Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The psychological bases of the selection and attitudinal response to news media have received ample attention in political communication research. However, the interplay between three crucial factors in today’s online, high-choice news media settings remains understudied: (1) textual versus multimodal (text-plus-visual) communication; (2) attitude congruent versus attitude incongruent versus balanced content; and (3) political versus nonpolitical genres. Relying on an experimental study of refugee and gun control news in the United States (N = 1,159), this paper investigates how people select and avoid, and also the extent to which they agree with, congenial, uncongenial, and balanced political news in a realistic multimodal selective-exposure setting in which political news is presented alongside sports and entertainment news. Although the findings partially depend on the issue, we find that the presence of multimodal (compared to textual) entertainment and sport items can increase avoidance of political news. Multimodal (compared to textual) political news augments attitude congruent selective exposure instead of encouraging cross-cutting selective exposure. Once selected, multimodal political news articles evoke stronger emotions and lead to higher issue agreement than textual news, regardless of an article’s attitude congruence. By linking research on text-alone to multimodal selective exposure, this study shows that visuals in high-choice media environments can contribute to the selective avoidance of political news generally and cross-cutting political news more specifically.

Keywords

confirmation bias multimodal communication selective exposure selective avoidance visual communication

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Arpan

Laura M.

Baker

Kaysee

Youngwon

Lee

Jung

Taejin

Lorusso

Lori

Smith

Jason

. 2006. “News Coverage of Social Protests and the Effects of Photographs on Prior Attitudes.” Mass Communication & Society 9 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1207/s15327825mcs0901_1.

Barry

Anne M.

1997. Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image, and Manipulation in Visual Communication. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Brader

Ted

. 2005. “Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions.” American Journal of Political Science 49 (2): 388–405.

Casas

Andreu

Williams

Nora W.

2017. “Images that Matter: Online Protests and the Mobilizing Role of Pictures.” Political Research Quarterly 72: 360–75.

Dan

Viorela

. 2017. Integrative Framing Analysis: Framing Health Through Words and Visuals. New York: Routledge.

de los Santos

Theresa M.

Nabi

Robin L.

2019. “Emotionally Charged: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online News Information Seeking and Processing.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 63 (1): 39–58.

Domke

David

Perlmutter

David

Spratt

Meg

. 2002. “The Primes of Our Times? An Examination of the “Power” of Visual Images.” Journalism 3:131–59. doi:10.1177/146488490200300211.

Feldman

Lauren

Stroud

Natalie J.

Bimber

Bruce

Wojcieszak

Magdalena

. 2013. “Assessing Selective Exposure in Experiments: The Implications of Different Methodological Choices.” Communication Methods and Measures 7:172–94. doi:10.1080/19312458.2013.813923.

Festinger

Leon

. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

10.

Frijda

Nico H.

1988. “The Laws of Emotion.” American Psychologist 43:349–58.

11.

Gallup. 2020. “Most Important Problem.” https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx (accessed May 4, 2020).

12.

Garcia

Mario R.

Stark

Margaret M.

1991. Eyes on the News. St. Petersburg: Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

13.

Geise

Stephanie

Baden

Christian

. 2015. “Putting the Image Back into the Frame: Modeling the Linkage between Visual Communication and Frame-Processing Theory.” Communication Theory 25:46–69. doi:10.1111/comt.12048.

14.

Grabe

Maria Elizabeth

Bucy

Erik P.

2009. Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

15.

Hayes

Andrew F.

2017. Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based Approach. New York: Guilford Press.

16.

Iyengar

Shanto

Hahn

Kyu S.

2009. “Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use.” Journal of Communication 59:19–39. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01402.x.

17.

Iyer

Aarti

Webster

Joanna

Hornsey

Matthew J.

Vanman

Eric J.

2014. “Understanding the Power of the Picture: The Effect of Image Content on Emotional and Political Responses to Terrorism.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 44:511–21. doi:10.1111/jasp.12243.

18.

Knobloch

Silvia

Hastall

Matthias

Zillmann

Dolf

Callison

Coy

. 2003. “Imagery Effects on the Selective Reading of Internet Newsmagazines.” Communication Research 30:3–29. doi:10.1177/0093650202239023.

19.

Knobloch-Westerwick

Silvia

Mothes

Cornelia

Polavin

Nick

. 2017. “Confirmation Bias, Ingroup Bias, and Negativity Bias in Selective Exposure to Political Information.” Communication Research 47 (1): 104–24.

20.

Krause

Amber

Bucy

Erik P.

2018. “Interpreting Images of Fracking: How Visual Frames and Standing Attitudes Shape Perceptions of Environmental Risk and Economic Benefit.” Environmental Communication 12 (3): 322–43.

21.

Kühne

Rinaldo

. May 2014. “Political News, Emotions, and Opinion Formation: Toward a Model of Emotional Framing Effects.” Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), Phoenix, AZ.

22.

Lang

Annie

Newhagen

John

Reeves

Byron

. 1996. “Negative Video as Structure: Emotion, Attention, Capacity, and Memory.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 40 (4): 460–77.

23.

Lavie

Nilli

. 2005. “Distracted and Confused? Selective Attention under Load.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9 (2): 75–82. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2004.12.004.

24.

Lazarus

Richard S.

1991. Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

25.

Messaris

Paul

Abraham

Linus

. 2001. “The Role of Images in Framing News Stories.” In Framing Public Life, ed. Reese

S. D.

Gandy

O.H.

Grant

A. E.

, 215–26. Mahwah: Erlbaum.

26.

Messing

Solomon

Westwood

Sean J.

2014. “Selective Exposure in the Age of Social Media: Endorsements Trump Partisan Source Affiliation When Selecting News Online.” Communication Research 41 (8): 1042–63.

27.

Nabi

Robin L.

2003. “Exploring the Framing Effects of Emotion: Do Discrete Emotions Differentially Influence Information Accessibility, Information Seeking, and Policy Preference?” Communication Research 30 (2): 224–47.

28.

Nelson

Douglas L.

Reed

Valerie S.

Walling

John R.

1976. “Pictorial Superiority Effect.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory 2 (5): 523–28.

29.

Newhagen

John E.

Reeves

Byron

. 1992. “The Evening’s Bad News: Effects of Compelling Negative Television News Images on Memory.” Journal of Communication 42 (2): 25–41.

30.

Pew Research Center. 2019a. “Around the World, More Say Immigrants Are a Strength than a Burden.” https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/03/14/around-the-world-more-say-immigrants-are-a-strength-than-a-burden/ (accessed May 5, 2020).

31.

Pew Research Center. 2019b. “Share of Americans Who Favor Stricter Gun Laws Has Increased since 2017.” https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/10/16/share-of-americans-who-favor-stricter-gun-laws-has-increased-since-2017 (accessed May 5, 2020).

32.

Powell

Thomas E.

Boomgaarden

Hajo G.

De Swert

Knut

de Vreese

Claes H.

2018. “Framing Fast and Slow: A Dual Processing Account of Multimodal Framing Effects.” Media Psychology 22 (4): 572–600.

33.

Powell

Thomas E.

Boomgaarden

Hajo G.

de Swert

Knut

de Vreese

Claes

. 2015. “A Clearer Picture: The Contribution of Visuals and Text to Framing Effects.” Journal of Communication 65 (6): 997–1017.

34.

Powell

Thomas E.

van der Meer

Toni G. L. A.

Peralta

Carlos B.

2019. “Picture Power? The Contribution of Visuals and Text to Partisan Selective Exposure.” Media and Communication 7 (3): 12–31.

35.

Prior

Markus

. 2007. Post-broadcast Democracy: How Media Choice Increases Inequality in Political Involvement and Polarizes Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

36.

Scheufele

Dietram A.

Tewksbury

David

. 2007. “Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models.” Journal of Communication 57:9–20. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00326_5.x.’

37.

Stroud

Natalie J.

2008. “Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure.” Political Behavior 30:341–66.

38.

Taber

Charles S.

Lodge

Milton

. 2006. “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs.” American Journal of Political Science 50:755–69. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00214.x.

39.

Valentino

Nicholas A.

Banks

Antoine J.

Hutchings

Vincent L.

Davis

Anne K.

2009. “Selective Exposure in the Internet Age: The Interaction between Anxiety and Information Utility.” Political Psychology 30 (4): 591–613.

40.

Van Aelst

Peter

Strömbäck

Jesper

Aelberg

Toril

Esser

Frank

de Vreese

Claes

Matthes

Jörg

Hopmann

David

Salgado

Susana

Hubé

Nicolas

Stępińska

Agnieszka

Papathanassopoulos

Stylianos

Berganza

Rosa

Legnante

Guido

Reinemann

Carsten

Sheafe

Tamir

Stanyer

James

. 2017. “Political Communication in a High-Choice Media Environment: A Challenge for Democracy?” Annals of the International Communication Association 41:3–27. doi:10.1080/23808985.2017.1288551.

41.

Wolf

Rita

Grotta

Gerald L.

1985. “Images: A Question of Readership.” Newspaper Research Journal 6 (2): 30–36.

42.

Zillmann

Dolf

Knobloch

Silivia

Hong-Sik

. 2001. “Effects of Photographs on the Selective Reading of News Reports.” Media Psychology 3:301–24. doi:10.1207/S1532785XMEP0304_01.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

3.11 MB

Selection in a Snapshot? The Contribution of Visuals to the Selection and Avoidance of Political News in Information-Rich Media Settings

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References

Supplementary Material