid-nineteenth century, the
frontier extended to the Pacific Ocean, and a rudimentary railroad
system, begun in the 1830s had started to move people and merchandise
across the continent. But until the 1840’s, information could move only
as fast as a human being could carry it; to be precise, only as fast as
a train could travel, which, to be even more precise, meant about
thirty-five miles per hour. In the face of such a limitation, the
development of America as a national community was retarded. In the
1840’s, America was still a composite of regions, each conversing in its
own ways, addressing its own interests. A continentwide conversation
was not yet possible. the solution to these problems, as every school
child used to know, was electricity. To no one’s surprise, it was an
American who found a practical way to put electricity in the service of
communication and, in doing so, eliminated the problem of space once and
for all. I refer, of course, to Samuel Finley Breese Morse, America’s
first true “spaceman.” His telegraph erased state lines, collapsed
regions, and, by wrapping the continent in an information grid, created
the possibility of a unified American discourse. But at a considerable
cost. For telegraphy did something that Morse did not foresee when he
prophesied that telegraphy would make “one neighborhood of the whole
country.” It destroyed the prevailing definition of information, and in
doing so gave a new meaning to public discourse. Among the few who
understood this consequence was Henry David Thoreau, who remarked in
Walden that “We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph
from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing
important to communicate …. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic
and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the
first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear
will be that Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.” Thoreau, as it
turned out, was precisely correct. He grasped that the telegraph would
create its own definition of discourse; that it would not only permit
but insist upon a conversation between Maine and Texas; and that it
would require the content of that conversation to be different from what
Typographic Man was accustomed to. the telegraph made a three-pronged
attack on typography’s definition of discourse, introducing on a large
scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence. These demons of
discourse were aroused by the fact that telegraphy gave a form of
legitimacy to the idea of context-free information; that is, to the idea
that the value of information need not be tied to any function it might
serve in social and political decision-making and action, but may attach
merely to its novelty, interest, and curiosity. the telegraph made
information into a commodity, a “thing” that could be bought and sold
irrespective of its uses or meaning.
But it did not do so alone. the potential of the telegraph to transform
information into a commodity might never have been realized, except for
the partnership between the telegraph and the press. the penny
newspaper, emerging slightly before telegraphy, in the 1830’s, had
already begun the process of elevating irrelevance to the status of
news. Such papers as Benjamin Day’s New York Sun and James Bennett’s
New York Herald turned away from the tradition of news as reasoned (if
biased) political opinion and urgent commercial information and filled
their pages with accounts of sensational events, mostly concerning crime
and sex. While such “human interest news” played little role in shaping
the decisions and actions of readers, it was at least local–about
places and people within their experience-and it was not always tied to
the moment. the human-interest stories of the penny newspapers had a
timeless quality; their power to engage lay not so much in their
currency as in their transcendence. Nor did all newspapers occupy
themselves with such content. For the most part, the information they
provided was not only local but largely functional–tied to the problems
and decisions readers had to address in order to manage their personal
and community affairs. the telegraph changed all that, and with
astonishing speed. Within months of Morse’s first public demonstration,
the local and the timeless had lost their central position in
newspapers, eclipsed by the dazzle of distance and speed. In fact, the
first known use of the telegraph by a newspaper occurred one day after
Morse gave his historic demonstration of telegraphy’s workability. Using
the same Washington-to-Baltimore line Morse had constructed, the
Baltimore Patriot gave its readers information about action taken by the
House of Representatives on the Oregon issue. the paper concluded its
report by noting: “… we are thus enabled to give our readers
information from Washington up to two o’clock. This is indeed the
annihilation of space.” 2 For a brief time, practical problems (mostly
involving the
scarcity of telegraph lines) preserved something of the old definition
of news as functional information. But the foresighted among the
nation’s publishers were quick to see where the future lay, and
committed their full resources to the wiring of the continent. William
Swain, the owner of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, not only invested
heavily in the Magnetic Telegraph Company, the first commercial
telegraph corporation, but became its president in 1850. It was not long
until the fortunes of newspapers came to depend not on the quality or
utility of the news they provided, but on how much, from what distances,
and at what speed. James Bennett of the New York Herald boasted that in
the first week of 1848, his paper contained 79,000 words of telegraphic
content 3–of what relevance to his readers, he didn’t say. Only four
years after Morse opened the nation’s first telegraph line on May 24,
1844, the Associated Press was founded, and news from nowhere, addressed
to no one in particular, began to crisscross the nation. Wars, crimes,
crashes, fires, floods–much of it the social and political equivalent
of Adelaide’s whooping cough–became the content of what people called
“the news of the day.” As Thoreau implied, telegraphy made relevance
irrelevant. the abundant flow of information had very little or nothing
to do with those to whom it was addressed; that is, with any social or
intellectual context in which their lives were embedded. Coleridge’s
famous line about water everywhere without a drop to drink may serve as
a metaphor of a decontextualized information environment: In a sea of
information, there was very little of it to use. A man in Maine and a
man in Texas could converse, but not about anything either of them knew
or cared very much about. the telegraph may have made the country into
“one neighborhood,” but it was a peculiar one, populated by strangers
who knew nothing but the most superficial facts about each other. Since
we live today in just such a neighborhood (now some-
times called a “global village”), you may get a sense of what is meant
by context-free information by asking yourself the following question:
How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio
or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your
plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have
taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?
For most of us, news of the weather will sometimes have such
consequences; for investors, news of the stock market; perhaps an
occasional story about a crime will do it, if by chance the crime
occurred near where you live or involved someone you know. But most of
our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us
something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action. This
fact is the principal legacy of the telegraph: By generating an
abundance of irrelevant information, it dramatically altered what may be
called the “information-action ratio.”
In both oral and typographic cultures, information derives its
importance from the possibilities of action. Of course, in any
communication environment, input (what one is informed about) always
exceeds output (the possibilities of action based on information). But
the situation created by telegraphy, and then exacerbated by later
technologies, made the relationship between information and action both
abstract and remote. For the first time in human history, people were
faced with the problem of information glut, which means that
simultaneously they were faced with the problem of a diminished social
and political potency.
You may get a sense of what this means by asking yourself another series
of questions: What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in
the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment?
What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk
of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA,
affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran?
I shall take
the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them. You
may, of course, cast a ballot for someone who claims to have some plans,
as well as the power to act. But this you can do only once every two or
four years by giving one hour of your time, hardly a satisfying means of
expressing the broad range of opinions you hold. Voting, we might even
say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. the last
refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a
version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it
in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into–what
else?–another piece of news. Thus, we have here a great loop of
impotence: the news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which
you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you
can do nothing.
Prior to the age of telegraphy, the information-action ratio was
sufficiently close so that most people had a sense of being able to
control some of the contingencies in their lives. What people knew
about had action-value. In the information world created by telegraphy,
this sense of potency was lost, precisely because the whole world became
the context for news. Everything became everyone’s business. For the
first time, we were sent information which answered no question we had
asked, and which, in any case, did not permit the right of reply.
We may say then that the contribution of the telegraph to public
discourse was to dignify irrelevance and amplify impotence. But this was
not all: Telegraphy also made public discourse essentially incoherent.
It brought into being a world of broken time and broken attention, to
use Lewis Mumford’s phrase. the principal strength of the telegraph was
its capacity to move information, not collect it, explain it or analyze
it. In this respect, telegraphy was the exact opposite of typography.
books, for example, are an excellent container for the accumulation,
quiet scrutiny and organized analysis of information and ideas. It
takes time to write a book, and to read one; time to discuss its
contents and to make judgments about their merit,
including the form of their presentation. A book is an attempt to make
thought permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted
by authors of the past. Therefore, civilized people everywhere consider
the burning of a book a vile form of anti-intellectualism. But the
telegraph demands that we burn its contents. the value of telegraphy is
undermined by applying the tests of permanence, continuity or coherence.
the telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be
quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts
into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor
require evaluation. the telegraph introduced a kind of public
conversation whose form had startling characteristics: Its language was
the language of headlines–sensational, fragmented, impersonal. News
took the form of slogans, to be noted with excitement, to be forgotten
with dispatch. Its language was also entirely discontinuous. One
message had no connection to that which preceded or followed it. Each
“headline” stood alone as its own context. the receiver of the news had
to provide a meaning if he could. the sender was under no obligation to
do so. And because of all this, the world as depicted by the telegraph
began to appear unmanageable, even undecipherable. the line-by-line,
sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its
resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the
world was to be understood. “Knowing” the facts took on a new meaning,
for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or
connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical
perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph,
intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them.
Thus, to the reverent question posed by Morse–What hath God wrought?–a
disturbing answer came back: a neighborhood of strangers and pointless
quantity; a world of fragments and discontinuities. God, of course, had
nothing to do with it.
And yet, for all of the power of the telegraph, had it stood alone as a
new metaphor for discourse, it is likely that print culture would have
withstood its assault; would, at least, have held its ground. As it
happened, at almost exactly the same time Morse was reconceiving the
meaning of information, Louis Daguerre was reconceiving the meaning of
nature; one might even say, of reality itself. As Daguerre remarked in
1838 in a notice designed to attract investors, “the daguerreotype is
not merely an instrument which serves to draw nature… [it] gives her
the power to reproduce herself.” 4 Of course both the need and the power
to draw nature have always implied reproducing nature, refashioning it
to make it comprehensible and manageable. the earliest cave paintings
were quite possibly visual projections of a hunt that had not yet taken
place, wish fulfillments of an anticipated subjection of nature.
Reproducing nature, in other words, is a very old idea. But Daguerre did
not have this meaning of “reproduce” in mind. He meant to announce that
the photograph would invest everyone with the power to duplicate nature
as often and wherever one liked. He meant to say he had invented the
world’s first “cloning” device, that the photograph was to visual
experience what the printing press was to the written word. In point of
fact, the daguerreotype was not quite capable of achieving such an
equation. It was not until William Henry Fox Talbot, an English
mathematician and linguist, invented the process of preparing a negative
from which any number of positives could be made that the mass printing
and publication of photographs became possible. the name “photography”
was given to this process by the famous astronomer Sir John F. W.
Herschel. It is an odd name since it literally means “writing with
light.” Perhaps Herschel meant the name to be taken ironically, since it
must have been clear from the beginning that photography and writing (in
fact, language in any form) do not inhabit the same universe of
discourse. Nonetheless, ever since the process was named it has been
the custom to speak of photography as a “language.” the metaphor is
risky because it tends to obscure the fundamental differences between
the two modes of conversation. To begin with, photography is a language
that speaks only in particularities. Its vocabulary of images is
limited to concrete representation. Unlike words and sentences, the
photograph does not present to us an idea or concept about the world,
except as we use language itself to convert the image to idea. By
itself, a photograph cannot deal with the unseen, the remote, the
internal, the abstract. It does not speak of “man,” only of a man; not
of “tree,” only of a tree. You cannot produce a photograph of “nature,”
any more than a photograph of “the sea.” You can only photograph a
particular fragment of the here-and-now–a cliff of a certain terrain,
in a certain condition of light; a wave at a moment in time, from a
particular point of view. And just as “nature” and “the sea” cannot be
photographed, such larger abstractions as truth, honor, love, falsehood
cannot be talked about in the lexicon of pictures. For “showing of” and
“talking about” are two very different kinds of processes. “Pictures,”
Gavriel Salomon has written, “need to be recognized, words need to be
understood.” 6 By this he means that the photograph presents the world
as object; language, the world as idea. For even the simplest act of
naming a thing is an act of thinking–of comparing one thing with
others, selecting certain features in common, ignoring what is
different, and making an imaginary category. There is no such thing in
nature as “man” or “tree.” the universe offers no such categories or
simplifications; only flux and infinite variety. the photograph
documents and celebrates the particularities of this infinite variety.
Language makes them comprehensible.
the photograph also lacks a syntax, which deprives it of a capacity to
argue with the world. As an “objective” slice of space-time, the
photograph testifies that someone was there or something happened. Its
testimony is powerful but it offers no opinions–no “should-have-beens”
or “might-have-beens.”
Photography is preeminently a world of fact, not of dispute about facts
or of conclusions to be drawn from them. But this is not to say
photography lacks an epistemological bias. As Susan Sontag has
observed, a photograph implies “that we know about the world if we
accept it as the camera records it.” ? But, as she further observes,
all understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears.
Language, of course, is the medium we use to challenge, dispute, and
cross-examine what comes into view, what is on the surface. the words
“true” and “false” come from the universe of language, and no other.
When applied to a photograph, the question, Is it true? means only, Is
this a reproduction of a real slice of space-time? If the answer is
“Yes,” there are no grounds for argument, for it makes no sense to
disagree with an unfaked photograph. the photograph itself makes no
arguable propositions, makes no extended and unambiguous commentary. It
offers no assertions to refute, so it is not refutable.
the way in which the photograph records experience is also different
from the way of language. Language makes sense only when it is
presented as a sequence of propositions. Meaning is distorted when a
word or sentence is, as we say, taken out of context; when a reader or
listener is deprived of what was said before, and after. But there is
no such thing as a photograph taken out of context, for a photograph
does not require one. In fact, the point of photography is to isolate
images from context, so as to make them visible in a different way. In
a world of photographic images, his. Sontag writes, “all borders…
seem arbitrary. Anything can be separated, can be made discontinuous,
from anything else: All that is necessary is to frame the subject
differently.” 8 She is remarking on the capacity of photographs to
perform a peculiar kind of dismembering of reality, a wrenching of
moments out of their contexts, and a juxtaposing of events and things
that have no logical or historical connection with each other. Like
telegraphy, photography recreates the world as a series of idiosyncratic
events. There is no
beginning, middle, or end in a world of photographs, as there is none
implied by telegraphy. the world is atomized. There is only a present
and it need not be part of any story that can be told. That the image
and the word have different functions, work at different levels of
abstraction, and require different modes of response will not come as a
new idea to anyone. Painting is at least three times as old as writing,
and the place of imagery in the repertoire of communication instruments
was quite well understood in the nineteenth century. What was new in
the mid-nineteenth century was the sudden and massive intrusion of the
photograph and other iconographs into the symbolic environment. This
event is what Daniel Boorstin in his pioneering book the Image calls
“the graphic revolution.” By this phrase, Boorstin means to call
attention to the fierce assault on language made by forms of
mechanically reproduced imagery that spread unchecked throughout
American culture–photo-graphs, prints, posters, drawings,
advertisements. I choose the word “assault” deliberately here, to
amplify the point implied in Boorstin’s “graphic revolution.” the new
imagery, with photography at its forefront, did not merely function as a
supplement to language, but bid to replace it as our dominant means for
construing, understanding, and testing reality. What Boorstin implies
about the graphic revolution, I wish to make explicit here: the new
focus on the image undermined traditional definitions of information, of
news, and, to a large extent, of reality itself. First in billboards,
posters, and advertisements, and later in such “news” magazines and
papers as Life, Look, the New York Daily Mirror and Daily News, the
picture forced exposition into the background, and in some instances
obliterated it altogether. By the end of the nineteenth century,
advertisers and newspapermen had discovered that a picture was not only
worth a thousand words, but, where sales were concerned, was better. For
countless Americans, seeing, not reading, became the basis for
believing.
In a peculiar way, the photograph was the perfect complement to the
flood of telegraphic news from nowhere that threatened to submerge
readers in a sea of facts from unknown places about strangers with
unknown faces. For the photograph gave a concrete reality to the
strange-sounding datelines, and attached faces to the unknown names.
Thus it provided the illusion, at least, that “the news” had a
connection to something within one’s sensory experience. It created an
apparent context for the “news of the day.” And the “news of the day”
created a context for the photograph. But the sense of context created
by the partnership of photograph and headline was, of course, entirely
illusory. You may get a better sense of what I mean here if you imagine
a stranger’s informing you that the illyx is a subspecies of vero miform
plant with articulated leaves that flowers biannually on the island of
Aldononjes. And if you wonder aloud, “Yes, but what has that to do with
anything?” imagine that your informant replies, “But here is a
photograph I want you to see,” and hands you a picture labeled Illyx on
Aldononjes. “Ah, yes,” you might murmur, “now I see.” It is true enough
that the photograph provides a context for the sentence you have been
given, and that the sentence provides a context of sorts for the
photograph, and you may even believe for a day or so that you have
learned something. But if the event is entirely self-contained, devoid
of any relationship to your past knowledge or future plans, if that is
the beginning and end of your encounter with the stranger, then the
appearance of context provided by the conjunction of sentence and image
is illusory, and so is the impression of meaning attached to it. You
will, in fact, have “learned” nothing (except perhaps to avoid strangers
with photographs), and the illyx will fade from your mental landscape as
though it had never been. At best you are left with an amusing bit of
trivia, good for trading in cocktail party chatter or solving a
crossword puzzle, but nothing more. It may be of some interest to note,
in this connection, that the
crossword puzzle became a popular form of diversion in America at just
that point when the telegraph and the photograph had achieved the
transformation of news from functional information to decontextualized
fact. This coincidence suggests that the new technologies had turned
the age-old problem of information on its head: Where people once sought
information to manage the real contexts of their lives, now they had to
invent contexts in which otherwise useless information might be put to
some apparent use. the crossword puzzle is one such pseudo-context; the
cocktail party is another; the radio quiz shows of the 1930’s and 1940’s
and the modern television game show are still others; and the ultimate,
perhaps, is the wildly successful “Trivial Pursuit.” In one form or
another, each of these supplies an answer to the question, “What am I to
do with all these disconnected facts?” And in one form or another, the
answer is the same: Why not use them for diversion? for entertainment?
to amuse yourself, in a game? In the Image, Boorstin calls the major
creation of the graphic revolution the “pseudo-event,” by which he means
an event specifically staged to be reported–like the press conference,
say. I mean to suggest here that a more significant legacy of the
telegraph and the photograph may be the pseudo-context. A
pseudo-context is a structure invented to give fragmented and irrelevant
information a seeming use. But the use the pseudo-context provides is
not action, or problem-solving, or change. It is the only use left for
information with no genuine connection to our lives. And that, of
course, is to amuse. the pseudo-context is the last refuge, so to say,
of a culture overwhelmed by irrelevance, incoherence, and impotence. Of
course, photography and telegraphy did not strike down at one blow the
vast edifice that was typographic culture. the habits of exposition, as
I have tried to show, had a long history, and they held powerful sway
over the minds of turn-of-the-century Americans. In fact, the early
decades of the twentieth century were marked by a great outpouring of
brilliant language and
literature. In the pages of magazines like the American Mercury and the
New Yorker, in the novels and stories of Faulkner, Fitzgerald,
Steinbeck, and Hemingway, and even in the columns of the newspaper
giants–the Herald Tribune, the Times– prose thrilled with a vibrancy
and intensity that delighted ear and eye. But this was exposition’s
nightingale song, most brilliant and sweet as the singer nears the
moment of death. It told, for the Age of Exposition, not of new
beginnings, but of an end. Beneath its dying melody, a new note had been
sounded, and photography and telegraphy set the key. Theirs was a
“language” that denied interconnectedness, proceeded without context,
argued the irrelevance of history, explained nothing, and offered
fascination in place of complexity and coherence. Theirs was a duet of
image and instancy, and together they played the tune of a new kind of
public discourse in America. Each of the media that entered the
electronic conversation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries followed the lead of the teleaph and the photograph, and
amplified their biases. Some, such as film, were by their nature
inclined to do so. Others, whose bias was rather toward the
amplification of rational speech–like radio–were overwhelmed by the
thrust of the new epistemology and came in the end to support it.
Together, this ensemble of electronic techniques called into being a new
world–a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into
view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is a world without much
coherence or sense; a world that does not ask us, indeed, does not
permit us to do anything; a world that is, like the child’s game of
peek-a-boo, entirely self-contained. But like peek-a-boo, it is also
endlessly entertaining. Of course, there is nothing wrong with playing
peek-a-boo. And there is nothing wrong with entertainment. As some
psychiatrist once put it, we all build castles in the air. the problems
come when we try to live in them. the communications media of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with telegraphy and
photography at their center, called the peek-a-boo world into existence,
but we did not come to live there until television. Television gave the
epistemological biases of the telegraph and the photograph their most
potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an
exquisite and dangerous perfection. And it brought them into the home.
We are by now well into a second generation of children for whom
television has been their first and most accessible teacher and, for
many, their most reliable companion and friend. To put it plainly,
television is the command center of the new epistemology. There is no
audience so young that it is barred from television. There is no poverty
so abject that it must forgo television. There is no education so
exalted that it is not modified by television. And most important of
all, there is no subject of public interest–politics, news, education,
religion, science, sports–that does not find its way to television.
Which means that all public understanding of these subjects is shaped by
the biases of television.
Television is the command center in subtler ways as well. Our use of
other media, for example, is largely orchestrated by television. Through
it we learn what telephone system to use, what movies to see, what
books, records and magazines to buy, what radio programs to listen to.
Television arranges our communications environment for us in ways that
no other medium has the power to do.
As a small, ironic example of this point, consider this: In the past few
years, we have been learning that the computer is the technology of the
future. We are told that our children will fail in school and be left
behind in life if they are not “computer literate.” We are told that we
cannot run our businesses, or compile our shopping lists, or keep our
checkbooks tidy unless we own a computer. Perhaps some of this is true.
But the most important fact about computers and what they mean to our
lives is that we learn about all of this from television. Television
has achieved the status of “meta-medium”–an instrument
that directs not only our knowledge of the world, but our knowledge of
ways of knowing as well.
At the same time, television has achieved the status of “myth,” as
Roland Barthes uses the word. He means by myth a way of understanding
the world that is not problematic, that we are not fully conscious of,
that seems, in a word, natural. A myth is a way of thinking so deeply
embedded in our consciousness that it is invisible. This is now the way
of television. We are no longer fascinated or perplexed by its
machinery. We do not tell stories of its wonders. We do not confine
our television sets to special rooms. We do not doubt the reality of
what we see on television, are largely unaware of the special angle of
vision it affords. Even the question of how television affects us has
receded into the background. the question itself may strike some of us
as strange, as if one were to ask how having ears and eyes affects us.
Twenty years ago, the question, Does television shape culture or merely
reflect it? held considerable interest for many scholars and social
critics. the question has largely disappeared as television has
gradually become our culture. This means, among other things, that we
rarely talk about television, only about what is on television–that is,
about its content. Its ecology, which includes not only its physical
characteristics and symbolic code but the conditions in which we
normally attend to it, is taken for granted, accepted as natural.
Television has become, so to speak, the background radiation of the
social and intellectual universe, the all-but-imperceptible residue of
the electronic big bang of a century past, so familiar and so thoroughly
integrated with American culture that we no longer hear its faint
hissing in the background or see the flickering gray light. This, in
turn, means that its epistemology goes largely unnoticed. And the
peek-a-boo world it has constructed around us no longer seems even
strange.
There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic
revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television
seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the
sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we
have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed.
Our culture’s adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now all
but complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth,
knowledge, and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with
import, and incoherence seems eminently sane. And if some of our
institutions seem not to fit the template of the times, why it is they,
and not the template, that seem to us disordered and strange.
It is my object in the rest of this book to make the epistemology of
television visible again. I will try to demonstrate by concrete example
that television’s way of knowing is uncompromisingly hostile to
typography’s way of knowing; that television’s conversations promote
incoherence and triviality; that the phrase “serious television” is a
contradiction in terms; and that television speaks in only one
persistent voice–the voice of entertainment. Beyond that, I will try
to demonstrate that to enter the great television conversation, one
American cultural institution after another is learning to speak its
terms. Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one
vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that
in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just
fine. That is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years
ago.
Parr II.
the Age of Show Business
A dedicated graduate student i know returned to his small apartment the
night before a major examination only to discover that his solitary lamp
was broken beyond repair. After a whiff of panic, he was able to
restore both his equanimity and his chances for a satisfactory grade by
turning on the television set, turning off the sound, and with his back
to the set, using its light to read important passages on which he was
to be tested. This is one use of television–as a source of illuminating
the printed page. But the television screen is more than a light source.
It is also a smooth, nearly flat surface on which the printed word may
be displayed. We have all stayed at hotels in which the TV set has had
a special channel for describing the day’s events in letters rolled
endlessly across the screen. This is another use of television-as an
electronic bulletin board. Many television sets are also large and
sturdy enough to bear the weight of a small library. the top of an
old-fashioned RCA console can handle as many as thirty books, and I know
one woman who has securely placed her entire collection of Dickens,
Flaubert, and Turgenev on the top of a 21-inch Westinghouse. Here is
still another use of television–as bookcase. I bring forward these
quixotic uses of television to ridicule the hope harbored by some that
television can be used to support the literate tradition. Such a hope
represents exactly what Marshall McLuhan used to call “rear-view mirror”
thinking: the assumption that a new medium is merely an extension or
amplification of an older one; that an automobile, for example, is only
a fast horse, or an electric light a powerful candle. To make such a
mistake in the matter at hand is to misconstrue entirely how television
redefines the meaning of public discourse. Television does not extend or
amplify literate culture. It attacks it. If television is a
continuation of anything, it is of a tradition begun by the telegraph
and photograph in the mid-nineteenth century, not by the printing press
in the fifteenth. What is television? What kinds of conversations does
it permit? What are the intellectual tendencies it encourages? What
sort of culture does it produce? These are the questions to be addressed
in the rest of this book, and to approach them with a minimum of
confusion, I must begin by making a distinction between a technology and
a medium. We might say that a technology is to a medium as the brain is
to the mind. Like the brain, a technology is a physical apparatus. Like
the mind, a medium is a use to which a physical apparatus is put. A
technology becomes a medium as it employs a particular symbolic code, as
it finds its place in a particular social setting, as it insinuates
itself into economic and political contexts. A technology, in other
words, is merely a machine. A medium is the social and intellectual
environment a machine creates. Of course, like the brain itself, every
technology has an inherent b ias. It has within its physical form a
predisposition toward being used in certain ways and not others. Only
those who know nothing of the history of technology believe that a
technology is entirely neutral. There is an old joke that mocks that
naive belief. Thomas Edison, it goes, would have revealed his discovery
of the electric light much sooner than he did except for the fact that
every time he turned it on, he held it to his mouth and said, “Hello?
Hello?” Not very likely. Each technology has an agenda of its own. It
is, as I have suggested, a metaphor waiting to unfold. the printing
press, for example, had a clear bias toward being used as a
the Ae of Show Business
linguistic medium. It is conceivable to use it exclusively for the
reproduction of pictures. And, one imagines, the Roman Catholic Church
would not have objected to its being so used in the sixteenth century.
Had that been the case, the Protestant Reformation might not have
occurred, for as Luther contended, with the word of God on every
family’s kitchen table, Christians do not require the Papacy to
interpret it for them. But in fact there never was much chance that the
press would be used solely, or even very much, for the duplication of
icons. From its beginning in the fifteenth century, the press was
perceived as an extraordinary opportunity for the display and mass
distribution of written language. Everything about its technical
possibilities led in that direction. One might even say it was invented
for that purpose. the technology of television has a bias, as well. It
is conceivable to use television as a lamp, a surface for texts, a
bookcase, even as radio. But it has not been so used and will not be so
used, at least in America. Thus, in answering the question, What is
television?, we must understand as a first point that we are not talking
about television as a technology but television as a medium. There are
many places in the world where television, though the same technology as
it is in America, is an entirely different medium from that which we
know. I refer to places where the majority of people do not have
television sets, and those who do have only one; where only one station
is available; where television does not operate around the clock; where
most programs have as their purpose the direct furtherance of government
ideology and policy; where commercials are unknown, and “talking heads”
are the principal image; where television is mostly used as if it were
radio. For these reasons and more television will not have the same
meaning or power as it does in America, which is to say, it is possible
for a technology to be so used that its potentialities are prevented
from developing and its social consequences kept to a minimum.
But in America, this has not been the case. Television has found in
liberal democracy and a relatively free market economy a nurturing
climate in which its full potentialities as a technology of images could
be exploited. One result of this has been that American television
programs are in demand all over the world. the total estimate of U.S.
television program exports is approximately 100,000 to 200,000 hours,
equally divided among Latin America, Asia and Europe. Over the years,
programs like “Gunsmoke,”
“Bonanza,”
“Mission: Impossible,” “Star Trek,”
“Kojak,” and more recently, “Dallas” and “Dynasty” have been as popular
in England, Japan, Israel and Norway as in Omaha, Nebraska. I have
heard (but not verified) that some years ago the Lapps postponed for
several days their annual and, one supposes, essential migratory journey
so that they could find out who shot J.R. All of this has occurred
simultaneously with the decline of America’s moral and political
prestige, worldwide. American television programs are in demand not
because America is loved but because American television is loved.
We need not be detained too long in figuring out why. In watching
American television, one is reminded of George Bernard Shaw’s remark on
his first seeing the glittering neon signs of Broadway and 42nd Street
at night. It must be beautiful, he said, if you cannot read. American
television is, indeed, a beautiful spectacle, a visual delight, pouring
forth thousands of images on any given day. the average length of a
shot on network television is only 3.5 seconds, so that the eye never
rests, always has something new to see. Moreover, television offers
viewers a variety of subject matter, requires minimal skills to
comprehend it, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification. Even
commercials, which some regard as an annoyance, are exquisitely crafted,
always pleasing to the eye and accompanied by exciting music. There is
no question but that the best photography in the world is presently seen
on television commercials. American
television, in other words, is devoted entirely to supplying its
audience with entertainment.
Of course, to say that television is entertaining is merely banal. Such
a fact is hardly threatening to a culture, not even worth writing a book
about. It may even be a reason for rejoicing. Life, as we like to say,
is not a highway strewn with flowers. the sight of a few blossoms here
and there may make our journey a trifle more endurable. the Lapps
undoubtedly thought so. We may surmise that the ninety million
Americans who watch television every night also think so. But what I am
claiming here is not that television is entertaining but that it has
made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of
all experience. Our television set keeps us in constant communion with
the world, but it does so with a face whose smiling countenance is
unalterable. the problem is not that television presents us with
entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as
entertaining, which is another issue altogether.
To say it still another way: Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all
discourse on television. No matter what is depicted or from what point
of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our
amusement and pleasure. That is why even on news shows which provide us
daily with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the
newscasters to “join them tomorrow.” What for? One would think that
several minutes of murder and mayhem would suffice as material for a
month of sleepless nights. We accept the newscasters’ invitation
because we know that the “news” is not to be taken seriously, that it is
all in fun, so to say. Everything about a news show tells us this–the
good looks and amiability of the cast, their pleasant banter, the
exciting music that opens and closes the show, the vivid film footage,
the attractive commercials–all these and more suggest that what we have
just seen is no cause for weeping. A news show, to put it plainly, is a
format for entertainment, not for education, reflection or catharsis.
And we must not judge too harshly those who have framed it in this way.
They are not assembling the news to be read, or broadcasting it to be
heard. They are televising the news to be seen. They must follow where
their medium leads. There is no conspiracy here, no lack of
intelligence, only a straightforward recognition that “good television”
has little to do with what is “good” about exposition or other forms of
verbal communication but everything to do with what the pictorial images
look like. I should like to illustrate this point by offering the case
of the eighty-minute discussion provided by the ABC network on November
20, 1983, following its controversial movie the Day After. Though the
memory of this telecast has receded for most, I choose this case
because, clearly, here was television taking its most “serious” and
“responsible” stance. Everything that made up this broadcast recommended
it as a critical test of television’s capacity to depart from an
entertainment mode and rise to the level of public instruction. In the
first place, the subject was the possibility of a nuclear holocaust.
Second, the film itself had been attacked by several influential bodies
politic, including the Reverend Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority. Thus,
it was important that the network display television’s value and serious
intentions as a medium of information and coherent discourse. Third, on
the program itself no musical theme was used as background-a significant
point since almost all television programs are embedded in music, which
helps to tell the audience what emotions are to be called forth. This
is a standard theatrical device, and its absence on television is always
ominous. Fourth, there were no commercials during the discussion, thus
elevating the tone of the event to the state of reverence usually
reserved for the funerals of assassinated Presidents. And finally, the
participants included Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara, and Elie Wiesel,
each of whom is a symbol of sorts of serious discourse. Although
Kissinger, somewhat later, made an appearance on the hit show “Dynasty,”
he was then and still is a
paradigm of intellectual sobriety; and Wiesel, practically a walking
metaphor of social conscience. Indeed, the other members of the
cast–Carl Sagan, William Buckley and General Brent Scowcroft–are, each
in his way, men of intellectual bearing who are not expected to
participate in trivial public matters. the program began with Ted
Koppel, master of ceremonies, so to speak, indicating that what followed
was not intended to be a debate but a discussion. And so those who are
interested in philosophies of discourse had an excellent opportunity to
observe what serious television means by the word “discussion.” Here is
what it means: Each of six men was given approximately five minutes to
say something about the subject. There was, however, no agreement on
exactly what the subject was, and no one felt obliged to respond to
anything anyone else said. In fact, it would have been difficult to do
so, since the participants were called upon seriatim, as if they were
finalists in a beauty contest, each being given his share of minutes in
front of the camera. Thus, if Mr. Wiesel, who was called upon last,
had a response to Mr. Buckley, who was called upon first, there would
have been four commentaries in between, occupying about twenty minutes,
so that the audience (if not Mr. Wiesel himself) would have had
difficulty remembering the argument which prompted his response. In
fact, the participants–most of whom were no strangers to
television–largely avoided addressing each other’s points. They used
their initial minutes and then their subsequent ones to intimate their
position or give an impression. Dr. Kissinger, for example, seemed
intent on making viewers feel sorry that he was no longer their
Secretary of State by reminding everyone of books he had once written,
proposals he had once made, and negotiations he had once conducted. Mr.
McNamara informed the audience that he had eaten lunch in Germany that
very afternoon, and went on to say that he had at least fifteen
proposals to reduce nuclear arms. One would have thought that the
discussion would turn on this
issue, but the others seemed about as interested in it as they were in
what he had for lunch in Germany. (Later, he took the initiative to
mention three of his proposals but they were not discussed.) Elie
Wiesel, in a series of quasi-parables and paradoxes, stressed the tragic
nature of the human condition, but because he did not have the time to
provide a context for his remarks, he seemed quixotic and confused,
conveying an impression of an itinerant rabbi who has wandered into a
coven of Gentiles.
In other words, this was no discussion as we normally use the word. Even
when the “discussion” period began, there were no arguments or
counterarguments, no scrutiny of assumptions, no explanations, no
elaborations, no definitions. Carl Sagan made, in my opinion, the most
coherent statement–a four-minute rationale for a nuclear freeze–but it
contained at least two questionable assumptions and was not carefully
examined. Apparently, no one wanted to take time from his own few
minutes to call attention to someone else’s. Mr. Koppel, for his part,
felt obliged to keep the “show” moving, and though he occasionally
pursued what he discerned as a line of thought, he was more concerned to
give each man his fair allotment of time.
But it is not time constraints alone that produce such fragmented and
discontinuous language. When a television show is in process, it is
very nearly impermissible to say, “Let me think about that” or “I don’t
know” or “What do you mean when you say… ?” or “From what sources
does your information come?” This type of discourse not only slows down
the tempo of the show but creates the impression of uncertainty or lack
of finish. It tends to reveal people in the act of thinking, which is
as disconcerting and boring on television as it is on a Las Vegas stage.
Thinking does not play well on television, a fact that television
directors discovered long ago. There is not much to see in it. It is,
in a phrase, not a performing art. But television demands a performing
art, and so what the ABC network gave us was a picture of men of
sophisticated verbal skills and political
understanding being brought to heel by a medium that requires them to
fashion performances rather than ideas. Which accounts for why the
eighty minutes were very entertaining, in the way of a Samuel Beckett
play: the intimations of gravity hung heavy, the meaning passeth all
understanding. the performances, of course, were highly professional.
Sagan abjured the turtle-neck sweater in which he starred when he did
“Cosmos.” He even had his hair cut for the event. His part was that of
the logical scientist speaking in behalf of the planet. It is to be
doubted that Paul Newman could have done better in the role, although
Leonard Nimoy might have. Scowcroft was suitably military in his
bearing–terse and distant, the unbreakable defender of national
security. Kissinger, as always, was superb in the part of the knowing
world statesman, weary of the sheer responsibility of keeping disaster
at bay. Koppel played to perfection the part of a moderator,
pretending, as it were, that he was sorting out ideas while, in fact, he
was merely directing the performances. At the end, one could only
applaud those performances, which is what a good television program
always aims to achieve; that is to say, applause, not reflection.
I do not say categorically that it is impossible to use television as a
carrier of coherent language or thought in process. William Buckley’s
own program, “Firing Line,” occasionally shows people in the act of
thinking but who also happen to have television cameras pointed at them.
There are other programs, such as “Meet the Press” or “the Open Mind,”
which clearly strive to maintain a sense of intellectual decorum and
typographic tradition, but they are scheduled so that they do not
compete with programs of great visual interest, since otherwise, they
will not be watched. After all, it is not unheard of that a format will
occasionally go against the bias of its medium. For example, the most
popular radio program of the early 1940’s featured a ventriloquist, and
in those days, I heard more than once the feet of a tap dancer on the
“Major Bowes’ Amateur Hour.” (Indeed, if I am not mistaken, he even once
featured a pantomimist.) But
ventriloquism, dancing and mime do not play well on radio, just as
sustained, complex talk does not play well on television. It can be made
to play tolerably well if only one camera is used and the visual image
is kept constant–as when the President gives a speech. But this is not
television at its best, and it is not television that most people will
choose to watch. the single most important fact about television is
that people watch it, which is why it is called “television.” And what
they watch, and like to watch, are moving pictures–millions of them, of
short duration and dynamic variety. It is in the nature of the medium
that it must suppress the content of ideas in order to accommodate the
requirements of visual interest; that is to say, to accommodate the
values of show business.
Film, records and radio (now that it is an adjunct of the music
industry) are, of course, equally devoted to entertaining the culture,
and their effects in altering the style of American discourse are not
insignificant. But television is different because it encompasses all
forms of discourse. No one goes to a movie to find out about government
policy or the latest scientific advances. No one buys a record to find
out the baseball scores or the weather or the latest murder. No one
turns on radio anymore for soap operas or a presidential address (if a
television set is at hand). But everyone goes to television for all
these things and more, which is why television resonates so powerfully
throughout the culture. Television is our culture’s principal mode of
knowing about itself. Therefore–and this is the critical point–how
television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is
properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen
entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the
screen the same metaphor prevails. As typography once dictated the
style of conducting politics, religion, business, education, law and
other important social matters, television now takes command. In
courtrooms, classrooms, operating rooms, board rooms, churches and even
airplanes, Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each
other. They do
not exchange ideas; they exchange images. They do not argue with
propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world
is a stage but that the stage is located in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In Chicago, for example, the Reverend Greg Sakowicz, a Roman Catholic
priest, mixes his religious teaching with rock ‘n’ roll music. According
to the Associated Press, the Reverend Sakowicz is both an associate
pastor at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Schaumberg (a suburb of
Chicago) and a disc jockey at WKQX. On his show, “the Journey Inward,”
Father Sakowicz chats in soft tones about such topics as family
relationships or commitment, and interposes his sermons with “the sound
of Billboard’s Top 10.” He says that his preaching is not done “in a
churchy way,” and adds, “You don’t have to be boring in order to be
holy.”
Meanwhile in New York City at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Father John J.
O’Connor put on a New York Yankee baseball cap as he mugged his way
through his installation as Archbishop of the New York Archdiocese. He
got off some excellent gags, at least one of which was specifically
directed at Mayor Edward Koch, who was a member of his audience; that is
to say, he was a congregant. At his next public performance, the new
archbishop donned a New York Mets baseball cap. These events were, of
course, televised, and were vastly entertaining, largely because
Archbishop (now Cardinal) O’Connor has gone Father Sakowicz one better:
Whereas the latter believes that you don’t have to be boring to be holy,
the former apparently believes you don’t have to be holy at all.
In Phoenix, Arizona, Dr. Edward Dietrich performed triple bypass
surgery on Bernard Schuler. the operation was successful, which was
nice for Mr. Schuler. It was also on television, which was nice for
America. the operation was carried by at least fifty television
stations in the United States, and also by the British Broadcasting
Corporation. A two-man panel of narrators (a
play-by-play and color man, so to speak) kept viewers informed about
what they were seeing. It was not clear as to why this event was
televised, but it resulted in transforming both Dr. Dietrich and Mr.
Schuler’s chest into celebrities. Perhaps because he has seen too many
doctor shows on television, Mr. Schuler was uncommonly confident about
the outcome of his surgery. “There is no way in hell they are going to
lose me on live TV,” he said.2 As reported with great enthusiasm by both
WCBS-TV and WNBC-TV in 1984, the Philadelphia public schools have
embarked on an experiment in which children will have their curriculum
sung to them. Wearing Walkman equipment, students were shown listening
to rock music whose lyrics were about the eight parts of speech. Mr.
Jocko Henderson, who thought of this idea, is planning to delight
students further by subjecting mathematics and history, as well as
English, to the rigors of a rock music format. In fact, this is not Mr.
Henderson’s idea at all. It was pioneered by the Children’s Television
Workshop, whose television show “Sesame Street” is an expensive
illustration of the idea that education is indistinguishable from
entertainment. Nonetheless, Mr. Henderson has a point in his favor.
Whereas “Sesame Street” merely attempts to make learning to read a form
of light entertainment, the Philadelphia experiment aims to make the
classroom itself into a rock concert. In New Bedford, Massachusetts, a
rape trial was televised, to the delight of audiences who could barely
tell the difference between the trial and their favorite midday soap
opera. In Florida, trials of varying degrees of seriousness, including
murder, are regularly televised and are considered to be more
entertaining than most fictional courtroom dramas. All of this is done
in the interests of “public education.” For the same high purpose, plans
are afoot, it is rumored, to televise confessionals. To be called
“Secrets of the Confessional Box,” the program will, of course, carry
the warning that some of its material may be offensive to children and
therefore parental guidance is suggested.
On a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Vancouver, a stewardess
announces that its passengers will play a game. the passenger with the
most credit cards will win a bottle of champagne. A man from Boston with
twelve credit cards wins. A second game requires the passengers to
guess the collective age of the cabin crew. A man from Chicago guesses
128, and wins another bottle of wine. During the second game, the air
turns choppy and the Fasten Seat Belt sign goes on. Very few people
notice, least of all the cabin crew, who keep up a steady flow of gags
on the intercom. When the plane reaches its destination, everyone seems
to agree that it’s fun to fly from Chicago to Vancouver. On February 7,
1985, the New York Times reported that Professor Charles Pine of Rutgers
University (Newark campus) was named Professor of the Year by the
Council for the Support and Advancement of Education. In explaining why
he has such a great impact on his students, Professor Pine said: “I have
some gimmicks I use all the time. If you reach the end of the
blackboard, I keep writing on the wall. It always gets a laugh. the
way I show what a glass molecule does is to run over to one wall and
bounce off it, and run over to the other wall.” His students are,
perhaps, too young to recall that James Cagney used this “molecule move”
to great effect in Yankee Doodle Dandy. If I am not mistaken, Donald
O’Connor duplicated it in Singing in the Rain. So far as I know, it has
been used only once before in a classroom: Hegel tried it several times
in demonstrating how the dialectical method works. the Pennsylvania
Amish try to live in isolation from mainstream American culture. Among
other things, their religion opposes the veneration of graven images,
which means that the Amish are forbidden to see movies or to be
photographed. But apparently their religion has not got around to
disallowing seeing movies when they are being photographed. In the
summer of 1984, for example, a Paramount Pictures crew descended upon
Lancaster County to film the movie Witness, which is
about a detective, played by Harrison Ford, who falls in love with an
Amish woman. Although the Amish were warned by their church not to
interfere with the film makers, it turned out that some Amish welders
ran to see the action as soon as their work was done. Other devouts lay
in the grass some distance away, and looked down on the set with
binoculars. “We read about the movie in the paper,” said an Amish
woman. “the kids even cut out Harrison Ford’s picture.” She added: “But
it doesn’t really matter that much to them. Somebody told us he was in
Star Wars but that doesn’t mean anything to us.” 3 the last time a
similar conclusion was drawn was when the executive director of the
American Association of Blacksmiths remarked that he had read about the
automobile but that he was convinced it would have no consequences for
the future of his organization. In the Winter, 1984, issue of the
Official Video Journal there appears a full-page advertisement for “the
Genesis Project.” the project aims to convert the Bible into a series of
movies. the end-product, to be called “the New Media Bible,” will
consist of 225 hours of film and will cost a quarter of a billion
dollars. Producer John Heyman, whose credits include Saturday Night
Fever and Grease, is one of the film makers most committed to the
project. “Simply stated,” he is quoted as saying, “I got hooked on the
Bible.” the famous Israeli actor Topol, best known for his role as Tevye
in Fiddler on the Roof, will play the role of Abraham. the
advertisement does not say who will star as God but, given the
producer’s background, there is some concern that it might be John
Travolta. At the commencement exercises at Yale University in 1983,
several honorary degrees were awarded, including one to Mother Teresa.
As she and other humanitarians and scholars, each in turn, received
their awards, the audience applauded appropriately but with a slight
hint of reserve and impatience, for it wished to give its heart to the
final recipient who waited shyly in the wings. As the details of her
achievements were being
recounted, many people left their seats and surged toward the stage to
be closer to the great woman. And when the name Meryl Streep was
announced, the audience unleashed a sonic boom of affection to wake the
New Haven dead. One man who was present when Bob Hope received his
honorary doctorate at another institution said that Dr. Streep’s
applause surpassed Dr. Hope’s. Knowing how to please a crowd as well as
anyone, the intellectual leaders at Yale invited Dick Cavett, the
talk-show host, to deliver the commencement address the following year.
It is rumored that this year, Don Rickles will receive a Doctorate of
Humane Letters and Lola Falana will give the commencement address. Prior
to the 1984 presidential elections, the two candidates confronted each
other on television in what were called “debates.” These events were not
in the least like the Lincoln-Douglas debates or anything else that goes
by the name. Each candidate was given five minutes to address such
questions as, What is (or would be) your policy in Central America? His
opposite number was then given one minute for a rebuttal. In such
circumstances, complexity, documentation and logic can play no role,
and, indeed, on several occasions syntax itself was abandoned entirely.
It is no matter. the men were less concerned with giving arguments than
with “giving off” impressions, which is what television does best.
Post-debate commentary largely avoided any evaluation of the candidates’
ideas, since there were none to evaluate. Instead, the debates were
conceived as boxing matches, the relevant question being, Who KO’d whom?
the answer was determined by the “style” of the men–how they looked,
fixed their gaze, smiled, and delivered one-liners. In the second
debate, President Reagan got off a swell one-liner when asked a question
about his age. the following day, several newspapers indicated that Ron
had KO’d Fritz with his joke. Thus, the leader of the free world is
chosen by the people in the Age of Television. What all of this means is
that our culture has moved toward a
new way of conducting its business, especially its important business.
the nature of its discourse is changing as the demarcation line between
what is show business and what is not becomes harder to see with each
passing day. Our priests and presidents, our surgeons and lawyers, our
educators and news-casters need worry less about satisfying the demands
of their discipline than the demands of good showmanship. Had Irving
Berlin changed one word in the title of his celebrated song, he would
have been as prophetic, albeit more terse, as Aldous Huxley. He need
only have written, There’s No Business But Show Business.
the American humorist H. Allen Smith once suggested that of all the
worrisome words in the English language, the scariest is “uh oh,” as
when a physician looks at your X-rays, and with knitted brow says, “Uh
oh.” I should like to suggest that the words which are the title of this
chapter are as ominous as any, all the more so because they are spoken
without knitted brow–indeed, with a kind of idiot’s delight. the
phrase, if that’s what it may be called, adds to our grammar a new part
of speech, a conjunction that does not connect anything to anything but
does the opposite: separates everything from everything. As such, it
serves as a compact metaphor for the discontinuities in so much that
passes for public discourse in present-day America.
“Now . . . this” is commonly used on radio and television newscasts
to indicate that what one has just heard or seen has no relevance to
what one is about to hear or see, or possibly to anything one is ever
likely to hear or see. the phrase is a means of acknowledging the fact
that the world as mapped by the speeded-up electronic media has no order
or meaning and is not to be taken seriously. There is no murder so
brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so
costly–for that matter, no ball score so tantalizing or weather report
so threatening–that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster
saying, “Now… this.” the newscaster means that you have thought long
enough on the previous matter (approximately forty-five seconds), that
you must not be morbidly preoccupied with it (let us say, for ninety
seconds), and that you must now give your attention to another fragment
of news or a commercial. Television did not invent the “Now… this”
world view. As I have tried to show, it is the offspring of the
intercourse between telegraphy and photography. But it is through
television that it has been nurtured and brought to a perverse maturity.
For on television, nearly every half hour is a discrete event, separated
in content, context, and emotional texture from what precedes and
follows it. In part because television sells its time in seconds and
minutes, in part because television must use images rather than words,
in part because its audience can move freely to and from the television
set, programs are structured so that almost each eight-minute segment
may stand as a complete event in itself. Viewers are rarely required to
carry over any thought or feeling from one parcel of time to another. Of
course, in television’s presentation of the “news of the day,” we may
see the “Now… this” mode of discourse in its boldest and most
embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented
news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and
therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure
entertainment. Consider, for example, how you would proceed if you were
given the opportunity to produce a television news show for any station
concerned to attract the largest possible audience. You would, first,
choose a cast of players, each of whom has a face that is both “likable”
and “credible.” Those who apply would, in fact, submit to you their
eight-by-ten glossies, from which you would eliminate those whose
countenances are not suitable for nightly display. This means that you
will exclude women who are not beautiful or who are over the age of
fifty, men who are bald, all people who are overweight or whose noses
are too long or whose eyes are too close together. You will try, in
other words, to assemble a cast of talking hair-do’s.
“Now… This”
At the very least, you will want those whose faces would not be
unwelcome on a magazine cover. Christine Craft has just such a face, and
so she applied for a co-anchor position on KMBC-TV in Kansas City.
According to a lawyer who represented her in a sexism suit she later
brought against the station, the management of KMBC-TV “loved
Christine’s look.” She was accordingly hired in January 1981. She was
fired in August 1981 because research indicated that her appearance
“hampered viewer acceptance.” What exactly does “hampered viewer
acceptance” mean? And what does it have to do with the news? Hampered
viewer acceptance means the same thing for television news as it does
for any television show: Viewers do not like looking at the performer.
It also means that viewers do not believe the performer, that she lacks
credibility. In the case of a theatrical performance, we have a sense
of what that implies: the actor does not persuade the audience that he
or she is the character being portrayed. But what does lack of
credibility imply in the case of a news show? What character is a
co-anchor playing? And how do we decide that the performance lacks
verisimilitude? Does the audience believe that the newscaster is lying,
that what is reported did not in fact happen, that something important
is being concealed? It is frightening to think that this may be so, that
the perception of the truth of a report rests heavily on the
acceptability of the newscaster. In the ancient world, there was a
tradition of banishing or killing the bearer of bad tidings. Does the
television news show restore, in a curious form, this tradition? Do we
banish those who tell us the news when we do not care for the face of
the teller? Does television countermand the warnings we once received
about the fallacy of the ad hominem argument? If the answer to any of
these questions is even a qualified “Yes,” then here is an issue worthy
of the attention of epistemologists. Stated in its simplest form, it is
that television provides a new (or, possibly, restores an old)
definition of truth:
the credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a
proposition. “Credibility” here does not refer to the past record of
the teller for making statements that have survived the rigors of
reality-testing. It refers only to the impression of sincerity,
authenticity, vulnerability or attractiveness (choose one or more)
conveyed by the actor/reporter. This is a matter of considerable
importance, for it goes beyond the question of how truth is perceived on
television news shows. If on television, credibility replaces reality
as the decisive test of truth-telling, political leaders need not
trouble themselves very much with reality provided that their
performances consistently generate a sense of verisimilitude. I
suspect, for example, that the dishonor that now shrouds Richard Nixon
results not from the fact that he lied but that on television he looked
like a liar. Which, if true, should bring no comfort to anyone, not
even veteran Nixon-haters. For the alternative possibilities are that
one may look like a liar but be telling the truth; or even worse, look
like a truth-teller but in fact be lying. As a producer of a television
news show, you would be well aware of these matters and would be careful
to choose your cast on the basis of criteria used by David Merrick and
other successful impresarios. Like them, you would then turn your
attention to staging the show on principles that maximize entertainment
value. You would, for example, select a musical theme for the show. All
television news programs begin, end, and are somewhere in between
punctuated with music. I have found very few Americans who regard this
custom as peculiar, which fact I have taken as evidence for the
dissolution of lines of demarcation between serious public discourse and
entertainment. What has music to do with the news? Why is it there? It
is there, I assume, for the same reason music is used in the theater and
films–to create a mood and provide a leitmotif for the entertainment.
If there were no music–as is the case when any television program is
interrupted for a news flash–viewers would expect something truly
alarming, possibly life-altering.
“Now… This”
But as long as the music is there as a frame for the program, the viewer
is comforted to believe that there is nothing to be greatly alarmed
about; that, in fact, the events that are reported have as much relation
to reality as do scenes in a play. This perception of a news show as a
stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to
entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact
that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While
brevity does not always suggest triviality, in this case it clearly
does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about
any event if its implications are exhausted in less than one minute’s
time. In fact, it is quite obvious that TV news has no intention of
suggesting that any story has any implications, for that would require
viewers to continue to think about it when it is done and therefore
obstruct their attending to the next story that waits panting in the
wings. In any case, viewers are not provided with much opportunity to
be distracted from the next story since in all likelihood it will
consist of some film footage. Pictures have little difficulty in
overwhelming words, and short-circuiting introspection. As a television
producer, you would be certain to give both prominence and precedence to
any event for which there is some sort of visual documentation. A
suspected killer being brought into a police station, the angry face of
a cheated consumer, a barrel going over Niagara Falls (with a person
alleged to be in it), the President disembarking from a helicopter on
the White House lawn–these are always fascinating or amusing, and
easily satisfy the requirements of an entertaining show. It is, of
course, not necessary that the visuals actually document the point of a
story. Neither is it necessary to explain why such images are intruding
themselves on public consciousness. Film footage justifies itself, as
every television producer well knows. It is also of considerable help in
maintaining a high level of unreality that the newscasters do not pause
to grimace or shiver when they speak their prefaces or epilogs to the
film clips. In-
deed, many newscasters do not appear to grasp the meaning of what they
are saying, and some hold to a fixed and ingratiating enthusiasm as they
report on earthquakes, mass killings and other disasters. Viewers would
be quite disconcerted by any show of concern or terror on the part of
newscasters. Viewers, after all, are partners with the newscasters in
the “Now… this” culture, and they expect the newscaster to play out
his or her role as a character who is marginally serious but who stays
well clear of authentic understanding. the viewers, for their part,
will not be caught contaminating their responses with a sense of
reality, any more than an audience at a play would go scurrying to call
home because a character on stage has said that a murderer is loose in
the neighborhood. the viewers also know that no matter how grave any
fragment of news may appear (for example, on the day I write a Marine
Corps general has declared that nuclear war between the United States
and Russia is inevitable), it will shortly be followed by a series of
commercials that will, in an instant, defuse the import of the news, in
fact render it largely banal. This is a key element in the structure of
a news program and all by itself refutes any claim that television news
is designed as a serious form of public discourse. Imagine what you
would think of me, and this book, if I were to pause here, tell you that
I will return to my discussion in a moment, and then proceed to write a
few words in behalf of United Airlines or the Chase Manhattan Bank. You
would rightly think that I had no respect for you and, certainly, no
respect for the subject. And if I did this not once but several times
in each chapter, you would think the whole enterprise unworthy of your
attention. Why, then, do we not think a news show similarly unworthy?
the reason, I believe, is that whereas we expect books and even other
media (such as film) to maintain a consistency of tone and a continuity
of content, we have no such expectation of television, and especially
television news. We have become so accustomed to its discontinuities
that we are no longer struck dumb, as any sane
“Now… This”
person would be, by a newscaster who having just reported that a nuclear
war is inevitable goes on to say that he will be right back after this
word from Burger King; who says, in other words, “Now… this.” One can
hardly overestimate the damage that such juxtapositions do to our sense
of the world as a serious place. the damage is especially massive to
youthful viewers who depend so much on television for their clues as to
how to respond to the world. In watching television news, they, more
than any other segment of the audience, are drawn into an epistemology
based on the assumption that all reports of cruelty and death are
greatly exaggerated and, in any case, not to be taken seriously or
responded to sanely. I should go so far as to say that embedded in the
surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of
anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic,
reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe
the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in
psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known
as vaudeville. For those who think I am here guilty of hyperbole, I
offer the following description of television news by Robert MacNeil,
executive editor and co-anchor of the “MacNeil-Lehrer News-hour.” the
idea, he writes, “is to keep everything brief, not to strain the
attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through
variety, novelty, action, and movement. You are required… to pay
attention to no concept, no character, and no problem for more than a
few seconds at a time.” 2 He goes on to say that the assumptions
controlling a news show are “that bite-sized is best, that complexity
must be avoided, that nuances are dispensable, that qualifications
impede the simple message, that visual stimulation is a substitute for
thought, and that verbal precision is an anachronism.” 3 Robert MacNeil
has more reason than most to give testimony about the television news
show as vaudeville act. the “Mac-Neil-Lehrer Newshour” is an unusual
and gracious attempt to
bring to television some of the elements of typographic discourse. the
program abjures visual stimulation, consists largely of extended
explanations of events and in-depth interviews (which even there means
only five to ten minutes), limits the number of stories covered, and
emphasizes background and coherence. But television has exacted its
price for MacNeil’s rejection of a show business format. By
television’s standards, the audience is minuscule, the program is
confined to public-television stations, and it is a good guess that the
combined salary of MacNeil and Lehrer is one-fifth of Dan Rather’s or
Tom Brokaw’s.
If you were a producer of a television news show for a commercial
station, you would not have the option of defying television’s
requirements. It would be demanded of you that you strive for the
largest possible audience, and, as a consequence and in spite of your
best intentions, you would arrive at a production very nearly resembling
MacNeil’s description. Moreover, you would include some things MacNeil
does not mention. You would try to make celebrities of your
newscasters. You would advertise the show, both in the press and on
television itself. You would do “news briefs,” to serve as an
inducement to viewers. You would have a weatherman as comic relief, and
a sportscaster whose language is a touch uncouth (as a way of his
relating to the beer-drinking common man). You would, in short, package
the whole event as any producer might who is in the entertainment
business.
the result of all this is that Americans are the best entertained and
quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world. I say
this in the face of the popular conceit that television, as a window to
the world, has made Americans exceedingly well informed. Much depends
here, of course, on what is meant by being informed. I will pass over
the now tiresome polls that tell us that, at any given moment, percent
of our citizens do not know who is the Secretary of State or the Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court. Let us consider, instead, the case
“Now… This”
of Iran during the drama that was called the “Iranian Hostage Crisis.” I
don’t suppose there has been a story in years that received more
continuous attention from television. We may assume, then, that
Americans know most of what there is to know about this unhappy event.
And now, I put these questions to you: Would it be an exaggeration to
say that not one American in a hundred knows what language the Iranians
speak? Or what the word “Ayatollah” means or implies? Or knows any
details of the tenets of Iranian religious beliefs? Or the main
outlines of their political history? Or knows who the Shah was, and
where he came from?
Nonetheless, everyone had an opinion about this event, for in America
everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a
few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite
different .order from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is
probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which
would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the
pollsters tell us. What is happening here is that television is
altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of
information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using
this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in
the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It
means misleading information–misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or
superficial information–information that creates the illusion of
knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In
saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately
aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of
their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment,
that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news
show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more
serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am
saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be
108 “Now… This”
well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do
if we take ignorance to be knowledge? Here is a startling example of how
this process bedevils us. A New York Times article is headlined on
February 15, 1983:
REAGAN MISSTATEMENTS GETTING LESS ATtENTION
the article begins in the following way:
President Reagan’s aides used to become visibly alarmed at suggestions
that he had given mangled and perhaps misleading accounts of his
policies or of current events in general. That doesn’t seem to happen
much anymore. Indeed, the President continues to make debatable
assertions of fact but news accounts do not deal with them as
extensively as they once did. In the view of White House officials, the
declining news coverage mirrors a decline in interest by the general
public. (my italics)
This report is not so much a news story as a story about the news, and
our recent history suggests that it is not about Ronald Reagan’s charm.
It is about how news is defined, and I believe the story would be quite
astonishing to both civil libertarians and tyrants of an earlier time.
Walter Lippmann, for example, wrote in 1920: “There can be no liberty
for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.” For all
of his pessimism about the possibilities of restoring an eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century level of public discourse, Lippmann assumed, as did
Thomas Jefferson before him, that with a well-trained press functioning
as a lie-detector, the public’s interest in a President’s mangling of
the truth would be piqued, in both senses of that word. Given the means
to detect lies, he believed, the public could not be indifferent to
their consequences. But this case refutes his assumption. the reporters
who cover the White House are ready and able to expose lies, and thus
create the grounds for informed and indignant opinion. But apparently
the public declines to take an interest. To press reports of White
House dissembling, the public has replied with Queen Victoria’s famous
line: “We are not amused.” However, here the words mean something the
Queen did not have in mind. They mean that what is not amusing does not
compel their attention. Perhaps if the President’s lies could be
demonstrated by pictures and accompanied by music the public would raise
a curious eyebrow. If a movie, like All the President’s Men, could be
made from his misleading accounts of government policy, if there were a
break-in of some sort or sinister characters laundering money, attention
would quite likely be paid. We do well to remember that President Nixon
did not begin to come undone until his lies were given a theatrical
setting at the Watergate hearings. But we do not have anything like
that here. Apparently, all President Reagan does is say things that are
not entirely true. And there is nothing entertaining in that. But there
is a subtler point to be made here. Many of the President’s
“misstatements” fall in the category of contradictions-mutually
exclusive assertions that cannot possibly both, in the same context, be
true. “In the same context” is the key phrase here, for it is context
that defines contradiction. There is no problem in someone’s remarking
that he prefers oranges to apples, and also remarking that he prefers
apples to oranges–not if one statement is made in the context of
choosing a wallpaper design and the other in the context of selecting
fruit for dessert. In such a case, we have statements that are
opposites, but not contradictory. But if the statements are made in a
single, continuous, and coherent context, then they are contradictions,
and cannot both be true. Contradiction, in short, requires that
statements and events be perceived as interrelated aspects of a
continuous and coherent context. Disappear the context, or fragment it,
and contradiction disappears. This point is nowhere made more clear to
me than in conferences with my younger students about their writing.
“Look here,” I say. “In this para-
graph you have said one thing. And in that you have said the opposite.
Which is it to be?” They are polite, and wish to please, but they are as
baffled by the question as I am by the response. “I know,” they will
say, “but that is there and this is here.” the difference between us is
that I assume “there” and “here,”
“now” and “then,” one paragraph and the next to be connected, to be
continuous, to be part of the same coherent world of thought. That is
the way of typographic discourse, and typography is the universe I’m
“coming from,” as they say. But they are coming from a different
universe of discourse altogether: the “Now… this” world of
television. the fundamental assumption of that world is not coherence
but discontinuity. And in a world of discontinuities, contradiction is
useless as a test of truth or merit, because contradiction does not
exist. My point is that we are by now so thoroughly adjusted to the
“Now… this” world of news–a world of fragments, where events stand
alone, stripped of any connection to the past, or to the future, or to
other events–that all assumptions of coherence have vanished. And so,
perforce, has contradiction. In the context of no context, so to speak,
it simply disappears. And in its absence, what possible interest could
there be in a list of what the President says now and what he said then?
It is merely a rehash of old news, and there is nothing interesting or
entertaining in that. the only thing to be amused about is the
bafflement of reporters at the public’s indifference. There is an irony
in the fact that the very group that has taken the world apart should,
on trying to piece it together again, be surprised that no one notices
much, or cares. For all his perspicacity, George Orwell would have been
stymied by this situation; there is nothing “Orwellian” about it. the
President does not have the press under his thumb. the New York Times
and the Washington Post are not Pravda; the Associated Press is not
Tass. And there is no Newspeak here. Lies have not been defined as
truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has
adjusted to incoherence and been
“Now… This”
amused into indifference. Which is why Aldous Huxley would not in the
least be surprised by the story. Indeed, he prophesied its coming. He
believed that it is far more likely that the Western democracies will
dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march into it, single file
and manacled. Huxley grasped, as Orwell did not, that it is not
necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction
and narcoticized by technological diversions. Although Huxley did not
specify that television would be our main line to the drug, he would
have no difficulty accepting Robert MacNeil’s observation that
“Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” Big Brother
turns out to be Howdy Doody. I do not mean that the trivialization of
public information is all accomplished on television. I mean that
television is the paradigm for our conception of public information. As
the printing press did in an earlier time, television has achieved the
power to define the form in which news must come, and it has also
defined how we shall respond to it. In presenting news to us packaged
as vaudeville, television induces other media to do the same, so that
the total information environment begins to mirror television. For
example, America’s newest and highly successful national newspaper, USA
Today, is modeled precisely on the format of television. It is sold on
the street in receptacles that look like television sets. Its stories
are uncommonly short, its design leans heavily on pictures, charts and
other graphics, some of them printed in various colors. Its weather
maps are a visual delight; its sports section includes enough pointless
statistics to distract a computer. As a consequence, USA Today, which
began publication in September 1982, has become the third largest daily
in the United States (as of July 1984, according to the Audit Bureau of
Circulations), moving quickly to overtake the Daily News and the Wall
Street Journal. Journalists of a more traditional bent have criticized
it for its superficiality and theatrics, but the paper’s editors remain
steadfast in their disregard
112 “Now… This”
of typographic standards. the paper’s Editor-in-Chief, John Quinn, has
said: “We are not up to undertaking projects of the dimensions needed to
win prizes. They don’t give awards for the best investigative
paragraph.” ‘Here is an astonishing tribute to the resonance of
television’s epistemology: In the age of television, the paragraph is
becoming the basic unit of news in print media. Moreover, Mr. Quinn
need not fret too long about being deprived of awards. As other
newspapers join in the transformation, the time cannot be far off when
awards will be given for the best investigative sentence.
It needs also to be noted here that new and successful magazines such as
People and Us are not only examples of television-oriented print media
but have had an extraordinary “ricochet” effect on television itself.
Whereas television taught the magazines that news is nothing but
entertainment, the magazines have taught television that nothing but
entertainment is news. Television programs, such as “Entertainment
Tonight,” turn information about entertainers and celebrities into
“serious” cultural content, so that the circle begins to close: Both the
form and content of news become entertainment.
Radio, of course, is the least likely medium to join in the descent into
a Huxleyan world of technological narcotics. It is, after all,
particularly well suited to the transmission of rational, complex
language. Nonetheless, and even if we disregard radio’s captivation by
the music industry, we appear to be left with the chilling fact that
such language as radio allows us to hear is increasingly primitive,
fragmented, and largely aimed at invoking visceral response; which is to
say, it is the linguistic analogue to the ubiquitous rock music that is
radio’s principal source of income. As I write, the trend in call-in
shows is for the “host” to insult callers whose language does not, in
itself, go much beyond humanoid grunting. Such programs have little
content, as this word used to be defined, and are merely of
ar-cheological interest in that they give us a sense of what a dialogue
among Neanderthals might have been like. More to the
point, the language of radio newscasts has become, under the influence
of television, increasingly decontextualized and discontinuous, so that
the possibility of anyone’s knowing about the world, as against merely
knowing of it, is effectively blocked. In New York City, radio station
WINS entreats its listeners to “Give us twenty-two minutes and we’ll
give you the world.” This is said without irony, and its audience, we
may assume, does not regard the slogan as the conception of a disordered
mind.
And so, we move rapidly into an information environment which may
rightly be called trivial pursuit. As the game of that name uses facts
as a source of amusement, so do our sources of news. It has been
demonstrated many times that a culture can survive misinformation and
false opinion. It has not yet been demonstrated whether a culture can
survive if it takes the measure of the world in twenty-two minutes. Or
if the value of its news is determined by the number of laughs it
provides.
Shuffle Off to Bethlehem
There is an evangelical preacher on television who goes by the name of
Reverend Terry. She appears to be in her early fifties, and features a
coiffure of which it has been said that it cannot be mussed, only
broken. Reverend Terry is energetic and folksy, and uses a style of
preaching modeled on early Milton Berle. When her audiences are shown in
reaction shots, they are almost always laughing. As a consequence, it
would be difficult to distinguish them from audiences, say, at the Sands
Hotel in Las Vegas, except for the fact that they have a slightly
cleaner, more wholesome look. Reverend Terry tries to persuade them, as
well as those “at home,” to change their ways by finding Jesus Christ.
To help her do this, she offers a “prosperity Campaign Kit,” which
appears to have a dual purpose: As it brings one nearer to Jesus, it
also provides advice on how to increase one’s bank account. This makes
her followers extremely happy and confirms their predisposition to
believe that prosperity is the true aim of religion. Perhaps God
disagrees. As of this writing, Reverend Terry has been obliged to
declare bankruptcy and temporarily halt her ministrations.
Pat Robertson is the master of ceremonies of the highly successful “700
Club,” a television show and religious organization of sorts to which
you can belong by paying fifteen dollars per month. (Of course, anyone
with cable television can watch the show free of charge.) Reverend
Robertson does his act in a much lower register than Reverend Terry. He
is modest, intelligent, and has the kind of charm television viewers
would associate with a cool-headed talk-show host. His appeal to
godliness is considerably more sophisticated than Reverend Terry’s, at
least from the standpoint of television. Indeed, he appears to use as
his model of communication “Entertainment Tonight.” His program includes
interviews, singers and taped segments with entertainers who are
born-again Christians. For example, all of the chorus girls in Don Ho’s
Hawaiian act are born-again, and in one segment, we are shown them both
at prayer and on stage (although not at the same time). the program
also includes taped reenactments of people who, having been driven to
the edge of despair, are saved by the 700 Club’. Such people play
themselves in these finely crafted docu-dramas. In one, we are shown a
woman racked with anxiety. She cannot concentrate on her wifely duties.
the television shows and movies she sees induce a generalized fear of
the world. Paranoia closes in. She even begins to believe that her own
children are trying to kill her. As the play proceeds, we see her in
front of her television set chancing upon the 700 Club. She becomes
interested in its message. She allows Jesus to enter her heart. She is
saved. At the end of the play, we see her going about her business,
calmly and cheerfully, her eyes illuminated with peace. And so, we may
say that the 700 Club has twice elevated her to a state of
transcendence: first, by putting her in the presence of Jesus; second,
by making her into a television star. To the uninitiated, it is not
entirely clear which is the higher estate.
Toward the end of each 700 Club show, the following day’s acts are
announced. They are many and various. the program concludes with
someone’s saying, “All this and more… tomorrow on the 700 Club.”
Jimmy Swaggart is a somewhat older-style evangelist. Though he plays the
piano quite well, sings sweetly, and uses the full range of television’s
resources, when he gets going he favors a kind of fire-and-brimstone
approach. But because this is television, he often moderates his
message with a dollop of ecumenism. For example, his sermon on the
question, Are the
Jews practicing blasphemy? begins by assuring his audience that they
are not, by recalling Jesus’ bar mitzvah, and by insisting that
Christians owe the Jews a considerable debt. It ends with his
indicating that with the loss of their Temple in Biblical times, the
Jews have somehow lost their way. His message suggests that they are
rather to be pitied than despised but that, in any case, many of them
are pretty nice people. It is the perfect television sermon–theatrical,
emotional, and in a curious way comforting, even to a Jewish viewer. For
television-bless its heart–is not congenial to messages of naked hate.
For one thing, you never know who is watching, so it is best not to be
wildly offensive. For another, haters with reddened faces and demonic
gestures merely look foolish on television, as Marshall McLuhan observed
years ago and Senator Joseph McCarthy learned to his dismay. Television
favors moods of conciliation and is at its best when substance of any
kind is muted. (One must make an exception here for those instances
when preachers, like Swaggart, turn to the subject of the Devil and
secular humanism. Then they are quite uncompromising in the ferocity of
their assaults, partly, one may assume, because neither the Devil nor
secular humanists are included in the Nielsen Ratings. Neither are they
inclined to watch.) There are at present thirty-five television stations
owned and operated by religious organizations, but every television
station features religious programming of one sort or another. To
prepare myself for writing this chapter, I watched forty-two hours of
television’s version of religion, mostly the shows of Robert Schuller,
Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Jim Bakker and Pat
Robertson. Forty-two hours were entirely unnecessary. Five would have
provided me with all the conclusions, of which there are two, that are
fairly to be drawn. the first is that on television, religion, like
everything else, is presented, quite simply and without apology, as an
entertainment. Everything that makes religion an historic, profound and
sacred human activity is stripped away; there is no ritual, no dogma, no
tradition, no theology, and above all, no sense of spiritual
transcendence. On these shows, the preacher is tops. God comes out as
second banana. the second conclusion is that this fact has more to do
with the bias of television than with the deficiencies of these
electronic preachers, as they are called. It is true enough that some
of these men are uneducated, provincial and even bigoted. They
certainly do not compare favorably with well-known evangelicals of an
earlier period, such as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield and Charles
Finney, who were men of great learning, theological subtlety and
powerful expositional skills. Nonetheless, today’s television preachers
are probably not greatly different in their limitations from most
earlier evangelicals or from many ministers today whose activities are
confined to churches and synagogues. What makes these television
preachers the enemy of religious experience is not so much their
weaknesses but the weaknesses of the medium in which they work. Most
Americans, including preachers, have difficulty accepting the truth, if
they think about it at all, that not all forms of discourse can be
converted from one medium to another. It is naive to suppose that
something that has been expressed in one form can be expressed in
another without significantly changing its meaning, texture or value.
Much prose translates fairly well from one language to another, but we
know that poetry does not; we may get a rough idea of the sense of a
translated poem but usually everything else is lost, especially that
which makes it an object of beauty. the translation makes it into
something it was not. To take another example: We may find it
convenient to send a condolence card to a bereaved friend, but we delude
ourselves if we believe that our card conveys the same meaning as our
broken and whispered words when we are present. the card not only
changes the words but eliminates the context from which the words take
their meaning. Similarly, we delude ourselves if we believe that most
everything a
teacher normally does can be replicated with greater efficiency by a
microcomputer. Perhaps some things can, but there is always the
question, What is lost in the translation? the answer may even be:
Everything that is significant about education. Though it may be
unAmerican to say it, not everything is televisible. Or to put it more
precisely, what is televised is transformed from what it was to
something else, which may or may not preserve its former essence. For
the most part, television preachers have not seriously addressed this
matter. They have assumed that what had formerly been done in a church
or a tent, and face-to-face, can be done on television without loss of
meaning, without changing the quality of the religious experience.
Perhaps their failure to address the translation issue has its origin in
the hubris engendered by the dazzling number of people to whom
television gives them access. “Television,” Billy Graham has written,
“is the most powerful tool of communication ever devised by man. Each
of my prime-time ‘specials’ is now carried by nearly 300 stations across
the U.S. and Canada, so that in a single telecast I preach to millions
more than Christ did in his lifetime.” To this, Pat Robertson adds: “To
say that the church shouldn’t be involved with television is utter
folly. the needs are the same, the message is the same, but the
delivery can change …. It would be folly for the church not to get
involved with the most formative force in America.” 2 This is gross
technological naivete. If the delivery is not the same, then the
message, quite likely, is not the same. And if the context in which the
message is experienced is altogether different from what it was in
Jesus’ time, we may assume that its social and psychological meaning is
different, as well. To come to the point, there are several
characteristics of television and its surround that converge to make
authentic religious experience impossible. the first has to do with the
fact that there is no way to consecrate the space in which a television
show is experienced. It is an essential condition of any traditional
religious service that the space in which it is conducted must be
invested with some measure of sacrality. Of course, a church or
synagogue is designed as a place of ritual enactment so that almost
anything that occurs there, even a bingo game, has a religious aura. But
a religious service need not occur only in a church or synagogue. Almost
any place will do, provided it is first decontaminated; that is,
divested of its profane uses. This can be done by placing a cross on a
wall, or candles on a table, or a sacred document in public view.
Through such acts, a gymnasium or dining hall or hotel room can be
transformed into a place of worship; a slice of space-time can be
removed from the world of profane events, and be recreated into a
reality that does not belong to our world. But for this transformation
to be made, it is essential that certain rules of conduct be observed.
There will be no eating or idle conversation, for example. One may be
required to put on a skull cap or to kneel down at appropriate moments.
Or simply to contemplate in silence. Our conduct must be congruent with
the otherworldliness of the space. But this condition is not usually
met when we are watching a religious television program. the activities
in one’s living room or bedroom or–God help us–one’s kitchen are
usually the same whether a religious program is being presented or “the
A-Team” or “Dallas” is being presented. People will eat, talk, go to
the bathroom, do push-ups or any of the things they are accustomed to
doing in the presence of an animated television screen. If an audience
is not immersed in an aura of mystery and symbolic otherworldliness,
then it is unlikely that it can call forth the state of mind required
for a nontrivial religious experience. Moreover, the television screen
itself has a strong bias toward a psychology of secularism. the screen
is so saturated with our memories of profane events, so deeply
associated with the commercial and entertainment worlds that it is
difficult for it to be recreated as a frame for sacred events. Among
other things, the viewer is at all times aware that a flick of the
switch will produce a different and secular event on the screenma hockey
game, a commercial, a cartoon. Not only that, but both prior to and
immediately following most religious programs, there are commercials,
promos for popular shows, and a variety of other secular images and
discourses, so that the main message of the screen itself is a continual
promise of entertainment. Both the history and the ever-present
possibilities of the television screen work against the idea that
introspection or spiritual transcendence is desirable in its presence.
the television screen wants you to remember that its imagery is always
available for your amusement and pleasure.
the television preachers themselves are well aware of this. They know
that their programs do not represent a discontinuity in commercial
broadcasting but are merely part of an unbroken continuum. Indeed, many
of these programs are presented at times other than traditional Sunday
hours. Some of the more popular preachers are quite willing to go “head
to head” with secular programs because they believe they can put on a
more appealing show. Incidentally, the money to do this is no problem.
Contributions to these shows run into the millions. It has been
estimated that the total revenue of the electric church exceeds $500
million a year.
I mention this only to indicate why it is possible for these preachers
to match the high production costs of any strictly commercial program.
And match them they do. Most of the religious shows feature sparkling
fountains, floral displays, choral groups and elaborate sets. All of
them take as their model for staging some well-known commercial program.
Jim Bakker, for example, uses “the Merv Griffin Show” as his guide. More
than occasionally, programs are done “on location,” in exotic locales
with attractive and unfamiliar vistas.
In addition, exceedingly handsome people are usually in view, both on
the stage and in the audience. Robert Schuiler is particularly partial
to celebrities, especially movie actors like Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., and
Cliff Robertson, who have declared
their allegiance to him. Not only does Schuller have celebrities on his
show but his advertisements use their presence to attract an audience.
Indeed, I think it fair to say that attracting an audience is the main
goal of these programs, just as it is for “the A-Team” and “Dallas.”
To achieve this goal, the most modern methods of marketing and promotion
are abundantly used, such as offering free pamphlets, Bibles and gifts,
and, in Jerry Falwell’s case, two free “Jesus First” pins. the
preachers are forthright about how they control the content of their
preaching to maximize their ratings. You shall wait a very long time
indeed if you wish to hear an electronic preacher refer to the
difficulties a rich man will have in gaining access to heaven. the
executive director of the National Religious Broadcasters Association
sums up what he calls the unwritten law of all television preachers:
“You can get your share of the audience only by offering people
something they want.”
You will note, I am sure, that this is an unusual religious credo. There
is no great religious leader–from the Buddha to Moses to Jesus to
Mohammed to Luther–who offered people what they want. Only what they
need. But television is not well suited to offering people what they
need. It is “user friendly.” It is too easy to turn off. It is at its
most alluring when it speaks the language of dynamic visual imagery. It
does not accommodate complex language or stringent demands. As a
consequence, what is preached on television is not anything like the
Sermon on the Mount. Religious programs are filled with good cheer.
They celebrate affluence. Their featured players become celebrities.
Though their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings, or
rather, because their messages are trivial, the shows have high ratings.
I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding
and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is
another kind of religion altogether.
There are, of course, counterarguments to the claim that television
degrades religion. Among them is that spectacle is hardly a stranger to
religion. If one puts aside the Quakers and a few other austere sects,
every religion tries to make itself appealing through art, music, icons
and awe-inspiring ritual. the aesthetic dimension to religion is the
source of its attraction to many people. This is especially true of
Roman Catholicism and Judaism, which supply their congregants with
haunting chants; magnificent robes and shawls; magical hats, wafers and
wine; stained-glass windows; and the mysterious cadences of ancient
languages. the difference between these accoutrements of religion and
the floral displays, fountains and elaborate sets we see on television
is that the former are not, in fact, accoutrements but integral parts of
the history and doctrines of the religion itself; they require
congregants to respond to them with suitable reverence. A Jew does not
cover his head at prayer because a skull cap looks good on television. A
Catholic does not light a votive candle to improve the look of the
altar. Rabbis, priests and Presbyterian ministers do not, in the midst
of a service, take testimony from movie stars to find out why they are
religious people. the spectacle we find in true religions has as its
purpose enchantment, not entertainment. the distinction is critical. By
endowing things with magic, enchantment is the means through which we
may gain access to sacredness. Entertainment is the means through which
we distance ourselves from it. the reply to this is that most of the
religion available to us on television is “fundamentalist,” which
explicitly disdains ritual and theology in favor of direct communication
with the Bible itself, that is, with God. Without ensnaring myself in a
theological argument for which I am unprepared, I think it both fair and
obvious to say that on television, God is a vague and subordinate
character. Though His name is invoked repeatedly, the concreteness and
persistence of the image of the preacher carries the clear message that
it is he, not He, who must be worshipped. I do not mean to imply that
the preacher wishes it to
be so; only that the power of a close-up televised face, in color, makes
idolatry a continual hazard. Television is, after all, a form of graven
imagery far more alluring than a golden calf. I suspect (though I have
no external evidence of it) that Catholic objections to Bishop Fulton
Sheen’s theatrical performances on television (of several years back)
sprang from the impression that viewers were misdirecting their
devotions, away from God and toward Bishop Sheen, whose piercing eyes,
awesome cape and stately tones were as close a resemblance to a deity as
charisma allows. Television’s strongest point is that it brings
personalities into our hearts, not abstractions into our heads. That is
why CBS’ programs about the universe were called “Walter Cronkite’s
Universe.” One would think that the grandeur of the universe needs no
assistance from Walter Cronkite. One would think wrong. CBS knows that
Walter Cronkite plays better on television than the Milky Way. And
Jimmy Swaggart plays better than God. For God exists only in our minds,
whereas Swaggart is there, to be seen, admired, adored. Which is why he
is the star of the show. And why Billy Graham is a celebrity, and why
Oral Roberts has his own university, and why Robert Schuller has a
crystal cathedral all to himself. If I am not mistaken, the word for
this is blasphemy. There is a final argument that whatever criticisms
may be made of televised religion, there remains the inescapable fact
that it attracts viewers by the millions. This would appear to be the
meaning of the statements, quoted earlier by Billy Graham and Pat
Robertson, that there is a need for it among the multitude. To which the
best reply I know was made by Hannah Arendt, who, in reflecting on the
products of mass culture, wrote:
This state of affairs, which indeed is equalled nowhere else in the
world, can properly be called mass culture; its promoters are neither
the masses nor their entertainers, but are those who try to
entertain the masses with what once was an authentic object of culture,
or to persuade them that Hamlet can be as entertaining as My Fair Lady,
and educational as well. the danger of mass education is precisely that
it may become very entertaining indeed; there are many great authors of
the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is
still an open question whether they will be able to survive an
entertaining version of what they have to say.
If we substitute the word “religion” for Hamlet, and the phrase “great
religious traditions” for “great authors of the past,” this quotation
may stand as the decisive critique of televised religion. There is no
doubt, in other words, that religion can be made entertaining. the
question is, By doing so, do we destroy it as an “authentic object of
culture”? And does the popularity of a religion that employs the full
resources of vaudeville drive more traditional religious conceptions
into manic and trivial displays? I have already referred to Cardinal
O’Connor’s embarrassing attempts to be well liked and amusing, and to a
parish priest who cheerfully tries to add rock music to Catholic
education. I know of one rabbi who has seriously proposed to his
congregation that Luciano Pavarotti be engaged to sing Kol Nidre at a
Yom Kippur service. He believes that the event would fill the synagogue
as never before. Who can doubt it? But as Hannah Arendt would say, that
is the problem, not a solution to one. As a member of the Commission on
Theology, Education and the Electronic Media of the National Council of
the Churches of Christ, I am aware of the deep concern among
“established” Protestant religions about the tendency toward
refashioning Protestant services so that they are more televisible. It
is well understood at the National Council that the danger is not that
religion has become the content of television shows but that television
shows may become the content of religion.
Reach Out and Elect Someone
In the Last Hurrah, Edwin O’Connor’s fine novel about lusty party
politics in Boston, Mayor Frank Skeffington tries to instruct his young
nephew in the realities of political machinery. Politics, he tells him,
is the greatest spectator sport in America. In 1966, Ronald Reagan used
a different metaphor. “Politics,” he said, “is just like show
business.” Although sports has now become a major branch of show
business, it still contains elements that make Skeffington’s vision of
politics somewhat more encouraging than Reagan’s. In any sport the
standard of excellence is well known to both the players and spectators,
and an athlete’s reputation rises and falls by his or her proximity to
that standard. Where an athlete stands in relation to it cannot be
easily disguised or faked, which means that David Garth can do very
little to improve the image of an outfielder with a .218 batting
average. It also means that a public opinion poll on the question, Who
is the best woman tennis player in the world?, is meaningless. the
public’s opinion has nothing to do with it. Martina Navratilova’s serve
provides the decisive answer. One may also note that spectators at a
sporting event are usually well aware of the rules of the game and the
meaning of each piece of the action. There is no way for a batter who
strikes out with the bases loaded to argue the spectators into believing
that he has done a useful thing for his team (except, perhaps, by
reminding them that he could have hit into a double play). the
difference between hits and strike-outs, touchdowns and fumbles, aces
and double faults cannot be blurred, even by the pomposities and
malapropisms of a Howard Cosell. If politics were like a sporting
event, there would be several virtues to attach to its name: clarity,
honesty, excellence.
But what virtues attach to politics if Ronald Reagan is right? Show
business is not entirely without an idea of excellence, but its main
business is to please the crowd, and its principal instrument is
artifice. If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to
pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which
is another matter altogether. And what the other matter is can be
expressed in one word: advertising. In Joe McGinnis’ book about Richard
Nixon’s campaign in 1968, the Selling of the President, he said much of
what needs to be said about politics and advertising, both in his title
and in the book. But not quite all. For though the selling of a
President is an astonishing and degrading thing, it is only part of a
larger point: In America, the fundamental metaphor for political
discourse is the television commercial.
the television commercial is the most peculiar and pervasive form of
communication to issue forth from the electric plug. An American who
has reached the age of forty will have seen well over one million
television commercials in his or her lifetime, and has close to another
million to go before the first Social Security check arrives. We may
safely assume, therefore, that the television commercial has profoundly
influenced American habits of thought. Certainly, there is no
difficulty in demonstrating that it has become an important paradigm for
the structure of every type of public discourse. My major purpose here
is to show how it has devastated political discourse. But there may be
some value in my pointing, first, to its effect on commerce itself.
By bringing together in compact form all of the arts of show
business–music, drama, imagery, humor, celebrity–the television
commercial has mounted the most serious assault on capitalist ideology
since the publication of Das Kapital. To understand why, we must remind
ourselves that capitalism, like science and liberal democracy, was an
outgrowth of the Enlightenment. Its principal theorists, even its most
prosperous practitioners, believed capitalism to be based on the idea
that both buyer and seller are sufficiently mature, well informed and
reasonable to engage in transactions of mutual self-interest. If greed
was taken to be the fuel of the capitalist engine, then surely
rationality was the driver. the theory states, in part, that
competition in the marketplace requires that the buyer not only knows
what is good for him but also what is good. If the seller produces
nothing of value, as determined by a rational marketplace, then he loses
out. It is the assumption of rationality among buyers that spurs
competitors to become winners, and winners to keep on winning. Where it
is assumed that a buyer is unable to make rational decisions, laws are
passed to invalidate transactions, as, for example, those which prohibit
children from making contracts. In America, there even exists in law a
requirement that sellers must tell the truth about their products, for
if the buyer has no protection from false claims, rational
decision-making is seriously impaired.
Of course, the practice of capitalism has its contradictions. Cartels
and monopolies, for example, undermine the theory. But television
commercials make hash of it. To take the simplest example: To be
rationally considered, any claim–commercial or otherwise–must be made
in language. More precisely, it must take the form of a proposition,
for that is the universe of discourse from which such words as “true”
and “false” come. If that universe of discourse is discarded, then the
application of empirical tests, logical analysis or any of the other
instruments of reason are impotent.
the move away from the use of propositions in commercial advertising
began at the end of the nineteenth century. But it was not until the
1950’s that the television commercial made linguistic discourse obsolete
as the basis for product decisions. By substituting images for claims,
the pictorial commercial
made emotional appeal, not tests of truth, the basis of consumer
decisions. the distance between rationality and advertising is now so
wide that it is difficult to remember that there once existed a
connection between them. Today, on television commercials, propositions
are as scarce as unattractive people. the truth or falsity of an
advertiser’s claim is simply not an issue. A McDonald’s commercial, for
example, is not a series of testable, logically ordered assertions. It
is a drama–a mythology, if you will–of handsome people selling, buying
and eating hamburgers, and being driven to near ecstasy by their good
fortune. No claims are made, except those the viewer projects onto or
infers from the drama. One can like or dislike a television commercial,
of course. But one cannot refute it. Indeed, we may go this far: the
television commercial is not at all about the character of products to
be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products.
Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho
fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy
families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country–these
tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything
about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What
the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but
what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business
expenditures shifts from product research to market research. the
television commercial has oriented business away from making products of
value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the
business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. the consumer is a
patient assured by psycho-dramas. All of this would come as a great
surprise to Adam Smith, just as the transformation of politics would be
equally surprising to the redoubtable George Orwell. It is true, as
George Steiner has remarked, that Orwell thought of Newspeak as
originating, in part, from “the verbiage of commercial advertising.” But
when Orwell wrote in his famous essay “the Politics of the English
Language” that politics has become a matter of “defending the
indefensible,” he was assuming that politics would remain a distinct,
although corrupted, mode of discourse. His contempt was aimed at those
politicians who would use sophisticated versions of the age-old arts of
double-think, propaganda and deceit. That the defense of the
indefensible would be conducted as a form of amusement did not occur to
him. He feared the politician as deceiver, not as entertainer. the
television commercial has been the chief instrument in creating the
modern methods of presenting political ideas. It has accomplished this
in two ways. the first is by requiring its form to be used in political
campaigns. It is not necessary, I take it, to say very much about this
method. Everyone has noticed and worried in varying degrees about it,
including former New York City mayor John Lindsay, who has proposed that
political “commercials” be prohibited. Even television commentators
have brought it to our attention, as for example, Bill Moyers in “the
Thirty-second President,” a documentary on his excellent television
series “A Walk Through the 20th Century.” My own awakening to the power
of the television commercial as political discourse came as a result of
a personal experience of a few years back, when I played a minuscule
role in Ramsey Clark’s Senate campaign against Jacob Javits in New York.
A great believer in the traditional modes of political discourse, Clark
prepared a small library of carefully articulated position papers on a
variety of subjects from race relations to nuclear power to the Middle
East. He filled each paper with historical background, economic and
political facts, and, I thought, an enlightened sociological
perspective. He might as well have drawn cartoons. In fact, Jacob
Javits did draw cartoons, in a manner of speaking. If Javits had a
carefully phrased position on any issue, the fact was largely unknown.
He built his campaign on a series of thirty-second television
commercials in which he used visual imagery, in much the same way as a
McDonald’s commercial, to project himself as a man of experience, virtue
and piety. For all I
know, Javits believed as strongly in reason as did Ramsey Clark. But he
believed more strongly in retaining his seat in the Senate. And he knew
full well in what century we are living. He understood that in a world
of television and other visual media, “political knowledge” means having
pictures in your head more than having words. the record will show that
this insight did not fail him. He won the election by the largest
plurality in New York State history. And I will not labor the
commonplace that any serious candidate for high political office in
America requires the services of an image manager to design the kinds of
pictures that will lodge in the public’s collective head. I will want
to return to the implications of “image politics” but it is necessary,
before that, to discuss the second method by which the television
commercial shapes political discourse. Because the television commercial
is the single most voluminous form of public communication in our
society, it was inevitable that Americans would accommodate themselves
to the philosophy of television commercials. By “accommodate,” I mean
that we accept them as a normal and plausible form of discourse. By
“philosophy,” I mean that the television commercial has embedded in it
certain assumptions about the nature of communication that run counter
to those of other media, especially the printed word. For one thing,
the commercial insists on an unprecedented brevity of expression. One
may even say, in-stancy. A sixty-second commercial is prolix; thirty
seconds is longer than most; fifteen to twenty seconds is about average.
This is a brash and startling structure for communication since, as I
remarked earlier, the commercial always addresses itself to the
psychological needs of the viewer. Thus it is not merely therapy. It
is instant therapy. Indeed, it puts forward a psychological theory of
unique axioms: the commercial asks us to believe that all problems are
solvable, that they are solvable fast, and that they are solvable fast
through the interventions of technology, techniques and chemistry. This
is, of course, a preposterous theory about the roots of discontent, and
would appear so to anyone hearing or reading it. But the commercial
disdains exposition, for that takes time and invites argument. It is a
very bad commercial indeed that engages the viewer in wondering about
the validity of the point being made. That is why most commercials use
the literary device of the pseudo-parable as a means of doing their
work. Such “parables” as the Ring Around the Collar, the Lost
Traveler’s Checks and the Phone Call from the Son Far Away not only have
irrefutable emotional power but, like Biblical parables, are
unambiguously didactic. the television commercial is about products
only in the sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of
whales, which is to say, it isn’t. Which is to say further, it is about
how one ought to live one’s life. Moreover, commercials have the
advantage of vivid visual symbols through which we may easily learn the
lessons being taught. Among those lessons are that short and simple
messages are preferable to long and complex ones; that drama is to be
preferred over exposition; that being sold solutions is better than
being confronted with questions about problems. Such beliefs would
naturally have implications for our orientation to political discourse;
that is to say, we may begin to accept as normal certain assumptions
about the political domain that either derive from or are amplified by
the television commercial. For example, a person who has seen one
million television commercials might well believe that all political
problems have fast solutions through simple measures–or ought to. Or
that complex language is not to be trusted, and that all problems lend
themselves to theatrical expression. Or that argument is in bad taste,
and leads only to an intolerable uncertainty. Such a person may also
come to believe that it is not necessary to draw any line between
politics and other forms of social life. Just as a television
commercial will use an athlete, an actor, a musician, a novelist, a
scientist or a countess to speak for the virtues of a product in no way
within their domain of expertise, television also frees politicians from
the limited field of their own expertise. Political figures may
show up anywhere, at any time, doing anything, without being thought
odd, presumptuous, or in any way out of place. Which is to say, they
have become assimilated into the general television culture as
celebrities. Being a celebrity is quite different from being well known.
Harry Truman was well known but he was not a celebrity. Whenever the
public saw him or heard him, Truman was talking politics. It takes a
very rich imagination to envision Harry Truman or, for that matter, his
wife, making a guest appearance on “the Goldbergs” or “I Remember Mama.”
Politics and politicians had nothing to do with these shows, which
people watched for amusement, not to familiarize themselves with poo
litical candidates and issues. It is difficult to say exactly when
politicians began to put themselves forward, intentionally, as sources
of amusement. In the 1950’s, Senator Everett Dirksen appeared as a
guest on “What’s My Line.” When he was running for office, John F.
Kennedy allowed the television cameras of Ed Murrow’s “Person to Person”
to invade his home. When he was not running for office, Richard Nixon
appeared for a few seconds on “Laugh-In,” an hour-long comedy show based
on the format of a television commercial. By the 1970% the public had
started to become accustomed to the notion that political figures were
to be taken as part of the world of show business. In the 1980’s came
the deluge. Vice-presidential candidate William Miller did a commercial
for American Express. So did the star of the Watergate Hearings,
Senator Sam Ervin. Former President Gerald Ford joined with former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for brief roles on “Dynasty.”
Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis appeared on “St. Elsewhere.”
Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill did a stint on “Cheers.” Consumer
advocate Ralph Nader, George McGovern and Mayor Edward Koch hosted
“Saturday Night Live.” Koch also played the role of a fight manager in a
made-for-television movie starring James Cagney. Mrs. Nancy Reagan
appeared on “Diff’rent Strokes.” Would
anyone be surprised if Gary Hart turned up on “Hill Street Blues”? Or
if Geraldine Ferraro played a small role as a Queens housewife in a
Francis Coppola film? Although it may go too far to say that the
politician-as-celebrity has, by itself, made political parties
irrelevant, there is certainly a conspicuous correlation between the
rise of the former and the decline of the latter. Some readers may
remember when voters barely knew who the candidate was and, in any case,
were not preoccupied with his character and personal life. As a young
man, I balked one November at voting for a Democratic mayoralty
candidate who, it seemed to me, was both unintelligent and corrupt.
“What has that to do with it?” my father protested. “All Democratic
candidates are unintelligent and corrupt. Do you want the Republicans
to win?” He meant to say that intelligent voters favored the party that
best represented their economic interests and sociological perspective.
To vote for the “best man” seemed to him an astounding and naive
irrelevance. He never doubted that there were good men among
Republicans. He merely understood that they did not speak for his
class. He shared, with an unfailing eye, the perspective of Big Tim
Sullivan, a leader of New York’s Tammany Hall in its glory days. As
Terence Moran recounts in his essay, “Politics 1984,” Sullivan was once
displeased when brought the news that the vote in his precinct was 6,382
for the Democrat and two for the Republican. In evaluating this
disappointing result, Sullivan remarked, “Sure, didn’t Kelly come to me
to say his wife’s cousin was running on the Republican line and didn’t
I, in the interests of domestic tranquility, give him leave to vote
Republican? But what I want to know is, who else voted Republican?” 2 I
will not argue here the wisdom of this point of view. There may be a
case for choosing the best man over party (although I know of none). the
point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact,
television makes impossible the determination of who is better than
whom, if we mean by “better”
such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in
executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more
understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. the
reason has, almost entirely, to do with “image.” But not because
politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best
possible light. After all, who isn’t? It is a rare and deeply
disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But
television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician
does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer
himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most
powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse.
To understand how image politics works on television, we may use as an
entry point the well-known commercial from which this chapter takes the
first half of its title. I refer to the Bell Telephone romances,
created by Mr. Steve Horn, in which we are urged to “Reach Out and
Touch Someone.” the “someone” is usually a relative who lives ‘in Denver
or Los Angeles or Atlanta–in any case, very far from where we are, and
who, in a good year, we will be lucky to see on Thanksgiving Day. the
“someone” used to play a daily and vital role in our lives; that is to
say, used to be a member of the family. Though American culture stands
vigorously opposed to the idea of family, there nonetheless still exists
a residual nag that something essential to our lives is lost when we
give it up. Enter Mr. Horn’s commercials. These are thirty-second
homilies concerned to provide a new definition of intimacy in which the
telephone wire will take the place of old-fashioned co-presence. Even
further, these commercials intimate a new conception of family cohesion
for a nation of kinsmen who have been split asunder by automobiles, jet
aircraft and other instruments of family suicide. In analyzing these
commercials, Jay Rosen makes the following observation: “Horn isn’t
interested in saying anything, he has no message to get across. His
goal is not to provide information about Bell, but to somehow bring out
from the broken ties of millions of American lives a feeling which might
focus on the telephone …. Horn does not express himself. You do not
express yourself. Horn expresses you.” 3 This is the lesson of all great
television commercials: They provide a slogan, a symbol or a focus that
creates for viewers a comprehensive and compelling image of themselves.
In the shift from party politics to television politics, the same goal
is sought. We are not permitted to know who is best at being President
or Governor or Senator, but whose image is best in touching and soothing
the deep reaches of our discontent. We look at the television screen
and ask, in the same voracious way as the Queen in Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of
all?” We are inclined to vote for those whose personality, family life,
and style, as imaged on the screen, give back a better answer than the
Queen received. As Xenophanes remarked twenty-five centuries ago, men
always make their gods in their own image. But to this, television
politics has added a new wrinkle: Those who would be gods refashion
themselves into images the viewers would have them be. And so, while
image politics preserves the idea of self-interest voting, it alters the
meaning of “self-interest.” Big Tim Sullivan and my father voted for the
party that represented their interests, but “interests” meant to them
something tangible–patronage, preferential treatment, protection from
bureaucracy, support for one’s union or community, Thanksgiving turkeys
for indigent families. Judged by this standard, blacks may be the only
sane voters left in America. Most of the rest of us vote our interests,
but they are largely symbolic ones, which is to say, of a psychological
nature. Like television commercials, image politics is a form of
therapy, which is why so much of it is charm, good looks, celebrity and
personal disclosure. It is a sobering thought to recall that there are
no photographs of Abraham Lincoln smiling, that his wife was in all
likelihood a psycho-path, and that he was subject to lengthy fits of
depression. He
would hardly have been well suited for image politics. We do not want
our mirrors to be so dark and so far from amusing. What I am saying is
that just as the television commercial empties itself of authentic
product information so that it can do its psychological work, image
politics empties itself of authentic political substance for the same
reason. It follows from this that history can play no significant role
in image politics. For history is of value only to someone who takes
seriously the notion that there are patterns in the past which may
provide the present with nourishing traditions. “the past is a world,”
Thomas Carlyle said, “and not a void of grey haze.” But he wrote this at
a time when the book was the principal medium of serious public
discourse. A book is all history. Everything about it takes one back in
time–from the way it is produced to its linear mode of exposition to
the fact that the past tense is its most comfortable form of address. As
no other medium before or since, the book promotes a sense of a coherent
and usable past. In a conversation of books, history, as Carlyle
understood it, is not only a world but a living world. It is the
present that is shadowy. But television is a speed-of-light medium, a
present-centered medium. Its grammar, so to say, permits no access to
the past. Everything presented in moving pictures is experienced as
happening “now,” which is why we must be told in language that a
videotape we are seeing was made months before. Moreover, like its
forefather, the telegraph, television needs to move fragments of
information, not to collect and organize them. Carlyle was more
prophetic than he could imagine: the literal gray haze that is the
background void on all television screens is an apt metaphor of the
notion of history the medium puts forward. In the Age of Show Business
and image politics, political discourse is emptied not only of
ideological content but of historical content, as well. Czeslaw Milosz,
winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature, remarked in his
acceptance speech in Stockholm that our
age is characterized by a “refusal to remember”; he cited, among other
things, the shattering fact that there are now more than one hundred
books in print that deny that the Holocaust ever took place. the
historian Carl Schorske has, in my opinion, circled closer to the truth
by noting that the modern mind has grown indifferent to history because
history has become useless to it; in other words, it is not obstinacy or
ignorance but a sense of irrelevance that leads to the diminution of
history. Television’s Bill Moyers inches still closer when he says, “I
worry that my own business . . . helps to make this an anxious age of
agitated amnesiacs …. We Americans seem to know everything about the
last twenty-four hours but very little of the last sixty centuries or
the last sixty years.” 4 Terence Moran, I believe, lands on the target
in saying that with media whose structure is biased toward furnishing
images and fragments, we are deprived of access to an historical
perspective. In the absence of continuity and context, he says, “bits
of information cannot be integrated into an intelligent and consistent
whole.” 5 We do not refuse to remember; neither do we find it exactly
useless to remember. Rather, we are being rendered unfit to remember.
For if remembering is to be something more than nostalgia, it requires a
contextual basis–a theory, a vision, a metaphor– something within
which facts can be organized and patterns discerned. the politics of
image and instantaneous news provides no such context, is, in fact,
hampered by attempts to provide any. A mirror records only what you are
wearing today. It is silent about yesterday. With television, we vault
ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present. “History,” Henry Ford
said, “is bunk.” Henry Ford was a typographic optimist. “History,” the
Electric Plug replies, “doesn’t exist.” If these conjectures make sense,
then in this Orwell was wrong once again, at least for the Western
democracies. He envisioned the demolition of history, but believed that
it would be accomplished by the state; that some equivalent of the
Ministry of Truth would systematically banish inconvenient facts and
destroy the records of the past. Certainly, this is the way of the
Soviet Union, our modern-day Oceania. But as Huxley more accurately
foretold it, nothing so crude as all that is required. Seemingly benign
technologies devoted to providing the populace with a politics of image,
instancy and therapy may disappear history just as effectively, perhaps
more permanently, and without objection. We ought also to look to
Huxley, not Orwell, to understand the threat that television and other
forms of imagery pose to the foundation of liberal democracy–namely, to
freedom of information. Orwell quite reasonably supposed that the state,
through naked suppression, would control the flow of information,
particularly by the banning of books. In this prophecy, Orwell had
history strongly on his side. For books have always been subjected to
censorship in varying degrees wherever they have been an important part
of the communication landscape. In ancient China, the Analects of
Confucius were ordered destroyed by Emperor Chi Huang Ti. Ovid’s
banishment from Rome by Augustus was in part a result of his having
written Ars Amatoria. Even in Athens, which set enduring standards of
intellectual excellence, books were viewed with alarm. In Areopagitica,
Milton provides an excellent review of the many examples of book
censorship in Classical Greece, including the case of Protagoras, whose
books were burned because he began one of his discourses with the
confession that he did not know whether or not there were gods. But
Milton is careful to observe that in all the cases before his own time,
there were only two types of books that, as he puts it, “the magistrate
cared to take notice of”: books that were blasphemous and books that
were libelous. Milton stresses this point because, writing almost two
hundred years after Gutenberg, he knew that the magistrates of his own
era, if unopposed, would disallow books of every conceivable subject
matter. Milton knew, in other words, that it was in the printing press
that censorship had found its true metier; that, in fact, information
and ideas did not become a
profound cultural problem until the maturing of the Age of Print.
Whatever dangers there may be in a word that is written, such a word is
a hundred times more dangerous when stamped by a press. And the problem
posed by typography was recognized early; for example, by Henry VIII,
whose Star Chamber was authorized to deal with wayward books. It
continued to be recognized by Elizabeth I, the Stuarts, and many other
post-Gutenberg monarchs, including Pope Paul IV, in whose reign the
first Index Librorum Prohibitorurn was drawn. To paraphrase David
Riesman only slightly, in a world of printing, information is the
gunpowder of the mind; hence come the censors in their austere robes to
dampen the explosion. Thus, Orwell envisioned that ( 1 ) government
control over (2) printed matter posed a serious threat for Western
democracies. He was wrong on both counts. (He was, of course, right on
both counts insofar as Russia, China and other pre-electronic cultures
are concerned.) Orwell was, in effect, addressing himself to a problem
of the Age of Print–in fact, to the same problem addressed by the men
who wrote the United States Constitution. the Constitution was composed
at a time when most free men had access to their communities through a
leaflet, a newspaper or the spoken word. They were quite well
positioned to share their political ideas with each other in forms and
contexts over which they had competent control. Therefore, their
greatest worry was the possibility of government tyranny. the Bill of
Rights is largely a prescription for preventing government from
restricting the flow of information and ideas. But the Founding Fathers
did not foresee that tyranny by government might be superseded by
another sort of problem altogether, namely, the corporate state, which
through television now controls the flow of public discourse in America.
I raise no strong objection to this fact (at least not here) and have no
intention of launching into a standard-brand complaint against the
corporate state. I merely note the fact with apprehension, as did
George Gerbner, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, when he
wrote:
Television is the new state religion run by a private Ministry of
Culture (the three networks), offering a universal curriculum for all
people, financed by a form of hidden taxation without representation.
You pay when you wash, not when you watch, and whether or not you care
to watch ….
Earlier in the same essay, Gerbner said:
Liberation cannot be accomplished by turning [television] off.
Television is for most people the most attractive thing going any time
of the day or night. We live in a world in which the vast majority will
not turn off. If we don’t get the message from the tube, we get it
through other people.
I do not think Professor Gerbner meant to imply in these sentences that
there is a conspiracy to take charge of our symbolic world by the men
who run the “Ministry of Culture.” I even suspect he would agree with me
that if the faculty of the An-nenberg School of Communication were to
take over the three networks, viewers would hardly notice the
difference. I believe he means to say–and in any case, I do–that in
the Age of Television, our information environment is completely
different from what it was in 1783; that we have less to fear from
government restraints than from television glut; that, in fact, we have
no way of protecting ourselves from information disseminated by
corporate America; and that, therefore, the battles for liberty must be
fought on different terrains from where they once were. For example, I
would venture the opinion that the traditional civil libertarian
opposition to the banning of books from school libraries and from school
curricula is now largely irrelevant. Such acts of censorship are
annoying, of course, and must be opposed. But they are trivial. Even
worse, they are distracting, in that they divert civil libertarians from
confronting those questions that have to do with the claims of new
technologies.
To put it plainly, a student’s freedom to read is not seriously injured
by someone’s banning a book on Long Island or in Anaheim or anyplace
else. But as Gerbner’ suggests, television clearly does impair the
student’s freedom to read, and it does so with innocent hands, so to
speak. Television does not ban books, it simply displaces them. the
fight against censorship is a nineteenth-century issue which was largely
won in the twentieth. What we are confronted with now is the problem
posed by the economic and symbolic structure of television. Those who
run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen
it. Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian. It does
everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we
watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it
simplistic, nonsubstantive, nonhistorical and noncontextual; that is to
say, information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never
denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves. Tyrants of all varieties have
always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as
a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even
hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does
not amuse. That is why tyrants have always relied, and still do, on
censorship. Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the
assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse
and entertainment–and cares. How delighted would be all the kings,
czars and fuehrers of the past (and commissars of the present) to know
that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes
the form of a jest.
Teaching as an Amusing Activity
There could not have been a safer bet when it began in 1969 than that
“Sesame Street” would be embraced by children, parents and educators.
Children loved it because they were raised on television commercials,
which they intuitively knew were the most carefully crafted
entertainments on television. To those who had not yet been to school,
even to those who had just started, the idea of being taught by a series
of commercials did not seem peculiar. And that television should
entertain them was taken as a matter of course. Parents embraced “Sesame
Street” for several reasons, among them that it assuaged their guilt
over the fact that they could not or would not restrict their children’s
access to television. “Sesame Street” appeared to justify allowing a
four- or five-year-old to sit transfixed in front of a television screen
for unnatural periods of time. Parents were eager to hope that
television could teach their children something other than which
breakfast cereal has the most crackle. At the same time, “Sesame
Street” relieved them of the responsibility of teaching their preschool
children how to read–no small matter in a culture where children are
apt to be considered a nuisance. They could also plainly see that in
spite of its faults, “Sesame Street” was entirely consonant with the
prevailing spirit of America. Its use of cute puppets, celebrities,
catchy tunes, and rapid-fire editing was certain to give pleasure to the
children and would therefore serve as adequate preparation for their
entry into a fun-loving culture.
As for educators, they generally approved of “Sesame Street,” too.
Contrary to common opinion, they are apt to find new methods congenial,
especially if they are told that education can be accomplished more
efficiently by means of the new techniques. (That is why such ideas as
“teacher-proof” textbooks, standardized tests, and, now, microcomputers
have been welcomed into the classroom.) “Sesame Street” appeared to be
an imaginative aid in solving the growing problem of teaching Americans
how to read, while, at the same time, encouraging children to love
school. We now know that “Sesame Street” encourages children to love
school only if school is like “Sesame Street.” Which is to say, we now
know that “Sesame Street” undermines what the traditional idea of
schooling represents. Whereas a classroom is a place of social
interaction, the space in front of a television set is a private
preserve. Whereas in a classroom, one may ask a teacher questions, one
can ask nothing of a television screen. Whereas school is centered on
the development of language, television demands attention to images.
Whereas attending school is a legal requirement, watching television is
an act of choice. Whereas in school, one fails to attend to the teacher
at the risk of punishment, no penalties exist for failing to attend to
the television screen. Whereas to behave oneself in school means to
observe rules of public decorum, television watching requires no such
observances, has no concept of public decorum. Whereas in a classroom,
fun is never more than a means to an end, on television it is the end in
itself. Yet “Sesame Street” and its progeny, “the Electric Company,” are
not to be blamed for laughing the traditional classroom out of
existence. If the classroom now begins to seem a stale and flat
environment for learning, the inventors of television itself are to
blame, not the Children’s Television Workshop. We can hardly expect
those who want to make good television shows to concern themselves with
what the classroom is for. They are concerned with what television is
for. This
does not mean that “Sesame Street” is not educational. It is, in fact,
nothing but educational–in the sense that every television show is
educational. Just as reading a book–any kind of book repromotes a
particular orientation toward learning, watching a television show does
the same. “the Little House on the Prairie,”
“Cheers” and “the Tonight Show” are as effective as “Sesame Street” in
promoting what might be called the television style of learning. And
this style of learning is, by its nature, hostile to what has been
called book-learning or its handmaiden, school-learning. If we are to
blame “Sesame Street” for anything, it is for the pretense that it is
any ally of the classroom. That, after all, has been its chief claim on
foundation and public money. As a television show, and a good one,
“Sesame Street” does not encourage children to love school or anything
about school. It encourages them to love television.
Moreover, it is important to add that whether or not “Sesame Street”
teaches children their letters and numbers is entirely irrelevant. We
may take as our guide here John Dewey’s observation that the content of
a lesson is the least important thing about learning. As he wrote in
Experience and Education: “Perhaps the greatest of all pedagogical
fallacies is the notion that a person learns only what he is studying at
the time. Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring
attitudes… may be and often is more important than the spelling
lesson or lesson in geography or history …. For these attitudes are
fundamentally what count in the future.” In other words, the most
important thing one learns is always something about how one learns. As
Dewey wrote in another place, we learn what we do. Television educates
by teaching children to do what television-viewing requires of them. And
that is as precisely remote from what a classroom requires of them as
reading a book is from watching a stage show.
Although one would not know it from consulting various recent proposals
on how to mend the educational system, this point–that reading books
and watching television differ entirely in what they imply about
learning–is the primary educational issue in America today. America
is, in fact, the leading case in point of what may be thought of as the
third great crisis in Western education. the first occurred in the
fifth century B.c., when Athens underwent a change from an oral culture
to an alphabet-writing culture. To understand what this meant, we must
read Plato. the second occurred in the sixteenth century, when Europe
underwent a radical transformation as a result of the printing press. To
understand what this meant, we must read John Locke. the third is
happening now, in America, as a result of the electronic revolution,
particularly the invention of television. To understand what this
means, we must read Marshall McLuhan.
We face the rapid dissolution of the assumptions of an education
organized around the slow-moving printed word, and the equally rapid
emergence of a new education based on the speed-of-light electronic
image. the classroom is, at the moment, still tied to the printed word,
although that connection is rapidly weakening. Meanwhile, television
forges ahead, making no concessions to its great technological
predecessor, creating new conceptions of knowledge and how it is
acquired. One is entirely justified in saying that the major
educational enterprise now being undertaken in the United States is not
happening in its classrooms but in the home, in front of the television
set, and under the jurisdiction not of school administrators and
teachers but of network executives and entertainers. I don’t mean to
imply that the situation is a result of a conspiracy or even that those
who control television want this responsibility. I mean only to say
that, like the alphabet or the printing press, television has by its
power to control the time, attention and cognitive habits of our youth
gained the power to control their education.
This is why I think it accurate to call television a curriculum. As I
understand the word, a curriculum is a specially constructed information
system whose purpose is to influence,
teach, train or cultivate the mind and character of youth. Television,
of course, does exactly that, and does it relentlessly. In so doing, it
competes successfully with the school curriculum. By which I mean, it
damn near obliterates it. Having devoted an earlier book, Teaching as a
Conserving Activity, to a detailed examination of the antagonistic
nature of the two curriculums–television and school–I will not burden
the reader or myself with a repetition of that analysis. But I would
like to recall two points that I feel I did not express forcefully
enough in that book and that happen to be central to this one. I refer,
first, to -the fact that television’s principal contribution to
educational philosophy is the idea that teaching and entertainment are
inseparable. This entirely original conception is to be found nowhere
in educational discourses, from Confucius to Plato to Cicero to Locke to
John Dewey. In searching the literature of education, you will find it
said by some that children will learn best when they are interested in
what they are learning. You will find it said–Plato and Dewey
emphasized this –that reason is best cultivated when it is rooted in
robust emotional ground. You will even find some who say that learning
is best facilitated by a loving and benign teacher. But no one has ever
said or implied that significant learning is effectively, durably and
truthfully achieved when education is entertainment. Education
philosophers have assumed that becoming acculturated is difficult
because it necessarily involves the imposition of restraints. They have
argued that there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and
a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual
pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group
cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and
rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought
victories. Indeed, Cicero remarked that the purpose of education is to
free the student from the tyranny of the present, which cannot be
pleasurable for those, like the young, who are struggling
hard to do the opposite–that is, accommodate themselves to the present.
Television offers a delicious and, as I have said, original alternative
to all of this. We might say there are three commandments that form the
philosophy of the education which television offers. the influence of
these commandments is observable in every type of television
programming–from “Sesame Street” to the documentaries of “Nova” and
“the National Geographic” to “Fantasy Island’ to MTV. the commandments
are as follows:
Thou shalt have no prerequisites
Every television program must be a complete package in itself. No
previous knowledge is to be required. There must not be even a hint
that learning is hierarchical, that it is an edifice constructed on a
foundation. the learner must be allowed to enter at any point without
prejudice. This is why you shall never hear or see a television program
begin with the caution that if the viewer has not seen the previous
programs, this one will be meaningless. Television is a nongraded
curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other
words, in doing away with the idea of sequence and continuity in
education, television undermines the idea that sequence and continuity
have anything to do with thought itself.
Thou shalt induce no perplexity
In television teaching, perplexity is a superhighway to low ratings. A
perplexed learner is a learner who will turn to another station. This
means that there must be nothing that has to be remembered, studied,
applied or, worst of all, endured. It is assumed that any information,
story or idea can be made immediately accessible, since the contentment,
not the growth, of the learner is paramount.
Thou shalt avoid exposition like the ten plagues visited upon Egypt
Of all the enemies of television-teaching, including continuity and
perplexity, none is more formidable than exposition. Arguments,
hypotheses, discussions, reasons, refutations or any of the traditional
instruments of reasoned discourse turn television into radio or, worse,
third-rate printed matter. Thus, television-teaching always takes the
form of story-telling, conducted through dynamic images and supported by
music. This is as characteristic of “Star Trek” as it is of “Cosmos,”
of “Diff’rent Strokes” as of “Sesame Street,” of commercials as of
“Nova.” Nothing will be taught on television that cannot be both
visualized and placed in a theatrical context. the name we may properly
give to an education without prerequisites, perplexity and exposition is
entertainment. And when one considers that save for sleeping there is
no activity that occupies more of an American youth’s time than
television-viewing, we cannot avoid the conclusion that a massive
reorientation toward learning is now taking place. Which leads to the
second point I wish to emphasize: the consequences of this reorientation
are to be observexd not only in the decline of the potency of the
classroom but, paradoxically, in the refashioning of the classroom into
a place where both teaching and learning are intended to be vastly
amusing activities. I have already referred to the experiment in
Philadelphia in which the classroom is reconstituted as a rock concert.
But this is only the silliest example of an attempt to define education
as a mode of entertainment. Teachers, from primary grades through
college, are increasing the visual stimulation of their lessons; are
reducing the amount of exposition their students must cope with; are
relying less on reading and writing assignments; and are reluctantly
concluding that the principal means by which student interest may be
engaged is entertainment. With no difficulty I could fill the remaining
pages of this chapter with examples of teachers’ efforts–in some
instances, unconscious-to make their classrooms into second-rate
television shows. But I will rest my case with “the Voyage of the
Mimi,” which may be taken as a synthesis, if not an apotheosis, of the
New Education. “the Voyage of the Mimi” is the name of an expensive
science and mathematics project that has brought together some of the
most prestigious institutions in the field of education–the United
States Department of Education, the Bank Street College of Education,
the Public Broadcasting System, and the publishing firm Holt, Rinehart
and Winston. the project was made possible by a $3.65 million grant
from the Department of Education, which is always on the alert to put
its money where the future is. And the future is “the Voyage of the
Mimi.” To describe the project succinctly, I quote from four paragraphs
in the New York Times of August 7, 1984:
Organized around a twenty-six-unit television series that depicts the
adventures of a floating whale-research laboratory, [the project]
combines television viewing with lavishly illustrated books and computer
games that simulate the way scientists and navigators work …. “the
Voyage of the Mimi” is built around fifteen-minute television programs
that depict the adventures of four young people who accompany two
scientists and a crusty sea captain on a voyage to monitor the behavior
of humpback whales off the coast of Maine. the crew of the converted
tuna trawler navigates the ship, tracks down the whales and struggles to
survive on an uninhabited island after a storm damages the ship’s hull
…. Each dramatic episode is then followed by a fifteen-minute
documentary on related themes. One such documentary involved a visit by
one of the teen-age actors to Ted Taylor, a nuclear physicist in
Greenport, L.I., who has devised a way of purifying sea water by
freezing it.
the television programs, which teachers are free to record off the air
and use at their convenience, are supplemented by a series of books and
computer exercises that pick up four academic themes that emerge
naturally from the story line: map and navigational skills, whales and
their environment, ecological systems and computer literacy.
the television programs have been broadcast over PBS; the books and
computer software have been provided by Holt, Rinehart and Winston; the
educational expertise by the faculty of the Bank Street College. Thus,
“the Voyage of the Mimi” is not to be taken lightly. As Frank Withrow
of the Department of Education remarked, “We consider it the flagship of
what we are doing. It is a model that others will begin to follow.”
Everyone involved in the project is enthusiastic, and extraordinary
claims of its benefits come trippingly from their tongues. Janice
Trebbi Richards of Holt, Rinehart and Winston asserts, “Research shows
that learning increases when information is presented in a dramatic
setting, and television can do this better than any other medium.”
Officials of the Department of Education claim that the appeal of
integrating three media–television, print, and computers–lies in their
potential for cultivating higher-order thinking skills. And Mr. Withrow
is quoted as saying that projects like “the Voyage of the Mimi” could
mean great financial savings, that in the long run “it is cheaper than
anything else we do.” Mr. Withrow also suggested that there are many
ways of financing such projects. “With ‘Sesame Street,'” he said, “it
took five or six years, but eventually you can start bringing in the
money with T-shirts and cookie jars.” We may start thinking about what
“the Voyage of the Mimi” signifies by recalling that the idea is far
from original. What is here referred to as “integrating three media” or
a “multi-media presentation” was once called “audio-visual aids,” used
by teachers for years, usually for the modest purpose of enhancing
student interest in the curriculum. Moreover, several years ago, the
Office of Education (as the Department was then called) supplied funds
to WNET for a similarly designed project called “Watch Your Mouth,” a
series of television dramatizations in which young people inclined to
misuse the English language fumbled their way through a variety of
social problems. Linguists and educators prepared lessons for teachers
to use in conjunction with each program. the dramatizations were
compelling-although not nearly as good as “Welcome Back, Kotter,” which
had the unassailable advantage of John Travolta’s charisma–but there
exists no evidence that students who were required to view “Watch Your
Mouth” increased their competence in the use of the English language.
Indeed, since there is no shortage of mangled English on everyday
commercial television, one wondered at the time why the United States
government would have paid anyone to go to the trouble of producing
additional ineptitudes as a source of classroom study. A videotape of
any of David Susskind’s programs would provide an English teacher with
enough linguistic aberrations to fill a semester’s worth of analysis.
Nonetheless, the Department of Education has forged ahead, apparently in
the belief that ample evidence–to quote his. Richards again–“shows
that learning increases when information is presented in a dramatic
setting, and that television can do this better than any other medium.”
the most charitable response to this claim is that it is misleading.
George Comstock and his associates have reviewed 2,800 studies on the
general topic of television’s influence on behavior, including cognitive
processing, and are unable to point to persuasive evidence that
“learning increases when information is presented in a dramatic
setting.” 2 Indeed, in studies conducted by Cohen and Salomon;
Meringoff; Jacoby, Hoyer and Sheluga; Stauffer, Frost and Rybolt; Stern;
Wilson; Neuman; Katz, Adoni and Parness; and Gunter, quite the opposite
conclusion is justified. Jacoby et all. found, for example, that only
3.5 percent of viewers were
able to answer successfully twelve true/false questions concerning two
thirty-second segments of commercial television programs and
advertisements. Stauffer et all. found in studying students’ responses
to a news program transmitted via television, radio and print, that
print significantly increased correct responses to questions regarding
the names of people and numbers contained in the material. Stern
reported that 51 percent of viewers could not recall a single item of
news a few minutes after viewing a news program on television. Wilson
found that the average television viewer could retain only 20 percent of
the information contained in a fictional televised news story. Katz et
all. found that 21 percent of television viewers could not recall any
news items within one hour of broadcast. On the basis of his and other
studies, Salomon has concluded that “the meanings secured from
television are more likely to be segmented, concrete and less
inferential, and those secured from reading have a higher likelihood of
being better tied to one’s stored knowledge and thus are more likely to
be inferential.” 4 In other words, so far as many reputable studies are
concerned, television viewing does not significantly increase learning,
is inferior to and less likely than print to cultivate higher-order,
inferential thinking. But one must not make too much of the rhetoric of
grants-manship. We are all inclined to transform our hopes into tenuous
claims when an important project is at stake. Besides, I have no doubt
that his. Richards can direct us to several studies that lend support
to her enthusiasm. the point is that if you want money for the
redundant purpose of getting children to watch even more television than
they already do–and dramatizations at that–you have to escalate the
rhetoric to Herculean proportions. What is of greatest significance
about “the Voyage of the Mimi” is that the content selected was
obviously chosen because it is eminently televisible. Why are these
students studying the behavior of humpback whales? How critical is it
that the
“academic themes” of navigational and map-reading skills be learned?
Navigational skills have never been considered an “academic theme” and
in fact seem singularly inappropriate for most students in big cities.
Why has it been decided that “whales and their environment” is a subject
of such compelling interest that an entire year’s work should be given
to it? I would suggest that “the Voyage of the Mimi” was conceived by
someone’s asking the question, What is television good for?, not, What
is education good for? Television is good for dramatizations,
shipwrecks, seafaring adventures, crusty old sea captains, and
physicists being interviewed by actor-celebrities. And that, of course,
is what we have got in “the Voyage of the Mimi.” the fact that this
adventure sit-com is accompanied by lavishly illustrated books and
computer games only underscores that the television presentation
controls the curriculum. the books whose pictures the students will
scan and the computer games the students will play are dictated by the
content of the television shows, not the other way around. books, it
would appear, have now become an audio-visual aid; the principal carrier
of the content of education is the television show, and its principal
claim for a preeminent place in the curriculum is that it is
entertaining. Of course, a television production can be used to
stimulate interest in lessons, or even as the focal point of a lesson.
But what is happening here is that the content of the school curriculum
is being determined by the character of television, and even worse, that
character is apparently not included as part of what is studied. One
would have thought that the school room is the proper place for students
to inquire into the ways in which media of all kinds–including
television–shape people’s attitudes and perceptions. Since our
students will have watched approximately sixteen thousand hours of
television by high school’s end, questions should have arisen, even in
the minds of officials at the Department of Education, about who will
teach our students how to look at television, and when not to, and with
what critical equipment when
they do. “the Voyage of the Mimi” project bypasses these questions;
indeed, hopes that the students will immerse themselves in the
dramatizations in the same frame of mind used when watching “St.
Elsewhere” or “Hill Street Blues.” (One may also assume that what is
called “computer literacy” does not involve raising questions about the
cognitive biases and social effects of the computer, which, I would
venture, are the most important questions to address about new
technologies.)
“the Voyage of the Mimi,” in other words, spent $3.65 million for the
purpose of using media in exactly the manner that media merchants want
them to be used–mindlessly and invisibly, as if media themselves have
no epistemological or political agenda. And, in the end, what will the
students have learned? They will, to be sure, have learned something
about whales, perhaps about navigation and map reading, most of which
they could have learned just as well by other means. Mainly, they will
have learned that learning is a form of entertainment or, more
precisely, that anything worth learning can take the form of an
entertainment, and ought to. And they will not rebel if their English
teacher asks them to learn the eight parts of speech through the medium
of rock music. Or if their social studies teacher sings to them the
facts about the War of 1812. Or if their physics comes to them on
cookies and T-shirts. Indeed, they will expect it and thus will be well
prepared to receive their politics, their religion, their news and their
commerce in the same delightful way.
II.
the Huxleyan Warning
There are two ways by which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In
the first–the Orwellian–culture becomes a prison. In the second–the
Huxleyan–culture becomes a burlesque.
No one needs to be reminded that our world is now marred by many
prison-cultures whose structure Orwell described accurately in his
parables. If one were to read both 1984 and Animal Farm, and then for
good measure, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, one would have a
fairly precise blueprint of the machinery of thought-control as it
currently operates in scores of countries and on millions of people. Of
course, Orwell was not the first to teach us about the spiritual
devastations of tyranny. What is irreplaceable about his work is his
insistence that it makes little difference if our wardens are inspired
by right- or left-wing ideologies. the gates of the prison are equally
impenetrable, surveillance equally rigorous, icon-worship equally
pervasive.
What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual
devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face
than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the
Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice.” We
watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries
of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural
life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious
public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in
short, a people become an audience and their public business a
vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a
clear possibility.
In America, Orwell’s prophecies are of small relevance, but Huxley’s are
well under way toward being realized. For America is engaged in the
world’s most ambitious experiment to accommodate itself to the
technological distractions made possible by the electric plug. This is
an experiment that began slowly and modestly in the mid-nineteenth
century and has now, in the latter half of the twentieth, reached a
perverse maturity in America’s consuming love-affair with television. As
nowhere else in the world, Americans have moved far and fast in bringing
to a close the age of the slow-moving printed word, and have granted to
television sovereignty over all of their institutions. By ushering in
the Age of Television, America has given the world the clearest
available glimpse of the Huxleyan future.
Those who speak about this matter must often raise their voices to a
near-hysterical pitch, inviting the charge that they are everything from
wimps to public nuisances to Jeremiahs. But they do so because what they
want others to see appears benign, when it is not invisible altogether.
An Orwellian world is much easier to recognize, and to oppose, than a
Huxleyan. Everything in our background has prepared us to know and
resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us. We are not
likely, for example, to be indifferent to the voices of the Sakharovs
and the Timmermans and the Walesas. We take arms against such a sea of
troubles, buttressed by the spirit of Milton, Bacon, Voltaire, Goethe
and Jefferson. But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard?
Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we
complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse
dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture’s being
drained by laughter?
I fear that our philosophers have given us no guidance in this
matter. Their warnings have customarily been directed against those
consciously formulated ideologies that appeal to the worst tendencies in
human nature. But what is happening in America is not the design of an
articulated ideology. No Mein Kampf or Communist Manifesto announced
its coming. It comes as the unintended consequence of a dramatic change
in our modes of public conversation. But it is an ideology nonetheless,
for it imposes a way of life, a set of relations among people and ideas,
about which there has been no consensus, no discussion and no
opposition. Only compliance. Public consciousness has not yet
assimilated the point that technology is ideology. This, in spite of
the fact that before our very eyes technology has altered every aspect
of life in America during the past eighty years. For example, it would
have been excusable in 1905 for us to be unprepared for the cultural
changes the automobile would bring. Who could have suspected then that
the automobile would tell us how we were to conduct our social and
sexual lives? Would reorient our ideas about what to do with our
forests and cities? Would create new ways of expressing our personal
identity and social standing?
But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is
inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a
program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to
make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at
this late hour, stupidity plain and simple. Moreover, we have seen
enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of
communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of
transportation. Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its
cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community,
history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type,
and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images
and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics.
Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here
is ideology without
words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is
required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the
inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are
Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward
some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that
movement. Thus, there are near insurmountable difficulties for anyone
who has written such a book as this, and who wishes to end it with some
remedies for the affliction. In the first place, not everyone believes
a cure is needed, and in the second, there probably isn’t any. But as a
true-blue American who has imbibed the unshakable belief that where
there is a problem, there must be a solution, I shall conclude with the
following suggestions. We must, as a start, not delude ourselves with
preposterous notions such as the straight Luddite position as outlined,
for example, in Jerry Mander’s Four Arguments for the Elimination of
Television. Americans will not shut down any part of their
technological apparatus, and to suggest that they do so is to make no
suggestion at all. It is almost equally unrealistic to expect that
nontrivial modifications in the availability of media will ever be made.
Many civilized nations limit by law the amount of hours television may
operate and thereby mitigate the role television plays in public life.
But I believe that this is not a possibility in America. Once having
opened the Happy Medium to full public view, we are not likely to
countenance even its partial closing. Still, some Americans have been
thinking along these lines. As I write, a story appears in the New York
Times (September 27, 1984) about the plans of the Farmington,
Connecticut, Library Council to sponsor a “TV Turnoff.” It appears that
such an effort was made the previous year, the idea being to get people
to stop watching television for one month. the Times reports that the
turnoff the previous January was widely noted by the media. Ms. Ellen
Babcock, whose family participated, is quoted as saying, “It will be
interesting to see if the
impact is the same this year as last year, when we had terrific media
coverage.” In other words, Ms. Babcock hopes that by watching
television, people will learn that they ought to stop watching
television. It is hard to imagine that Ms. Babcock does not see the
irony in this position. It is an irony that I have confronted many
times in being told that I must appear on television to promote a book
that warns people against television. Such are the contradictions of a
television-based culture. In any case, of how much help is a one-month
turnoff?. It is a mere pittance; that is to say, a penance. How
comforting it must be when the folks in Farmington are done with their
punishment and can return to their true occupation. Nonetheless, one
applauds their effort, as one must applaud the efforts of those who see
some relief in limiting certain kinds of content on television-for
example, excessive violence, commercials on children’s shows, etc. I am
particularly fond of John Lindsay’s suggestion that political
commercials be banned from television as we now ban cigarette and liquor
commercials. I would gladly testify before the Federal Communications
Commission as to the manifold merits of this excellent idea. To those
who would oppose my testimony by claiming that such a ban is a clear
violation of the First Amendment, I would offer a compromise: Require
all political commercials to be preceded by a short statement to the
effect that common sense has determined that watching political
commercials is hazardous to the intellectual health of the community. I
am not very optimistic about anyone’s taking this suggestion seriously.
Neither do I put much stock in proposals to improve the quality of
television programs. Television, as I have implied earlier, serves us
most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill
when it co-opts serious modes of discourse–news, politics, science,
education, commerce, religion–and turns them into entertainment
packages. We would all be better off if television got worse, not
better.
“the A-Team” and “Cheers” are no threat to our public health. ”
Minutes,”
“Eye-Witness News” and “Sesame Street” are.
the problem, in any case, does not reside in what people watch. the
problem is in that we watch. the solution must be found in how we
watch. For I believe it may fairly be said that we have yet to learn
what television is. And the reason is that there has been no worthwhile
discussion, let alone widespread public understanding, of what
information is and how it gives direction to a culture. There is a
certain poignancy in this, since there are no people who more frequently
and enthusiastically use such phrases as “the information age,”
“the information explosion,” and “the information society.” We have
apparently advanced to the point where we have grasped the idea that a
change in the forms, volume, speed and context of information means
something, but we have not got any further.
What is information? Or more precisely, what are information? What are
its various forms? What conceptions of intelligence, wisdom and
learning does each form insist upon? What conceptions does each form
neglect or mock? What are the main psychic effects of each form? What
is the relation between information and reason? What is the kind of
information that best facilitates thinking? Is there a moral bias to
each information form? What does it mean to say that there is too much
information? How would one know? What redefinitions of important
cultural meanings do new sources, speeds, contexts and forms of
information require? Does television, for example, give a new meaning
to “piety,” to “patriotism,” to “privacy”? Does television give a new
meaning to “judgment” or to “understanding”? How do different forms of
information persuade? Is a newspaper’s “public” different from
television’s “public”? How do different information forms dictate the
type of content that is expressed?
These questions, and dozens more like them, are the means through which
it might be possible for Americans to begin talking back to their
television sets, to use Nicholas Johnson’s
phrase. For no medium is excessively dangerous if its users understand
what its dangers are. It is not important that those who ask the
questions arrive at my answers or Marshall McLuhan’s (quite different
answers, by the way). This is an instance in which the asking of the
questions is sufficient. To ask is to break the spell. To which I
might add that questions about the psychic, political and social effects
of information are as applicable to the computer as to television.
Although I believe the computer to be a vastly overrated technology, I
mention it here because, clearly, Americans have accorded it their
customary mindless inattention; which means they will use it as they are
told, without a whimper. Thus, a central thesis of computer
technology–that the principal difficulty we have in solving problems
stems from insufficient data–will go unexamined. Until, years from now,
when it will be noticed that the massive collection and speed-of-light
retrieval of data have been of great value to large-scale organizations
but have solved very little of importance to most people and have
created at least as many problems for them as they may have solved.
In any case, the point I am trying to make is that only through a deep
and unfailing awareness of the structure and effects of information,
through a demystification of media, is there any hope of our gaining
some measure of control over television, or the computer, or any other
medium. How is such media consciousness to be achieved? There are only
two answers that come to mind, one of which is nonsense and can be
dismissed almost at once; the other is desperate but it is all we have.
the nonsensical answer is to create television programs whose intent
would be, not to get people to stop watching television but to
demonstrate how television ought to be viewed, to show how television
recreates and degrades our conception of news, political debate,
religious thought, etc. I imagine such demonstrations would of
necessity take the form of parodies, along the lines of “Saturday Night
Live” and “Monty Python,”
the idea being to induce a nationwide horse laugh over television’s
control of public discourse. But, naturally, television would have the
last laugh. In order to command an audience large enough to make a
difference, one would have to make the programs vastly amusing, in the
television style. Thus, the act of criticism itself would, in the end,
be co-opted by television. the parodists would become celebrities,
would star in movies, and would end up making television commercials.
the desperate answer is to rely on the only mass medium of communication
that, in theory, is capable of addressing the problem: our schools. This
is the conventional American solution to all dangerous social problems,
and is, of course, based on a naive and mystical faith in the efficacy
of education. the process rarely works. In the matter at hand, there
is even less reason than usual to expect it to. Our schools have not
yet even got around to examining the role of the printed word in shaping
our culture. Indeed, you will not find two high school seniors in a
hundred who could tell you–within a five-hundred-year margin of
error–when the alphabet was invented. I suspect most do not even know
that the alphabet was invented. I have found that when the question is
put to them, they appear puzzled, as if one had asked, When were trees
invented, or clouds? It is the very principle of myth, as Roland
Barthes pointed out, that it transforms history into nature, and to ask
of our schools that they engage in the task of demythologizing media is
to ask something the schools have never done.
And yet there is reason to suppose that the situation is not hopeless.
Educators are not unaware of the effects of television on their
students. Stimulated by the arrival of the computer, they discuss it a
great deal–which is to say, they have become somewhat “media
conscious.” It is true enough that much of their consciousness centers
on the question, How can we use television (or the computer, or word
processor) to control education? They have not yet got to the question,
How can we use education to control television (or the computer, or word
processor)? But our reach for solutions ought to exceed our present
grasp, or what’s our dreaming for? Besides, it is an acknowledged task
of the schools to assist the young in learning how to interpret the
symbols of their culture. That this task should now require that they
learn how to distance themselves from their forms of information is not
so bizarre an enterprise that we cannot hope for its inclusion in the
curriculum; even hope that it will be placed at the center of education.
What I suggest here as a solution is what Aldous Huxley suggested, as
well. And I can do no better than he. He believed with H. G. Wells
that we are in a race between education and disaster, and he wrote
continuously about the necessity of our understanding the politics and
epistemology of media. For in the end, he was trying to tell us that
what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were
laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were
laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.
Chapter I: the Medium Is the Metaphor
As quoted in the Wisconsin State Journal, August 24, 1983, Section 3,
page 1.
Cassirer, p. 43.
Frye, p. 227.
Chapter 2: Media as Epistemology
1. Frye, p. 217.
2. Frye, p. 218. 3. Frye, p. 218.
4.
As quoted in Ong, “Literacy and the Future of Print,” pp. 201-202.
5.
Ong, Oralityt p. 35.
6.
Ong, Orality, p. 109.
7.
Jerome Bruner, in Studies in Cognitive Growth, states that growth is “as
much from the outside in as from the inside out,” and that “much of
[cognitive growth[ consists in a human being’s becoming linked with
culturally transmitted ‘amplifiers’ of motoric, sensory, and reflective
capacities.” (pp. 1-2)
According to Goody, in the Domestication of the Savage blind, “[writing]
changes the nature of the representations of the world (cognitive
processes) for those who cannot [read].” He continues: “the existence of
the alphabet therefore changes the type of data that an individual is
dealing with, and it changes the repertoire of programmes he has
available for treating his data.” (p. 110)
Julian Jaynes, in the Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind, states that the role of “writing in the breakdown of
the bicameral voices is tremendously important.” He claims that the
written word served as a “replacement” for the hallucinogenic image, and
took up the right hemispheric function of sorting out and fitting
together data.
Walter Ong, in the Presence of the Word, and Marshall McLuhan, in
Understanding Media, stress media’s effects on the variations in the
ratio and balance among the senses. One might add that as early as
1938, Alfred North Whitehead (in Modes of Thought) called attention to
the need for a thorough study of the effects of changes in media on the
organization of the sensorium.
Chapter 3: Typographic America
1. Franklin, p. 175.
2. Hart, p. 8. 3. Hart, p. 8. 4. Hart, p. 8. 5. Hart, p. 15.
6. Lockridge, p. 184. 7. Lockridge, p. 184. 8. Hart, p. 47.
9. Mumford, p. 136.
10. Stone, p. 42.
11. Hart, p. 31.
12. Boorstin, p. 315. 13. Boorstin, p. 315. 14. Hart, p. 39. 15.
Hart, p. 45.
16. Fast, p. x (in Introduction).
17.
This press was not the first established on the American continent. the
Spanish had established a printing office in Mexico a hundred years
earlier.
18.
Mott, p. 7.
19.
Boorstin, p. 320.
20.
Mott, p. 9.
21.
Lee, p. 10.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
Boorstin, p. 326. Boorstin, p. 327. Hart, p. 27. Tocqueville, p. 58.
Tocqueville, pp. 5-6. Hart p. 86.
Curti pp. 353-354. Hart p. 153.
Hart p. 74.
Curti p. 337.
Hart p. 102.
Bet [er, p. 183. Curti, p. 356. Berger, p. 158. Berger, p. 158.
Berger, p. 158. Curti, p. 356. Twain, p. 161. Hofstadter, p. 145.
Hofstadter, p. 19. Tocqueville, p. 260. Miller, p. 269. Miller, p.
271. Marx, p. 150.
Chapter 4: the Typographic Mind
1. Sparks, p. 4.
2. Sparks, p. 11. 3. Sparks, p. 87.
4.
Questions were continuously raised about the accuracy of the
transcriptions of these debates. Robert Hitt was the verbatim reporter
for the debates, and he was accused of repairing Lincoln’s
“illiteracies.” the accusations were made, of course, by Lincoln’s
political enemies, who, perhaps, were dismayed by the impression
Lincoln’s performances were making on the country. Hitt emphatically
denied he had “doctored” any of Lincoln’s speeches.
5. Hudson, p. 5. 6. Sparks, p. 86. 7. Mill, p. 64.
8. Hudson, p. 110. 9. Paine, p. 6. 10. Hudson, p. 132. 11. Perry
Miller, p. 15. 12. Hudson, p. 65. 13. Hudson, p. 143.
14. Perry Miller, p. 119.
15. Perry Miller, p. 140.
16. Perry Miller, pp. 140-141. 17. Perry Miller, p. 120. 18. Perry
Miller, p. 153. 19. Presbrey, p. 244. 20. Presbrey, p. 126. 21.
Presbrey, p. 157. 22. Presbrey, p. 235.
23.
Anderson, p. 17. In this connection, it is worth citing a letter,
dated January 15, 1787, written by Thomas Jefferson to Monsieur de
Crave-coeur. In his letter, Jefferson complained that the English were
trying to claim credit for an American invention: making the
circumference of a wheel out of one single piece of wood. Jefferson
speculated that Jersey farmers learned how to do this from their reading
of Homer, who described the process clearly. the English must have
copied the procedure from Americans, Jefferson wrote, “because ours are
the only farmers who can read Homer.”
Chapter 5: the Peek-a-Boo World
1.
Thoreau, p. 36.
2.
Harlow, p. 100.
3.
Czitrom, pp. 15-16.
4.
Sontag, p. 165.
5.
Newhall, p. 33.
6.
Salomon, p. 36.
Notes
7. Sontag, p. 20. 8. Sontag, p. 20.
Chapter 6: the Age of Show Business
1.
On July 20, 1984, the New York Times reported that the Chinese National
Television network had contracted with CBS to broadcast sixty-four hours
of CBS programming in China. Contracts with NBC and ABC are sure to
follow. One hopes that the Chinese understand that such transactions
are of great political consequence. the Gang of Four is as nothing
compared with the Gang of Three.
2.
This story was carried by several newspapers, including the Wisconsin
State Journal, February 24, 1983, Section 4, p. 2.
3.
As quoted in the New York Times, June 7, 1984, Section A, p. 20.
Chapter 7: “Now… This”
1.
For a fairly thorough report on Ms. Craft’s suit, see the New York
Times, July 29, 1983.
2.
MacNeil, p. 2.
3.
MacNell, p. 4.
4.
See Time, July 9, 1984, p. 69.
Chapter 8: Shuffle Off to Bethlehem
1.
Graham, pp. 5-8. For a detailed analysis of Graham’s style, see
Michael Real’s Mass Mediated Culture. For an amusing and vitriolic one,
see Roland Barthes’ “Billy Graham at the Winter Cyclo-dome,” in the
Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies. Barthes says, “If God really does
speak through the mouth of Dr. Graham, then God is a real blockhead.”
2.
As quoted in “Religion in Broadcasting,” by Robert Abelman and Kimberly
Neuendorf, p. 2. This study was funded by a grant from Unda-USA,
Washington, D.C.
3.
Armstrong, p. 137.
4.
Arendt, p. 352.
Chapter 9: Reach Out and Elect Someone
1.
Drew, p. 263.
2.
Moran, p. 122.
3.
Rosen, p. 162.
4.
Quoted from a speech given on March, 27, 1984, at the Jewish Museum in
New York City on the occasion of a conference of the National Jewish
Archive of Broadcasting.
5.
Moran, p. 125.
6.
From a speech given at the twenty-fourth Media Ecology Conference, April
26, 1982, in Saugerties, New York. For a full account of Dean Gerbner’s
views, see “Television: the New State Religion,” Etcetera 34:2 (June,
1977: 145-150.
Chapter I0: Teaching as an Amusing Activity
1. Dewey, p. 48.
2.
G. Comstock, S. Chaffee, N. Katzman, M. McCombs, and D. Roberts,
Television and Human Behavior (New York: Columbia University Press,
1978).
3.
A. Cohen and G. Salomon, “Children’s Literate Television Viewing:
Surprises and Possible Explanations,” Journal of Communication 29
(1979): 156-163; L. M. Meringoff, “What Pictures Can and Can’t Do for
Children’s Story Comprehension,” paper presented at the annual meeting
of the American Educational Research Association, April, 1982; J.
Jacoby, W. D. Hoyer and D. A. Sheluga, Miscomprehension of Televised
Communications (New York: the Educational Foundation of the American
Association of Advertising Agencies, 1980); J. Stauffer, R. Frost and
W. Rybolt, “Recall and Learning from Broadcast News: Is Print Better?,”
Journal of Broadcasting (Summer, 1981): 253-262; A. Stern, “A Study for
the National Association for Broadcasting,” in M. Barret (ed.), the
Politics of Broadcasting, 1971-1972 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973);
C. E. Wilson, “the Effect of a Medium on Loss of Information,”
Journalism Quarterly 51 (Spring, 1974): 111-115; W. R. Neuman,
“Patterns of Recall Among Television News Viewers,” Public Opinion
Quarterly 40 (1976): 118-125; E. Katz, H. Adoni
and P. Parness, “Remembering the News: What the Pictures Add to
Recall,” Journalism Quarterly 54 (1977): 233-242; B. Gunter,
“Remembering Television News: Effects of Picture Content,” Journal of
General Psychology 102 (1980): 127-133.
4. Salomon, p. 81.
Anderson, Paul. Platonism in the Midwest. Philadelphia: Temple
University Publications, 1963.
Arendt, Hannah. “Society and Culture,” in the Human Dialogue, edited by
Floyd Matson and Ashley Montagu. Glencoe, I11.: Free Press, 1967.
Armstrong, Ben. the Electric Church. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1979.
Berger, Max. the British Traveler in America, 1836-1860. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1943.
Boorstin, Daniel J. the Americans: the Colonial Experience. New York:
Vintage books, 1958.
Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor,
1956.
Curti, Merle. the Growth of American Thought. New York: Harper &
Row, 1951.
Czitrom, Daniel. Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
Dewey, John. Experience and Education. the Kappa Delta Pi Lectures.
London: Collier books, 1963.
Drew, Elizabeth. Portrait of an Election: the 1980 Presidential
Campaign.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth. the Printing Press as an Agent of Change. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Fast, Howard. Introduction to Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine. New
York: Heritage Press, 1961.
Franklin, Benjamin. the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New
York: Magnum books, 1968.
Frye, Northrop. the Great Code: the Bible and Literature. Toronto:
Academic Press, 1981.
Graham, Billy. “the Future of TV Evangelism.” TV Guide 31:10 (1983).
Harlow, Alvin Fay. Old Wires and New Waves: the History of the Tele-
graph, Telephone and Wireless. New York: Appleton-Century, 1936. Hart,
James D. the Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1950. Hofstadter, Richard.
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1964. Hudson, Winthrop. Religion in America. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1965. Lee, James Melvin. History of American
Journalism. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1917. Lockridge, Kenneth.
“Literacy in Early America, 1650-1800,” in Literacy and Sodal
Development in the West: A Reader, edited by Harvey J. Graff. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1981. MacNeil, Robert. “Is Television
Shortening Our Attention Span?” New York University Education Quarterly
14:2 (Winter, 1983). Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. the German
Ideology. New York: International Publishers, 1972. Mill, John Stuart.
Autobiography and Other Writings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969.
Miller, John C. the First Frontier: Life in Colonial America. New
York: Dell, 1966. Miller, Perry. the Life of the Mind in America: From
the Revolution to the Civil War. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
1965. Moran, Terence. “Politics 1984: That’s Entertainment.” Et cetera
41:2 (Summer, 1984). Mott, Frank Luther. American Journalism: A History
of Newspapers in the U.S. through 260 Years, 1690 to 1950. New York:
Macmillan, 1950. Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilization. New York:
Harcourt, Brace and World, 1934. Newhall, Beaumont. the History of
Photography from 1839 to the Present Day. New York: Museum of Modern
Art, 1964. Ong, Walter. “Literacy and the Future of Print.” Journal of
Communication 30:1 (Winter, 1980). Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy.
New York: Methuen, 1982. Paine, Thomas. the Age of Reason. New York:
Peter Eckler Publishing Co., 1919.
Bibliography
Presbrey, Frank. the History and Development of Advertising. Garden
City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran and Co., 1929. Rosen, Jay. “Advertising’s
Slow Suicide.” Et cetera 41:2 (Summer, 1984). Salomon, Gavriel.
Interaction of Media, Cognaion and Learning. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 1979. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1977. Sparks, Edwin Erie, ed. the Lincoln-Douglas
Debates of 1858. Vol. I. Springfield, I11.: Illinois State Historical
Library, 1908. Stone, Lawrence. “the Educational Revolution in England,
1500- 1640.” Past and Present 28 (July, 1964). Thoreau, Henry David.
Walden. Riverside Editions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. New York: Vintage books,
1954. Twain, Mark. the Autobiography of Mark Twain. New York: Harper
and Bros., 1959.
Impact of Popularity Indications
on Readers’ Selective Exposure
to Online News
Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, Nikhil Sharma,
Derek L. Hansen, and Scott Alter
Selecting news online may differ from traditional news choices, as most
formal importance indicators in traditional media do not convert di-
rectly to online news. However, online portals feature news recom-
mendations based on collaborative filtering. To investigate how recom-
mendations affect information choices, 93 participants browsed online
news that featured explicit (average rating) or implicit (times viewed)
recommendations or no recommendations (control group) while news
exposure was logged. Participants picked more articles if the portal fea-
tured explicit recommendations, and stronger explicit recommenda-
tions instigated longer exposure to associated articles. Implicit recom-
mendations produced a curvilinear effect with longer exposure for low
and high numbers.
The Internet has greatly contributed to the so-called information tide (Graber, 1984)
that news consumers face. Using the World Wide Web to access news has become
commonplace, with nearly two thirds of the people who “get news” using online
sources at least some of the time (Fallows, 2004). Thus, communication scholars need
to address new phenomena in news consumption that are unique to information re-
trieval from the World Wide Web. Initial explorations into how news consumers per-
ceive print and online news have revealed that the audience applies largely parallel
criteria to both outlets (Sundar, 1999). However, with regard to issue perceptions and
learning from news, differences between print and online news did emerge. For ex-
© 2005 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 49(3), 2005, pp. 296–313
296
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick (Ph.D., University of Music & Drama, Hanover, Germany) is an Assistant Profes-
sor at the School of Communication, Ohio State University. Her research addresses media effects and message
selection in entertainment media and news.
Nikhil Sharma (B.A., Chandigarh College of Architecture, India) is a doctoral student at the School of Informa-
tion, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His research interests include collaborative sensemaking and infor-
mation reuse.
Derek L. Hansen (B.A., Brigham Young University) is a doctoral candidate at the School of Information, Uni-
versity of Michigan at Ann Arbor. His research interests include health communication and computer-sup-
ported cooperative work.
Scott Alter (B.S., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). His undergraduate concentration was communication
studies, and his research examines factors of selective exposure to information.
ample, Althaus and Tewksbury (2002) demonstrated reduced agenda-setting effects
for online news readers compared to readers of the print news version. Furthermore,
Eveland and Dunwoody (2002) showed that reading Web news produces smaller
learning effects than print news. The authors of both studies attributed these differ-
ences to increased selectivity in online news consumption. Hence, the well-estab-
lished phenomenon of selectivity in media consumption (Klapper, 1960) also seems
relevant for online media. This highlights the importance of determining which fac-
tors influence selective exposure to online news.
Interestingly, online news platforms offer their users filtering techniques to access
the abundant information selectively. Two broad classes of selection devices can be
differentiated (Cosley, Lam, Albert, Konstan, & Riedl, 2003): content-based, in
which the reader may enter keywords or section preferences to create customized
newspaper versions (as in many so-called Daily Me projects in the 1990s); and col-
laborative filtering, in which previous readers’ opinions on content are employed
(see Lasica, 2002a, 2000b). The latter approach can be seen in various popular on-
line portals from which many people retrieve news (e.g., Yahoo! News and Google
News) and also in online versions of established news media (e.g., USAToday.com
and CNN.com). Because news consumption is often considered important for sur-
veying and interpreting the social environment (Lippmann, 1922; McCombs &
Shaw, 1972; Neuman, Just, & Crigler, 1992; Noelle-Neumann, 1974, 1977), it is in-
triguing that online news platforms now incorporate collaborative filtering cues,
such as most e-mailed, number of page views, and average (avg.) rating associated
with specific articles. The social functions of news may be even more salient when
cues of collaborative filtering are present and indicate what other news readers ap-
preciate and consume.
It is plausible that user-based recommendations of news have strong impacts on se-
lective exposure to news. Various possible impacts of this kind are investigated in this
study. We will review differences of print and online news that are relevant in this
context, address how online news platforms offer new features to “tame the informa-
tion tide” (Graber, 1984), and state research questions for the subsequent empirical
investigation.
News Selections in Traditional Versus Online
News Presentations
News editors apply a relatively standardized set of criteria when selecting informa-
tion for publication or broadcast in news outlets (e.g., Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Gans,
1979; White, 1950) and, furthermore, emphasize certain news reports by prominent
presentation, for example, on the front page, with illustration, or as the first item in a
newscast. For traditional news platforms, such formal indicators of newsworthiness
have been demonstrated to guide information selections of news consumers (e.g.,
Garcia & Stark, 1991; Graber, 1984; McCombs & Mauro, 1977; Wolf & Grotta, 1985;
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 297
Zillmann, Knobloch, & Yu, 2001) and also the level of importance attached to a re-
ported issue (e.g., Kiosis, 2004; Wanta, 1988). Recently, though, more and more news
consumers turn to the World Wide Web to retrieve information (e.g., Fallows, 2004),
as it provides abundant and timely news coverage, mostly free of charge (Deuze,
2003).
It is entirely possible that the very same factors trigger information selection in both
online and print news, although selecting might be more convenient in online settings
and thus more important. In fact, studies by Zillmann et al. (2001) and Knobloch,
Hastall, Zillmann, and Callison (2003) revealed that images in both print and online
news attract news consumers in like fashion. Studies by Knobloch-Westerwick and
collaborators (Knobloch, Dillman Carpentier, & Zillmann, 2003; Knobloch, Hastall,
Grimmer, & Brück, 2004; Knobloch, Patzig, & Hastall, 2002; Knobloch, Zillmann,
Gibson, & Karrh, 2002; Knobloch-Westerwick, Dillman Carpentier, Blumhoff, &
Nickel, 2005) investigated the personal utility of news content for online and print set-
tings and found the same factors to trigger selective exposure to media content. How-
ever, all these studies focused on content features.
Yet many unique formal features of online news displays are likely to promote dif-
ferent news selection behaviors. It has been noted that well-established, formal indi-
cators of issue importance are no longer visible when news reports are retrieved on-
line (e.g., Tewksbury & Althaus, 2000). By and large, online news outlets and portals
list headlines that include hyperlinks to access the actual article. The length of an arti-
cle, a strong determinant for selective reading of print news (e.g., McCombs & Mauro,
1977), cannot be previewed before clicking the hyperlink to access the article page
for further scrutiny. Thus, the display on the entering page should have substantial im-
pact on what online news consumers actually read and what they ignore. In addition,
unlike in print newspapers, these headlines usually do not differ in terms of typeface
size. Thumbnail-sized illustrations often accompany news headlines, but any empha-
sis is lost as most headlines carry such images (e.g., Google News). In brief, news con-
sumers receive hardly any indication regarding which of the accessible news reports
has greater importance in the view of the news editors.
Recommender Systems in Online News
Instead of using the indications that traditional media employ, many online news
displays carry other importance cues for their reports. Due to the interactive nature of
the World Wide Web, it is easy for online news site designers to include the current
number of times a report has been viewed, which news items have been the most
popular in any recent time span, or how readers explicitly rated a news item. In gen-
eral, such “recommender systems” can be found on many Web and e-commerce sites
(Cosley et al., 2003). Media products are especially likely to be evaluated using these
systems, such as music at music.yahoo.com, books at amazon.com, and movies at
imdb.com. A great variety of approaches can be used; for example, recommendations
298 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
can be derived from explicit ratings based on evaluation scales or from implicit appre-
ciation inferred from observed selections (Resnick, Iacovou, Sushak, Bergstrom, &
Riedl, 1994). Furthermore, there are a number of evaluation scale formats, including
“thumbs up/thumbs down,” “one to five stars,” or scales ranging from 1 to 100
(Cosley et al., 2003). More sophisticated collaborative filtering algorithms detect sim-
ilar preference patterns among different users to predict the liking of content and thus
provide individualized recommendations based on shared tastes. This approach was
pioneered by the GroupLens system (e.g., Resnick et al., 1994) and first implemented
for Usenet Newsgroups, where Usenet participants provide news items.
A basic, yet common version of such recommender systems can be found in many
online news displays that indicate how many readers have viewed a report (implicit
recommendations) or how these readers evaluated an article (explicit recommenda-
tions; see Claypool, Le, Waseda, & Brown, 2001). These indications of liking or im-
portance assessments, based on audience behavior and judgment, are likely to influ-
ence news selections. It has often been argued and demonstrated that consumers of
traditional news derive social perceptions from the news coverage (McCombs &
Shaw, 1993), employing a so-called quasi-statistical sense (Noelle-Neumann, 1974,
1977). Mutz (1992) looked more specifically at portrayals of mass opinions in the me-
dia and contrasted such sources of “impersonal influence” from unknown others with
personal influences. In her conceptualization, sheer numbers are often the basis of
impersonal influence, whereas personal influence stems from trust in familiar others.
Popularity indications of online news can be considered a source of impersonal influ-
ence. Now, given that the online news media offer immediate and seemingly objec-
tive numeric indicators on what news coverage other readers consume and appreci-
ate, it appears likely that online news readers will orient their news consumption
along these lines, as discussed in the following.
Theoretical Perspectives
At first glance, it seems logical that news consumers should simply follow the rec-
ommendations they encounter in online news outlets—essentially a bandwagon ef-
fect with a popular trend producing even greater attraction (Sundar & Nass, 2001).
Chaiken (1987) argued that people use the heuristic that, if many think an opinion is
valid, the opinion is probably correct. Accordingly, they could just follow the evalua-
tions and choices made by others, thereby limiting their own cognitive selection ef-
forts. Affiliation motives may be another reason for bandwagon effects, even when re-
lating to strangers (e.g., Byrne, 1961). However, there are theoretical considerations
that speak for alternatives to bandwagon effects. The following three approaches il-
lustrate this for cognitive aspects, interindividual differences, and situational percep-
tions as intervening variables.
First, given that bandwagon effects may result from heuristic and cursory process-
ing, cognitive preconditions could determine whether individuals follow cues on
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 299
common selections or pursue their own distinct interests instead. Someone who is
more cognitively engaged or more used to news processing will be able to invest
more resources into individual news selection and thus not simply follow the cues of
others’ choices. This thought has been advocated by Petty and Cacioppo’s (1979) dif-
ferentiation of central versus peripheral processing. When more cognitive resources
are applied to the news selection process (central processing), people are less likely to
follow the heuristics of popularity indications. This is ultimately an argument of why
the bandwagon effect may not apply. The next two theoretical ideas suggest that in
some situations people actually avoid jumping on the bandwagon.
Second, individuals sometimes seek distinctiveness, either privately or publicly, in
order to enhance their self-concept. For example, according to Brewer’s (1991) opti-
mal distinctiveness theory, membership in large groups will activate a person’s need
for differentiation, whereas membership in smaller minority groups satisfies the indi-
vidual’s need for distinctiveness through intergroup comparisons while fostering as-
similation patterns. Thus, news consumers who consider themselves members of a
large group may be motivated to read different material than peers. Alternatively,
news consumers who consider themselves members of a minority group may be more
likely to read the same material as peers. The type of news site (e.g., general purpose,
specialty news) may even affect the particular group membership that is evoked in the
reader’s mind. Perceived group membership and perceived relative group size would
then function as intervening factors, resulting in different news reading patterns. It is
important to note that the resulting behavior does not have to be observable by others.
Individuals might enhance their self-concepts through private behaviors such as news
selections by basing inferences about their selves solely on their own behavior with-
out others’ feedback, for instance, through social comparisons (Festinger, 1954; Wills,
1981, 1991).
Third, somewhat similar to Brewer (1991), Snyder and Fromkin’s (1980) theory on
uniqueness-seeking argues that people pursue a sense of moderate self-distinctive-
ness and try to avoid being overly similar or dissimilar to others because such states
are experienced as unpleasant. Uniqueness-seeking can be applied to various do-
mains, but most research has been conducted in the realm of consumer choices (Lynn
& Snyder, 2002), of which news selections could be considered a specific case.
Snyder and Fromkin suggested that individuals differ regarding uniqueness-seeking.
Hence, those with a low need for uniqueness-seeking may make their news choices
closely in line with others’ recommendations, whereas those with a high unique-
ness-seeking need might just show opposite patterns.
These three approaches illustrate that cognitive circumstances (central vs. periph-
eral processing), situational perceptions (group membership and size), or inter-
individual differences (uniqueness-seeking) can account for the possibility that some
news users let popularity indications guide their selections, whereas others make in-
dependent decisions or even seek out news that others neglected. We cannot discuss
all possible theoretical accounts for such behavior variations (see Mutz, 1998), but it
should be clear that “following the crowd” is not the only option. Furthermore, differ-
ent patterns might emerge for different popularity indicators.
300 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
Related Empirical Work
Considerations on possible impacts of news recommender systems can also be de-
rived from related empirical work. These investigations will be reviewed along estab-
lished dimensions for print and online news (Sundar, 1999): (a) representativeness (for
the genre of news), (b) credibility, (c) timeliness, and (d) liking.
If news consumers want reports to be representative, in the sense of broadly impor-
tant and newsworthy (see Sundar, 1999), highly personalized filtering systems may
not be particularly valuable in the realm of news. Audience members actually want to
be informed of what is widely considered relevant to make sense of their social envi-
ronment (e.g., Neuman et al., 1992). This need is reflected by the representativeness
dimension and may explain why “Daily Me” formats of online newspapers, display-
ing personalized selections of news based on content-oriented filtering, have re-
mained a niche (Redelfs, 1996). Instead, recommendations on a collaborative basis
appear especially helpful for this matter. In fact, a study by Sundar and Nass (2001)
supports the idea that news consumers like information better when it appears to be
selected and appreciated by many, which could be interpreted as representativeness.
In the study, participants were led to believe that the news they read resulted from a
traditional news arrangement from an editor, from a computerized news compilation,
from other users’ selections, or from the individual user selections. These source asso-
ciations significantly influenced news users’ perceptions. News reports selected by
other users of the online news platform received significantly better evaluations on
the dimensions of liking, representativeness, and quality than when the same reports
appeared to be compiled by a news editor or by the users themselves. These findings
imply that recommendations of online news will also affect news consumption. How-
ever, Sundar and Nass looked at news evaluations instead of actual consumption and
declared different source constellations instead of directly investigating the effects of
recommendations. Hence, no definite conclusion on effects of news ratings can be
drawn from their findings.
Furthermore, as prompt delivery of information is a key characteristic of online
news platforms, the audience might not appreciate explicit recommendations be-
cause gathering such evaluations on a broad basis requires the sacrifice of time,
which inevitably causes news to become less timely. However, positive recommen-
dations could make news appear more credible. Knobloch, Sundar, and Hastall
(2005) investigated with American and German participants whether credibility and
timeliness indications for news instigated longer exposure to the associated informa-
tion. Yet the news display in their experimental procedure did not indicate credibility
with recommendations from other readers. Instead, the news reports were associated
with news sources for which either low or high credibility had been established in a
pretest. The results indicate that credibility does affect selective exposure to news.
The experimental manipulation of timeliness consisted of different publishing times
for the specific news reports. These indications influenced only American news con-
sumers; German participants did not vary at all in their news exposure with the timeli-
ness manipulation. Also in the same study, U-shaped curvilinear impacts of newswor-
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 301
thiness, indicated by numbers of related articles, materialized in like fashion for
participants in both countries. Given that higher credibility can increase selective ex-
posure to news, user recommendations may have a parallel impact.
Selective exposure impacts of liking indications such as recommendations, to our
knowledge, have only been studied in an earlier exploration that we conducted
(Knobloch, 2004; Sharma et al., 2004), which consisted of an Internet-based experi-
ment in a field setting. In this research, effects of implicit and explicit ratings on news
selections were explored. Participants, recruited via e-mail, browsed through an ex-
perimental online news magazine while their selective exposure times were unobtru-
sively logged. The article leads on the front page were associated with five levels of
recommendation indicators, two articles for each level, either for times viewed, avg.
rating, or no numerical information at all (control group). To control for influence of
article topics, the numbers for times viewed and avg. rating were reversed for two ad-
ditional experimental cells, thus resulting in five experimental groups: times viewed,
times viewed reversed, avg. rating, avg. rating reversed, and control group. The find-
ings showed that both the level and the kind of numerical information associated with
articles had a significant impact on selective reading. Online news readers spent
more time on articles associated with low numbers for page visits, contrary to expec-
tations. Reading times were also affected by quality ratings associated with articles,
supposedly provided from other readers. However, these effects were less clear—pos-
sibly because the meaning of those ratings may have been somewhat ambiguous to
news readers.
As it stands, little is known about the impact of recommendations on selection of
online news. Based on the considerations outlined previously, this study, while im-
proving the research design that Sharma et al. (2004) used in an earlier exploration,
investigates the following research questions:
RQ1: Do recommendations influence selective exposure to online news articles?
RQ2: Do explicit recommendations (i.e., avg. rating) and implicit recommendations
(i.e., times viewed) influence the selective exposure to online news articles
differently?
Method
Overview
In a Web-based experiment with three experimental groups, 93 participants
browsed through an online news platform. The news stories were accessible in a
format commonly found on the World Wide Web: the front page showed a news
lead for each article, with a headline and the first words of the article text, allowing
readers to access actual articles by clicking on hyperlinks. The displayed articles
were associated with recommendations at varying levels that appeared to be de-
rived from either explicit ratings (avg. rating) or implicit evaluation (times viewed).
302 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
A control group browsed through the same articles without any recommendation
indication. The kind of recommendation, or lack thereof, served as between-factor,
whereas selective exposure to articles associated with various recommendation lev-
els provided repeated measures. After the scheduled browsing period, participants
completed a brief questionnaire.
Respondents
Participants were recruited from an introductory course in communication at a
large California university and received extra credit. Of the 93 respondents, 68 were
female. The average age was 21.2 years. The majority (53%) indicated that they read
online news at least once a week or more frequently. The three experimental groups
included 30, 31, and 32 participants, with equal gender distributions.1
Procedure
Participants convened for the scheduled session in a computer lab, up to 12 at a
time. The experimenter greeted them and asked them to be seated at a computer,
while leaving ample space between occupied seats to ensure privacy. All 30 comput-
ers in the lab were identical, with 17-inch flat-screen monitors. The experimenter in-
formed participants that they would go through a computerized research session in
which all further instructions would be given via the screen. Then participants were
asked to start the software by clicking a menu icon. The experimenter remained pres-
ent during the session.
A consent form was displayed on screen, and all participants gave their consent
by clicking a button. Then participants accessed the browsing instructions, stating
that they would see a test version of an online newsmagazine. They were informed
that time would not allow them to read everything so they should browse through
the articles and read whatever they found interesting. It was indicated that a ques-
tionnaire would eventually be uploaded to collect information on impressions of
the newsmagazine. By clicking “continue,” participants accessed the online news-
magazine and browsed through articles for 2.5 minutes. After this time span, a tran-
sition page stated that the scheduled reading time was up. A questionnaire col-
lected information on respondents’ perceptions and demographic information.
Finally, the screen showed a debriefing page before participants were dismissed.
Experimental Internet Newsmagazine
The computerized procedure was created using the programming languages PHP,
JavaScript, and HTML. Throughout the procedure, all of the participants’ actions
were logged to a MySQL database server. This online news platform had a similar
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 303
look and feel to popular news magazines currently on the Internet; in fact, it mim-
icked typeface, font size, and font colors of common news outlets such as Google
News (see Figure 1). A masthead of the name and logo of the experimental plat-
form—“World Wide News, U.S. Edition”—was displayed across the top of the Web
site. In addition, a navigation bar was placed on the left-hand side of the page. Al-
though it was deactivated, the displayed navigation bar contained newspaper sec-
tion headings such as sports, world news, and so forth, that would be commonly
found on a news site. The main frame initially contained an overview, which listed
all available articles by headline and news lead in two columns. Except for the
control group, which was not presented with recommendations, all articles were
associated with numerical information to indicate recommendations for avg. rating
or times viewed. In the lower right corner of the main frame, a graphic declared
what the recommendations meant. For avg. rating, the statement read: “About
News Ratings: Ratings averaged from Reader Recommendations; 1 = Not at all
Recommended — 5 = Highly Recommended.” For times viewed, the statement
read: “About ‘Times Viewed’: Data indicate how many readers viewed a story; Up-
dated Every Hour” (see Figure 1). For the control group, a graph that just repeated
information from the masthead (“World Wide News, U.S. Edition—Test Version”)
populated this spot on the screen.
The headlines of the displayed articles were “Mickey drawing leads man on quest,”
“High school principal ponders loss of job,” “Student overcomes learning disability,”
“West Nile Virus: Bracing cautiously for another season of mosquitoes,” “Behcet’s dis-
ease: ‘I diagnosed my rare condition’,” “Civilian rescues driver,” and “eBay quest for
cookie jar leads to long-lost sibling.” All reports were edited to the same length of 450
words. The seven articles were chosen based on prior findings indicating that they all
attracted similar levels of exposure (Knobloch, 2004; Sharma et al., 2004). The page
placement of the seven news articles was systematically rotated across participants so
that each article had an opportunity to be placed in every position.
Except for the control group, all displayed articles were associated with numerical
information to indicate recommendations. The recommendation indications were
systematically rotated across article topics. In the avg. rating condition, the specific
numbers were 1.3, 1.5, 3.0, 3.1, 3.3, 4.4, and 4.6. The numbers did not have identical
differences in order to make the ratings look credible. The times viewed condition
employed numbers in close proportion (multiplied by 50) to recommendations in the
avg. rating version: 64, 75, 152, 155, 165, 221, and 232. Recommendation levels
were also rotated on the overview page, although independently from article posi-
tions. This process assured that the various recommendations were assigned to differ-
ent articles, and the position of the articles on the page varied for each participant.
The position of articles was likewise rotated in the control group.
The respondents made their reading selections by clicking on the hyperlinks to
articles (i.e., on the articles’ headlines), scrolling through the selected articles and
reading as much of them as they cared to, clicking to return to the overview, select-
ing other articles (or returning to the abandoned ones), and so forth, until the end of
the reading period.
304 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
Behavioral Measures of Selective Exposure
Unbeknownst to the participants, their article choices were recorded in a database
monitoring the use of hyperlinks. In addition, scripts were written to measure, in sec-
onds, the time that elapsed between entering and leaving a particular article. This was
done for every article. In the case of repeated entries and exits, the duration of the
multiple exposures was accumulated to a single measure of exposure time. Scripts
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 305
Figure 1
Screen Shots of Front Page of Online News Portal Featuring Explicit
Recommendations (Avg. Rating) or Implicit Recommendations (Times Viewed)
were also used to administer the initial random assignment of experimental condi-
tions to respondents. In addition to the primary measure of selective exposure time,
the decision to read or ignore an article served as a secondary measure of selective ex-
posure. Any exposure time above 1 second defined article selection.
Questionnaire
At the end of the preset reading time, the application jumped to a page soliciting in-
formation about the respondents’ impressions of the articles. These questions mostly
served to gain an understanding of how participants interpreted the recommenda-
tions associated with news articles on the front page and their own use of this informa-
tion. In detail, the following questions and response options, to be selected via radio
buttons, appeared on screen:
The articles in the online newspaper you just read were associated with individual
numeric information. Please answer the following questions regarding this numeric
information:
1. What did the numeric information indicate for each article? (a) how many read-
ers viewed the news story, (b) how strongly readers would recommend the report to
others, (c) how many people have e-mailed the story, (d) unsure.
2. Please select the rating information that you would associate with a stronger rec-
ommendation: (a) avg. rating 2.0, (b) avg. rating 4.0, (c) unsure.
3. All news stories were posted … (a) at the same time, (b) at different times, (c)
unsure.
4. The numeric information on the reports influenced my reading selections … (a)
not at all, (b) somewhat, (c) a great deal.
These questions, thus the entire screen page, were skipped for the control group.
On the next screen, participants indicated how often they consumed online news:
“daily,” “several times each week,” “about once a week,” “several times a month,”
“about once a month,” “several times a year,” “about once a year,” or “never.” Finally,
demographic information was collected before a debriefing page appeared.
Results
Perceptions of Recommendations
In the times viewed condition, 88% of participants responded that the numerical
information they had seen was to indicate “number of times the story was viewed,”
and 12% chose the response “how many people have e-mailed the story.” In the avg.
rating condition, 73% of respondents selected the correct response option of “individ-
uals would recommend the story to others,” whereas 10% chose the times viewed re-
sponse, and 17% selected “how many people have e-mailed the story.” The differ-
306 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
ences between the distributions in the times viewed and avg. rating conditions were
significant, χ2(2, N = 62) = 42.2, p < .001. These percentages attest that the experi-
mental treatment was clear while not overly obtrusive.
When asked which rating would indicate better quality (either a rating of 2.0 or a
rating of 4.0), 77% of the participants in the avg. rating condition chose the response
that was in line with how the ratings had been explained in the news portal. In com-
parison 50% of participants in the times viewed condition selected the same re-
sponse, which shows that using higher rating numbers to indicate recommendations
that are more positive is not self-explanatory. As the percentages differed significantly,
χ2(1, N = 62) = 4.71, p = .030, participants in the avg. rating group obviously paid at-
tention to the graphic explaining the recommendations.
Interestingly, a significantly larger share of respondents in the times viewed condi-
tion (36% vs. 13%), χ2(1, N = 62) = 4.72, p = .030, assumed that the articles had been
posted at different times, although the news portal had displayed an upload time that
was said to apply to all stories. Regarding the perceived influence of the recommen-
dations on one’s own news selections, the two experimental conditions did not differ
(p = .27). In both groups, respondents mostly thought they had not been influenced by
the recommendations at all (60%) or, if so, only somewhat (37%).
Impacts of Article Position on Front Page on Selective
Exposure to News
In a mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA), with experimental groups as be-
tween-factor, exposure times for the seven news articles placed in different spots on
the news portal front page were incorporated as within-factor with seven repeated
measures. Only an effect for position emerged, F(6, 540) = 3.36, p = .003, η2 = .036.
Articles positioned first and second in the left column produced average reading
times of 23 and 21 seconds, whereas reading times for articles in other spots ranged
between 9 and 15 seconds. No other significant effects emerged, which means that
effects of article positioning were independent of recommendations. As a side note,
the lack of an impact of the experimental group shows that the recommendations as
such did not produce different levels of total news exposure, that is, the reading time
accumulated for all articles.
Impacts of Article Topic on Selective Exposure to News
Articles had been selected based on the premise that they should not instigate dif-
ferent levels of interest. The article selection was derived from a set of reports used in
prior research (Knobloch, 2004; Sharma et al., 2004) in which they had produced
similar levels of selective exposure. An ANOVA with the current data, again with kind
of recommendation as between-factor and exposure times as repeated measures, for
specific articles now instead of front-page positions, was conducted. The various arti-
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 307
cle topics yielded similar levels of exposure times that were not significantly different
(F < 1). An analysis with selective exposure times for various articles as repeated mea-
sures only for the control group showed again that the articles did not attract readers
to different degrees. Significance was not even approached, despite the statistical
power of repeated measures. Thus, the presented article topics as such had no differ-
ent levels of appeal for the current sample as well.
Impacts of Recommendations on Selective Exposure to News
A mixed-design ANOVA employed the kind of recommendation as between-factor
and the exposure to news articles associated with different recommendation levels as
within-factor with seven repeated measures. This analysis did not incorporate the
control group, as no recommendations had been presented to these participants. A
significant interaction between the kind and level of recommendation emerged, F(6,
360) = 3.13, p = .008, η2 = .05. For the repeated measures in the avg. rating condition,
a linear effect materialized at p = .049, whereas the impact of implicit recommenda-
tions in the times viewed emerged as quadratic effect at p = .001. As shown in Figure
2, higher explicit recommendations (i.e., avg. rating) resulted in longer reading times.
In the times viewed condition, a curvilinear effect occurred, as both very low and very
high numbers for implicit recommendations resulted in longer reading times for the
corresponding reports. No other effects reached significance in this ANOVA.2
Impacts of Recommendations on News Article Selections
Furthermore, an ANOVA examined selective exposure based on article selections
instead of exposure time. The same mixed design as previous was applied while again
308 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
Figure 2
Impacts of Kind and Level of Recommendations of Online News
on Selective Exposure to News (in Seconds)
excluding the control group. A main effect of the kind of recommendation material-
ized, F(1, 60) = 4.3, p = .042, η2 = .067, because participants in the avg. rating condi-
tion clicked on more articles in general (M = 2.7 vs. 2.2). As for exposure time, the
analysis yielded an interaction between the repeated measures for the recommenda-
tion levels and the kind of recommendation, F(6, 360) = 3.3, p = .006, η2 = .052, as
depicted in Figure 3. Implicit recommendations fostered article selection for low and
high numbers, resulting in a curvilinear effect, F(1, 31) = 7.6, p = .010, η2 = .196. Arti-
cle selections were also influenced by explicit recommendations in curvilinear fash-
ion but showed an inverted U-pattern, F(1, 29) = 4.8, p = .037, η2 = .141, although the
linear effect fell short of significance (p = .076).
Discussion
As news consumers face an enormous amount of information to choose from on the
World Wide Web, the current investigation examined how collaborative filtering rec-
ommendations affect online news exposure. The results clearly show that both im-
plicit (times viewed) and explicit recommendation (avg. ratings) affect selective expo-
sure to online news. These recommendations influenced which articles the news
consumers in our Web-based experiment selected and how much time they spent on
the reports. Interestingly, the kind of recommendation did not affect how much time
participants generally spent on reading news instead of scrutinizing the front page,
but explicit recommendations fostered selections of more articles.
The two kinds of recommendations, explicit and implicit, also influenced
selective exposure to news in different ways. Online readers preferred articles that
had been viewed by either few or many other people (as indicated by the times
viewed recommendation). On the other hand, articles with better explicit recom-
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 309
Figure 3
Impacts of Kind and Level of Recommendations of Online News
on Selection of News Articles
mendations (avg. rating) were read longer than articles with poor explicit recom-
mendations.
The result that the least popular (i.e., lowest times viewed) articles were read most
frequently replicated findings of an earlier exploration (Knobloch, 2004; Sharma et
al., 2004). One potential explanation for this phenomenon is that participants be-
lieved that the articles with fewer readers were more recently posted. Although in the
present study, all news reports were explicitly associated with the same upload time, a
significantly higher portion in this condition believed that the stories were posted at
different times. Thus, it is still possible that some readers prefer news that merely a few
others have read because they appear more recent.
Another possible explanation for the desire to read either very popular news or the
least popular news articles is that some participants were looking for a “rare gem” be-
cause these choices could add to news consumers’ self-uniqueness experience. By
making less popular news selections, these media users may have felt more “special”
while not risking any consequences of violating social norms. This could help explain
our findings that articles with either high or low times viewed produced longer read-
ings times and were selected more frequently. News readers may either want to read
what others have favored and feel bonded or do the opposite to add to an experience
of self-uniqueness (Snyder & Fromkin, 1980). Likewise, when applying the optimal
distinctiveness theory (Brewer, 1991) to these findings, it appears that some news
readers may have regarded themselves as members of a large group and were
inclined to set themselves apart through their choices. Yet, interestingly, the explicit
recommendations (avg. rating) did not trigger different selection patterns, as people
followed these endorsements in fairly uniform fashion. Future research should investi-
gate more specifically what factors result in these different selection patterns.
This study has some limitations, as it was conducted in a lab setting and employed a
highly homogenous sample. However, the fact that the results reflected those of our
previous study (Knobloch, 2004; Sharma et al., 2004), which included a far more di-
verse population in a field setting, is suggestive that the findings presented here gener-
ally apply. Furthermore, to remove confounding effects, the present study used arti-
cles that were apparently equally interesting, as they yielded similar exposure times in
the control group. It is important, therefore, to remember that the effect of recommen-
dations may not be the same for articles that are extremely boring or eye-catching.
Other characteristics of news stories may have a significant interaction with recom-
mendations as well. For example, a high times viewed message may encourage more
or less reading depending on if the article were popular entertainment versus health
information. In this study, the fact that readers knew that they had limited time may
have encouraged selective behavior. However, research has indicated that most ac-
tual online news reading is, in fact, selective and of short duration (e.g., Harris Inter-
active, 2004). Future work could certainly help clarify some of these important issues.
This study has focused on two specific types of recommendations because of their
prevalence, but other types of both explicit and implicit ratings exist that could be ex-
plored. For example, implicit ratings that measure times e-mailed, times printed, and
310 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
times saved are all currently used on some news Web sites in addition to times
viewed. These implicit ratings signal very different uses of an article and likely pro-
mote different behavior when encountered. Likewise, different explicit ratings such as
credible or interesting could be used in addition to recommended. A natural exten-
sion of this work would be to measure the effect of some of these measures on selec-
tive exposure. This would allow Web site designers to use better understood rating
options that may encourage certain types of selective exposure.
The widely found recommendation systems in news platforms, in light of our re-
sults, do affect which news reports are consumed and which are ignored. It appears,
though, that interpretations of recommendation meanings are anything but equivo-
cal. Although statistically significant patterns exist, they may not always match news
Web site designers’ intuitions. The various forms of recommendations (e.g., most
e-mailed, most viewed, highest rated) might instigate very diverse behaviors. More-
over, news consumers may hold suspicions about the raters’ motivations because giv-
ing recommendations for any item online might be driven by various intentions of the
rater. Online users are in part aware of such factors and might distrust some recom-
mendation systems for this reason (Cosley et al., 2003). Hence, the findings presented
here may just be a starting point for investigating a highly complex process through
which people choose public affairs information online.
Notes
1The data of the control group were collected a few months later than the data for the two
other groups. The articles were not time sensitive, and the exact same setting and procedure
were used.
2Additional analysis ruled out that these results were based on extreme cases.
References
Althaus, S. L., & Tewksbury, D. (2002). Agenda setting and the new news: Patterns of issue im-
portance among readers of the paper and online versions of the New York Times. Communi-
cation Research, 29, 180–207.
Brewer, M. B. (1991). The social self: On being the same and different at the same time. Person-
ality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 475–482.
Byrne, D. (1961). Interpersonal attraction as a function of affiliation need and attitude similarity.
Human Relations, 14, 283–289.
Chaiken, S. (1987). The heuristic model of persuasion. In M. P. Zanna, J. M. Olson, & C. P.
Hermann (Eds.), Social influence: The Ontario symposium (Vol. 5, pp. 3–39). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Claypool, M., Le, P., Waseda, M., & Brown, D. (2001). Implicit interest indicators. Proceedings
of ACM Intelligent User Interfaces Conference (IUI). Santa Fe, NM. Retrieved March 3, 2004,
from http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~claypool/papers/iii/
Cosley, D., Lam, S. K., Albert, I., Konstan, J., & Riedl, J. (2003). Is seeing believing? How recom-
mender systems influence users’ opinions. Proceedings of CHI 2003 Conference on Human
Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 585–592). Fort Lauderdale, FL. Retrieved March 3, 2004,
from http://www.cs.umn.edu/Research/GroupLens/publications.html
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 311
Deuze, M. (2003). The Web and its journalisms: Considering the consequences of different types
of news media online. New Media & Society, 5, 203–230.
Eveland, W. P., & Dunwoody, S. (2002). An investigation of elaboration and selective scanning
as mediators of learning from the Web versus print. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Me-
dia, 46, 34–53.
Fallows, D. (2004). The Internet and daily life: Many Americans use the Internet in everyday ac-
tivities, but traditional offline habits still dominate. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Re-
trieved October 19, 2004, from http://www.pewinternet.org
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140.
Galtung, J., & Ruge, M. H. (1965). The structure of foreign news: The presentation of the Congo,
Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of Peace Research, 2, 64–91.
Gans, H. (1979). Deciding what’s news. New York: Pantheon.
Garcia, M., & Stark, P. (1991). Eyes on the news. St. Petersburg, FL: Poynters Institute.
Graber, D. (1984). Processing the news: How people tame the information tide. New York:
Longman.
Harris Interactive. (2004, May 19). Most Americans who are online use Internet for news, but
most say this does not reduce their use of other news media. The Harris poll #35. Retrieved
October 18, 2004, from http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=464
Kiosis, S. (2004). Explicating media salience: A factor analysis of New York Times issue coverage
during the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Journal of Communication, 54(1), 71–87.
Klapper, J. T. (1960). The effects of mass communication. Oxford, England: Free Press of
Glencoe.
Knobloch, S. (2004, May). Social determinants of selective exposure to media information: Re-
cent Web-based experimental investigations. Panel presented at the International Communi-
cation Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.
Knobloch, S., Dillman Carpentier, F., & Zillmann, D. (2003). Effects of salience dimensions of in-
formational utility on selective exposure to online news. Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly, 80, 91–108.
Knobloch, S., Hastall, M., Grimmer, D., & Brück, J. (2004, May). Predicting selective exposure to
media information: The efficacy dimension in the informational-utility model. Paper pre-
sented at the International Communication Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.
Knobloch, S., Hastall, M., Zillmann, D., & Callison, C. (2003). Imagery effects on the selective
reading of Internet newsmagazines: A cross-cultural examination. Communication Re-
search, 30, 3–29.
Knobloch, S., Patzig, G., & Hastall, M. (2002). Informational Utility: Einfluss von Nützlichkeit
auf selektive Zuwendung zu negativen und positiven Online-Nachrichten [Informational
utility: Impact of utility on selective exposure to negative and positive online news]. Medien-
& Kommunikationswissenschaft, 50, 359–375.
Knobloch, S., Sundar, S. S., & Hastall, M. (2005, May). Clicking news: Impacts of newsworthi-
ness, source credibility, and timeliness as online news features on news consumption. Paper
presented at the International Communication Association Conference, New York.
Knobloch, S., Zillmann, D., Gibson, R., & Karrh, J. (2002). Effects of salient news items on infor-
mation acquisition and issue perception. Zeitschrift für Medienpsychologie, 14, 14–22.
Knobloch-Westerwick, S., Dillman Carpentier, F., Blumhoff, A., & Nickel, N. (2005). Informa-
tional utility effects on selective exposure to good and bad news: A cross-cultural investiga-
tion. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 82, 181–195.
Lasica, J. D. (2002a, April 2). The promise of the Daily Me. Online Journalism Review. Retrieved
April 1, 2004, from http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1017779142.php
Lasica, J. D. (2002b, April 2). The second coming of personalized news. Online Journalism Re-
view. Retrieved April 1, 2004, from http://www.ojr.org/ojr/lasica/1017779142.php
Lippmann, W. (1922). Public opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Lynn, M., & Snyder, C. R. (2002). Uniqueness seeking. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Hand-
book of positive psychology (pp. 395–410). London: Oxford University Press.
312 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/September 2005
McCombs, M. E., & Mauro, J. B. (1977). Predicting newspaper readership from content charac-
teristics. Journalism Quarterly, 54, 48–49.
McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public
Opinion Quarterly, 36, 176–187.
McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1993). The evolution of agenda-setting research: Twenty-five
years in the marketplace of ideas. Journal of Communication, 43(2), 58–67.
Mutz, D. (1992). Impersonal influence: Effects of representations of public opinion on political
attitudes. Political Behavior, 14, 89–122.
Mutz, D. (1998). Impersonal influence: How perceptions of mass collectives affect political atti-
tudes. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Neuman, W., Just, M., & Crigler, A. (1992). Common knowledge: News and the construction of
political meaning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Noelle-Neumann, E. (1974). The spiral of silence: A theory of public opinion. Journal of Com-
munication, 24(2), 43–51.
Noelle-Neumann, E. (1977). Turbulences in the climate of opinion: Methodological application
of the spiral of silence theory. Public Opinion Quarterly, 41, 113–151.
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1979). Issue involvement can increase or decrease persuasion by
enhancing message-relevant cognitive responses. Journal of Personality and Social Psychol-
ogy, 37, 1915–1926.
Redelfs, M. (1996). Electronic publishing und computer-assisted reporting: Auswirkungen des
Information Superhighway auf den Journalismus. In H. J. Kleinsteuber (Ed.), Der Information
Superhighway: Amerikanische Visionen und Erfahrungen (pp. 257–276). Opladen, Ger-
many: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Resnick, P., Iacovou, N., Sushak, M., Bergstrom, P., & Riedl, J. (1994). GroupLens: An open ar-
chitecture for collaborative filtering of netnews. In Proceedings of 1994 Computer Supported
Collaborative Work Conference (pp. 175–186). New York: ACM Press.
Sharma, N., Hansen, D., Buis, L., Carter, T. J. A., Ng, I., Alter, S., et al. (2004, May). It’s all in the
ratings: Impact of ratings on selection of online news articles. Panel paper presented at the In-
ternational Communication Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.
Snyder, C. R., & Fromkin, H. L. (1980). Uniqueness: The human pursuit of difference. New York:
Plenum.
Sundar, S. (1999). Exploring receivers’ criteria for perception of print and online news. Journal-
ism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 76, 373–386.
Sundar, S., & Nass, C. (2001). Conceptualizing sources in online news. Journal of Communica-
tion, 51(1), 52–72.
Tewksbury, D., & Althaus, S. L. (2000). Differences in knowledge acquisition among readers of
the paper and online versions of a national newspaper. Journalism and Mass Communication
Quarterly, 77, 457–479.
Wanta, W. (1988). The effects of dominant photographs: An agenda-setting experiment. Journal-
ism Quarterly, 65, 107–111.
White, D. M. (1950). The gatekeeper: A case study in the selection of news. Journalism Quar-
terly, 41, 384–390.
Wills, T. A. (1981). Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulle-
tin, 90, 245–271.
Wills, T. A. (1991). Similarity and self-esteem in downward comparison. In J. Suls & T. A. Wills
(Eds.), Social comparison: Contemporary theory and research (pp. 51–78). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Wolf, R., & Grotta, G. (1985). Images: A question of readership. Newspaper Research Journal,
6(2), 30–36.
Zillmann, D., Knobloch, S., & Yu, H. S. (2001). Effects of photographs on the selective reading of
news reports. Media Psychology, 3, 301–324.
Knobloch-Westerwick et al./POPULARITY INDICATIONS AND NEWS EXPOSURE 313
MEDIA CREDIBILITY RECONSIDERED:
SYNERGY EFFECTS BETWEEN ON-AIR
AND ONLINE NEWS
By Erik P. Bucy
This experimental investigation of media credibility examined the
combined, or synergistic, effects of on-air and online network news
exposure, placing student and adult news consumers in broadcast
news, online news, and teleivebbing conditions. Results indicate that
perceptions of network news credibility are affected by channel used.
Perceptions of credibility were enhanced when the channel used was
consistent with the news source being evaluated, suggesting a channel
congruence effect. In addition, evidence is offered for the existence of
a synergy effect between on-air and online news.
Faced with unprecedented competitive pressures from new
challengers and new technology, network news organizations are
adjusting to the fact that a growing audience for news relies primarily
on the Internet rather than television.’ As the viewership for the “big
three” network news broadcasts continues to slide to roughly a third of
the overall evening television audience, down from 72% in the early
1980s, the audience for Net news is expanding; about one in three
Americans is now going online for news at least once a week.^ As more
people log on for news, fewer are tuning in.̂ The decline in nightly
network news viewing is reportedly greater for Internet users than non-
users; only 26% of Internet users report regularly watching a nightly
network news broadcast, compared to 35% of nonusers who tune in
regularly.”
At the same time, however, an increasing number of television
viewers with Internet access are telewebbing, or surfing the Web while
watching television (in so-called “two-screen” households). A recent
online survey of some 2,000 Internet users by Scarborough Research
found that half of all online respondents reported having a television in
the same room as their computer.’ Within these two-screen households,
91% of respondents said they watched television and surfed the
Web
simultaneously. Estimates by the industry research firm Dataquest
placed the American telewebbing population at 52 million as of 2001,
up from 27 million in 1999.’ Younger adults aged 18-34 are the most
enthusiastic telewebbers. In the Scarborough survey, more than a
Erik P. Bucy is an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunications and
adjunct professor in the Schoo! oflnforttiaiics, Indiana Universitii, Btoomington.
Introduction
Vol. SO, No. 2
Sl>nifiier2IMa
247
quarter (27%) reported going online and “always or often” watching
television at the same time.’ Younger audiences are also more likely to
turn to the Internet for news. Almost half of those under age 30 (46%)
go online for news at least once a week, compared to just 20% of those
age 50 and over.* Older Americans are far more likely to say they get
their news from television or the newspaper.
Network news operations were among the first electronic media
to realize the importance of establishing an online presence and in the
mid-1990s committed to developing their sites relatively early in the
Web’s development.’ Major broadcast news sites are now among the
most trusted and heavily visited information sources online. In fact,
many Internet users consider the networks’ online news to be more
believable than the parent news organization.^” Given that assess-
ments of media credibility are strongly, and have been historically,
associated with use of and reliance on a particular media channel,” the
believability accorded to Net news by people who are already online is
not surprising. But the surge in online news credibility among Internet
users does not necessarily imply a corresponding decrease in television
news credibility among iheoverali news audience. Credibility perceptions
do not behave in a zero-sum fashion.’^ Instead, to the extent that online
media are being used as a complement to broadcast media, network
news organizations may stand to benefit from their online operations.
Nevertheless, in recent years other coverage-related factors have
called the credibility of network news into question. During the past
decade, amidst accusations of media bias, misplaced news priorities,
and sensationalism, credibility has resurfaced as an issue of central
importance to news division operations. The miscalled 2000 presidential
election and overplayed Chandra Levy and Monica Lewinsky stories
brought this point home in pronounced fashion. When events this high
profile are mishandled, news media come under intensepublic scrutiny,
raising questions about their authority to broadcast the news as they see
fit. Yet while the networks were roundly criticized for getting the
election story wrong,” and then for manufacturing lurid interest in an
alleged affair between California Congressman Gary Condit and his
missing intern, they were generally praised for coverage of the World
Trade Center attacks.” In either scenario, the depth and interactivity
afforded by the networks’ online operations, which allow users to mine
the news for more information at their own pace and according to
individualized interests, might have the effect of mitigating negative
perceptions of media credibility while enhancing already positive
evaluations of news veracity and network professionalism.
Defining Media Credibility. For conceptual clarity, media
credibility canbedefined as perceptions of anewschannel’sbelievability,
as distinct from individual sources, media organizations, or the content
of the news itself.̂ ^ Media credibility differs from source credibility,
which focuses on characteristics of message senders or individual
speakers, such as trustworthiness and expertise. Each tradition has its
own history of research, with the former stemming from studies on
newspaper reporting accuracy and the latter emerging from the attitude
change studies of Carl Hovland and associates.” Since the introduction
248
of the Roper questions about relative media credibility in the late 1950s,
the measurement of media credibility has been vigorously debated.”
Subsequent research has shown that the way the concept is
operationalized and measured influences credibility ratings among
respondents.^’ When measured as a single perceptual dimension, media
credibility is most consistently operationalized as believability.” Other
dimensions used to measure the concept include accuracy, bias, fairness,
and completeness of information, among others.^ A multiple dimension
approach to measuring credibility is now the norm in academic research.
Given the ongoing traffic-building efforts by broadcasters to
promote “enhanced television” and coax viewers into visiting their
Web sites to avail themselves of online information, the question arises
as to whether cross-platform media use is in fact influential in cultivating
perceptions of broadcast news credibility and, by extension, in
maintaining positive audience evaluations of network news. While
survey results vary, studies by the Pew Research Center and Online
News Association^’ are finding that many online users judge the
Internet as a news medium to be as or more credible than traditional
media, including both print and broadcast. To assess whether there are
enhanced benefits from cross-platform media use, this study compares
perceptions of TV and Net news credibility after exposure to online
news, broadcast news, and a combined, or telewebbing, condition.
Investigating Synergy Effects, Synergy, a marketing term, refers
to the benefits derived from selling two or more compatible products
simultaneously (e.g., a blockbuster movie, the book on which the movie
is based, the movie soundtrack, and action figures derived from the
story), as well as the harnessing of relations between two or more
elements of a media production and distribution process, including the
repurposing of content created for one medium for distribution by
another.^ In the context of this study, synergy refers to the possibility
of two contiguous media behaviors—on air and online news
consumption—having a greater impact on perceptions of media
credibility than exposure to either medium by itself. Although
teiewebbing emerged as a mass phenomenon in the late 1990s,^ the
effects of cross-platform media use remain underexamined and little
understood.
In addition to examining synergy effects in a real-time setting,
this study adds to a small but growing body of research that has applied
the experimental method to questions of television news credibility.^^
The preponderance of studies on media credibility has been survey
based,^ and most charmel comparison studies have examined the
credibility of television news in relation to newspapers.^ The survey
approach to studying credibility allows researchers to track broad
trends in public opinion about the media but the results of such surveys
are limited in their ability to explain cause-and-effect relationships.
Survey research has established that use of a particular media
channel correlates with high credibility ratings for that channel.^ But
does media use lead to enhanced perceptions of credibility, or do
people tend to use media they already consider credible? Survey
studies, because they lack control and generally do not address the issue
249
of temporal sequence, carmot effectively answer this question. Surveys,
moreover, are hampered in a data-gathering sense because they rely on
reflections of past media use, an estimation process prone to distortion
and social desirability biasing. Placing participants directly in different
media settings (e.g., telewebbing, television only, or Net news only)
offers the opportunity to assess perceptions of credibility as they occur
rather than relying on reflections of past media behavior. The
experimental situa tion also enables the researcher to control the sequence
of presumed effects.
Thedocumentation of synergy effects on percep tions of credibility
could have important implications for the broadcast news industry,
and network news organizations in particular, as audiences tend to pay
more attention to and become more reliant on media they consider
credible.^* Perceptions of credibility have also been found to influence
the processing of issue importance. When media are perceived as
credible, acceptance of information veracity increases and agenda-
setting effects—accepting issues given prominent media coverage as
valid and important—are likely to occur.^’ In an era of convergent
media and twenty-four-hour news channels, when the future of the
nightly newscast itself is being called into question,* the networks are
challenged with maximizing their believability, accuracy, fairness, and
informational completeness across delivery platforms.
Media Credibility and Age Cohort. Studies of media credibility
have consistently fo\md an association between age and education with
credibility assessments. In general, older, more educated audiences
tend to be the most critical of media, while younger, less educated news
consumers are more likely to be accepting of news coverage and to
evaluate the media as credible.’^ The youngest adults, 18-24 years old,
are the most likely to rate news media highly believable. And it is
network news, more than most other forms of media, that has been
likely to elicit these demographic response patterns.’^ Sophistication,
life experience, and knowledge of the press—a type of news literacy—
combine to make more seasoned audiences skeptical of the nightly
Although displacement theory would suggest that a traditional
medium such as television, besieged by new challengers and new
communication technologies, would directly lose itsaudience to popular
forms of new media, some studies conclude that the Internet supplements
rather than replaces television viewing.*” These findings zie consistent
with the idea that online sources provide what industry players Uke
ABC-TV refer to as an “enhanced television” experience. Robinson and
colleagues even found a positive relationship between computer use
and television viewing.^’Other researchers haveargued, however, that
television viewing is negatively affected by computer or internet use.*
None of the aforementioned studies, however, explicitly considers
telewebbing as a media behavior that might influence the interpretation
of these findings.
In a time of rapid technological change and format experi-
mentation, credibility remains central to understanding public
perceptions of network news as well as encouraging acceptance of the
250 /OUKNAUSM & MASS CoMMlpacxnoN
Internet as a trusted source of news and information. Documenting the
potential contributions of online news operations to perceptions of
network news credibility through experimental investigation may
enhance industry and scholarly awareness of the nonmonetary value of
the networks’ online news operations beyond boftom-line issues of
profitability and audience share. If such effects are found, this will
suggest to the industry that investments in online news operations may
be justified not on the basis of economic considerations alone but on the
grounds of enhancing public perceptions of network news through
multiple media channels.
To assess whether cross-platform media use of online and on-air Research
news has a greater impact on audience perceptions of media credibility Questions
than exposure to either medium in isolation, this study of synergy
effects is guided by the following research questions:
RQl: Do different audiences for news, specifically
younger and older age groups, rate the credibility of on-air
and online news differently?
RQ2; What influence does media channel have on
audience evaluations of media credibility?
RQ3: Is there a combined, or synergy, effect between
on-air and online news sources that enhances perceptions of
credibility over use of either medium in isolation?
RQ4: Is there an interaction between media channel
and age group resulting in different synergy effects for
younger and older news audiences?
Operationally, this study took the form of a 4 (media channel) x 2
(age group) between subjects, factorial experiment. The first factor,
media channel, had four levels: television news. Net news, both TV and
Net news, and no exposure (control group). The second factor, age
group, had two levels: imdergraduate students and older adults. Student
subjects consisted of 84 undergraduates enrolled in communications
courses at a large Midwestern university and ranged in age from 18 to
25 (M=20). Adult subjects consisted of 83 members of a local community
group and ranged in age from 26 to 80 (M = 49). A total of 167 subjects
participated in the study, populating each cell of the design with a
minimum of 20 subjects. Student subjects received extra credit for their
participation, while adults received a small monetary incentive. Slightly
more than half of the study participants (52.1%, n = 87) were female,
while just under half (47.9%, n = 80) were male.
Procedure. The study was conducted in the weeks immediately
following the September 11 terrodstattacks.The news focus on terrorism
remained prominent for the duration of the study, although the early
R E D / B I U T Y R£CONSff)EB£D
Method
251
emphasis on domestic security issues gradually gave way to a focus on
the war in Afghanistan. Within each age group, subjects were randomly
assigned to one of the four media channel conditions. To guard against
primacy and recency effects, each condition had four randomized
orders. At the beginning of the experiment, subjects completed a
questionnaire asking about their media use, political attitudes and
knowledge, and demographic information.
Subjects assigned to the television condition were shown four,
randomly ordered network news stories (from ABC, NBC, CBS, or
MSNBC) about the World Trade Center attacks and were asked to rate
their responses. The stories were recorded off-air from network news
coverage beginning on the day of the attacks and for several days
thereafter. Each story consisted of an anchor lead-in, followed by a
news report about the attacks or Bush administration response to the
crisis and a direct presidential sound bite in reaction to the unfolding
events. Altogether, there were eight unique stories in the stimulus
material, two from each network. The average length of each story was
just over 2 minutes (M = 125.75 seconds). After viewing each story,
subjects completed a series of evaluative measures and open-ended
questions designed to elicit any specific impressions prompted by the
stories.
Subjects assigned to the Net news condition were instructed to
visit two unaltered network news sites (among ABC, CBS, NBC with
Tom Brokaw, or MSNBC with Brian Williams) and perform either an
interactive or reading task for approximately 5 minutes. The specific
pages visited featured news stories, photos, graphics, and interactive
features about the terrorist attacks, making the online content comparable
with the broadcast news stories. The decision to not replicate the exaci
verbal content of the broadcast news stories and leave the Net news
sites unaltered was made with the intention to maximize ecological
validity and to deliberately test the effect of medium as opposed tc
modality. Consistent with previous channel studies, “news items were
selected so that the same substantive information was included in each
medium’s version of the story, but the journalistic presentation variei
as it actually does by medium.”^’ After visiting each site, subject
completed a series of evaluative measures designed to elicit credibility
assessments of the individual sites.
Subjects assigned to the cross-platform (synergy) condition, ii
randomly alternating order, first viewed four of the broadcast new
stories and then visited two Net news sites. To guard against orde
effects, some subjects first viewed the broadcast news stories and thei
went online, while others went orJine first then viewed the storie
Again, after viewing each story and visiting each site, subjects complete
a series of evaluative measures and open-ended questions.
At the end of each media condition, subjects completed a series < overall credibility measures separately for television and Net news. Media credibility, the focal concept of this study, was operationalize as the degree to which news consumers judge network newscasts an Web sites to be believable, fair, accurate, informative, and in-depth. Each item comprising the credibility construct was measured using a'
252
TV News
Credibility
Fair
Accurate
Believable
Informative
ln-Depth
Credibility
Index
Note: For each item,
TABLE 1
Mean TV News Credibility Ratings by Age Group
Younger
(Student)
5.08
(1.09)
5.30
(1.02)
5.54
(1.21)
5.82
(.98)
4.89
(1.45)
5.33
(.90)
1 = Not at All, 7 =
Older
(Adult)
4.24
(1.34)
4.46
(1.22)
4.54
(1.38)
4.51
(1.54)
3.09
(1.33)
4.17
(1.12)
d.f.
164
164
164
164
164
164
t-value
4.44
4.80
4.97
6.54
8.38
7.36
Very. Standard deviations appear in parentheses.
P
.0001
.0001
.0001
.0001
.0001
.0001
point scale (1 = not at all; 7 = very). To determine the suitability of using
the five items together in combined credibility indexes, a reliability
analysis was performed for both TV news and Net news credibility. For
both indexes the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .89.
Subjects assigned to the control condition were not exposed to any
media, but simply completed the experimental questionnaire and overall
media credibility measures.
Abetween-subjectsanalysisofvariance{ANOVA) was performed Results
for the media channel and age group factors on the combined credibility
indexes. For the age group factor, there were significant main effects for
both the TV news index, F(l, 160) = 54.28, p < .0001, eta-squared = .26,
as well as the Net news index, F(l, 160) = 9.26, p < .01, eta-squared = .06.
To reveal the contribution of individual items, a series of t-tests were
run for each index separately.
Table 1 shows age-group differences for evaluations of TV news
credibility, broker down by individual item. Across all items, the
younger age group rated TV news credibility significantly higher than
the older age group, reserving its highest ratings for informativeness
and believability. Interestingly, both age groups rated TV news lowest
on its depth. On the bottom row of the table the combined index scores
show that younger audience members evaluated TV news to be
significantly more credible overall than older audience members.
253
TABLE 2
Mean Net Nm/s Credibitity Ratings by Age Group
Net News
Credibility
Fair
Accurate
Believable
Informative
In-Depth
Credibility Index
Note: For each item.
Younger
(Student)
4.73
(1.20)
4.60
(1.22)
4.61
(1.27)
5.73
(.97)
5.54
(1.2S)
5.04
(.91)
1 = Not at All, 7
Older
(Adult)
4.31
{1.47)
4.26
(1.44)
4.43
(1.45)
4.94
(1.50)
4.57
(1.76)
4.50
(1.34)
A.J.
159
159
159
159
159
159
t-value
1.97
1.60
.83
4.00
3.99
2.99
V
.05
n.s.
n.s.
.0003
.0001
.01
= Very. Standard deviations appear in parentheses.
Table 2 shows a similar, though less marked, pattern for evalua-
tions of Net news credibiiity. Students were much more inclined to rate
online news as informative and in-depth than adult subjects. As with
TV news, adults aJso considered Net news significantly less fair than
students. Again on the bottom row of the table the combined index
scores show that younger audience members evaluated Net news to be
significantly more credible overall than older audience members.
Figure 1 shows the main effects for age group on the combined
index scores in bar chart form. Although students’ credibility ratings
are higher overall than adults, within age groups adults rate Net news
to be significantly more credible (M = 4.50, s.d. = 1.34) than TV news (M
= 4.16, s.d. = 1.13), i(76) = -2.64, p < .01. Within the yoiinger age group,
the reverse occurs; students rate TV news more credible overall (M =
5.33, s.d. = .90) than Net news (M = 5.(M, s.d. = .91), t(83) = 2.61, p < .01.
Another difference between the TV and Net news credibility ratings is
revealed by the fewer degrees of freedom in the t-tests for the older age
group when compared to the younger group (76 versus 83). Several of
the older adult participants said they had no online experience and
declined to even rate Net news credibility for this reason.
In response to the first research question, then, different audiences
do seem to rate the credibility of on-air and onlirie news differently.
Younger audience members are much more inclined to assign both
news channels higher credibility ratings than older audience members.
But within groups, adults consider Net news to be more fair, informative.
.25*
FIGURE I
Main Effects for Age Group
Mean
Rating
4 . 0 –
3.5
TVNews
Credibility
Net News
Credibility
Students
Adults
and in-depth, and therefore more credible overall, than TV news.
Students, on the other hand, give TV news higher marks than Net news
on every item except in-depth and regard television as the more
credible news source. Care should be taken not to read too much into
these results, since these age-group differences do not take into account
the unique effect of channel exposure, which is analyzed next.
The second research question asked what influence media channel
had on audience evaluations of credibility. Analysis of variance produced
a significant main effect for media channel on the TV news credibility
index, f(3, 160) = 3.94, p < .01, eta-squared = .07. Across all subjects,
exposure to television news resulted in the highest TV news index
scores (M = 5.16, s.d. = 1.14) of any media channel. These scores were
significantly higher than the control group (M = 4.54, s.d. = 1.12), which
was exposed to no media, and the Net news-only group (M = 4.47,
s.d. = 1.31), as determined by Tukey post-hoc comparisons (see Table
3). Media exposure did not have a significant effect on ratings of
Net news credibility, which varied comparatively little regardless of
channel used.
Figure 2 shows the main effects for media channel on the credibility
indexes in bar chart form. The columns representing exposure to
TV
news suggest an effect of charmel congruence on credibility evaluations,
where perceptions of credibility are enhanced when the channel used is
consistent with the news source being evaluated. Simply put, television
news viewing results in the highest evaluations of TV news credibility
of any condition. Going online has the same effect on evcduations of Net
news credibility for students (M=5.26, s.d. = .69), at a level significantly
higher than the control group ratings (M = 4.65, s.d. = .79), t(39) = 2.66,
p < .01, but not for adults (see Table 3). In three out of four cases, then,
channel congruence enhances credibility evaluations. In response to the
second research question, direct media exposure mostly enhances
255
Index
TV News
Credibility
Net News
Credibility
TABLE 3
Mean Credibiiity Ratings, Main Effect for
Media Channel
Students
Adults
O\eraU
Students
Adults
Overall
TV
5.54
(1.08)
4.69
(1.07)
5.16,
(1.14)
5.15
(1.02)
4.27
(1.28)
4.76
(1.21)
Web
5.30
(.93)
3.59
(1.05)
(1.31)'”
5.26
(.69)
4.18
(1.24)
4.74
(1.13)
Both
5.38
(.83)
4.40
(.95)
(1.01)'””
5.06
(1.04)
4.86
(1.26)
4.96
(1.14)
Control d.f.
5.06
(.70)
4.01
(1.23)
4.54^ 3
(1.12)
4.65
(.79)
4.65
(1.54)
4.65 3
(1.20)
f p Eta
Squared
3.94 .01 .07
.77 n.s. .01
Note: For each item, 1 = Not at All, 7 = Very. Standard deviations appear in parentheses. Overall
mearw for TV News Credibility that do not share subscripts differ at the p<.05 level in Tukey post-
hoc comparisons.
credibility evaluations when the charmel is consistent with the news
source being evaluated, resulting in what might be called a congruence
effect. When the channel is inconsistent, direct exposure still results in
higher evaluations than no exposure for students but lower evaluations
for adults.
The third research question asked whether there is a synergy
effect between on air and online news sources that enhances perceptions
of credibility over use of either medium in isolation. Figure 2 illustrates
the potential existence of this phenomenon. Subjects exposed to both
broadcast and online news in the same experimental session
(telewebbing) rated TV and Net news credibility higher overall than any
other condition except for the TV congruency case (TV exposure
producing the highest TV credibility evaluations). For both students
and adults, teiewebbing has a small positive impact on TV news
credibility (M = 4.90, s.d. = 1.01) beyond Net news use (M = 4.47, s.d. =
1.31) and no exposure (M = 4.54, s.d. = 1.12), but these individual
comparisons were not significant in Tukey post-hoc comparisons (see
Table 3).
The fourth research question asked whether there is an inter-
action between media channel and age group resulting in different
synergy effects for younger and older news audiences. Figure 3 shows
a near significant interaction for media channel and age group on
evaluations of Net news credibility, F(3,160) = 2.15, p < .10, eta-squared
= .04.* Interestingly, the control groups for both students and adults
256 & MASS COMMUNJOOION Q
FIGURE 2
Main Effects for Media Channel
4.75-
Mean
Rating
• TVNews
CredibiHty
D Net News
Credibility
Control TV Web Both
Media Channel
(shown on the left side of the graph) rated Net news credibility the san\e
(M = 4.65), although the standard deviation was higher for adults
(s.d. = 1.54) than students (s.d. = .79). When exposed to either TV or Net
news, however, students and adults reacted quite differently (as
indicated by the divergent upward and downward lines in the center of
the graph). For adults, exposure had a negative effect and evaluations
of Net news credibility fell from the control group level. For students,
exposure had a positive effect and evaluations rose. When adults were
placed in the telewebhing condition (shown on the right side of the
graph), with exposure to both TV and Net news, evaluations of Net
news jumped to their highest levels. For students, telewebbing caused
perceptions of Net news to dip slightly. The interaction for media
channel and age group for evaluations of TV news credibility was not
significant.
To summarize these findings, when adults were placed in the
telewebbing condition, with exposure to both TV and Net news,
evaluations of Net news credibility jumped to their highest levels.
Evaluations of TV news credibility aiso benefited from telewebbing,
compared to the control group and to Web use alone. For students,
telewebbing caused perceptions of TV and Net news credibility to
increase in relation to the control group, but dip slightly or show no
difference compared to other forms of media exposure. In answer to
RQ4, then, telewebbing potentially results in greater synergy effects of
Net news credibility for adults than students, but these results only
approached significance.
This study of synergy effects, which adds to the experimental
literature of media credibility, found significant main effects for media
channel on evaluations of TV news credibility and for age group on
Discussion
257
Interaction for Media Ciiannel and Age Group
Net News Credibiiity
Mean
Rating
Students
Adults
Conlro! TV Web Both
Media Channel
evaluations of both TV and Net news credibility. The ANOVA model
also produced a near-significant interaction for the two factors on
evaluations of Net news credibility, which may have achieved
significance had the group sizes been larger. Consistent with survey
studies of media credibility, younger audience members evaluated
both TV and Net news to be significantly more credible overall than
older audience members. In particular, students regarded both forms of
network news as more informative than adults, while adults considered
both forms of news to be significantly less fair than students. Both age
groups rated TV news lowest for its depth. Within age groups, adults
rated Net news to be significantly more credible than TV news, while
students rated TV news more credible. These results are somewhat
surprising, given that the audience for broadcast news tends to be older,
while the orviine audience tends to be younger. Each age group evaluated
the less familiar medium more generously.
Media charmel also influenced credibility evaluations. The ratings
for television news suggested a channel congruence effect, where
perceptions of credibility are enhanced when the channel used is
consistent with the source being evaluated. This was the case for both
students and adults. The finding of a congruence effect in an experimental
setting differs from the common survey finding that media audiences
regard the medium on which they are most reliant as the most credible
because the evaluations here were generated in response to direct
exposure to a particular medium and not based on reflections of past
media use. Nevertheless, similar to the association of media reliance
with high credibility evaluations revealed by surveys, audiences seem
to regard media they have/«sf used more favorably than media to which
they are not exposed.
258 /oURNALiSM & MASS COMMUNKATION QUAXTEKLY
Going online had the same congruence effect on evaluations of
Net news credibility for students, but not adults. When the channel
used is inconsistent, adults tend to evaluate the source less favorably
compared to the control group. Adults were noticeably less inclined to
view TV news as credible after exposure to tKe Web. For studenfa, any
media exposure had a positive impact and evaluations rose relative to
the control group.
As for cross-platform media use, the results provided some initial
evidence for the existence of a synergy effect. The magnitude of these
effects, though relatively small, was greater for adults than for stu-
dents, perhaps reflecting students’ propensity to multitask. A recent
study of the gratifications obtained from new media found that students
spend on average a total of 10.5 hours per day with a range of different
media technologies.*’ The telewebbing condition was arguably more
novel for adults, and thus had a greater impact on their credibility
evaluations. Overall, subjects exposed to the telewebbing condition
rated TV and Net news credibility higher than the control group or
subjects exposed orJy to Net news. The only exception was that TV
exposure by itself elicited the highest evaluations of TV credibility.
The fact that several of the mean credibility ratings for telewebbing
pointed to synergy effects but were not significantly different at the
p < .05 level suggests that a larger number of subjects in this between-
subjects experiment would have produced more significant results,
Between-subjects experiments with 20 or fewer subjects per group, as
was the case with this study, are notoriously underpowered.*^ To
overcome this classic problem without having to involve hundreds of
subjects in a costly and time-consuming data coUecfion process, future
experimental research should take advantage of within-subjects,
repeated measures designs, which provide greater statistical power
with fewer subjects since each subject responds multiple times and
serves as his or her own control.*'
When studying network news, the demographics of the audience
are an essential consideration. Young adults who are wired, and therefore
on a trajectory for the higher socioeconomic status that characterizes
networknews viewers, represent the future of the on-air newsaudience.
Whether members of this audience will ever completely migrate online
for their news and information seems doubtful, at least at this stage of
the Web’s development. Students in this study reported almost two
nights of network news viewing per week—even as members of a
residential campus environment that provides “cost free,” high-
bandwidth orJine access. What seems almost certain, however, is a
continued tendency by younger audiences to teleweb and, beyond that,
multitask with a variety of information and communication technologies
simultaneously.
The results of this study suggest that media exposure has
differential effects on student and adult perceptions of news credibility-
Future research should keep this finding in mind and not attempt to
generalize about the news audience from a convenience sample of
undergraduates. The experimental nature of this study, while desirable
for the control it offered over the news channels subjects ware exposed
259
to, was limited in its ability to simulate actual viewing conditions.
Subjects in the telewebbing condition, for instance, either saw a series
of newscasts first and then went online, or spent some time online first
and then watched a series of broadccists. At home (or in the office), news
consumers who teleweb may use both media at the same time. Follow-up
studies should attempt to recreate a real-time telewebbing or “enhanced
television” experience in as naturalistic a way as possible. In addition,
other genres of media content associated with telewebbing, such as live
sports coverage or news specials, should be studied. Satisfying these
two conditions may lead to more pronounced findings for synergy
effects.
With the growth of telewebbing and multitasking as routine
audience activities, it wiU become increasingly important to understand
and measure perceptions of news credibility under conditions of
simultaneous media use. Considering the potential contribution of
synergy effects resulting from cross-platform media use could help
recast the debate about media credibility so that the realities, rather than
thehyperbole, of online developments are adequately taken into account.
The networks have adapted to the online environment and are making
gainful use of both delivery platforms. Moreover, most audience
members do not stop using a source as heavily relied on as television
just because a new medium arrives on the scene; instead, their media
repertoire may become wider and more varied.
The rise of telewebbing and two-screen households presents
media research with the challenge of understanding the impact of this
new consumer behavior on evaluations of news content. With
technological convergence, the independence of different delivery
platforms is eroding. Even so, the stylistic differences between on-air
and online news m.ay persist, withbroadcast news retaining its trademark
chronological narrative and online (text-based) news embracing the
inverted pyramid style of print reporting. Although both forms of
news are similar in that they are delivered through electronic
telecommunications terminals, they may be processed and evaluated
with vastly different criteria, as is the case for assessmentsof newspaper
and television news credibility.** From the perspective of the news
audience, the ways in which television and the Web complement—and
contravene—each other are only beginning to be vmderstood. Research
should investigate the different processing styles required for on-air
and online news, with the aim of revealing the psychological mechanisms
underlying credibility judgments.
NOTES
1. This study was supported with a Research in Broadcasting Grant
from the National Association of Broadcasters. The author would Uke
to thank Christopher E. Beaudoin for his thoughtful reading of this
manuscript and members of the Institute for Communication Research
lab in the Department of Telecommunications at Indiana University,
especially Seungwhan Lee, Yongkuk Chung, Byung-ho Park, and Leah
Haverhals, for their assistance with running subjects and inputting
data. An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Broadcast
Education Association NAB-sponsored Research Grant Panel, Las
Vegas, NV, April 2002.
2. Pew Research Center, “TV News Viewership Declines” (13 May
1996), available at http://people-press.org/reports, 16 May 2002.
3. Deirdre McFariand, “First Scarborough National Internet Study
Reveals Changes in How Online Consumers Use Traditional and Internet
Media” (New York: Scarborough Research, 9 May 2001), available at
h t t p : / / w w w .scarborough.com/scarb2002/press/pr_intemetstudyl.
htm, 8 May 2002.
4. Pew Research Center, “Internet Sapping Broadcast News
Audience” (11 June2000),availableathttp:/ /people-press.org/reports,
23 July 2000.
5. McFariand, “First Scarborough National Internet Study.”
6. Jim Davis, “More People Surfing Web While Watching TV”
(CNET News.com, 15 February 2000), available at http://
news.com.com/2iaO-1040-236906.html?legacy=cnet&dtn.head, 8 May
2002; Bill Niemeyer and Steven Hoffman, “Interactive Television 4
Here Today,” NATPE Media Trends 4 (winter 2002), available at http:/
/www.centrimedia.com/archives/2002_01_NATPE_Article.html, 8
May 2002,
7. Niemeyer and Hoffman, “Interactive Television Is Here Today.”
8. Pew Research Center, “Internet Sapping Broadcast News
Audience.”
9. Sylvia M. Chan-Olmsted and Jung Suk Park, “From On-Air to
Online World: Examining the Content and Structures of Broadcast TV
Stations’ Web Sites,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77
(summer 2000): 321-39.
10. Pew Research Center, “Internet Sapping Broadcast News
Audience.”
11. Bradley S. Greenberg, “Media Use and Believability: Some
Multiple Correlates,” journalism Quarterly 43 (winter 1966): 665-70,732;
Wayne Wanta and Yu-Wei Hu, “The Effects of Credibility, Reliance,
and Exposure on Media Agenda-Setting: A Path Analysis Model/’
Journalism Quarterly 71 (spring 1994): 90-98; Bruce H. Westley and
Werner J. Severin, “Some Correlates of Media Credibility,” Journalism
Quarterly 41 (summer 1964): 325-35.
12. Andrew J, Flanagin and Miriam J. Metzger, “Perceptions of
Internet Information Credibility,” Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly 77 (autumn 2000): 515-40.
13. Steve McClellan, John M. Higgins, Dan Trigoboff, and Bill
McConnell, “It’s Gore! It’s Bush! It’s a Mess! Election Night Gaffes Mean
Television Will Be Under Scrutiny for a Long Time,” Broadcasting 6*
Cable, 13 November 2000,6-10.
14. Andrew Kohut, “The Press Shines at a Dark Moment,” Columbia
Journalism Review, January/February 2002,54-55.
15. Spiro Kiousis, “Public Trust or Mistrust? Perceptions of Media
Credibility in the Information Age,” Mass Communication & Society 4
(fall 2001): 381-403.
M E D U CsiDinmrr RECONSIDHIED 261
16. Cecilie Gaziano and Kristin McGrath, “Measiirmg the Concept
of Credibility,” Journalism Quarterly 63 (autumn 1986): 451-62; for an
overview, see CharlesC. Self, “Credibility,” i n ^ n Integrated Approach to
Communication Theory and Research, ed. Michael B. Salwen and Don W.
Stacks (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Eribaum Associates, 1996), 421-41.
17. The Roper question asked: “If you got conOicting or different
reports about fiie same news story from radio, television, the magazines,
or the newspapers, which of the four versions would you be most
inclined to believe—the one on radio or television or magazines or
newspapers?” The special case of confhcting reports does not address
the credibility of each medium apart from this scenario (Walter Gantz,
“The Influence of Researcher Methods on Television and Newspaper
News Credibility Evaluations,” jourrml of Broadcasting 25 [spring 1981];
155-69).
18. Gantz, “The Irifluence of Researcher Methods on Television and
Newspaper News Credibility Evaluations”; Gaziano and McGrath,
“Measuring the Concept of Credibility”; Tony Rimmer and David
Weaver, “Different Questions, Different Answers? Media Use and
Media Credibility,” journalism Quarterly 64 (spring 19S7): 28-36, 44;
Eugene F.Shaw, “Media Credibility: Taking theMeasure of a Measure,”
Journalism Quarterly 50 (summer 1973): 306-11.
19. Flanagin and Metzger, “Perceptions of Internet Information
Credibility.”
20. Thomas J. Johnson and Barbara K. Kaye, “Cruising Is Believing?
Comparing Internet and Traditional Sources on Media Credibility
Measures,” Journalism &• Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (summer
1998): 325-40.
21. Pew Research Center, “TVNews Viewership Declines,” “Internet
Sapping Broadcast News Audience”; Howard I. Finberg, Martha L.
Stone, and Dianne Lynch, Digital Journalism Credibility Study (New
York: Online News Association, 31 January 2002), available at http:/ /
wviav.joumalists.org/Programs/Research.htm, 17 May 2002.
22. Tim O’SuUivan, Brian Dutton, and Philip Rayner, Studying the
Media: An Introduction, 26 ed. (London: Arnold, 1998).
23. Davis, “More People Surfing Web While Watching TV.”
24. JohnE. Newhagen, “Effects of Televised Government Censorship
Disclaimers on Memory and Thought Elaboration During the Gulf
War,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 38 (summer 1994): 339-
51; Maria Elizabeth Crabe, Shuhaa H. Zhou, Armie Lang, and Paul
David Bolls, “Packaging Television News: The Effects of Tabloid on
Information Processing and Evaluative Responses,” Journal of
Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44 (fall 2000): 581-98.
25. See, for example, Cecilie Gaziano, “How Credible Is theCredibility
Crisis?” Journalism Quarterly 65 (summer 1988): 267-78, 375; Johnson
and Kaye, “Cruising Is Believing?”; Self, “Credibility.”
26. Richard F. Carter and Bradley S. Greenberg, “Newspapers or
Television: Which Do You Believe?” Journalism Qturterly 42 (winter
1965): 29-34; John D. Abel and Michael O. Wirth, “Newspapers vs. TV
Credibility for Local News,” Journalism Quarterly 54 (summer 1977):
371-75; Raymond S. H. Lee, “Credibility of Newspaper and TV News,”
262
Journalism Quarterly 55 (summer 1978): 282-87; Gantz, “The Influence of
Researcher Methods on Television juid Newspaper News Credibility
Evaluations”; John Newhagen and Clifford Nass, “Differential Criteria
for Evaluating Credibility of Newspapers and TV News,” Journalism
Quarterly 66 (summer 1989); 277-84.
27. Carter and Greenberg, “Newspapers or Television”; Rimmer
and Weaver, “Different Questioris, Different Answers?”; Wanta and
Hu, “The Effects of Credibility, Reliance, and Exposure on Media
Agenda-Setting.”
28. Gaziano, “How Credible Is the Credibility Crisis?”; Johnson and
Kaye, “Cruising Is Believing?”; Wanta and Hu, “The Effects of
Credibility, Reliance, and Exposure on Media Agenda-Setting.”
29. Randy E. Miller and Wayne Wanta, “Sources of the Public
Agenda: The President-Press-Public Relationship,” Jnfernah’onai/ournflJ
of Public Opinion Research 8 (winter 1996): 390-402.
30. Leonard Downie Jr. and Robert G. Kaiser, The News About the
Nezvs: American Journalism inPeril{NewYoik:Knopi,2002);]eiiGialmck,
“How Network News Outsmarted Itself,” Columbia Journalism Review,
May/June 2002, 54-55.
31. Ronald Mulder, “A Log-Linear Analysis of Media Credibility,”
Journalism Quarterly 58 (winter 1981): 635-38; Michael J. Robinson and
Andrew Kohut, “Believability and the Press,” Public Opinion Quarterly
52 (summer 1988): 174-89. Although it is not the focus of this study,
gender is also strongly associated with news media credibility. As a
rule, men evaluate news media as less credible than women. In terms of
network credibility, Robinson and Kohut found a 5-percentage-point
difference between genders, with women consistently more willing to
report they believe the news media.
32. Robinson and Kohut, “Believability and the Press,”
33. In their study, Robinson and Kohut operationalized knowledge
of the press with 11 close-ended items that included an xmderstanding
of such basic concepts as a press release, newsroom roles, and ownership
of major news organizations (Robinson and Kohut, “Believability and
the Press”).
34. Douglas A. Ferguson and Elizabeth M. Perse, “The World Wide
Web as a Functional Alternative to Television, “journal of Broadcasting &
Electronic Media 44 (spring 2000): 155-74; Barbara K. Kaye and Thomas
]. Johnson, “From Here to Obscurity: Media Substitution Theory and
the Internet” (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Phoenix,
AZ, August 2000).
35. John P. Robinson, Kevin Barth, and Andrew Kohut, “Social
Impact Research: Personal Computers, Mass Media, and Use of Time,”
Social Science Computer Review 15 (spring 1997): 65-82; John P. Robinson
and Meyer Kestnbaum, “The Personal Computer, Culture, and Other
Uses of Free Time,” Social Science Computer Review 17 (summer 1999):
209-16.
36. John C. Schweitzer, “Personal Computers and Media Use,”
Journalism Quarterly 68 (winter 1991): 689-97; Joseph M. Kayany and
Paul Yelsma, “Displacement Effects of Online Media in the Sociotechnical
Context of Households,” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 44
263
(spring 2000): 215-29; Norman H. Nie and Lutz Erbring, Internet and
Society: A Preliminary Report (Stanford, CA: Stanford Institute for the
Quantitative Study of Society, 2] April 2000), available at: h t t p : / /
www.stanfoTd.edu/group/siqss/Press_Release/intemetS tudy.html,
17 May 2002.
37. W. Russell Neuman, Marion R. Just, and Ann N. Crigler, Common
Knowledge: News and the Construction of Political Meaning (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 34.
38. The exact wording of the credibility question was as foUows:
“Please circle the number on each of the items below that best represents
your overall evaluation of the following media as news sources.”
Subjects then completed 7-point scales rating television and the World
Wide Web for fairness, accuracy, believability, informativeness, and
depth. Although thecredibility question didnot mention networknews
specifically, all the stimulus materials consisted of network news stories
or Web sites. Subjects were therefore primed to evaluate the credibility
of network news, not news media in general.
39. Flanagin and Metzger, “Perceptions of Internet Information
Credibility”; Johnson and Kaye, “Cruising Is Believing?”
40. With the significance level set at p < .10, observed power = .68, indicating that a larger number of subjects may have produced more apparent group differences (see James P. Stevens, Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences, 4th ed. [Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002J).
41. Xiaomei Cai, “A Test of the Functional Equivalence Principle in
the New Media Environment” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University,
Bloomington, 2001).
42. Stevens, Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences.
43. Stevens, Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences.
44. Newhagen and Nass, “Differential Criteria for Evaluating
Credibility of Newspapers and TV News.”
264 IOimNAUsM& MASS COMMUNICATION
CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS:
ONLINE NEWSPAPER COVERAGE
OF ELECTION 2000
By fane B. Singer
ThroughtheirWebsites,newspapersmay contribute topoUticalcampaign
coverage in new ways. This survey of online editors of leading U.S.
nezvspaper sites indicates that editors gave primary emphasis to the
medium’s ability to provide Election 2000 information faster and in
more detail. Though options for enhancing political discourse were
appreciated, both interactivity and multimedia presentations were
less widely cited among key goals and perceived successes. These
findings suggest that journalists are “normalizing” the Internet as a
way to further traditional roles and goals.
Coverage of political campaigns, elections, and outcomes is a
staple of American newspaper journalism. An underlying, generally
unquestioned assumption is that one key job of the press is to help
inform the electorate well enough to enable wise choices for self
–
government.’ Indeed, the media claim special rights and privileges,
from blanket First Amendment protection to special postal rates, based
on their unique status as the “fourth branch” of government.^ Surveys
of journalists’ self-perceptions repeatedly unearth themes of public
service and commitment to making democracy work, typically through
disseminating and interpreting important information.-* Whether
journalists actually do what they see themselves as doing and whether
what they do actually enhances the democratic process always have
been open to question. Nonetheless, the belief that their role is
exemplified by their handling of political information has remained
unshakeable, and political coverage is a component of the newspaper to
which journalists have ascribed primary importance.””
Today’s “newspaper” consists of both a traditional printproduct
and an online counterpart, with at least 1,200 U.S. dailies offering Web
si tes.’The easy availability of thousandsof political sites means citizens
no longer need a traditional n\edia outlet to inform themselves about
candidates and campaign issues.* At the same time, the Web gives print
journalists anopportunity both toextendtheircover age of government—
something they describe as a key benefit of online resources^—and to
venture into new areas such as audio/video content or interactive
forums. In short, newspaper journalists’ self-perception as a cornerstone
jane B. Singer is an assistant professor in the School of journalism and Mass Communi-
cation, University of Iowa.
39
Online
Political
News
and Its
Providers
of democracy is now open to fresh interpretation. The Web offers both
citizens and journalists new options related to information, discourse,
and decision making.
Yet evidence from political science indicates that while the Internet
affords an ability to expand dramatically participation in our political
system, its actual effects seem quite muted. Simply put, cyberspace is
becoming “normalized”—citizens are doing very much the same
things online as they do “offline.”* This exploratory study examines
whether a similar normalization effect canbe seen in online adaptations
of the journalistic role in the political process. It uses journalists’
constructions of their own news-work activities to explore the options
pursued by leading newspapers’ online editors in covering the 2000
campaign and election.
Although precise figures vary, an estimated 178 million Americans
now have online access,’ and information seeking is a key component
of their use;'” in fact, the Internet has been the only news medium other
than radio to steadily gain regular users in recent years. Among younger
audiences, a greater percentage regularly get news from the Internet
than from printmedia.” Americans apparently trust the online medium,
as well. Fianagin and Metzger^^ found that while audience members
rate newspapers as the most credible of media, they do not see the
Internet as significantly less credible than other media forms.
By the 2000 election, the Web had become a key source of political
news. A Pew Research Center study found nearly one in five Americans
went online for election news in 2000. Among those already online, one-
third got election news from the Internet, most citing convenience as the
main attraction. Moreover,
43
% of online political news users said
online news affected their voting decisions. The most common sources
for political information were sites of major news outlets, including
newspapers.’-^
That said, however, many people get news online who already
read the paper anyway. Scempel, Hargrove, and Bernt” found Internet
users more likely than nonusers to read a newspaper regularly and to
listen to radio news. A small-scale study in Austin, Texas, also found
overlap between readers of print and online papers, particularly local
ones.’^ Other researchers also have found the Web supplementing
rather than replacing traditional news n\edia. While the Web may
compete with television entertainment functions, its use as a source of
news seems related positively to reading print newspapers.’^ More
anecdotal trade press evidence supports the view that new media can
“preserve and extend the best aspects of the print culture while
augmenting it with their various technological advantages.””
This is a key implication for online newsrooms affiliated with
print newspapers. Many people will come to the newspaper’s site
already familiar with what is in the print paper. They are more likely to
go online to learn more about stories seen first in traditional media than
to substitute Web use for those media.” Online, then, they may be
looking for additional or supplemental content such as breaking news.
40 ^ 5 CoMMUNICATtON
background stories, multimedia components, searchable databases, or
opportunities to talk about a news story or event.” In short, they may
want what one online news expert calls “more functional, imaginative
news,” sites distinguished by a wealth of detail and, increasingly,
interactive components.™
The new medium, therefore, could fit well with, and even
extend, journalists’ existing role—and their self-perception—as people
who perform a public service through the transmission and
interpretation of information. Preliminary work in online news work
indicates that such a self-perception, which seems well-entrenched
across time^’ and across cultures,^ meshes seamlessly with the new
medium. For example, BrilP^ found that people working in online
newsrooms rate news judgment as among their most important skills,
and Singer^* found that print journalists considering the effects of
online delivery on their roles saw providing and interpreting high-
quality information as crucial.
Indeed, the Web may make it possible to counter criticisms of
traditional media coverage of campaigns and elections as superficial
and focused on sensational, combative, or “horse-race” aspects of
politics.-^ Key attributes of the medium make it suitable for addressing
these concerns. To borrow from Millison,^’ the Web allows online
journalism to be “real-time” or immediate—ideal for breaking news;^’
“shifted time,” which Miilison suggests accommodates archiving but
also allows unlimited background and reference materials to be made
available, accessible at users’ convenience; “multimedia,” including
text, graphics, audio, and at least limited video content; and “interactive”
in ways ranging from e-mail to discussion forums to information-
retrieval tools that give users greater control over information content
and flow.^’
The interactive dimension, in particular, has generated consi-
derable excitement among political communication theorists. Some
envision the Web as a tool for creating or recreating the much-discussed
but elusive “public sphere” seen by Dewey, Habermas, and others as
vital to the proper functioning of democracy. The potential rise of an
“electronic republic”^’ forces the predominantly one-way flow of
traditional mass n\edia such as newspapers to give way to a two-way
flow enabling audience members to participate actively. It thus has the
potential to alter the importance of traditional media in formation of
political sensibilities. “At the very least,” says one political researcher,
“the Net appears likely to decrease the influence of established media
organizations over formation of the political agenda.”*
But such Internet-enabled populism has remained primarily in
the realm of theory, not reality. Online users seem to enjoy quick
unscientific polls, but participation in political chat groups holds far
less interest,^’ even though larger media sites have begun actively to
promote such discussion following earlier reticence through much of
the 1990s.̂ ^ Studies of the 1996 and 1998 elections showed that for their
part, candidates not only have failed to encourage interaction with
potential voters,’*’ they tend actively to avoid it, fearing loss of message
control and ability to “fudge” about specific proposals.^ They are more
apt to use the Web for enhanced self-promofion than enhanced
accountability.^’
So instead of a move toward the politically and socially engaged
cyber-communities envisioned in the medium’s early years,* the Web
has entered “an era of organized civil society and structured group
pluralism with a relatively passive citizenry”^”—characteristics of U.S.
society in general, with or without the new medium. When people use
the medium for political purposes, they do so in the same way they use
other mass media forms: to acquire information rather than to generate
it. Moreover, their interest usually involves breaking news and their
goal typically is a quick summary rather than in-depth analysis.'”
Recently, researchers have begun to acknowledge that while the
medium does facilitate deliberation of political questions, the quality of
discourse falls short of the expectations held out for a technologically
revised public sphere.” Enthusiasts for technologically induced political
change often overlook the fact that online communication tends to be
very similar to face-to-face or other mediated communication, even
though messages can flow farther and faster, and with fewer
intermediaries. Increasingly, political observers are coming to the
conclusion that new political messages will resemble the old in many
ways’*” —that users are incorporating the medium into existing political
behavior patterns rather than using it to generate new ones.
The present study seeks to explore this “normalization” process,
but in the context of journalists and their use of the medium to fulfill
professional roles and goals. One goal of this study is to examine how
online editors perceive options for both political information delivery
and political interaction, and what use they are making of them. Are
they folding the Web’s attributes into their traditional roles—
“normalizing” the medium from a journalistic perspective—or are they
seeking to use it for new purposes and toward new goals?
To address this issue, this study was structured around the
following research questions:
RQl: What did online editors see as their roles and
goals in covering political campaigns and elections through
newspaper-affiliated Web sites in 2000?
RQ2: What types of content did they identify as most
deserving of pride in relation to those goals?
RQ3: What lessons from their experience in 2000 might
they apply to future online political coverage?
Methodology This study uses a descriptive survey, one that documents and
describes current conditions or attitudes.*’ The researcher chose a
purposive sampling method, appropriate in studies that seek cases that
are especially inf ormative.”^ The goal was to gather information about
their 2000 political campaign and election coverage from major papers’
oniine editors in each of the fifty states. These newspapers form a
unique data set as the print media most likely to have name recog-
nition for every voter in their state, serving as probable sources of state
and national political content if users turn to an online newspaper for
such content at all.
The Web site of the A u d i t Bureau of Circulations
(www.accessabc.com) was used to determine which papers to include;
this site provides original data on newspaper circulation. Print circulation
figures, rather than online usage data, were used because it is likely to
be familiarity with the newspaper itself that leads users to seek it out
online as a source of political information. Based on these ABC figures,
the researcher selected the biggest paper in each state for inclusion. In
addition, any other papers with a daily circulation over 2
50
,000—the
largest category used by the Newspaper Association of America—were
included; again, such major “metros” typically enjoy name recognition
throughout their states and often circulate statewide.
For some states, only the state’s largest paper qualified for
inclusion. In other states, multiple newspapers qualified; California,
for example, has six papers with circulation over 250,000. Altogether,
eighty newspapers were included, ranging in circulation size from
33,000 (the largest in its sparsely populated state) to well over
1
million.
The newspapers’ Web sites were accessed to determine the nan\e
and contact information of an appropriate editorial staffer with
responsibility for the site’s political news content. A list of e-n-iail
addresses was compiled, with generic e-mail addresses (such as
editor@newspaper.com) used only if the online newspaper did not
make individual addresses available.
An e-mail survey was used, with an introductory e-mail letter
sent the week before the 7 November election, followed by the survey
itself, sent electronically to the same editors on 9 and 10 November
2000. It consisted of ten questions, some with multiple parts. Most
questions concerned overall campaign coverage, with a few related
specifically to Election Night. Question construction was informed by
earlier studies of online newspaper coverage of the 2000 Iowa caucus,
which served as a pre-test for the present study.
Because this was an exploratory study, both closed-ended and
open-ended questions were used. The closed-ended questions sought
concrete data relating to such items as the presence or absence of
political discussion forums. The open-ended ones sought richer
interpretive feedback from editors to address directly the research
questions involving their goals for the sites, content areas they were
most proud of, and lessons for future campaign coverage. This
combination of question types offers the ability to understand not just
what was included on these Web sites but why. The study was not
intended to produce generalizable results, because sites were chosen
for inclusion based on specific criteria described above.
Although it took as many as five e-mailings over four months
and, in some cases, multiple follow-up phone calls, a total of 57 online
editors eventually completed the survey, for a resjxmse rate of just over
71%. The mean response rate for e-mail surveys hovers just above
43
30%.* Responses were received from papers in forty-one of the fifty
states.
Because the data from the closed-ended questions were nominal
(or, on questions related to staff size, ordinal) and because the respondent
pool was relatively small, descriptive statistics were most relevant.
With the open-ended questions, the goal was to identify major themes
in editors’ conceptualizations of their content decisions and online
journalistic roles. To help with this assessment, a short summary of the
editor’s comments on each question was created. This allowed quick
and convenient identification of major concepts. The summaries were
used to categorize responses and as a reference to the actual text from
the editors, which fleshed out nuances in those responses.
FtndtngS -j-jjg number of major newspapers offering sections of their sites
dedicated specifically to election coverage increased dramatically
from 1996 to 2000. Thirteen included in this study (22.8%) did not even
have a Web site in 1996, according to their current editors. Of those
online in 1996,27 offered an election section that year; another 4 editors
did not know whether an election section had been available. In 2000,
not only were all the newspapers included in this study online (offering
either stand-alone sites or community / portal sites typically co-produced
with other information providers), but 53 of the 57 (93%) devoted a
separate section of their site to election coverage. Thus, about twice as
many leading newspapers offered separate online election sections in
2000 as in 1996.
Goals related to informing the public dominated what editors of
those online election sections wanted to accomplish in 2000, as well as
what they were most proud of having accomplished after the campaign
was over and what they hope to do in 2004. While the goals and the
ways in which they are being implemented suggest that journalists see
the Web as supporting their traditional roles, they also are identifying
ways to take advantage of the medium’s unique attributes in fulfilling
those roles.
RQl: Election 2000 Goals. Editors asked to describe their primary
goal for online coverage of the 2000 election offered varied and often
multi-faceted responses. However, their ideas fall into rough categories.
Two types of closely related, information-oriented goals—providing
information and bolstering the newspaper’s a n d / o r Web site’s
reputation, primarily through that information service—were mentioned
by a majority. A different goal—creating or strengthening the democratic
community, notably by stimulating public discussion of political issues—
was cited less frequently.
The Web is an ideal medium for journalists who believe getting
information to the public quickly is their key role^ and many of these
respondents share that belief. A goal directly related to informing users
was mentioned by
45
of the 49 editors (91.8%) who offered at least one
goal. Of those, 19 referred specifically to the Web’s ability to provide
timely news, especially onElectionNight.Representativegoals included
“to present results of major races fast” and to provide “complete
election returns throughout the evening, updated within minutes of
changes in voter returns.”
In addition to timeliness, the Web offers an unlimited news hole.
With no time or space restrictions on content, information can be
offered in significant depth and detail. The editor who referred to the
site’s goal as keeping people “abreast of over 400 local elections”
recognized this, as did the one who emphasized providing a
“comprehensive collection of resources.”
A handful of editors with information-oriented goals defined
those goals specifically in terms of the value of information for voters
facing a ballot decision. The goal was to “give voters the ability to
understand the choice they were about to make,” said one; “provide
news useful to readers wanting to make a decision,” explained
another.
Notably, these editors saw the Web site extending the franchise of
the print newspaper rather than standing apart from it. The goal was to
“provide an online resource that combined the best elements of the
newspaper coverage with supplementary material online to broaden
the information available to readers,” one editor said. Some saw the
Web site as finally enabling them to beat television, something they
could never do in print. “We were trying to beat the TV stations at their
game, and we succeeded with better live coverage. We also scooped
them on the biggest local race,” said one proud online editor.
In addition, these editors saw themselves filling the separate
function of making the Web site itself successful. One editor said his
goal was “helping citizens make better choices” and, “by making
material available all the time (instead of just one day like the print
election guide), to driveonlineviewership.”Some reversed thepriodties,
such as the editor who sought to “generate traffic, grow brand identity
and provide a public service by providing detailed and useful
information.”
Only 4 editors described goals not directly related to providing
information orbuilding a viableonlinebusiness,butratherto stimulating
political discourse among a community of online users. One sought to
“create a local community for discussion of a national issue.” Another
sought to “empower our community to interact more directly with
candidates and officials and to provide the foundation for an electronic
town hall.” Two others emphasized the desire to engage readers in
what one called “lively discussions” about the election.
RQ2: Election 2000 Accomplishments and Sources of Pride.
Whatever their goals, the editors were nearly unanimous in declaring
that they had been met. Of 48 respondents answering this question,
only one admitted failure to meet his goals, citing the “overwhelming
number of races” and expressing regret that it was not easier for users
to find key information.
Many evaluated their success in terms of usage, citing heavy
traffic, especially but not exclusively on Election Night. The
overwhelming majority of these editors reported that usage of their
election site as a whole either exceeded (18 editors, 31.6%) or met (
31
editors,
54
.4%) their expectations, even given the amount of work the
45
section required. “Online traffic soared, so someone must have found
it valuable,” one editor explained.
In particular, they expressed satisfaction over how quickly they
were able to update results on Election Night. Fifty-four of the 57 editors
(94.7%) provided timely returns, with 37 editors (68.5% of those who
posted results) saying updates were made at least every 15 minutes for
some or all of the races they covered. “We were posting results as fast
as the TV and CNN,” declared one editor who judged the election
section a success. “Readers could find out the results of local races seven
to eight hours earlier than if they had waited for the newspaper to arrive
on their doorstep,” said another.
Although wire services and government offices were cited by a
majority of ttie editors as sources for their Election Night updates,
newspaper reporters aiso supplied local information that appeared
online ahead of the print edition, according to 24 editors (44.4% of those
providing updates). Eight editors (14.8% of those providing Election
Night results) relied on their Web staffs or resources put in place to feed
results to the site quickly. A few papers threw everyone they had at
Election Night coverage—including the editor at a large-circulation
paper who reported “dam near everybody, including a number of
people from the business side” helped keep the site current. Many
sites remain woefully understaffed, however. More than half of the
57 respondents (32, or 56.1%) had 4 staffers or fewer on Election
Respondents also were asked whether their election sites
contained content unique to the Web and, if so, to describe briefly as
many as three online-only content areas of which they were most
proud. Forty-five editors (78.9%) said they provided at least some
unique election content. (Another 3 w h o said they did not
provide such content answered subsequent questions as if they
actually did.) Admittedly, most of the content came from print;
3
8
(66.7%) said at least three-quarters of their online election content also
ran in the paper, while only 4 (7%) said more than half their online
content was original. (One other editor said political sections contained
“substantial” Web-only content.) Their descriptions of unique aspects
special to them reveal what these editors are learning the Web can do
that the newspaper carmot. Table 1 provides an overview of editor
responses to this question.
Among the 44 editors who described at least one online-only
content area that they were most proud of, the Web’s two key
information-related attributes—ability to offer depth and detail, and to
provide frequent updates—were both appreciated. Atotal of 95 content
areas were cited, of which 38 (40%) were features that provided
information too extensive to offer in print or, if offered, too expensive
to publish and distribute more than once. These included ballot guides;
candidate profiles or questiormaire responses; and other “news to use”
features locating precincts or tracking presidential campaign
contributions “right down to the local town level.” In genera], editors
who cited online features in this category saw their site providing what
one described as a “one-stop shopping section for voters by pulling in
TABLE I
Key Attributes of Online-Only Content Areas That Editors Cited as Sources of Pride
Depth and Detail Updated News / Chats and Multiinedia Candidate Total
(Voter Guides, Election Discussion Features, “Match” Editor
Links, Archives, Results Forums Especially Feature Responses
Candidate Bios …) Audio/Video
Cited First
Cited Second
Cited Third
Total Times
Feature Cited ‘
15
11
1
2
38
16
9′
4
29
8
4
2
14
1
7
2
10
4
–
–
4
44
31
20
95
‘ Includes one editor who cited Web radio and chat features as part of his “live” Election Night
coverage.
‘° Some of the 44 editors who offered at least one response to this question cited as many as 3
different online-only areas in the same general category.
analysis and detailed reporting from as many different sources as
possible.”
Twenty-nine of the 95 content areas (30.5%) cited by editors as
sources of pride took advantageof the Web’s ability to provide breaking
news. The key coinponents seemed to be the ability both to compete
with television on Election Night and to enhance the service provided
by the affiliated newspaper.
Although only a few editors described facilitating discussion as
their primary goal, chats and discussion forums were cited 14 times
(14.7% of the total 95 responses) as sources of pride. Again, the key
advantage was the ability to offer something impossible to offer in
print. Chats with candidates “added a previously non-existent dimension
to the voter-candidate relationship,” said one editor. Others appreciated
providing an opportunity for fresh voices to be heard, such as the editor
who said “some of the best content” came from readers talking politics
in her site’s forums. Several described the forums as lively and active,
and one editor suggested they made a concrete contribution to
democracy: “Discourse on our education issues forum, for example, has
been cited during legislative debate on school reform measures.”
A somewhat different aspect of interactivity involves users’ ability
to personalize information, something possible but more cumbersome
in print. An example offered by editors here was a “candidate match”
feature, cited by 4 editors, which let users identify candidates whose
views come closest to their own on various issues.
One other cited content category was multimedia material,
primarily audio and/or video of the candidates. Ten of 95 content areas
^Nimans 4 7
mentioned (10.5%) involved only this type of content, which is obviously
not possible in print. (However, only one editor listed multimedia
content as a top source of pride, while 8 of 14 editors mentioning chats
and discussion forums listed such interactive components first.) Again,
multimedia content was seen primarily as supplementing print coverage.
For example, one editor described video interviews of the candidates as
a way for voters to “assess their credibility and sincerity.”
These editors, then, zeroed in on four core attributes of the Web
in describing how they used it in covering this major event: its ability to
offer timeliness, depth, interactivity (including personalizahle content),
and multimedia formats. Interactivity merits a closer look, given its
central role in scholarly consideration of the potential of the Internet as
a tool for political discourse and citizen ennpowerment, as well as its
novelty for most print journalists.
Two-thirds of the editors (38 of 57) said their sites contained or
linked directly toopportunities for users to engage in political discourse.
Twenty-three editors (60.5% of those offering forums) said they took
action to stimulate online discussion, from linking from relevant stories,
to promoting discussion boards in print, to seeding the boards with
provocative questions. Several editors said they used moderators
effectively.Although32 of theeditors(84.2%ofthoseoffering discussion
opportunities) said usage of their boards or chat areas met (17 editors)
or exceeded (15 editors) their expectations, they were more hesitant to
characterize the boards as successful. While 15 editors (39.5%) said they
were a success, an equal number gave them uneven results or even
characterized them as less than successful.
Some who were happy with their boards liked them for reasons
that would warm the hearts of political theorists. “It gives a soapbox to
people who would not otherwise have one. Despite excesses and
Ixmacies of some posters, boards remain a powerful populist tool,” one
editor said. “I am not used to seeing people actively engaged in
discussing politics, but they did, extensively,” said another. Others had
criteria for success that hit closer to their own homes. “We received tens
of thousands of page views in our political forums on some days,”
declared another editor who judged them a success. And some saw
discussion opportunities as a win-win-win offering: “Traffic was
dramatic, the dialogue was imconventional in pohtical terms, and the
candidates enjoyed the experience.”
Those who were less happy focused on the quality of the
conversation (low) or diversity of participants (also low). “The people
who truly cared participated, but there was no great groundswell of
interest from the general populace,” said one editor. “The forums were
more useful for entertainment value than educational value,” said
another. “Most political discussions seem to attract the same kind of
ranters you hear on talk radio,” said a third. Many online editors, then,
were less than fully satisfied with their sites’ success as venues for
meaningful political discourse. “I considered them a success,” a fourth
editor said, “but not a roaring one.”
RQ3: Plans for Election 2004. Was it worth all the effort? Again,
most of the editors said usage of their election sites met or exceeded
]ouiifiMjsM& MASS C o
their expectations, though some still expressed dissatisfaction.. “Our
expectations were not terribly high,” said one. “An election section is
one of those things you feel that you have to have, and that it should be
innovative and informative, but you realize that, unless you are CNN
or ABC, the section is not going to generate much traffic.” Others were
unsure whether the demand for information justified the work required
to supply it. “We devoted an incredible amount of time to this section,”
an editor said. “In retrospect, we questioned if we (should) have
focused as many resources on a product used by our readers for such a
relatively short amount of time.”
Others viewed the experience with a great deal more enthusiasm.
“Election Night was a great night to be in the news biz—and a watershed
for (our site). We were able to keep on top of a flood of numbers and
stories and keep ourpages fresh and up to date,” said oneeditor. “Better
still, people were paying attention. We had record traffic, including
more than a hundred thousand page views between 3 and 4 in the
morning!” Another felt the Web has “revolutionary implications for
election coverage. Our expectations, on usage and popularity, have
been exceeded with every foray into this area.”
But there is always room for improvement. Editors were asked
what they hoped to do differently in 2004, based on their experience in
2000 and given the certainty that the medium wili continue to change.
Of the 57 responding to this survey, 43 (75.4%) took a crack at crystal
ball-gazing (not counting the one who daydreamed simply about
“more food, more flasks”), and most had multiple items on their wish
list. Many hope to take even better ad vantage of the two online attributes
they saw as most important: timeliness and depth. Again, Election
Night was a common focal point, with 26 editors (69% of those offering
ideas) hoping for better ways to gather and present election returns in
2004, including automated feeds and a database to display results.
Others wanted to go beyond results, for instance by having “more
candidates online for chats during counting.”
Better voting guides, offered earlier to accommodate early-voting
initiatives and provide information at what one editor called “an even
more granular community level,” were also popular wish list items.
Some saw opportunities to combine detailed content with multimedia
applications or a personalizable interface, such as an interactive district
map, “so as you roil over it, you’ll get a district description and list of
candidates.” Half a dozen editors cited enhanced audio/video
applications, typically along with other things they hoped to offer in
2004. Only one specifically mentioned going beyond the Web itself. He
anticipated an infrastructure in place that would provide information
to other platforms, such as hand-held mobile devices.
Only a handful of editors mentioned enhanced opportunities for
citizens to engage in political discourse. But those who did were
eloquent about its benefits. In the words of one especially ardent
supporter:
This medium is about the empowerment of our community,
to facilitate interaction with interesting or meaningfulpeople.
to house “forums” in which users can exchange ideas and
information, to focus on the local angles, to give people a
voice… .My newspaper bias as a former op-ed editor is that
the liveliest page of any newspaper is (or should be) the
letters to the editor page. This is the place the readers have
a voice, have a stake in the “community” that a good
newspaper nurtures. Newspapers have always been the
bridge between newsmakers and readers. With interactive
Intemet applications, we have a way to enhance that role
and make that bridge a two-way thoroughfare. This is good
for the newspaper, good for the online service and gocid for
the users. We’re muddling through the continuing chaos of
an election in which roughly half the voting public is going
to feel disenfranchised by the system, no matter what the
outcome. This is a good time to be in the “enfranchisement”
business.
Discussion
and
Conclusions
This study found thatasjourna lists moveonline,a “normalization”
process seems to be occurring: information-oriented functions,
particularly related to getting news out quickly, remain key compo-
nents of their self-perceptions, especially in the political context of
furthering democracy. Like candidates and voters examined else-
where, journalists do not see and are not enacting a fundamental
change in this role as they move online. While content may be evolv-
ing in new directions, their concepts of their own role in providing tl .at
content are not.
Indeed, the information disseminator role seems, at least to these
editors, particularly well-suited to a medium that facilitates both depth
of content and speed of delivery. If their predictions are correct, that will
continue to be the case in the future. While all of these sites did include
content contained in the newspaper, material original to the Web was
designed primarily to provide more and faster infonnation—to enhance
what is provided in print.
That said, the dominance of Election Night updates in editors’
reflections may indicate too much emphasis on speed over what could
be classified as true public-service political journalism. This study
cannot address why editors were perhaps inordinately proud of being
able to provide results readily available to every American with a
television set, particularly on an Election Night that demonstrated the
danger of emphasizing speed over certainty. But these findings seem to
indicate that the timeliness of the medium is a key attribute for online
editors, despite inherent risks of the speed that one observer has
described as a “fabulous drug” for news organizations.**
Still, editors also gave considerable weight to roles that address
criticisms of media coverage of politics as superficial and cynical. They
were proud of offering breadth, depth, and utility not easily available
in print. The sites studied were all affiliated with leading newspapers,
and newspaper journalists have traditionally taken pride in offering
depth that local broadcast competitors cannot. Again, this survey is
50
only a starting point for exploring why these editors emphasized what
they did, both on the sites and in discussing the sites. But their goal
seemed consistent with Gans’ “journalistic theory of democracy,”
which suggests (not necessarily correctly) that more information
equals better-equipped citizens and therefore better and more
participatory democracy.'”‘ And their attempts at meeting that goal
address what Gans suggests is crucial: both deeper and more “user-
friendly” coverage of politics.
These goals and achievements reflect what orJine editors see as
good newspaper journalism—which they believe can perhaps be done
better on the Web. Again, this suggests a process of normalization as
journalists become conafortable online. Good journalism involves getting
information to people quickly, and good newspaper journalism provides
background and context that enable people to make sense of it. One
online editor said as much:
These surveys focus too muchon whether online newspaper
sites had content “not available in print.” What I see every
day is that people want the online newspaper to just BE
THE NEWSPAPER! My industry has spent billions of
marketing dollars and millions of production hours trying
to come up with the “killer app” for online newspapers
when the answer was really rigfit in front of us. So I really
believe that the future of online newspapers will be
determined not by the number of Web-only gadgets, but by
” how effectively companies like mine strengthen the
newspaper brand and identity online.
But while the newspaper’s strengths and reputation can be
replicated and extended online, the medium also can do things that
print cannot. Public journalism initiatives notwithstanding, the
newspaper cannot truly be a two-way medium. Nor can the “dead tree
edition” offer the ability to hear a candidate hesitate in responding to a
question or show how well the candidate makes eye contact with an
interviewer. While these editors tended to give such unique online
capabilities less prominence in reflecting on their campaign sites, some
did see the potential.
Interactivity offers interesting possibilities for significantly
enhancing the democratic process—and, should they so choose, the
media’s role in that process. By the early 1990s, a number of journalists
believed it was extremely important to “give ordinary people a chance
to express their views on public affairs. ” * That is difficult, costly, and
problematic in print; it is relatively simple, cheap, and desirable online.
The newspaper is a zero-sum medium: Space is limited, and the portion
of the news hole taken up by one story means another gets bumped. The
Web, with unlimited capacity for varied content and varied informa-
tion providers to co-exist, offers newspapers ways to encourage public
participation in civic discourse without jeopardizing their role as
trustworthy, relatively impartial sources and sense-makers of
information.
51
There is an opportunity here, then, for newspapers to take this
“normalization” process in more pro-social directions—to strengthen
and extend in new directions their “brand identity” in the democratic
realm. Indeed, it may be vital for them to do so as their traditional
information-provider role is challenged by thousands of Web sites on
any given topic, including politics. Online, core functions related to
engagement as well as impartiality can be both distinct and
complementary in ways that they cannot in a finite, discrete, and
severely limited media space. True, the discourse will not always be
high-minded—it may not even be particularly civil And true, the
number of people who participate may remain relatively small. But, as
several editors pointed out, the potential for increased democratic
empowerment is enormous.
Journalists who see their role as crucial to democracy have an
opportunity to expand that role in a meaningful way. Providing credible
information is tremendously important, and will become even more so
as the volume of online “content” grows and people turn increasingly
to a name they know for help in sorting out and making sense of it all.'”
But an informed citizenry is only one step toward an engaged and active
citizenry. The online medium offers journalists the opportunity to play
a central role in facilitating not just one but both.
NOTES
1. Herbert J. Gans, “What Can Journalists Actually Do for
AmencanDemoctacy’!”TheHarvard International Journalof Press/Politics
3 (fall 1998): 6-12. See also Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, The Elements
of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect
(New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 17-20.
2. Michael Schudson, ThePozverofNews (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1995), 205.
3. David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland WUhoit, American Journalists
in the 1990s: U.S. News People at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 1996), 133-40.
4. See, for example, its emphasis by gatekeepers, as described in
DavidManning White, “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study in theSelection
of News/’ Journalism Quarterly 27 (winter 1950): 383-90; Glen L. Bleske,
“Ms. Gates Takes Over: An Updated Version of a 1949 Case Study,” in
Social Meanings of News, ed. D. Berkowitz (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications, 1991), 72-80.
5. “Daily Newspapers,” Newslink, undated (2002), h t t p : / /
newslink.org/daynews.html.
6. “About Political Information-a targeted search engine for politics,
policy & political news,” politicalinformation.com, undated (2002),
http://politicalinformation.com/about.html.However, citizens using
the Web to obtain political news in 2000 continued to rely most heavily
on the sites provided by familiar media outlets such as CNN or the New
York Times; see “Internet Election News Audience Seeks Convenience,
Familiar Names,” The Pew Research Center for the People and the
Press, 3 December 2000, h t t p : / / p e o p l e – p r e s s . o r g / r e p o r t s /
display.php3?Report!D=21, h t t p : / / p e o p l e – p r e s s . o r g / r e p o r t s /
display.php3?PageID=137. The Pew study suggested an additional
cause for optimism for traditional media sites as Internet use achieves
mainstream status: Internet users with more experience (those online
for three or more years) visited the sites of major news organizations at
higher rates than did “newbies.” For some as-yet-unexplored reason,
self-described liberals appeared more likely to go to the Web for
political information than conservatives; 43% of liberals said they
checked the Web for political news at least once a week during the 2000
campaign, compared with 33% of conservatives. See Eve Gerber,
“Divided We Watch,” Brill’s Content, February 2001,110-111.
7. BruceGarrison, “Journalists’Perceptions of Onlir\e Information-
Gathering Problems,” journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77
(autumn 2000): 500-514.
8. Michael Margolis and David Resnick, Politics As Usual: The
Cyberspace “Revolution” (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000),
2.
9. “Affluent Americans Drive internet Growth, According to
Nielsen/ /NetRatings,” Nielsen//NetRattngs, 15 October 2002, http:/
/www.nielsen-netratings.com/pr/pr_021015 .
10. Andrew J. Fianagin and Miriam ]. Metzger, “Internet Use in the
Contemporary Media Environment,” Human Communication Research
27 (January 2000): 153-81; “Nielsen//NetRatings Announces the First
Digital Media Universe Rankings, With Microsoft and AOL Time
Warner Neck-and-Neck as the Top Parent Companies,” Nielsen//
NetRatings, 21 November 2002, http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/
pr/pr_021121 .
11. Guido H. Stempel III, Thomas Hargrove, and Joseph P. Bemt,
“Relation of Growth of Use of the Internet to Changes in Media Use
from 1995 to 1999,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77
(spring 2000): 71-79.
12. Andrew J. Fianagin and Miriam J. Metzger, “Perceptions of
Internet Information Credibility,” journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly 77 (autumn 2000): 515-40.
13. “Internet Election News Audience,” Pew Research Center.
14. Stempel, Hargrove, and Bernt, “Relation of Growth of Use of the
Internet.”
15. Hsiang Iris Chyi and Dominic Lasorsa, “Access, Use and
Preferences for Online Newspapers,” Newspaper Research journal 20 (fall
1999): 2-13.
16. Scott L. Althaus and David Tewksbury, “Patterns of Internet and
Traditional News Media Use in a Networked Community,” Political
Communication 17 Qanuary 2000): 21-45.
17. Robert S. Boynton, “New media may be old media’s savior,”
Columbia journalism Review, July/August 2000, http://www.cjr.org/
year /OO / 2/boynton.asp.
18. “The Internet News Audience Goes Ordinary,” The Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press, 14 January 1999, http://people-
press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=337.
19. Jeff South, “Web Staffs Urge the Print Side To Think Ahead,”
Online Journalism Review, 11 June 1999, http://www.ojr.org/ojr/
business/1017968570.php.
20. Alison Schafer, “2000 Fizzled as THE Internet Election,” Online
Journalism Review, 1 February 2001, h t t p : / / w w w . o j r . o r g / o j r /
technology/1017962091.php.
21. John W.C. Johnstone, Edward J. Slawski, and William W.
Bowman, The NeiDS People: A Sociological Portrait of American Journalists
and Their Work (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1976); David H.
Weaver and G. Cleveland Withoit, The American Journalist: A Portrait of
U.S. News People and Their Work (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1986); Weaver and Wilhoit, American Journalists in the 1990s.
22. Examples include John Henningham, “Characteristics and
Attitudesof Australian Journalists,” Efecfronic/ourna/ofCommHf!(CHf!o«/
Lfl Revue Electronique de Communication 3 (December 1993), h t t p : / /
www.cios.org/www/ejc/v3n393.htm; Wei Wu, David Weaver, and
Owen V. Johnson, “Professional Roles of Russian and U.S. Journalists:
A Comparative Study,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 73
(autumn 1996): 534-48.
23. Arm M. Brill, “Way New Journalism: How the Pioneers Are
Doing,” Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue Eledronicjue de
CommumcatioH 7(1997), http://www.cios.org/www/ejc/v7n297.htm.
24. Jane B. Singer, “Still Guarding the Gate? The Newspaper
Journalist’s Role in an Online World,” Convergence: The Journal of
Research into New Media Technologies 3 (spring 1997): 72-89.
25. See Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Dirty Politics: Deception, Distraction,
Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 184-85; Thomas
E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 247-48; S.
Robert Lichter, “A Plague on Both Parties: Substance and Fairness in TV
Election News,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 6 (July
2001), 8-30; Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman, The Press Effect:
Politicians, Journalists and the Stories that Shape the Political World (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 84-85.
26. Doug Miilison, “Online Journalism FAQ,” The Online Journalist
(1999), http://www.online-joumalist.com/faq.html.
27. This ability to accommodate immediacy carries risks that trouble
many journalists and observers; see Dave Kansas and Todd Citlin,
“What’s the Rush?” Media Studies Journal 13 (spring/summer 1999): 72-
76; Jim Benning, “The Lesson of Emulex,” Online Journalism Review, 8
September 2000, http://www.ojr.org/ojr/ethics/1017%3430.php. In
particular, it makes online journalism prone to mistakes. As TV coverage
of the 2000 presidential race demonstrated, an emphasis on being first
(or at least not being last) over being right is risky for any journalism
that operates in real-time. Still, the ability to offer breaking news online
is at least potentially an advantage over the print product, one this
study indicates is clearly perceived by online journalists.
28. J. D. Lasica, “The Promise of the Daily Me,” Online Journ-
alism Review, 2 August 2001, h t t p : / / w w w . o ) r . o r g / o j r / l a s i c a /
1017779142.php.
29. Lawrence K. Grossman, The Electronic Republic: Reshaping
54
Democracy in the Information Age (New York: Viking, 1995), 1-7.
30. Bruce Bimber, “The Internet and Political Transformation:
Populism, Community and Accelerated Pluralism,” Polity XXXI (1998):
133-60, h t t p : / / w w w . p o l s c i . u c s b . e d u / f a c u l t y / b i m b e r / r e s e a r c h /
transformation.html.
31. “Internet Election News Audience,” Pew Research Center.
32. Tanjev Schultz, “Interaction Options in Online Journalism: A
Content Analysis of lOOU.S. Newspapers,”/oumai of Computer-Mediated
Communication 5 (September 1999), http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/
vol5/lssuel/schultz.html; James W. Tankard Jr. and HyunBan, “Online
Newspapers: Living Up to Their Potential?” (paper presented at the
annual meeting of AEJMC, Baltimore, 1998).
33. Richard Davis, The Web of Politics: The Internet’s Impact on the
American Political System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999),
90-92,109-114.
34. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, “On-line Interaction and Why
Candidates Avoid It,” Journal of Communication 50 (autumn 2000): 111-
32.
35. Diana Owen, Richard Davis, and Vincent James Strickler,
“Congress and the Internet,” The Harvard International journal of Press/
Politics 4 (spring 1999): 10-29.
36. Howard Rheingold, The Virtttal Community: Homesteading on the
Electronic Frontier (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993).
37. Margolis and Resnick, Politics As Usual, 7.
38. Margolis and Resnick, Politics As Usual, 103,110.
39. Lincoln Dahlberg, “Computer-Mediated Communication and
The Public Sphere: A Critical Analysis,” Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication 7 (October 2001), http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol7/
issuel / dahlberg.html.
40. Bimber, “Internet and Political Transformation.”
41. Joseph R. Wimmer and Roger D. Dominick, Mass Media Research:
An Introduction, 6th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2000),
161.
42. W. Lawrence Neuman, Social Research Methods: Qualitative and
Quantitative Approaches (Needham Heights, MA: AUyn and Bacon,
1991), 203-204.
43. Kim Sheehan, “E-mail Survey Response Rates: AReview,”/our«fl/
of Computer-Mediated Communication 6 (January 2001), h t t p : / /
www.ascusc.org/jcmc/\’ol6/issue2/sheehan.html.
44. Weaver and Wilhoit, American Journalists in the 1990s, 135-36.
45. Editors also were asked the size of their staffs—full-time, part-
time and shared with print—in an attempt to determine how tliey
allocated resources in covering the election. However, the question did
not specify whether “staff” meant total online staff or only editorial
staff, and responses indicated that editors interpreted the question in
various ways, limiting the usefulness of these findings. Still, a couple
of interesting patterns were discernible. One is that Web staffs remain
small in comparison with print; 35 editors (61.4%) reported fuil-time
staffs of 10 people or fewer—and this survey covered leading newspapers
in each state. Another is that while a few years ago, online and print
55
staffs overlapped considerably (see Jane B. Singer, Martha P. Tharp, and
Amon Haruta, “Online Staffers: Superstars or Second-Class Citizens?”
Nezospaper ResearcJi Journal 20 [summer 1999].- 29-47) typically with copy
editors and/or graphic designers doing douhle duty, that situation has
become rarer. OrJy 7 editors (12.3%) said they shared any staff with
print, and 3 of those shared just a single person.
46. Kansas and Gitlin, “What’s the Rush?” 76.
47. Gans, “What Can Journalists Actually Do?” 10.
48. Weaver and Wiihoit, American Journalists in the 1990s, 140.
49. Schudson, The Power of News, 1-2; Kovach and Rosenstiel, Elements
of Journalism, 23-25.
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
Where Is My Issue? The Influence of
News Coverage and Personal Issue
Importance on Subsequent Information
Selection on the Web
Young Mie Kim
Researchers believe that the Web functions to supplement traditional news
media. Little is known, however, about how traditional news media consump-
tion influences Web use patterns. This study investigates how prior TV news
exposure influences individuals’ subsequent Web use by testing 3 theories that
may explain individuals’ information selection patterns—accessibility, instru-
mental utility, and personal issue importance. The results of this study reveal
the strong effects of personal issue importance when selecting information on
the Web, regardless of news coverage in traditional media. The findings also
indicate higher levels of information selection when there is no prior exposure
to news coverage.
In the past few decades, the Web has grown exponentially and become an
important source of political information. Recent statistics show that in 1 month
alone (March 2007), approximately 210 million people in the United States used
the Internet at least once (Nielsen/NetRatings, 2007). During the 2004 election,
75 million Americans (37% of the adult population) used the Internet for political
information acquisition; 18% of these users said the Internet was their primary
source of political information, according to a study by Pew Internet & American
Life (2005).
Coinciding with this expanded use of the Web, network television viewership and
newspaper readership have declined. Indeed, many believe that network television
viewing and newspaper circulation will continue to diminish. Coffey and Stipp
(1997), for instance, suggest that traditional media uses will decline over time
because younger generations will grow up using computers more than their parents’
generation and because the computer now replaces other free-time activities. Televi-
sion news viewing in particular appears to be most vulnerable to this decline. Rogers
(1985) found that these early adopters of computers tend to spend less time viewing
Young Mie Kim (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign) is an Assistant Professor in the
School of Communication at the Ohio State University. Her research interests include new communication
technologies and political communication.
© 2008 Broadcast Education Association Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 52(4), 2008, pp.
600
–621
DOI: 10.1080/08838150802437438 ISSN: 0883-8151 print/1550-6878 online
600
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 601
television. Accordingly, the Pew survey indicated that about 27% of respondents
replaced television viewing with the Web (Pew Research Center, 1997).
However, some researchers argue that the shift from traditional news to reliance
on the Web is, at best, exaggerated. While the Web has replaced some outlets as
a source of news consumption, it is less dramatic than some would claim. Ahlers
(2006), for instance, illustrated that only 12% of news consumers migrated directly
from traditional news media to electronic news media. Furthermore, another 22%
of U.S. adults reported that they use the Web as a complement to traditional news
media rather than a substitute (Ahlers, 2006; Dutta-Bergman, 2004). Thus, it appears
more likely that the Web functions as a supplement, rather than a substitute, to
traditional news media.
Little is known, however, about how traditional news media influence the pat-
terns of Web use (cf. Dutta-Bergman, 2004). What theories offer an insight into
the relationship between traditional news and Web uses? If the Web serves as a
supplement or a complement to traditional news media, how does this take place?
This study investigates the way news coverage in the traditional media influences
individuals’ subsequent Web use patterns in terms of selectivity. By testing three
theoretical frameworks that explain individuals’ information selection patterns—the
accessibility effect from priming, instrumental utility of information, and personal
issue importance—this study explores how traditional news media influence what
information individuals choose to view on
the Web.
What Drives Selectivity on the Web? Three Theories
For nearly 60 years, selectivity has remained an enduring concept in communi-
cation research. The concept of selectivity is especially relevant to the new media
environment, particularly the Web. Whereas traditional news media focus on larger
markets with little interest in tailoring the content to specific markets, information
obtained through the Web is almost inherently specialized by topic (e.g., Green-
berg, 1999; Rash, 1997; Sunstein, 2001).1 An enormous amount of information
is far more accessible on the Web than was previously available through tradi-
tional media. In addition, because the Web promotes a high level of interactiv-
ity, users can be selectively attentive—and selectively exposed—to information.
These two major characteristics of the Web—specialization and interactivity—offer
a high potential for increased selectivity (Tewksbury, 2003). While researchers
accept that the Web offers a higher level of selectivity and therefore offers greater
benefits compared to traditional news media, regrettably little is known about
what factors influence individuals’ information selection on the Web. This is es-
pecially true when examining traditional news and its relationship with Web use
patterns: How does prior exposure to news influence what people choose to view
on the Web? Three theoretical frameworks can be applied to explain the poten-
tial influence of prior exposure to news coverage on information selection on
the Web.
602 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
Accessibility From Priming. One explanation for how news coverage influences
subsequent online information selection would be the accessibility effect from prim-
ing (Higgins, 1996). Tulving (1993) describes this broadly as the facilitative effect
of performing one task on the subsequent performance of the same or a similar
task. Similarly, a media effect of priming broadly refers to the effect media content
has on individuals’ later behavior (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen, & Dillman-
Carpentier,
2002).
The priming event activates a knowledge construct, which temporarily increases
the probability of using that construct when performing subsequent tasks. A con-
struct’s temporal accessibility2 is due to the recency and frequency of activation. In
general, a recent construct is likely to be employed in a subsequent task, especially
when the time lag between priming and the subsequent task is short; but as the
time delay increases, the most frequently primed construct takes precedent over a
recently primed construct (Higgins, Bargh, & Lombardi, 1985). Prototypical priming
studies in social psychology thus expose participants to a particular construct and
then have them immediately perform a seemingly unrelated task (e.g., person per-
ception). Participants in Higgins, Rholes, and Jones’s (1977) original priming study,
for instance, were exposed to one or another set of trait-related constructs and
later asked to characterize the ambiguous behaviors of a target person in a reading
comprehension task. Participants were more likely to use the trait-related recent
constructs primed by the initial task to categorize the target person’s behaviors rather
than equally applicable alternative constructs. This accessibility effect of priming
has been replicated in many studies with different methods (for details, see Higgins,
1996).
Some scholars have theorized that the structure or organization of constructs
influences the effects of priming. Anderson (1983) and others (Althaus & Kim,
2006; Collins & Loftus, 1975; Kim, 2005; Price & Tewksbury, 1997), for example,
illustrated that concepts are associated with one another as nodes and nested within
a network structure through linkages. When priming activates a particular construct
in a network, the activation radiates from this particular node to others with which
it is associated, thereby increasing the probability that similar concepts unspecified
in the original stimulus come to mind and influence subsequent tasks. Within this
network structure, the activation is a function of the strength of the associations
between constructs. In support of this, Valentino and colleagues (Valentino, 1999;
Valentino, Traugott, & Hutchings, 2002) found that cues in media (news and politi-
cal advertising, respectively) boosted constraint of opinions regarding related issues.
However, when the issue was less relevant, exposure to media coverage did not
appear to increase constraint of opinions.
Although the effect of prior exposure to news coverage on subsequent online
information selection has not been directly tested, the theory of accessibility effects
of priming suggests that the presence or absence of certain issues in news coverage
should be sufficient to produce accessibility effects and influence immediately
individuals’ subsequent online information selection behavior. The groundbreaking
study by Iyengar and Kinder (1987) addressed the accessibility effect of priming
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 603
with a series of experiments that either included or excluded certain issues. Their
findings showed that participants in the experimental condition that included a
certain issue became more concerned with the included issue. Similarly, Domke
and colleagues (Domke, 2001; Domke, Shah, & Wackman, 1998) found that the
presence of some issues in media triggered the issues primed in the coverage and
formed individuals’ perceptions of candidates. Given all this, if the accessibility
effect from priming applies to selectivity on the Web following traditional news
exposure, it is reasonable to expect that online selectivity on a certain issue should
be higher when individuals are exposed to the issue on the news immediately prior
to their information selection on the Web than when they are not exposed.
H1: (Accessibility effect of priming). The level of online selectivity on a particular
issue (i.e., the weight of particular issue content in information selection)
would be higher when individuals are exposed to the issue on traditional
news outlets prior to their Web use than when they have not been exposed
to the issue.
Instrumental Utility Theory. While Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dis-
sonance has long dominated the selective exposure literature with its emphasis
on an avoidance strategy in selectivity, communication scholars have conceptu-
alized selectivity as an approaching strategy rather than an avoidance strategy. In
other words, audience members actively seek information that satisfies their needs,
orientations, and motivations. The uses and gratification approach, for example,
emphasizes the utility function of mass media. When information provided by mass
media is useful and fulfills their needs, orientations, and motivations, audience
members use the mass media. For instance, Blumler and McQuail (1969) explain
how the political content of television is linked to audience members’ various mo-
tivations: voting guidance, reinforcement of existing decisions, general surveillance
of the political environment, as well as anticipated utility in future interpersonal
communication. Similarly, Chaffee and McLeod (1973) illustrated how social utility
(i.e., future involvement in interpersonal communication) motivated individuals to
selectively expose themselves to election campaign information.
As an extension of the uses and gratifications approach but with an emphasis on
the information selection process, selectivity has also been explored through the
function of extrinsic information utility. Atkin’s (1973) extrinsic instrumental utility
theory proposes that selective information seeking can be explained as having a util-
itarian purpose, where an individual uses it directly as a means toward solving prac-
tical problems. The key to this instrumental utility model is the reduction of extrinsic
uncertainty. Intrinsic uncertainty or intrinsic motivations, including individuals’ in-
trinsic interest (e.g., personal importance), intrinsic curiosity, and intrinsic pleasure,
are not considered in Atkin’s instrumental information utility theory because in-
trinsic motivations are noninstrumental. Intrinsic motivations derive consummatory
gratifications in the form of intrinsic satisfaction, but this does not directly apply
604 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
to problem-solving. For this reason, intrinsic motivations are noninstrumental and
beyond the scope of Atkin’s instrumental information utility theory (Atkin, 1973).
Excluding individuals’ intrinsic motivations or predispositions, Atkin argues that
the need for information is ‘‘a function of extrinsic uncertainty produced by a
perceived discrepancy between the individual’s current level of certainty about
important environmental objects and a criterion state he seeks to achieve (p. 206).’’
Extrinsic uncertainty is channeled toward particular objects to solve problems that
arise in one’s everyday environment as an adaptation strategy. Because the range
of one’s knowledge is in general severely limited, the ‘‘discrepancy’’ exists between
the current state of certainty and the criterion state of certainty. When individ-
uals perceive that they have insufficient knowledge about environmental objects
(i.e., primitive uncertainty, ‘‘which product is good?’’) or existing knowledge is
inadequate for situations that require orientations, decisions, and performance (i.e.,
complex uncertainty, ‘‘am I supporting the right candidate?’’), extrinsic uncertainty
increases. New information that an individual does not possess already indeed
diminishes the discrepancy and ultimately reduces extrinsic uncertainty. For this
reason, individuals seek information that they do not know already. Seen this way,
selectivity is an adaptation to extrinsic uncertainty. Within the instrumental utility
theory framework, Knobloch, Dillman-Carpentier, and Zillmann (2003) confirmed
that participants selected the articles associated with the news leads where salient
features induced high levels of extrinsic uncertainty.
Unlike the accessibility effect from priming, the instrumental utility theory im-
plies that if issue information is provided prior to information seeking, the level
of information selection on the issue would be reduced because the utility of the
additional information is low. However, if individuals see additional information
that has not been covered previously, the utility of this additional information is
high. As individuals’ extrinsic uncertainty increases when faced with information
not previously exposed to them, they seek the new information to reduce extrinsic
uncertainty. Valentino, Hutchings, and Williams’ (2004) study of the effect of polit-
ical campaign advertisements on subsequent information-seeking behavior is worth
notice. In this study, participants were exposed to both Gore and Bush campaign
advertisements that contained information on their issue positions. Participants were
then asked to visit either or both of the candidates’ campaign Web sites containing
the issues covered in the advertisement as well as other issues. The study found that
compared to the control group not exposed to the campaign advertisements, those
exposed to political campaign advertisements containing issue information sought
a lesser amount of information in the subsequent information search task. Valentino
et al. (2004) explained that the exposure to advertisements reduced further demand
for issue information.
Taking all this into consideration, this study expects that if the instrumental utility
theory is correct, the level of information selection for a particular issue on the
Web is high when there is no prior exposure to the issue because the information
on the Web not presented in prior news coverage appears to be novel and useful
to decrease individuals’ extrinsic uncertainty.
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 605
H2: (Instrumental utility). The level of online selectivity on a particular issue (i.e.,
the weight of particular issue content in information selection) would be
higher when the individuals are not exposed to the issue through traditional
news outlets prior to Web use than when they have been previously exposed.
Personal Issue Importance. When Atkin examined information-seeking behavior,
he did not consider intrinsic motivation because it is noninstrumental. Recently,
however, other scholars have explained selectivity as a function of noninstrumental
considerations such as personal issue importance (Berent & Krosnick, 1993, unpub-
lished, as cited in Boninger, Krosnick, Berent, & Fabrigar, 1995; Petty & Krosnick,
1995). Most people have few resources and little motivation to carefully attend to all
of the nations’ issues to reduce extrinsic uncertainty because the information cost for
becoming fully informed is substantial (Berent & Krosnick, 1995). Therefore, indi-
viduals must be selective in their information gathering, processing, and structuring
(Wang, 1977). Indeed, individuals do not have to be cognitively highly sophisticated
to form attitudes regarding the issues they consider personally important. Therefore,
people select information relevant to issues that are personally important to them. As
motivated tacticians, individuals have multiple strategies for information processing
and choose among them based on goals, needs, and motives (Chaiken, Liberman,
& Eagly, 1989; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). When individuals
think the issue is of high personal relevance, they desire more information regarding
the issue and engage in a greater level of message scrutiny than when the issue is
perceived to be of little personal importance (e.g., Chaiken, 1980; Petty & Cacciopo,
1986).
Personal issue importance is an intrinsic and chronic tendency rather than an
extrinsic and deliberate strategy influencing selectivity (Berent & Krosnick, 1995).
First, even though individuals see an issue as important to the country as a whole,
(e.g., national defense), they may not consider the issue as personally important
if they do not subjectively value the issue. Second, situational relevance does
not define personal issue importance. For example, individuals may consider the
issue of gay marriage important even if the issue does not directly influence their
lives. Research has shown that individuals tend to distinguish ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘others’’
in perceiving issue importance (Glynn, Ostman, & McDonald, 1995), and as a
result, individuals’ personal experience and collective experience are generally
independent (Kinder & Kiewiet, 1979; Mutz, 1998).
Unlike instrumental utility, the notion of personal issue importance underscores
the fact that individuals are naturally drawn to information personally important
to them regardless of its extrinsic and instrumental value. Consumer research, for
example, has documented that those exhibit a high level of personal interest in
a product want to acquire more information about the product class in general
(McQuarrie & Munson, 1992; Richins, Bloch, & McQuarrie, 1992). Berent and
Krosnick’s 1993 study (unpublished; cited in Boninger et al., 1995) clearly illustrated
this tendency in the area of political communication. In their study, participants
were asked to evaluate political candidates and were given six issue statements
606 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
from each candidate. They were instructed, however, to read only three out of the
six statements for each candidate. Participants selected information relevant to the
issues that were personally important to them at the expense of information relevant
to issues they considered personally unimportant. Furthermore, Berent and Krosnick
provided party affiliation information so that participants could easily infer each
candidate’s position regarding the issues. If selectivity is solely based on extrinsic
utility, selective exposure to issue statement information would be reduced when
the party affiliation information is provided because the utility of seeking further
information is small. The results, however, showed that participants personally
concerned with an issue did select issue information just as much as when party
affiliations were unknown. This implies that information selection is not influenced
by a deliberate calculation of the value of information.
In light of all this, this study expects that if the personal importance account is
correct, individuals would select information on the Web based on their personal
issue importance regardless of prior exposure to news coverage, as opposed to
what the accessibility effect of priming or the instrumental utility theory suggests.
Selectivity on a particular issue thus would be higher when individuals have a high
level of personal issue importance compared to when they do not.
H3: (Personal issue importance). Regardless of prior exposure, the level of online
selectivity on a particular issue (i.e., the weight of particular issue content in
information selection) would be higher when individuals consider the issue
personally important than when they do not consider the issue important.
Interplay of Accessibility, Instrumental Utility, and Personal Issue Importance.
Three theoretical frameworks offer different explanations and predictions as to how
exposure to traditional news media would influence subsequent information se-
lection behavior on the Web. These theories are based on different assumptions
concerning the nature of individuals per se, their motivations and behavior, as well
as information itself. For instance, whereas the accessibility effect of priming theory
suggests presence of issue information in the news should increase information
selection on a particular issue, the instrumental utility of information theory proposes
that prior exposure to issues in the news might reduce information selection given
that the utility of the information becomes low when individuals are exposed to and
learn about the issue already. Rather, new issue information on the Web, which is
not presented in the news prior to Web browsing, has a higher level of instrumental
utility because individuals do not know much about the issue. The concepts of
instrumental utility and personal issue importance emphasize different motivations
behind individuals’ information selection in the sense that information utility is
largely driven by extrinsic environment, while personal issue importance is intrinsic
and chronic by nature. Unlike the accessibility of priming or instrumental utility,
personal issue importance explains selectivity on a particular issue regardless of
prior exposure to the issue information.
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 607
However, a careful examination of these theories suggests some interplay be-
tween these factors and provides nuanced theoretical qualifications for the effect
of traditional news coverage on subsequent information selection online. A couple
of possibilities exist in terms of the interaction between the accessibility effect of
priming, instrumental utility of information, and personal
issue importance.
For example, when individuals consider an issue personally important but do not
find out about the issue prior to Web browsing, what would happen? Psychological
research on vigilance proposes that individuals monitor their environment for sur-
vival purposes; thus, the implication of negative information increases uncertainty
and tends to grab one’s attention (Pratto & Oliver, 1991). Accordingly, Marcus, Neu-
man, and Mackuen (2000) note that information-seeking behavior (i.e., surveillance)
is most likely to occur when external stimuli threaten individuals’ personal interests.
A threat signals when past learning is not enough for an individual to handle a
new situation and when a stimulus is powerful or dangerous to the individual. The
vigilance effect thus suggests that individuals explore information about an issue
on the Web when they are not exposed to the information in the traditional news
media prior to Web use, but the issue is of personal concern. Therefore, this study
expects an interaction effect of instrumental utility and personal issue importance if
the vigilance theory is correct.
H4: (Vigilance effect). The level of online selectivity on a particular issue (i.e.,
the weight of particular issue content in information selection) should be
amplified when individuals are not exposed to the issue prior to their Web
use
and when the issue is personally important to the individuals.
On the other hand, it is also possible that even if there is prior exposure to
issue information, individuals still seek further issue information as long as the
issue centers on one’s personal issue importance. In support of this, Hutchings’
(2003) series of studies demonstrated that the perceived importance of an issue
boosted when the issue was covered in the news and when individuals consider
the issue personally important as well. Thus, in the present study, online information
selection concerning an issue would stay about the same or become amplified when
individuals have a high level of personal issue concern regarding the issue and
when they are exposed to the issue through traditional news outlets prior to using
the Web. This study therefore expects an interaction effect of priming and personal
issue importance.
H5: (Escalation effect). The level of online selectivity on a particular issue (i.e.,
the weight of particular issue content in information selection) would be
amplified when individuals are exposed to the issue prior to their Web use
and when the issue is personally important to the individuals.
In summary, three theoretical frameworks suggest different predications regarding
the influence of news coverage on subsequent information selection on the Web.
608 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
Regrettably, little research has yet empirically tested the impact of traditional news
coverage on the way individuals seek information on the Web. The present study
attempts to test different theories and provide a theoretical framework to explain the
process by which the Web supplements (or not) traditional news media by exam-
ining how exposure to news coverage on traditional media influences individuals’
subsequent information selection
on the Web.
Method
Overview
The study examines how exposure to traditional news would affect individuals’
subsequent information selection behavior on the Web. In particular, this study tests
competing selectivity hypotheses that would offer explanations for the relationship
between traditional news and online information consumption. This study consisted
of four phases: A pretest, TV news viewing (no news condition skips this stage), Web
surfing, and a posttest.
Design
The study employed 3 (issue coverage condition: no news vs. issue presence vs.
issue absence) � 2 (personal importance: high vs. low) factorial designs to test the
effects of the presence or absence of an issue in the news and the individuals’
personal issue importance, on their subsequent information selection behavior on
the Web.
Sample
A total of 306 subjects (18 years or older) completed all stages of the study.
Subjects were recruited from lecture classes from a large midwestern university.
Extra credit was offered to those who completed the study.
Procedure
Subjects were asked to come to a computer lab and complete a short com-
puterized pretest. The pretest included questions on personal issue importance
concerning four focused issues (abortion, gay rights, the economy, and the war
in Iraq), general political interest questions, and distractor questions (e.g., media
uses patterns).
After completing the pretest, subjects were asked to watch a video clip that
contained a collection of news stories about the four different issues. Under the
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 609
‘‘absence’’ condition, one of the issues was excluded so that only three issues were
covered. Under the ‘‘presence’’ condition, all four issues were covered. The TV
viewing stage ran about 20 minutes including introductions. The control condition
(no video condition) skipped this stage.
Next, subjects were asked to find and read information on the four focused
issues on the Web. A portal site designed by the research team was introduced to
subjects for ease of information searching. The portal included 60 actual Web sites
from diverse sources (including news, issue advocacy groups, and research think
tanks) with information on the four focused issues. The portal site also included
instructions for the information search. Subjects were instructed to browse and
examine whatever information they desired for up to 20 minutes. The instructions
stated that subjects would not be able to read everything linked to this site to
induce selectivity. The 20-minute time limit was also given to induce selectivity in
the information search. Each individual’s information selection was recorded in real
time by an individual level, click-by-click, Web behavior recording program.
After the online information search task, subjects were asked to fill out another
short computerized posttest. The posttest included recall questions as well as basic
demographic questions (e.g., gender, age, race, party identification).
TV News Viewing Manipulation
Evening news stories on abortion, gay rights, the economy (tax and budget), and
the war in Iraq from a network television station (ABC) were selected about 5
months prior to the study. Each news story had a package format that included
an anchor’s leading comment, episodes, interviews, and reporters’ comments. The
average length of a news story was 126 seconds (abortion, 123 seconds; gay rights,
115 seconds; the economy, 135 seconds; war, 130 seconds).3 For the presence
condition, a video clip contained four news stories covering each of the focused
issues. The presence condition was broken into four subgroups depending on the
order of the four news stories. Therefore, four different tapes were made for the
presence condition, but because the tapes were randomly assigned to the subjects
under the presence condition, the subgroups were pooled in the analysis. For the
absence condition, a total of four tapes were created; each tape was missing one
of the focus issue stories. In the analysis, each issue absence condition (n D 51
for each issue) was compared to the presence (n D 51) and the no news exposure
conditions (n D 51).
Web Behavior Record
Given the problems of self-reporting exposure measures (see Chaffee & Schleuder,
1986; Price & Zaller, 1993; Tewksbury, 2006; Valentino et al., 2004), this study
developed an innovative method for measuring information search behavior by
adopting a real-time, click-by-click tracking method. For each page that participants
610 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
accessed, the computer program recorded the individuals’ unique identification
number, time stamp (including time spent on the link), the Web page file name,
and the actual content of each Web page. Each individual’s Web viewing data were
automatically transmitted to a university server and saved as a data file with a unique
user ID. Due to the transitory nature of the Web, Web pages may have changed
or disappeared prior to the analysis. To overcome this problem, the program also
downloaded each of the Web pages viewed by the individuals in real time and
transmitted these to the research server.4 The program is based on a client-side pro-
gramming technique, which allows it to capture existing real-world Web behavior
beyond artificially created research Web sites, so participants can visit any Web site
existing in the real world. Using unique user IDs, the program enables researchers to
analyze data at an individual level (as opposed to IP addresses) and combines these
with survey data, which is not possible with log analyses or server-side tracking
programs.
Study Venue
A portal site was constructed as the venue for the study. At the top level, five
categories of Web pages were presented in a menu format: main menu, abortion, gay
rights, the economy, and the war in Iraq. The design and structure of the portal was
the same as any regular Web site in order to provide subjects with easy surfing ability
and to increase the validity of the study. The menu bar in the window was designed
to stay during the study for ease of information selection. In this way, subjects did
not need to go back to the menu page to move around different issue categories.
The list of relevant political Web sites was presented in alphabetical order. A total
of 60 real Web sites were linked to the portal under these categories. Selection of
these sites was based on nonpartisan, voting information consolidator sites, such as
Project Vote Smart (national and local election information) and Politics1 (national
and local election information).
Measures
Personal Issue Importance. Personal issue importance was measured in the pretest
by a 7-point scale, ranging from 1 (not at all important) to 7 (extremely important)
for each of the four focus issues (Mabortion D 5.0, SDabortion D 1.87; Mgay D 3.82,
SDgay D 1.98; Meconomy D 6.11, SDeconomy D 1.09; Mwar D 5.91, SDwar D 1.25.
Selectivity. Selectivity was operationalized in terms of centrality at the issue level,
which was conceptualized by the weight of a particular kind of issue content in
information selection. It was measured by the number of pages on a category out of
the total number of pages (Mabortion D .36, SDabortion D .33; Mgay D .16, SDgay D
.24; Meconomy D .22, SDeconomy D .26; Mwar D .26, SDwar D .28).
5 This measure of
selectivity was based on individual Web behavior records. Individuals’ Web viewing
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 611
records were coded by looking into each of the Web pages an individual viewed
(therefore, the coding unit is a page). After the content categorizing into four focus
issues and others, the hit number (the number of clicks) and the time spent on a page
for each category were calculated.6 For the reliability test, 20% of the cases were
randomly selected and coded separately by two trained coders. The two coders’
agreement rate was about 98.5%, yielding Cohen’s kappa .96.
Other Variables. Basic demographic variables including gender (female D 66%,
male D 34%); age (18–24 D 40%, 25–29 D 54%, 30 or older D 6%); race (White D
80.4%); party identification (Democrat D 46.4%, Republican D 35.1%, Indepen-
dent D 14.2%); and political ideology (M D 3.68, SD D 1.61) were measured and
used as control variables.
Results
Manipulation Check
To see if TV viewing manipulation was successful, subjects were asked what
issues they viewed on the news during the study. Two individuals who failed to
correctly identify issue coverage were excluded in the final analysis.
The study also examined differences between conditions in terms of basic de-
mographics (i.e., gender, age, race, party identification, and political ideology) to
check whether the random assignment was successful. No statistically significant
difference was found between the conditions. Therefore, experimental manipulation
and random assignment appeared to be successful.
Testing the Accessibility From Priming Hypothesis
First, this study tested whether subsequent online information selection would be
affected by the presence of issues in news coverage. If the accessibility effect from
priming occurs, when all four issues are covered (presence condition), subjects’
online information selection should be higher compared to absence and no news
conditions. Across all four focus issues, however, this study did not find any statisti-
cally significant differences between the three conditions—presence, absence, and
no news conditions—suggesting no main effect of the presence of issues in news
coverage on subsequent online information selection, abortion: F (2, 128) D .273,
p D .762, observed power D .16; gay rights: F (2, 122) D 1.621, p D .20, observed
power D .46; the economy: F (2, 123) D 1.51, p D .23, observed power D .44;
the war in Iraq: F (2, 123) D .549, p D .58, observed power D .23. Therefore, no
accessibility effect from priming on subsequent online information selection was
found, rejecting H1.
612 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
Testing the Instrumental Utility of Information Hypothesis
It appeared that there was no difference between ‘‘all four issues covered’’ (pres-
ence condition), ‘‘one issue missing’’ (absence condition), and ‘‘no news.’’ The data
were then pooled and divided into two groups per issue: no prior issue coverage
(issue absence and control condition) and prior issue coverage (issue presence
conditions).
The study then tested H2, whether prior exposure to issues or no prior exposure
to issues influenced individuals’ subsequent online information selection patterns.
In particular, the study examined whether individuals selected more information
when they were not previously exposed to the issue than when they were, driven
by the instrumental utility of news information. Supporting H2 in general, the results
suggest the existence of instrumental utility effects. Individuals tended to find more
information about an issue on the Web when they were not previously exposed to
the issue, except for the abortion issue, F (1, 250) D .042, p D .41, Power D .11.
This tendency was found to be consistent across the other three issues, gay rights,
F (1, 250) D 4.45, p D .015, Partial �2 D .04 (no prior issue coverage M D .18,
SD D .26; prior issue coverage M D .11, SD D .21), the economy F (1, 250) D 1.9,
p D .09, Partial �2 D .02 (no prior issue coverage M D .27, SD D .31; prior issue
coverage M D .20, SD D .23), and war F (1, 250) D 2.65, p D .05, Partial �2 D
.03 (no prior issue coverage M D .22, SD D .29; prior issue coverage M D .13,
SD D .26).
The findings again suggest (at the very least) the accessibility effect of priming
by prior exposure to issues did not explain individuals’ issue information selection
patterns on the Web. Rather, the instrumental utility of new issue information, which
was excluded in news but included in the Web, appeared to better explain the
subsequent issue information selectivity online, supporting H2.
Testing the Personal Issue Importance Hypothesis
Based on the notion of personal issue importance, the present study expected
that personal issue importance as individuals’ predisposition would influence in-
dividuals’ online information selection patterns regardless of prior exposure to the
issue (H3). As expected, personal issue importance made a significant difference
between conditions across all four focus issues, the abortion issue, F (1, 250) D
38.55, p D .000, Partial �2 D .14 (high personal importance M D .44, SD D .34;
low personal importance M D .19, SD D .23), gay rights, F (1, 250) D 14.69, p D
.000, Partial �2 D .06 (high personal importance M D .21, SD D .27; low personal
importance M D .10, SD D .18), the economy, F (1, 249) D 2.58, p D .05, Partial
�
2
D .01 (high personal importance M D .25, SD D .26; low personal importance
M D .19, SD D .26), and war, F (1, 249) D 17.19, p D .000, Partial �2 D .07
(high personal importance M D .30, SD D .29; low personal importance M D .14,
SD D .20).7 When individuals showed higher levels of personal issue importance,
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 613
the selectivity on the issue of personal importance increased to a greater extent. The
findings suggest strong effects of personal issue importance on online information
selection behavior, confirming H3.
Testing Interaction Effects
Next, the study tested the interaction effects of TV news coverage and personal
issue importance on subsequent information selection patterns on the Web. In par-
ticular, the study explored the possibility of vigilance effects (H4) and/or escalation
effect (H5). When individuals care about an issue but do not find out about the
issue prior to Web browsing, their subsequent online information selectivity on that
particular issue would be amplified (vigilance effect). On the other hand, it may also
be possible that even if there is prior information regarding an issue, an individual
would still seek information further as long as the issue centers on one’s interest.
In this case, information selection on the Web would stay about the same or be
amplified when individuals have a high level of personal issue concern and when
they are exposed to news coverage on the issue (escalation effect).
As shown in Figure 1, the gay rights issue yielded a vigilance effect, supporting
H4. Those who were concerned with the issue of gay rights exhibited higher levels
of selectivity when the issue was not found prior to their Web browsing, F (3, 81) D
Figure 1
Vigilance Effect: Interaction of News Coverage and Personal Issue Importance on
Subsequent Information Selection on the Web (Gay Rights)
614 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
Figure 2
Escalation Effect: Interaction of News Coverage and Personal Issue Importance
on Subsequent Information Selection on the Web (Abortion)
2.58, p D .05, Partial �2 D .10 (Figure 1). However, none of the other interac-
tion effects of personal issue importance and instrumental utility was statistically
significant.
Interestingly, in the case of the abortion issue, an escalation effect was found,
F (3, 87) D 4.45, p D .006, Partial �2 D .15 (Figure 2). When individuals had a high
level of personal issue importance on the abortion issue and they were exposed to
the issue prior to Web browsing, their selectivity on abortion was significantly high,
confirming H5.
Discussion
Using a Web behavior recording program that measures naturally occurring Web
viewing, click-by-click, in real time, the study examined how traditional news cov-
erage (in this case TV news) influences individuals’ subsequent information selection
on the Web. Although many media pundits have claimed that traditional news me-
dia have been threatened by the growth of the Web, research has consistently shown
that the Web functions as a supplement to traditional news. However, relatively
little is known about how people use the Web to supplement traditional news. By
employing a unique method that measures online information selection, click-by-
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 615
click at an individual level, the study enables one to better understand the process
by which traditional news coverage influences subsequent information selection on
the Web. As Valentino and colleagues (2004) noted, the lack of sound theoretical
explanations and inconsistent empirical findings concerning how media messages
influence subsequent selective exposure may be partly due to the imprecise methods
used to measure information exposure; the problem becomes more obvious in the
case of online information exposure (Tewksbury, 2006). The individual level Web
behavior recording method employed in this study, therefore, should allow one to
better understand individuals’ information selection patterns.
This study first empirically tested three competing theoretical accounts for selec-
tive information searches on the Web in relation to prior exposure to traditional
media in an attempt to offer a better theoretical framework to explain the relation-
ship between traditional news and Web use patterns: the accessibility effect from
priming, instrumental utility of information, and personal issue importance. To some
extent, these theories predict seemingly conflicting outcomes, or at least provide
competing explanations for online selectivity following exposure to traditional news
coverage. Prior research has viewed the relationship between traditional news media
and the Web from the displacement (e.g., Coffey & Stipp, 1997; Stephens, 1998) or
complementary perspective (e.g., Ahlers, 2006; Dutta-Bergman, 2004), but has not
specified the processes by which the displacement or complementary relationship is
formed. Dutta-Bergman’s noteworthy study, for instance, reveals significant overlap
between traditional and online news consumption at the level of domain-specific
topic, but not by medium, clearly representing evidence for the complementary
relationship within topic areas. Although it goes one step further by illustrating
the details of the complementary relationship using a large scale of survey data
(Pew Research data), Dutta-Bergman’s study still does not allow one to identify
the processes underlying the relationship between traditional news and Web use
because of limitations in the survey method.
The findings of this study have several important implications regarding selectivity
on the Web and its relationship with traditional news use. Most importantly, the
findings of this study exhibit the strong effects of personal issue importance on
individuals’ information selection on the Web across all four focus issues. Including
the control group (no news condition), the impact of personal issue importance
was sustained. The main effects of personal issue importance also survived when
news coverage or the prior issue exposure factor was introduced. This suggests that
individuals’ information selection online is perhaps primarily driven by personal
issue importance as an intrinsic motivation. At a more macro level, the results may
imply that the Web may greatly facilitate sharper distinctions or a highly segmented
specialized audience as found in Tewksbury’s (2003) research on online news
consumption. Ultimately, this trend may lead to the development of distinctive
groups along issue lines, namely ‘‘issue publics’’ (Converse, 1964). With increased
specialized information and interactivity, issue publics can more easily focus on
the topics they are concerned with in their information selection. By using the
additional information that is available through more specialized and interactive
616 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
media, individuals would advance their knowledge and consolidate their attitude.
However, this narrow range of information exposure resulting from the new media
consumption has been an enduring concern among communication scholars (e.g.,
Davis, 1999; Katz, 1996). With the rapid diffusion of specialized and interactive new
communication technologies, the intensified issue publics and their narrow range
of information selection may weaken social consensus and polarize the public to
more extreme positions on the issues of their concerns (Havick, 2000; Sunstein,
2002).
Still, the strong impact of personal issue importance on online selectivity should
not completely discount the influence of traditional news on Web use patterns.
Consistent with prior research (Atkin, 1973; Knobloch et al., 2003), the results of the
study generally supported the notion of the instrumental utility of new information
on the Web in relation to issue coverage on traditional news. While prior research
on the instrumental utility of information has centered on how features of messages
(e.g., salience features; Knobloch et al.) cause individuals to view the utility of the
messages differently, this study expands the theory to how prior exposure (i.e., ab-
sence vs. presence of information) influences later judgments about the instrumental
utility of related issue information, especially when involved with the consumption
of two different media: traditional and new media. Individuals tended to select more
information about a particular issue online when they were not exposed to the issue
prior to their Web browsing. Individuals actively seek online information ‘‘missing’’
from traditional news media in an attempt to reduce extrinsic uncertainty. When
issues are already covered by traditional news media, its information utility becomes
relatively low. Because of this, individuals would rather find new information when
they have a chance to browse the Web. More importantly, when personal concern
on an issue is relatively high and the issue is not covered in the news in the prior
exposure setting, their level of subsequent information selection becomes amplified
(vigilance effect), as shown with the gay rights issue in this study. In some cases,
though, individuals’ level of selectivity stay about the same or become amplified
in the prior presence of the issue in the news setting, as shown in the abortion
issue in this study. At any rate, prior exposure to traditional news still matters in
information selection on the Web. It is not so clear, however, why the study found
mixed patterns of interaction effects. Given that the results varied by issue, one can
speculate that the nature of the issue might have played a role. Future research
should replicate this study using a wider range of issues and consider this factor in
developing a theoretical framework.
At the very least, the findings of this study imply that the simple accessibility effect
of priming may need some qualifications when explaining the influences of prior
exposure to traditional news on information selection on the Web. Individuals do
not merely follow what traditional news media suggest they should pursue on the
Web. It appears that information selection on the Web is primarily determined by
individuals’ habitual and intrinsic inclination (i.e., personal issue importance) and
motivational calculation about what would be the most useful in consideration of
extrinsic utility (i.e., instrumental utility). As Higgins (1996) noted, individuals at
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 617
times do not apply primed constructs to subsequent judgments. Chronically acces-
sible constructs (Higgins & Brendl, 1995) as well as motivational factors (Martin,
1986; Martin & Achee, 1992; Martin, Seta, & Crelia, 1990) also play substantive
roles in priming effects. In this sense, the effects of personal issue importance and
instrumental utility and the interplay of the two found in this study may all need to
be incorporated to expand the theoretical framework of priming as well.
The findings of this study may have noteworthy implications for the news media
industry in particular. Most of all, the news media industry (including online news)
should more carefully consider that their audience may have various reasons for
seeking information, which may alter the scope or type of information provided.
Especially, because online news outlets find it difficult to set agendas (Althaus &
Tewksbury, 2002; Tewksbury, 2003), the need to consider individuals’ intrinsic and
extrinsic motivations would be imperative. Faced with the significant threat of the
Web, the traditional news media has already actively adopted the Web as an addi-
tional news outlet. However, some studies (e.g., Tewksbury & Althaus, 2000) have
shown that the content of traditional and online news almost mirror each other. The
results of this study suggest that the news media industry should consider significant
differences in information consumption between traditional and online news outlets.
This study reinforces the idea that the two media outlets should be supplementary
but different in terms of the scope and type of information that each provides.
The present study, of course, has some limitations. Although the study assumes
that the processes of selectivity and media use patterns are common psychological
processes shared by all human beings, the use of a convenient sample of college
students might still have limitations in the generalizability of the results of the study.
The power turned out to be relatively low for some of the statistically insignificant
findings, suggesting some caution in interpreting those results. To increase the ex-
ternal validity, the study employed real Web sites as a venue for online information
selection, but the findings of the study might have been influenced by uncontrolled
real Web sites (although the between-subject design should have randomized the
potential error). Perhaps the biggest limitation is the limited number of issues tested
in this particular study. Since the study found mixed results in the interaction effects
by issue, it is imperative to explore the influence of the nature of issues on selectivity
on the Web.
Despite all, the study shed light upon one’s understanding of how individuals
use traditional news and the Web and how news coverage influences subsequent
information selection on the Web in terms of selectivity. The findings of the study
should better inform one of the ways to untangle the relationship between traditional
news and Web uses in the rapidly changing media environment.
Notes
1One might argue that high levels of specialization already have been observed in other
news media such as cable television. However, specialization of online information is still
618 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
distinguishable from cable television. The ownership structure of cable television constrains
the ability to provide greater specialization and diversity; for example, increased competition
and lower profitability in cable television, where information providers maintain an oligopoly
system (Gomery, 1993), have reduced message diversity, and programming largely depends
on market size and other market factors.
2In some cases, constructs are chronically, as opposed to temporally, accessible. Chronic
accessibility may come from different sources (Price & Tewksbury, 1997): Frequent activation
and self-concept (i.e., predispositions).
3According to the Annual Report on American Journalism (2004), edited packages in the
evening news of three networks were 84% of the time on these programs, 6.8 packages on
each evening. An average length of an edited package was 138 seconds.
4Visual image files were not captured to avoid delayed information in loading individuals’
Web activities.
5Centrality was measured by the time spent on a content category out of total time spent
as well. The patterns were similar to hit measures (Mabortion D .32, SDabortion D 1.37; Mgay D
.12, SDgay D .19; Meconomy D .16, SDeconomy D .22; Mwar D .18, SDwar D .22. The results
using hit measures were reported in this paper.
6If the duration of reading a page exceeded 10 minutes, this was regarded as an interruption
of the study and the duration was calculated as just 10 minutes.
7Instead of dichotomizing personal issue importance scores, the present study regressed
individuals’ selectivity scores on their 7-point personal issue importance scales, TV viewing
conditions, the interaction of the two, and other control variables including gender, race, age,
political ideology, and party identification. The patterns of these results are about the same.
The effects of personal issue importance were statistically significant and survived across all
four focus issues.
References
Ahlers, D. (2006). News consumption and the news electronic media. Harvard International
Journal of Press/Politics, 11(1), 29–52.
Althaus, S. K., & Kim, Y. M. (2006). Priming effects in complex information environments:
Reassessing the impact of news discourse on presidential approval. Journal of Politics,
68(4), 960–976.
Althaus, S. L., & Tewksbury, D. (2002). Agenda-setting and the ‘‘new’’ news: Patterns of
issue importance among readers of the paper and online versions of the New York Times.
Communication Research, 29, 180–207.
Anderson, J. R. (1983). The architecture of cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Annual Report on American Journalism (2004). The state of news media 2004. Retrieved
September 15, 2007, from http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.org/narrative_networktv_
contentanalysis.asp?catD2&mediaD4
Atkin, C. K. (1973). Instrumental utilities and information seeking. In P. Clarke (Ed.), New
models for communication research (pp. 205–242). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Berent, M. K., & Krosnick, J. A. (1995). The relation between political attitudes importance
and knowledge structure. In M. Lodge & K. McGraw (Eds.), Political judgment: Structure
and process (pp. 91–110). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Blumler, J. G., & McQuail, D. (1969). Television in politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Boninger, D. S., Krosnick, J. A., Berent, M. K., & Fabrigar, L. R. (1995). The causes and
consequences of attitude importance. In R. E. Petty & J. A. Krosnick (Eds.), Attitude strength:
Antecedents and consequences (pp. 159–190). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Inc.
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 619
Chaffee, S. H., & McLeod, J. (1973). Individual vs. social predictors of information seeking.
Journalism Quarterly, 50, 237–245.
Chaffee, S. H., & Schleuder, J. (1986). Measurement and effects of attention to media news.
Human Communication Research, 13, 76–107.
Chaiken, S. (1980). Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source
versus message cues in persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 752–
766.
Chaiken, S., Liberman, A., & Eagly, A. H. (1989). Heuristic and systematic information pro-
cessing within and beyond the persuasion context. In J. S. Uleman & J. A. Bargh (Eds.),
Unintended thought (pp. 212–252). New York: Guilford Press.
Coffey, S., & Stipp, H. (1997). The interactions between computer and television usage. Journal
of Advertising Research, 37, 61–67.
Collins A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing.
Psychological Review 82, 407–428.
Converse, P. E. (1964). The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In D. A. Apter (Ed.),
Ideology and discontent (pp. 206–261). New York: Free Press.
Davis, R. (1999). The web of politics. New York: Oxford.
Domke, D. (2001). Racial cues and political ideology: An examination of associative priming.
Communication Research, 28, 772–801.
Domke, D., Shah, D. V., & Wackman, D. B. (1998). Media priming effects: Accessibility,
association, and activation. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 10, 51–74.
Dutta-Bergman, M. J. (2004). Complementarity in consumption of news types across traditional
new media. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 48, 41–60.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
Fiske, S. T., & Neuberg, S. L. (1990). A continuum of impression formation, from category-
based to individuating process: Influences of information and motivation on attention and
interpretation. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 23,
pp. 1–74). New York: Academic.
Glynn, C. J., Ostman, R. E., & McDonald, D. G. (1995). Opinions, perception, and social
reality. In T. L. Glasser & C. T. Salmon (Eds.), Public opinion and the communication of
consent (pp. 249–277). New York: Guilford Press.
Gomery, D. (1993). Who owns the media? In A. Alexander, J. Owers & R. Carveth (Eds.), Media
economics: Theory and practice (pp. 47–70). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Inc.
Greenberg, A. (1999). Reply to Pippa Norris’s ‘‘Who Surfs?’’ In E. C. Kamarck & J. S. Nye, Jr.
(Eds.), Democracy.com? Governance in a networked world (pp. 95–98). Hollis, NH: Hollis
Publishing.
Havick, J. (2000). The impact of the Internet on a television-based society. Technology in
Society, 22, 273–287.
Higgins, E. T. (1996). Knowledge activation: Accessibility, applicability, and salience. In
E. T. Higgins & A. W. Kruglanski (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles
(pp. 133–168). New York: Guilford.
Higgins, E. T., Bargh, J. A., & Lombardi, W. (1985). Nature of priming effects on categorization.
Journal of Experimental Psychology, 11, 59–69.
Higgins, E. T., & Brendl, C. M. (1995). Accessibility and applicability: Some ‘‘activation rules’’
in influencing judgment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 218–243.
Higgins, E. T., Rholes, W. S., & Jones, C. R. (1977). Category accessibility and impression
formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 141–154.
Hutchings. V. L. (2003). Public opinion and democratic accountability: How citizens learn
about politcs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News that matters: Television and American opinion.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Katz, E. (1996). And deliver us from segmentation. Annals of American Academy of Political
and Social Science, 546, 22–33.
620 Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media/December 2008
Kim, Y. M. (2005). Use and disuse of contextual primes in dynamic news environments, Journal
of Communication, 55, 737–755.
Kinder, D. R., & Kiewiet, D. R. (1979). Economic discontent and political behavior: The role of
personal grievances and collective economic judgments in Congressional voting. American
Journal of Political Science, 23, 495–527.
Knobloch, S., Dillman-Carpentier, F., & Zillmann, D. (2003). Effects of salience dimensions of
informational utility on selective exposure to online news. Journalism & Mass Communi-
cation Quarterly, 80, 91–108.
Marcus, G. E., Neuman, W. R., & Mackuen, M. (2000). Affective intelligence and political
judgment. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Martin, L. L. (1986). Set/reset: Use and disuse of concepts in impression formation. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 493–504.
Martin, L. L., & Achee, J. W. (1992). Beyond accessibility: The role of processing objectives in
judgment. In L. L. Martin & A. Tesser (Eds.), The construction of social judgments (pp. 195–
216). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Martin, L. L., Seta, J. J., & Crelia, R.A. (1990). Assimilation and contrast as a function of people’s
willingness and ability to expend effort in forming an impression. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 59, 27–37.
McQuarrie, E. F., & Munson, J. M. (1992). A revised product involvement inventory: Improved
usability and validity. Advances in Consumer Research, 19, 108–115.
Mutz, D. C. (1998). Impersonal influence: How perspectives of mass collectives affect political
attitudes. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Nielsen/NetRatings (2007). Average Web usage. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://pm.net
ratings.com/nnpm/owa/NRpublicreports.usagemonthly
Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral
route to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Petty, R. E., & Krosnick, J. A. (1995). Attitude strength: Antecedents and consequences.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Pew Internet and American Life (2005, October 17). The Internet and democratic debate.
Retrieved May 15, 2007, from http://www.pewinternet.org
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (1997, October 17). TV news viewership
declines. Retrieved March 15, 2007, from http://www.people-press.org/mediaque.htm
Pratto, F., & Oliver, P. J. (1991). Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of negative
social information. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 61, 380–391.
Price, V., & Tewksbury, D. (1997). News values and public opinion: A theoretical account of
media priming and framing. In G. Barnett & F. Boster (Eds.), Progress in communication
science (Vol. 13, pp. 173–212). London: Ablex Publishing.
Price, V., & Zaller, J. (1993). Who gets the news? Alternative measures of news reception and
their implications for research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 57, 133–164.
Rash, W., Jr. (1997). Politics on the Nets: Wiring the political process. New York: W. H.
Freeman.
Richins, M. L., Bloch, P. H., & McQuarrie, E. F. (1992). How enduring and situational
involvement combine to create involvement responses. Journal of Consumer Psychology,
1, 143–153.
Rogers, E. M. (1985). The diffusion of home computers among households in Silicon Valley.
Marriage and Family Review, 8, 89–100.
Roskos-Ewoldsen, D. R., Roskos-Ewoldsen, B., & Dillman-Carpentier, F. R. (2002). Media
priming: A synthesis. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media Effects: Advances in theory
and research (2nd ed., pp. 97–120). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Stephens, M. (1998). Which communications revolution is it, anyway? Journalism & Mass
Communication Quarterly, 75, 9–13.
Sunstein, C. R. (2001). Republic.com. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Sunstein, C. R. (2002). The law of group polarization. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10, 175–
195.
Kim/WHERE IS MY ISSUE? 621
Tewksbury, D. (2003). What do Americans really want to know? Tracking the behavior of
news readers on the Internet. Journal of Communication, 53, 694–710.
Tewksbury, D. (2006). Exposure to the newer media in a presidential primary campaign.
Political Communication, 23, 313–332.
Tewksbury, D., & Althaus, S. L. (2000). Differences in knowledge acquisition among readers of
the paper and online versions of a national newspaper. Journalism & Mass Communication
Quarterly, 77, 457–479.
Tulving, E. (1993). Elements of episodic memory. New York: Oxford University Press.
Valentino, N. A. (1999). Crime news and the priming of racial attitudes during evaluations of
the president. Public Opinion Quarterly, 63, 293–320.
Valentino, N. A., Hutchings, V. L., & Williams, D. (2004). The impact of political adver-
tising on knowledge, Internet information seeking, and candidate preference. Journal of
Communication, 54, 337–354.
Valentino, N. V., Traugott, M. W., & Hutchings, V. L. (2002). Group cues and ideological
constraint: A replication of political advertising effects studies in the lab and the field.
Political Communication, 19, 29–48.
Wang, G. (1977). Information utility as a predictor of newspaper readership. Journalism Quar-
terly, 54, 791–794.
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Communication Research
http://crx.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/01/06/009365021038712
4
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0093650210387124
published online 6 January 2011Communication Research
Jonas Lefevere, Knut De Swert and Stefaan Walgrave
Effects of Popular Exemplars in Television News
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at:Communication ResearchAdditional services and information for
http://crx.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:
http://crx.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
What is This?
– Jan 6, 2011Version of Record >>
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
http://crx.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/01/06/0093650210387124
http://www.sagepublications.com
http://crx.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
http://crx.sagepub.com/subscriptions
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
http://crx.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/01/06/0093650210387124.full
http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Communication Research
XX(X) 1 –17
© The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission: http://www.
sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0093650210387124
http://crx.sagepub.com
1University of Antwerp, Belgium
Corresponding Author:
Jonas Lefevere, University of Antwerp, Sint Jacobsstraat 2, Antwerp, Belgium 2000
Email: jonas.lefevere@ua.ac.be
Effects of Popular Exemplars
in Television News
Jonas Lefevere1, Knut De Swert1,
and Stefaan Walgrave1
Abstract
Common people that are apparently randomly selected by journalists to illustrate a news
story (popular exemplars) have a substantial effect on what the audience think about
the issue. This effect may be partly due to the mere fact that popular exemplars attract
attention and act as attention commanders just like many other speaking sources in the
news. Yet, popular exemplars’ effects extend well beyond that of other talking sources. Due
to their similarity, trustworthiness, and the vividness of their account, popular exemplars
have significantly more impact than experts that are being interviewed or, in particular,
than politicians that are quoted in the news. We show this drawing on an internet-based
experiment that uses fake television news items as stimuli and that systematically compares
the effect of these talking sources in the news. We also find that taking into account
preexisting attitudes changes the findings substantially. The effects are more robust and
yield a more nuanced picture of what type of exemplars have what kind of effect on what
type of public.
Keywords
exemplification, media effects, experiment, popular exemplars, media sources
Although politicians, spin doctors, movement spokespersons, and corporate communica-
tion specialists are wearing themselves out to get access to the news, journalists seem to be
in love with just about everyone else. The use of normal people in television news reports,
the “men and women on the street,” “vox pops” or “exemplars,” has become common
journalistic practice (Arpan, 2009; Daschmann & Brosius, 1999). People without any spe-
cific representative function or expertise who appear to be randomly picked—we will refer
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
2 Communication Research XX(X
)
to them as “popular exemplars” throughout this text—frequently appear in the news to give
their opinion or tell their story. Gibson, Gan, Hill, Hoffman, and Seigler (cited in Zillmann
& Brosius, 2000) investigated the prevalence of exemplification in the U.S. television
news and found that half of all news reports contained at least one exemplar. And the trend
seems to be upward. In Belgium, the share of popular exemplars in the main newscasts has
grown from 27% to 37% of all speaking actors during the 2003-2007 period (De Swert,
Walgrave, Hooghe, Uce, & Hardy, 2008). The same study showed that in France, Canada,
Turkey, and the Netherlands, the balance has shifted even more toward common people,
whereas in the U.S., Ireland, and Germany, television news is featuring only slightly less
common people. In a sample of 11 countries, only Norway proved to have a consistently
low amount of popular exemplars in its main television newscasts.
The fact that popular exemplars are increasingly used raises questions about their effects
on the audience. Are these interviews with common people just illustrating a story and
making it more attractive for the public? Or, are popular exemplars influential and do they
have an effect on what the audience thinks about the topic the “ordinary” source is talking
about? The available experimental work in communications research clearly points in the
latter direction. Popular exemplars have effects on what people think about an issue.
This study speaks to the exemplification literature and makes three contributions. Other
than most extant studies, we focus on the effects that popular exemplars on television have
on the viewers. Second, we do not compare popular exemplars with base-rate information
but with other sources that give their opinion on the same issue; this allows us to look at
the specific effect of the popular exemplar. Third, previous studies often did not measure
the preexisting attitudes of the subjects about the issue; we do and can assess the relative
contribution of the popular exemplar treatment on top of what people thought before
treatment.
The study aims to answer two basic research questions: (a) does the use of exemplars in
television news have an effect on the opinion of the viewers about the issue at stake?; (b)
to what extent is the popular exemplar-effect different from the effects of interviews with
other sources like politicians or experts? To tackle these questions, we draw on an internet-
based experiment in Belgium in the framework of which respondents were treated with six
different TV-news items containing ordinary people, experts, and politicians giving differ-
ent statements in different configurations.
Why and How Do Exemplars Affect the Public?
Exemplification theory is a well-established theoretical field in mass communication
(Zillmann, 1999, 2002; Zillmann & Brosius, 2000). News coverage does not only provide
base-rate information (e.g., general statements, authoritative and reliable information,
facts and statistics, etc.). Base-rate information is usually systematic and representative (of
reality) but it lacks vividness and clarity. It is relatively difficult for the journalist to bring
and it is difficult for the viewer to absorb (Daschmann & Brosius, 1999). Therefore, news
often also contains other types of information: individual cases/statements (examples or
exemplars) that are used to illustrate the scope of the phenomenon described in the news
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Lefevere et al. 3
story (Zillmann, Gibson, Sundar, & Perkins, 1996). Exemplars should be seen as case
reports used to represent characteristics typical of a group of events (Zillmann & Brosius,
2000). An exemplar statement thus suggests that a whole group of people supports this
stance or shares this experience. As mentioned above, this process of exemplification
(Zillmann, 1999, 2002) and the effects of the use of exemplars have been well-studied over
the recent two decades (Abraham & Appiah, 2006; Arpan, 2009; Aust & Zillmann, 1996;
Brosius, 1996, 2003; Brosius & Bathelt, 1994; Daschmann, 2001, 2004; Daschmann &
Brosius, 1999; Gibson & Zillmann, 1998; Hu & Sundar, 2007; Perry & Gonzenbach, 1997;
Zillmann et al., 1996; Zillmann, Perkins, & Sundar, 1992). The effects of exemplars in
these studies are defined in different ways, ranging from the perceived news credibility
over news persuasiveness to (perceived) public opinion. The main conclusions of these
studies were that (a) the use of exemplars has an effect on public opinion formation and
that (b) this effect is much stronger than the effect of base-rate information such as statis-
tics or official information. Even if the latter kind of information has greater validity and
is more representative, people tend to rely more on individual illustrative stories to form
their opinion (Daschmann, 2000; Daschmann & Brosius, 1999).
One important difference between our study and the majority of existing research on
exemplars is that we do not focus on perceived public opinion, but rather on people’s per-
sonal opinion: The former is a cognitive effect (how do people think the majority of the
public thinks), whereas the latter is a persuasive effect. Though existing research has
focused mainly on how exemplars, which exemplify public opinion, alter the perception of
the public, the persuasive effect of exemplars should not be overlooked. Perry and
Gonzenbach (1997) tested the effects of exemplification versus base-rate information on
perceived and personal opinion. Their findings indicate that both perceived and personal
opinion vary positively with the distribution of exemplars in the news; combining conflict-
ing base-rate information and exemplars in the same item, Brosius and Bathelt (1994)
found that people’s own opinion moved away from base-rate information. As such, we do
have reason to believe that exemplification cannot only have effects on perceived opinion,
but can actually have persuasive effects on personal opinion as well. Furthermore, in the
studies we mentioned the direction of the effect was equal for the two dependent variables
(perceived and personal opinion). As Perry and Gonzenbach argue, effects on personal
opinion are quite consequential, since we are dealing with persuasive effects.
Why do exemplars affect the audience? Media content in general and in particular the
input of media sources featured in news content can cause changes in the receivers’ level
of knowledge and their perceptions. As Graber (1988) argues, televised news is highly
credible and authentic because people trust what they see more than what they hear. In
Graber’s research, respondents stated that the visuals allowed them to form more complete
and accurate impressions of people as well as events. Visualizing people as interviewees in
a news report is therefore bound to enhance media effects and persuasion (Petty &
Cacioppo, 1986). Speaking news sources work as attention commanders and facilitate an
effect on the audience’s evaluation of the subject the news source is talking about.
Consequently, the effects of a message that is mediated by a visible news source are larger
than the effects caused by an unmediated message. Gibson and Zillmann (1998, 1993) find
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
4 Communication Research XX(X)
this effect even for direct citations compared to paraphrasing in newspaper coverage. The
fact that speaking sources in the news have a greater impact than base-rate information has,
in our opinion, been quite well-documented. We are mainly interested here in looking at the
effects that different types of sources have on opinion formation. So, we expect differences
depending on the type of news source being interviewed in the news. The source credibility
theory states that the more credible the source is, the more likely it is that the information
brought by the source will be recalled by the receiver and the more probable it is that it will
induce persuasion toward the advocacy (for an overview of studies confirming this,
Pornpitakpan, 2004). Among the many factors that have been found to determine source
credibility, two factors stand out: Expertise and trustworthiness (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley,
1953). Expertise obviously is most relevant for experts speaking, and it is certainly less
attributable to popular exemplars. Trustworthiness mainly refers to the perception of the
audience about the extent to which speaking news sources are trying to persuade them.
Experts are supposed to be neutral and therefore trustworthy, but popular exemplar state-
ments are generally considered to come from the heart. As such, popular exemplars are not
meant to be persuasive either. Politicians are less trustworthy because they, by nature, try
to convince people. Another attribute that is worth mentioning, is similarity between source
and receiver. Feldman (1984) found perceived similarity to enhance source credibility
effects. Hence, source credibility theory suggests that both popular exemplars (trustworthi-
ness, similarity) and experts (trustworthiness, expertise) have their advantages in the pro-
cess of persuasion, whereas politicians, scoring low on all these characteristics, should be
least effective.
The differential effects of different news sources can also be grounded in other, similar
theories. Brosius (1995) made a reception model of everyday rationality and claims that
exemplars have some distinct features that makes them stick in people’s memory. News con-
sumers use cognitive heuristics to deal with the overwhelming flow of daily information
coming to them (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Popular exemplars have the vividness that
makes it easier for people to remember them and to relate to them. Busselle and Shrum (2003,
p. 260) distinguish three attributes of exemplars: Vividness, realism, and distinctiveness.
These attributes of exemplars work as attention commanders (Taylor & Thompson, 1982),
which is a necessary step in the process of direct media effects (Perse, 2001). Once attention
has led to a prominent place in memory (Busselle & Shrum, 2003; Wyer & Srull, 1989),
exemplar information automatically becomes more available than pallid base-rate informa-
tion, which has neither been noticed, nor stored in memory as well as the exemplars have. In
short, popular exemplars create information that is more available to people (Kahneman,
Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). At the next decision moment, the
easiest accessible information is (unconsciously) considered as the most valid information
and will be used to form the opinion or judgment one needs to make. A statement is poten-
tially most influential when it (a) attracts attention and (b) ends up in the “upper drawer” of
the receiver’s mind. Since the realism and vividness of popular exemplars is higher compared
to other sources, the “upper drawer” will be full of these concrete exemplars, forming the
sample on which a more generalized opinion is based. Combining the source credibility the-
ory and the heuristic approach leads to the key hypothesis of this article:
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Lefevere et al. 5
Hypothesis 1: News reports containing popular exemplars affect the audience’s
opinions about the issue more than news items in which experts convey the same
information and especially more than when it is conveyed by a politician.
Method
Our popular exemplar experiment was embedded in a large internet panel survey in the run
up to the 2009 regional elections in Belgium: University of Antwerp Web based Electoral
Panel (UAWEP09). The panel is not representative for the Belgian population, but it con-
tains a diverse group of people in terms of sex, age, and education. The panel survey
encompassed three waves. The first wave measured several preexisting attitudes toward
the issue of mobility, as well as general media-related attitudes and sociodemographic
variables. The media stimulus was embedded in the second wave, which also included the
postmeasurements of the relevant attitudes.
The stimulus was a clip from a real news broadcast of the main television broadcaster
in Belgium (Eén) in which a constructed, fake news item was embedded. Preceding the
fake news item was a real news item that reported about important road works on a major
Belgian highway (E19) connecting two key cities in Belgium. Following this real item, the
news anchor made the transfer to the fake item that was closely related to the actual news
item. The anchor explained that, following the decision to renovate the highway, the neigh-
boring community of Kontich had decided to invest in local exits of the highway as well.
However, this decision caused delay in the community’s planned investments in bike paths.
Following this introduction by the news anchor, an off screen voice reiterated the set-up as
footage of the junctions and bike paths was shown. Depending on the condition, the off-
screen voice was then followed by interviews with ordinary locals, apparently randomly
picked from the streets and interviewed on the street, a local politician, or a university
expert. Again depending on the condition, the actors in the fake news item either supported
the decision of the Kontich municipality council or not. Some of them defended a procar
position concurring with the local government’s decision to prioritize investments in roads
whereas others adopted the opposite position and voiced the opinion that the local govern-
ment should have given priority to investments in bike paths (probike). For the popular
exemplar conditions, three people in the streets each gave a very short quote. For the expert
and politician conditions, only one expert or politician was interviewed. This inserts a pos-
sible confounding factor into our design, as some conditions have three people, and others
have only one. This is hard to avoid, because in real news items it is unlikely that three
experts or politicians are given an opportunity to voice their opinion, and a single popular
exemplar is rare as well. The current design was aimed at creating the most realistic and
externally valid stimulus possible. To minimize the confounding effect, we tried to keep the
length of the total speaking time more or less equal across all conditions. Actual durations
of the fragments in which sources were talking were 33 seconds (popular exemplar, pro-
bikes), 25 seconds (popular exemplar, procars), 32 seconds (expert, probikes), 33 seconds
(expert, procars), 22 seconds (politician, probikes), 29 seconds (politician, procars). The
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
6 Communication Research XX(X)
differences in duration were kept to an absolute minimum, but due to the fact that we could
not abort a speaking source midquote, and the speed of speaking varied, some variation is
unavoidable.
To enhance realism, the off-screen voice was that of a journalist regularly contributing
to the real news on Eén. A professional camera crew working for the news broadcaster shot
the footage and interviews. The microphone used in the item is identical to the one used in
actual news items, and the optical character recognitions (OCRs) were edited to be identi-
cal to the real ones as well. Put shortly, the fabricated news item was as real and credible as
a news item can be and resembled a routine news item as much as possible. After the fake
item, the news anchor started announcing the next item in the news, during which the
image faded to black.
One of the possible problems with online experiments is controlling for actual expo-
sure: One needs to be certain that respondents were actually sitting in front of the screen,
and that they were exposed to the entire clip. As to the first problem, there is no way to
accurately test this, but the fact that people had to actively press the “play” button to start
the clip ensures that they were at least present at the time the fragment started. Pertaining
to the second problem, we embedded hidden time measurements that allowed us to map the
length of exposure for each respondent. Due to the fact that we used a custom-made media
player that inhibited forwarding/rewinding, these two precautions should ensure that we
have an adequate control for actual exposure. Only respondents spending at least the length
of the stimulus in streaming video mode were retained in the analyses. Following the item,
a few diversion questions were asked in the survey. Then, we included several key mea-
surements: We asked the respondents about their opinion on the issue of cars versus bikes.
Respondents had to indicate on a 5-point scale whether they were in favor of investments
in bike paths or in favor of investments in highways. This variable is the dependent in our
analysis. After the experiment, all respondents were debriefed by email and we explained
to them that the news fragment they saw was fabricated.
Table 1 gives a summary of the experimental conditions as well as the number of sub-
jects in each condition. As is customary in experimental designs, we assigned respondents
to the conditions by randomly generating a number between 1 and 6 for each respondent.
Based on this random number, respondents were assigned to one of the six experimental
conditions. The reported N in the table is the number of people that were exposed to the full
stimulus, and answered the questions that are relevant for our analysis.
We included two different popular exemplar conditions, each of them biased in one
direction, containing only probike or only procar statements. We also created conditions
with two other types of actors, two conditions with a politician speaking, and two with an
expert interviewed, each time with a condition having an actor in favor or an actor against
the decision. In each condition, at least 200 respondents watched the stimulus.
The diverse sample of subjects allows us to control for their preexisting attitudes regard-
ing the issue at stake (cars vs. bikes). When people have existing experience or opinions
about an issue, this may have a moderating influence on the effect of media exposure
(Brosius, 2003). If the effects of exposure to exemplars remains intact after controlling for
these variables, which was impossible for the bulk of the previous exemplification research,
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Lefevere et al. 7
we make more correct estimations of the size of the popular exemplar effect. Table 2 pro-
vides frequencies, means, and standard deviations of sociodemographic variables as well
as the variables that will be used in the multivariate analyses.
Results
Let us first briefly take a look at our dependent variable, which is the distribution of opin-
ions in favor of bike paths or highway infrastructure. Table 3 documents the opinion dis-
tribution per condition and after treatment.
The first observation is that, in all conditions, the probike opinions largely outweigh the
procar opinions; if we combine the numbers for being slightly and strongly in favor, they
dominate with 52.9% (popular exemplar, procar condition) to 69.7% (expert, probike con-
dition). The table, second, suggests that popular exemplars and experts do have the greatest
Table 1. Overview of Experimental Condition and Amount of Respondents That Was Fully
Exposed to the Stimulus
Condition Actor N
Popular exemplar
probikes
Three ordinary people interviewed on various
locations in the community, all of which disagree
with the decision to invest in the highway junctio
n
25
2
Popular exemplar
procars
Three ordinary people interviewed on various
locations in the community, all of which agree with
the decision to invest in the highway junction
304
Expert probikes A researcher of the University of Antwerp presents
a mobility survey, of which the results show that
a large majority of people prefer bike paths and
durable mobility investments to solve mobility
problems
264
Expert procars A researcher of the University of Antwerp presents
a mobility survey, of which the results show that
a large majority of people prefer investments in
highway infrastructure to solve mobility problems
292
Politician probikes A politician of the local opposition states that the
majority is ignoring the will of the people, and that
most of the people in the community are against
the investments in highway infrastructure and would
prefer bike paths
281
Politician procars A politician of the local government states that
budgetary constrains force a trade-off, but that the
investments in highway infrastructure should get the
highest priority. The delay in bike path investments is
only temporary
277
Total 1,670
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
8 Communication Research XX(X)
effect on the public. After treatment with one of these conditions, the subjects are either
relatively most probikes or most procars.
To test these apparent associations, we conducted a two-way ANOVA analysis with two
independent factors: Speaking source (popular exemplar, expert or politician) and direction
of opinion (probikes, or procars). By looking at the interaction between the two factors, we
can assess whether the speaking source matters for the effect of direction that was por-
trayed. We report the estimated marginal means for the various groups in Table 4.
Table 2. Overview of Sociodemographic Variables and Variables Used in Analysis
Variable Frequency M SD
Sex
Male 70.5
Female 29.5
Age (18-82) 42.1 14.1
Level of education
None 0.2
Lower education 0.5
Professional secondary, unfinished 0.8
Technical secondary, unfinished 2.6
General secondary, unfinished 1.5
Professional secondary, finished 2.6
Technical secondary, finished 7.1
General secondary, finished 8.7
Higher education, non-university 29.6
University 46.3
Political interest
11-point scale from no interest at all (0) to
highly interested (10)
8.7 1.7
Dependent variable: Poststimulus attitude
Strongly in favor of investments in highways 10.1
Slightly in favor of investments in highways 13.9
No preference for investments in either
highways or bike paths
14.3
Slightly in favor of investments in bike paths 23.0
Strongly in favor of investments in bike paths 38.7
Pre-existing attitude in favor of bike paths
Not in favor of bike paths 37.8
In favor of bike paths 62.2
Pre-existing attitude in favor of highways
Not in favor of highways 81.1
In favor of highways 18.9
N 1670
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
9
T
a
b
le
3
.
O
ve
rv
ie
w
o
f
O
pi
ni
o
n
D
is
tr
ib
ut
io
n
o
n
Sc
al
e
R
an
gi
ng
F
ro
m
1
(
St
ro
ng
ly
in
F
av
or
o
f
In
ve
st
m
en
ts
in
H
ig
hw
ay
s)
t
o
5
(
St
ro
ng
ly
in
F
av
or
o
f
In
ve
st
m
en
ts
in
B
ik
e
Pa
th
s)
, P
er
C
o
nd
it
io
n
(N
=
1
,6
70
)
C
o
nd
it
io
n
St
ro
ng
ly
in
f
av
o
r
o
f
in
ve
st
m
en
ts
in
hi
gh
w
ay
s
(%
)
Sl
ig
ht
ly
in
f
av
o
r
o
f
in
ve
st
m
en
ts
in
hi
gh
w
ay
s
(%
)
N
o
p
re
fe
re
nc
e
fo
r
in
ve
st
m
en
ts
in
e
it
he
r
hi
gh
w
ay
s
o
r
bi
ke
pa
th
s
(%
)
Sl
ig
ht
ly
in
f
av
o
r
o
f
in
ve
st
m
en
ts
in
b
ik
e
pa
th
s
(%
)
St
ro
ng
ly
in
f
av
o
r
o
f
in
ve
st
m
en
ts
in
b
ik
e
pa
th
s
(%
)
N
Po
pu
la
r
ex
em
pl
ar
pr
o
ca
r
14
.1
16
.4
16
.4
23
.0
29
.9
30
4
Po
lit
ic
ia
n
pr
o
ca
r
6.
5
13
.7
18
.1
24
.9
36
.8
27
7
Ex
pe
rt
p
ro
ca
r
10
.3
16
.4
13
.0
22
.3
38
.0
29
2
Po
lit
ic
ia
n
pr
o
bi
ke
12
.1
12
.5
14
.2
22
.8
38
.4
28
1
Po
pu
la
r
ex
em
pl
ar
pr
o
bi
ke
8.
7
10
.7
14
.3
23
.0
43
.3
25
2
Ex
pe
rt
p
ro
bi
ke
8.
3
12
.9
9.
1
22
.0
47
.7
26
4
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
10 Communication Research XX(X)
As expected, speaking source as such did not significantly affect opinion, F(3.043) =
1.633, sig. = .196. Rather, the direction of the opinion that was expressed by the source
mattered, F(17.149) = 9.202, sig = .002. On the whole, the expectation that the direction of
opinion would matter is therefore confirmed by these results. Of interest to our study is the
interaction between speaking source and direction of opinion. Confirming our hypothesis,
this effect is significant as well, F(9.810) = 5.264, sig = .005. These results prove that it is
not merely the direction of opinion that matters, but who is giving the opinion matters as
well. If we look at the estimated marginal means reported in Table 4, the clear and signifi-
cant effect of popular exemplars is immediately noticeable. Though experts seem to have
an effect, the 95% confidence intervals of the two conditions overlap; this result indicates
that experts do not have a significant effect on opinion. For politicians, the results are even
more striking: We find an effect that goes in the opposite direction of what we would
expect. To present this graphically, we plotted the interaction between the two factors of the
ANOVA in Figure 1.
Figure 1 paints an even clearer picture: The difference in opinion is largest between the
two popular exemplar conditions, slightly less outspoken for the expert conditions, and
even inverse for the politician conditions. The conclusion is candid: Popular exemplars
have the greatest impact on people’s own opinion. This implies that journalists using this
type of format in their items should thread carefully because the subsequent swings in
opinion are substantial. Experts have a smaller effect on opinion; the effect of politicians in
the news is insignificant, the distribution of opinion even goes against the direction por-
trayed in the news item. Our key hypothesis is clearly confirmed.
Most prior studies do not control for preexisting attitudes when assessing the stimulus
effect: Though news coverage may have substantial effects on public opinion, people often
hold preexisting notions on the subject that may severely impact the effect of such cover-
age. To test whether this was the case, we added preexisting attitudes (either in favor of
cars, bikes, or without a clear preexisting attitude) to the model as a quasiexperimental fac-
tor. Preexisting attitudes were measured a month earlier in Wave 1 using different ques-
tions than those in Wave 2. We feared asking identical questions might prime the respondents
Table 4. Estimated Marginal Means for Scale Ranging From 1 (Strongly in Favor of Investments
in Highways) to 5 (Strongly in Favor of Investments in Bike Paths), Per Condition (N = 1,670)
95% confidence interval
Speaking source M (SE) Lower bound Upper bound
Popular exemplar, probike 3.813 (.09) 3.645 3.982
Popular exemplar, procar 3.382 (.08) 3.228 3.535
Expert, probike 3.879 (.08) 3.714 4.044
Expert, procar 3.613 (.08) 3.456 3.770
Politician, probike 3.630 (.08) 3.470 3.790
Politician, procar 3.718 (.08) 3.558 3.879
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Lefevere et al. 11
for the stimulus in Wave 2. The preexisting attitudes (Wave 1) were measured via two
5-point scales (totally disagree to totally agree) on two separate statements: “The issue of
mobility should be solved by creating more bike paths” and “The traffic problems should
be solved by investing in more highways.” From these preexposure measurements, the fact
that the overall distribution of opinion toward bikes is skewed toward bike paths was
already clear: of those respondents that had a clear preference, more than 70% were in
favor of bike paths. To ease interpretation, these scales were transformed into three quasiex-
perimental conditions: being in favor of bike paths, being in favor of highways, and not
being in favor of either. This allows us to test whether a clear preexisting direction of opin-
ion in favor of either one of the proposed solutions affects the stimulus effect. In Table 5
we again report the estimated marginal means for the factors direction and speaking source,
this time controlling for preexisting attitudes.
Figure 1. Estimated marginal means of opinion distribution of respondents, on scale ranging
from 1 (Strongly in favor of investments in highways) to 5 (Strongly in favor of investments in bike
paths; N = 1,670)
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
12 Communication Research XX(X)
When we add the preexisting attitudes as a factor to the ANOVA, the results indicate
that controlling for preexisting attitudes further strengthens the net effect of exposure. This
is confirmed in Table 5: Whereas the results of our basic model would have resulted in an
insignificant effect of the expert conditions, this time the effects of the conditions are
greater—the 95% confidence intervals show that both popular exemplars and experts have
a significant effect on opinion. The effect of politicians remains insignificant. Looking at
the significance of the various factors, speaking source remains insignificant, F(1.341) =
1.006, sig = .366, direction of opinion becomes more significant, F(21.312) = 15.989, sig =
.000 as does the interaction effect between the two factors, F(10.716) = 8.040, sig = .000.
As one would expect, the preexisting attitudes constitute the most important factor in the
ANOVA, F(444.526) = 333.501, sig = .000. However, none of the interaction terms with
either speaking source, F(0.383) = 0.287, sig = .887; direction, F(0.190) = 0.142, sig =
.867; or both, F(0.514) = 0.386, sig = .819 are significant. This indicates that although
preexisting attitudes have an expected effect on postexposure opinion, they do not signifi-
cantly alter the overall effect of stimulus exposure. The fact that controlling for them in the
ANOVA causes the expert conditions to reach significance shows the importance of includ-
ing them in the analysis, especially when the distribution of opinions is skewed as it was in
our design. Overall, the conclusion we draw from these analyses is that popular exemplars
have the greatest impact in general, experts have some success and politicians do not seem
to have any effect at all. On top of what most previous research did, we can compare
between a model that controls for preexisting attitudes, and one that does not. Without
including the skewedly distributed preexisting attitudes in the ANOVA we would have
wrongly concluded that experts do not have an effect, whereas in fact they do. Moreover,
our results indicate that controlling for these predispositions does not nullify our initial
findings: The effects of popular exemplars do not become smaller when taking preexisting
attitudes into account, even on the contrary. This is proof of the fact that popular exemplars
matter on top of what people thought before exposure. Still, the impact remains modest
compared to the strong impact of the preexisting attitude.
Table 5. Estimated Marginal Means for Scale Ranging From 1 (Strongly in Favor of Investments
in Highways) to 5 (Strongly in Favor of Investments in Bike Paths), Per Condition, After Adding
Pre-Existing Attitudes as a Quasiexperimental Factor to ANOVA (N = 1,670)
95% confidence interval
Speaking source M (SE) Lower bound Upper bound
Popular exemplar, probike 3.542 (.08) 3.390 3.695
Popular exemplar, procar 3.066 (.07) 2.921 3.211
Expert, probike 3.592 (.08) 3.442 3.742
Expert, procar 3.230 (.08) 3.083 3.378
Politician, probike 3.300 (.08) 3.151 3.449
Politician, procar 3.397 (.08) 3.249 3.544
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Lefevere et al. 13
Conclusion and Discussion
Our evidence shows that common people that are apparently randomly selected by journal-
ists to illustrate a news story have a substantial effect on what the audience thinks about
the issue. This effect may be partly due to the fact that popular exemplars attract attention
and act as attention commanders just as many other speaking sources in the news do. Yet,
popular exemplar effects extend well beyond the effects of other talking sources. Due to
their similarity, trustworthiness, and the vividness of their account, popular exemplars
have significantly more impact than experts that are being interviewed and, in particular,
than politicians that are quoted in the news. We showed this by drawing on an experiment
that used fake television news items as stimuli and that systematically compared the effect
of different talking sources in the news. Controlling for preexisting attitudes qualifies the
findings to a certain extent. The popular exemplar effects are more robust and yield a more
nuanced picture of what type of popular exemplars (e.g., procar popular exemplar) have
what kind of effect on what type of public (e.g., on a probike public). Other than the fact
that including preexisting attitudes in the model strengthens our initial findings, it also
helps put the effects we find in perspective: Exposure to the various types of exemplars
has an effect, but as one would expect this effect does not occur on a blank slate. One
qualification for these results is the fact that our design utilized three popular exemplars
versus one expert or politician. Future research efforts could avoid this confounding factor
by keeping the number of exemplars constant across conditions. Still the finding that
popular exemplars have a greater effect on the opinion of respondents compared to politi-
cians and experts, is in itself an important finding.
Popular exemplars have a distinct effect on what people think. This raises serious ques-
tions about the increased use of popular exemplars by journalists to illustrate their story.
These voices of common people are chosen to illustrate and not to represent. But because
they are presented as a random sample of people, the illusion/perception of representation
is held up. Popular exemplars are (at least unconsciously) taken seriously by the audience
because they see them as representative of public opinion. Journalists should be aware of
this and account for it in their daily decisions. And at first sight harmless journalistic prac-
tice can easily lead to distortions in the public perception of social problems and situations
(Arpan, 2009). Looking at the evidence from this study and others (Aust & Zillmann,
1996) on television news, and the indications from many studies in exemplification
research using printed media stimuli, one could conclude that news consumers of generally
trusted media take (popular) exemplars a little more seriously (representative) than intended
by the journalist. A question that remains is whether this effect would also be found in the
newer media. With modern information technology, the door is open for many people to do
citizen journalism and to produce “news” on their own and put it online. It would be inter-
esting to know to what extent the influence of popular exemplars is related to the trustwor-
thiness of the medium they are featured in.
Apart from the effects popular exemplars may have on the public, the informative con-
tent of news is not increased by using popular exemplars either. The addition of this spe-
cific type of exemplars is aimed at making news stories more interesting, not at adding
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
14 Communication Research XX(X)
informative content to it. They limit airplay for representative actors whose messages tend
to be more informative and yield information with a general relevance. In addition, popular
exemplars give journalists increased power over the news content. More than other news
sources, popular exemplars are puppets on a string held by the journalist. The pool of
people on the street is so large, that the journalist can easily go cherry picking. The use of
popular exemplars empowers the journalist especially when, as we showed, popular exem-
plars have significant effect on public opinion.
The increased use of popular exemplars by journalists is rooted in media’s need to
attract an audience in a climate of increased commercialization and competition. For
Dovey (2000), this has led to a bottom-up news source selection by media outlets favoring,
among others, a more frequent use of recognizable ordinary men and women in the street
(Biltereyst, 2000, pp. 14-15). At the level of the individual journalist, increased market
competition has fostered reliance on popular exemplars as well. Niven (2005) considers
journalists as economic actors trying to minimize costs while maximizing benefits. One of
the main ways for journalists to minimize costs in their daily job is “apparent objectivity.”
It implies the use of two or more news sources in a word–counterword setting, creating the
illusion of balanced news coverage and objectivity. Already decades ago, Gaye Tuchman
(1978) described how journalists prefer to bring news stories with conflicting voices to
create an image of objective coverage. As long as their work appears to be objective, col-
leagues, bosses, and audience are not likely to challenge them. The question whether these
sources reflect real and representative voices in society is sometimes neglected. Popular
exemplars are ideal instruments to yield apparent objectivity. They are easy to get (the
street is everywhere) and the setting (random interviews) suggests representativeness.
The results of this study question the use of popular exemplars based on such stylistic
or economic reasons. The study supports a plea for a better monitoring of the fairness of
exemplifying opinions in television news. Not only what is being said matters, but also
who is saying it. Being a, for the audience, recognizable and unsuspicious person on the
street yields considerable effects; experts, and especially politicians, have to live with
lower credibility and persuasiveness. Media should be advised to give a range of inter-
views with common people that corresponds to the real world division of opinions or, as it
often is not known what the public thinks, reduce the practice of popular exemplars in daily
news reporting altogether.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or
publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or author-
ship of this article: This research was funded by the PARTIREP consortium. PARTIREP (2007-
2011) is an Interuniversity Attraction Pole (IAP) funded by the Belgian Science Policy. It
involves the universities of Antwerp (UA), Brussels (VUB and ULB), Leiden (Universiteit
Leiden), and Leuven (KULeuven).
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Lefevere et al. 15
References
Abraham, L., & Appiah, O. (2006). Framing news stories: The role of visual imagery in priming racial
stereotypes. The Howard Journal of Communication, 17, 183-203.
Arpan, L. M. (2009). The effects of exemplification on perceptions of news credibility. Mass Communica-
tion and Society, 12, 249-270.
Aust, C. F., & Zillmann, D. (1996). Effects of victim exemplification in television news on viewer perception
of social issues. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73, 787-803.
Biltereyst, D. (2000). Realiteit en Fictie: tweemaal hetzelfde? [Reality and fiction: Two times the same
thing?] (p. 85). Brussels, Belgium: Koning Boudewijnstichting.
Brosius, H. (1995). Alltagsrationalitat in der Nachrichtenrezeption: ein Modell zur Wahrnehmung und
Verarbeitung von Fernsehnachrichteninhalten [Everyday rationality in news reception: A model on
perception and processing of television news content]. Opladen, Germany: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Brosius, H. (1996). Der Einfluss von Fallbeispielen auf Urteile der Rezipienten [The influence of exemplars
on judgments among recipients]. Rundfunk & Fernsehen, 44, 51-69.
Brosius, H. (2003). Exemplars in the news: A theory of the effects of political communication. In J. Bry-
ant, D. Roskos-Ewoldsen, & J. Cantor (Eds.), Communication and emotion: Essays in honor of Dolf
Zillmann (pp. 179-194). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Brosius, H., & Bathelt, A. (1994). The utility of exemplars in persuasive communications. Communication
Research, 21(1), 48-78.
Busselle, R. W., & Shrum, L. J. (2003). Media exposure and exemplar accessibility. Media Psychology, 5,
255-282.
Daschmann, G. (2000). Vox Pop & polls: The impact of poll results and voter statements in the media on
the perception of a climate of opinion. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 12, 160-181.
Daschmann, G. (2001). Der Einfluss von Fallbeispielen auf Leserurtaile: experimentelle Untersuchungen
zur Medienwirkung [The impact of exemplars on readers’ judgments: Experimental studies on media
effects]. Konstanz, Germany: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft.
Daschmann, G. (2004). Labordaten versus Felddaten—Theoretische Überlegungen und ein empirisches
Beispiel zu den Implikationen der Verwendung studentischer Versuchsgruppen in Laborexperimenten
[Laboratory data versus field data – Theoretical considerations and an empirical example of the implica-
tions of the use of student study groups in laboratory experiments]. In Werner Wirth, Edmund Lauf &
Andreas Fahr (Eds.), Forschungslogik und -design in der Kommunikationswissenschaft. Band 1: Ein-
führung, Problematisierungen und Aspekte der Methodenlogik aus Kommunikationswissenschaftlicher
Perspektive [Research logic and design in communication sciences. Volume 1: Introduction, problemati-
zations and aspects of the methodology of the communication science perspective] (pp. 88-114). Cologne,
Germany: von Halem.
Daschmann, G., & Brosius, H. (1999). Can a single incident create an issue? Exemplars in German televi-
sion magazine shows. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 76(1), 35-51.
De Swert, K., Walgrave, S., Hooghe, M., Uce, V., & Hardy, A. (2008). Het Vlaamse televisienieuws onder de
loep: Een vergelijkend onderzoek 2003-2008 [Focus on Flemish television news: A comparative analy-
sis 2003-2008]. Flanders, Belgium: ENA (Electronic News Archive) report for the Minister of Media.
Dovey, J. (2000). Freakshow: First person media and factual television. London: Pluto Press.
Feldman, R. H. L. (1984). The influence of communicator characteristics on the nutrition attitudes and
behavior of high school students. Journal of School Health, 54, 149-151.
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
16 Communication Research XX(X)
Gibson, R., & Zillmann, D. (1993). The impact of quotation in news reports on issue perception. Journalism
Quarterly, 70, 793-800.
Gibson, R., & Zillmann, D. (1998). Effects of citation in exemplifying testimony on issue perception. Jour-
nalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 75, 167-176.
Graber, D. A. (1988). Processing the news: How people tame the information tide. New York: Longman
Group.
Hovland, C. I., Janis, I. L., & Kelley, H. H. (1953). Communication and persuasion. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Hu, Y., & Sundar, S. (2007). Doctors vs. laypersons on blogs vs. bulletin boards vs. websites vs. homepages.
The effects of on-line health sources on credibility and behavioral intentions. Paper presented at the
Annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Niven, D. (2005). An economic theory of political journalism. Journalism and Mass Communication Quar-
terly, 82, 247-263.
Perry, S. D., & Gonzenbach, W. J. (1997). Effects of news exemplification extended: Considerations of con-
troversiality and perceived future opinion. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 41, 229-244.
Perse, E. M. (2001). Media effects and society. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Petty, R., & Cacioppo, T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude
change. New York: Springer.
Pornpitakpan, C. (2004). The persuasiveness of source credibility: A critical review of five decades’ evi-
dence. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 34, 243-281.
Taylor, S., & Thompson, S. (1982). Stalking the elusive “vividness” effect. Psychological Review, 89, 155-181.
Tuchman, G. (1978). Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York: Free Press.
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cogni-
tive Psychology, 5(2), 1-24.
Wyer, R. S. J., & Srull, T. K. (1989). Memory and cognition in its social context. Hillsdale, NL: Lawrence
Erlbaum.
Zillmann, D. (1999). Exemplification theory: Judging the whole by some of its parts. Media Psychology,
1(1), 69-94.
Zillmann, D. (2002). Exemplification theory of media influence. In J. Bryant & D. Zillmann (Eds.), Media
effects: Advances in theory and research (pp. 19-41). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Zillmann, D., & Brosius, H. (2000). Exemplification in communication: The influence of case reports on the
perception of issues. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Zillmann, D., Gibson, R., Sundar, S., & Perkins, J. (1996). Effects of exemplification in news reports on the
perception of social issues. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 73, 427-444.
Zillmann, D., Perkins, J., & Sundar, S. (1992). Impression-formation effects of printed news varying in
descriptive precision and exemplification. Medienpsychologie, 4, 168-185.
Bios
Jonas Lefevere is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Antwerp
(Belgium). His PhD focuses on the effects of electoral campaigns on voters’ patterns of information acqui-
sition, but his research interests also include media effects on public opinion.
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
Lefevere et al. 17
Knut De Swert is a PhD candidate in Political Communication at the Department of Political Science,
University of Antwerp (Belgium) and a lecturer at the Department of Communication Science at the
University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). His research focus is on political actors in television news.
Stefaan Walgrave is professor of political science at the University of Antwerp. His research interests are
media and politics, social movements and protest, and public opinion.
at Stanford University Libraries on October 21, 2011crx.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://crx.sagepub.com/
NOTICE
WARNING CONCERNING COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS
The copyright law of the United States [Title 17, United States Code] governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material.
Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish
a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the
reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or
research. If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for
purposes in excess of “fair use”, that use may be liable for copyright infringement.
This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if, in its judgment,
fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. No further reproduction
and distribution of this copy is permitted by transmission or any other means.
