Oppositional Readings of Network Television News: Viewer Deconstruction

Abstract

This paper describes an empirical study regarding deconstruction by network television news viewers. We define news deconstruction as the identification and criticism of ideology in news by its viewers. Twelve viewers were given surveys about the news, shown videotapes of NBC news, and asked to fill out cognitive response forms during viewing. We explained our studies of news deconstruction and then interviewed them regarding their impressions of our explanation and their feelings about the ideological aspects of news and how they oppose them. We contentanalyzed the cognitive response and interview data for deconstruction moves using four categories which we call oppositional statement types:

1. Criticism—comments concerning news content.

2. Resistance—disbelief in news content.

3. Challenge—questioning of factual accuracy of news.

4. Deconstruction—exposing ideology that promotes only one view of events and discourages others.

Our content analysis indicates that most oppositional moves for the viewers we studied are criticism comments—surface-level criticisms. The least common oppositional moves are challenges.

The purpose of the interviews was to have the viewers discuss how they feel about news deconstruction. Our interview observations indicate how viewers attempt to deconstruct the news and where they have trouble doing so. After news deconstruction was explained to them, most of our viewers appeared capable of identifying news bias and ideology. However, they tended to struggle when trying to replace TV news as an information source with one they find more trustworthy. This finding is consistent with our quantitative finding that challenge statements are uncommon.

Keywords

ideology news discourse news viewer empowerment news ideology news signification oppositional readings of news political linguistics resistance to ideology subcultures television news TV news viewer deconstruction

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