TY - JOUR
AU - Neuman, W Russell
AB - Abstract Media effects research has focused so intently on effects that it has neglected the richly informative domain of persuasive messages that have no effects, have reverse boomerang effects, or have unintended and unanticipated consequences. This results in a paradoxical paradigmatic gap: a theoretical blind spot. I propose we broaden our research focus to include systematic patterns of miscommunication and non-communication in the interpretive dynamics of both mass and interpersonal communication. This review explores evolving research on persistent misinformation and counterfactual beliefs, and the underlying psychology of cognitive distortion and selective attention. Research methodologies of particular promise are reviewed, including transmission chain studies, textual analysis, and the rich domain of “big data” evolving from the digital revolution in mass and interpersonal communication. For the last half century we have been dutifully focusing on a paradigm of communication effects while virtually ignoring the phenomenon of miscommunication. Systematic patterns of miscommunication are equally, if not more, important in terms of their social and cultural implications. Just for the record, try a search in Google Scholar for the term “communication.” 5,420,000 results. Try a search in Google Scholar for the term “miscommunication.” 73,200 results. When the message as received is at variance from the message as intended by the sender, our traditional paradigm leads us to define the outcome as error or noise and we accordingly dismiss the findings as irrelevant. A research paradigm is supposed to draw our attention to critical variables and patterns. If the paradigm draws our attention away from critical outcomes there is a paradox in the paradigm. My proposition is that miscommunication, defined as systematic patterns of variation in attention, apprehension, and interpretation, represents some of the most fruitful lines of further scientific and, indeed, humanistic scholarship in the field of communication (Neuman, 2016). It appears that Joseph Klapper’s (1960) apparent conclusion about “minimal media effects” has stimulated a modest tsunami of studies, each in turn revealing corrective not-so-minimal effects. For some analysts it appears that large effects in attitude change, learning, or behavior help to justify our existence as students of the phenomenon of human communication. In their 1999 overview of the field, Emmers-Sommer and Allen conclude, for example: “Taken together, these findings can be used to lend insight for future research directions. Overall, we can conclude that the media do, indeed, have effects” (1999, p. 492). Ostensibly, even after fifty years of research and debate, simply to demonstrate a statistically significant effect in the ongoing battle against the vestiges of Dr. Klapper’s bad idea is sufficient justification for celebration and publication. Perhaps our paradigm would be strengthened if we recognized that media effects are neither characteristically strong nor are they characteristically minimal: they are characteristically highly variable. The fundamental phenomenon of human communication is not productively characterized as a mechanical transmission (Carey, 1989). Human communication is a complex polysemic exchange by which a set of ideas or propositions may or may not resonate with the intended recipients. So a model of variable resonance rather than mechanical effect should occupy a more central place in our theorizing. The idea of resonance nicely captures the idea that a particular string of symbols might interact distinctively with the expectations and beliefs of one or another listener. How would such an appropriately enhanced paradigm potentially influence the practice of research? I’ll review six starting points involving both theory and method that strike me as of particular potential. The explicit study of miscommunication Currently there are pockets of research along these lines. One such tradition is the study of boomerang and backfire effects when a message produces a result which is the opposite of that intended (Byrne & Hart, 2009). Examples include antismoking campaigns actually increasing predispositions to smoke (Wolburg, 2006), antilitter messages associated with increased littering (Reich & Robertson, 1979), and charity appeals lowering donation rates (Small, Loewenstein, & Slovic, 2007). Hart and Nisbet (2012), in a recent study of the climate change issue, outline a theory about how the dynamics of selective attention, motivated reasoning, and opposing narratives influence political polarization and resistance to scientific information. There is also some evidence of commercial advertising campaigns having negative and null effects, although for obvious reasons the advertising industry is reluctant to draw attention to such findings (Lodish et al., 1995). What may be missing in these focused case studies, however, is a broader theory of miscommunication. My contention is that such a theory exists, although, because of its relative casual formulation, it may not be recognized as such. I am referring to Walter Lippmann’s classic 1922 manuscript, entitled Public Opinion. It holds that the message received and interpreted by the public at large may be a partial and distorted reflection of the message as intended by the professional journalists and political elites for two reasons. The first is the complexity of the ideas and events themselves being subject to diverse interpretations and contextual framing. The second is the self-interested interpretive inclinations of various audience groups. Consider his summary: The environment with which our public opinions deal is refracted in many ways, by censorship and privacy at the source, by physical and social barriers at the other end, by scanty attention, by the poverty of language, by distraction, by unconscious constellations of feeling, by wear and tear, violence, monotony. These limitations upon our access to that environment combine with the obscurity and complexity of the facts themselves to thwart clearness and justice of perception, to substitute misleading fictions for workable ideas, and to deprive us of adequate checks upon those who consciously strive to mislead. (Lippmann, 1922, pp. 48–49) Much of his analysis pivots on the central metaphor of how a rural housewife in the Midwest could possibly be expected to understand the complexities on the battlefield and the underlying politics and economics of the First World War underway on the other side of the globe. He relies heavily on the notion of stereotypes as simplifying models of a necessarily more complex reality, which anticipates a half century of research on schema theory and the psychology of selective perception and social identity (Bandura, 2009; Neuman, 2016; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Counterfactual beliefs, persistent misinformation, and myths A related line of research focuses on the character of beliefs and narratives that persist in the face of evidence to the contrary. The topic is attracting renewed attention recently; see, for example, an article in a recent special issue of this journal under the title The Prevalence, Consequence, and Remedy of Misinformation in Mass Media Systems (Southwell & Thorson, 2015). Examples are numerous and a cause for concern. In the Arab Middle East, between 48% and 55% of participants in national public opinion polls expressed the belief that the events of 9/11 were planned and executed by the CIA and/or Mossad (Kull, Ramsay, Weber, Lewis, & Mohseni, 2009). Although some extreme conspiracy theories are restricted to fringe groups, demonstrably counterfactual beliefs reflect majority views with surprising frequency. Nyhan and Reifler (2010) have studied the persistence of misconceptions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction preceding the Iraq War of 2003, about the effects of tax cuts on revenue, and about the Bush administration’s policy on stem cell research. They demonstrated how motivated reasoning and ideological preferences lead to the rejection of potential corrective information. These are compelling case studies, as support for foreign intervention and fundamental tax policy represent critical issues for public deliberation. The phrase “fake news” has attracted attention and inspired considerable anxiety recently. There were all sorts of rumors and misperceptions bouncing around the mass media and the social media for the entire run up to the 2016 presidential election. But it was not until two days after the electoral surprise that existence of fake news became a viral story in itself. According to Toronto-based Sysomos, which monitors traditional and social media, the phrase “fake news” averaged less than 100 mentions per day before the election and between 1,000 and 2,000 a day after, starting with a dramatic spike on November 10th. Untrue rumors may resonate particularly with public opinion when they are 1) shocking, 2) seem to have some kernel of believability, and 3) represent what people would like to believe (Heath & Heath, 2007). So the attention-grabbing “discovery” of fake news in the 2016 election is itself ironic. Misperception, misdirection, and misunderstanding in public opinion dynamics are all too familiar in political history. The existence of fake news isn’t news. What may be a new development in the American case is a culture of partisan political polarization that energizes and glorifies the rumor mills. Public Policy Polling, for example, explored voter perceptions following the presidential election of 2016 and found: 40% of Trump voters claimed that he won the national popular vote to only 49% who granted that Clinton won it and 11% who were not sure. 73% of Trump voters thought that George Soros was paying protesters against Trump to only 6% who thought that it is not true, and 21% who were not sure. 67% of Trump voters said that unemployment increased during the Obama administration, to only 20% who said it decreased. Only 41% of Trump voters said that the stock market went up during the Obama administration. 39% said it went down, and another 19% said they were not sure (Debnam, 2016). It may well be that misperceptions of this magnitude were present in the wake of other presidential contests. Unfortunately, we do not know because pollsters and political scientists were not inclined to ask about such matters. It may also be the case in recent years that some respondents interpret such questions as tests of political identity rather than matters of demonstrable factuality. Hopefully further research will tease out such distinctions. The dynamics of how complex issues are understood and how new factual information is interpreted are central to our theories of political communication. The changing patterns of news consumption via social media networks will present both new elements of political communication and new prospects for research through experimentation and the analysis of social media behavior (Neuman, Guggenheim, Jang, & Bae, 2014; Weeks, 2015). The underlying psychology of cognitive distortion and selective perception The inventive studies by Daniel Khaneman, Amos Tversky, and associates on the psychology of systematic misperception was of such evident significance it merited a Nobel Prize in 2002. They focused on the perception of risk and raised fascinating questions about how such hardwired patterns about experimentation and risk aversion may have been relevant to differential rates of evolutionary survival (Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982; McDermott, Fowler, & Smirnov, 2008). Parallel work on political selective perception, selective attention, and cognitive distortion also has a rich history. Early studies by David Sears and Jonathan Freedman (1967) on selective attention to information were interpreted as indicating only minor selectivity effects, and academic attention waned for several decades. It did return with full force in the 2000s, however, in response to partisan polarization, increasingly polarized news formats, and the evolution of political blogs and social media (Bennett & Iyengar, 2008; Stroud, 2011; Sunstein, 2001). Part of the reason for the three-decade gap in research in this area was the association of selectivity with Joseph Klapper’s notion of minimal effects which was so skeptically received. Klapper, for example, summarized his review of the literature: “Selective exposure, selective perception, and selective retention have been shown ... to be typically the protectors of predispositions and the handmaidens of reinforcement” (Klapper, 1960, p. 64). Importantly, the new wave of research demonstrated a much more nuanced definition of selectivity and an elaboration of conditional effects. R. Kelly Garrett and colleagues, for example, emphasize the critical distinction between seeking attitude-confirming information and avoiding attitude-discrepant information. They conclude that the evidence of the former is much stronger than that of the latter. Such findings will be central to refining theories of political polarization (Garrett, 2009). Further, these researchers found information avoidance, when it occurred, appears to be more evident among Republicans, suggesting a curious psychological asymmetry (Garrett & Stroud, 2014; see also Jost, 2009). To add to the complexity, they found that those who are more likely to seek out attitude-confirming information would also be more likely to seek out attitude-discrepant information, reflecting a pattern of political engagement and sophistication (Garrett, Carnahan, & Lynch, 2013). Knobloch-Westerwick and Kleinman (2012) add that special cases of information usefulness, which they term “information utility,” can override the psychological impulse for confirmation of existing beliefs. So rather than asserting that selectivity effects are typically minimal or not-so-minimal, this research tradition is appropriately enriching our understanding of the conditions under which selectivity is important and the kinds of individuals for whom it is important. These findings, of course, are subject to change as the political culture and political media undergo change. Mutz, for example, makes the case that political incivility is an increasingly important factor in American politics and, following Bennett’s concept of indexing, that more extreme political views are increasingly viewed as acceptable (Bennett, 1990; Mutz, 2006, 2015). It is clear that the increasingly polarized media channels resonate with evolving public perceptions for at least some portion of the electorate (Arceneaux, Johnson, & Murphy, 2012; Mason, 2013). Transmission chain research methodologies A particularly promising experimental technique, seldom used until recently, is a variant of the social “telephone game” where information or a narrative is passed successively through several individuals or groups to study how it is transformed by the process (Mesoudi, 2011). Mesoudi argues that the success or failure of various political frames or memes to resonate culturally is not unlike Darwinian models of physical selective survival, and developed a corresponding model of cultural evolution. His work builds on communication models of diffusion (Katz, 1999; Rogers, 2003) and the evolving interdisciplinary field of memetics (Aunger, 2002). In a recent study, sociologist Fallin Hunzaker (2016) demonstrated how communication of a narrative through five retellings gradually loses information. It is a relatively simple story including elements of chronic unemployment, borrowing money, shoplifting, and police interrogation. Importantly, she finds that although unexpected, culturally-inconsistent information (not in accordance with stereotypes) may be more memorable initially, cultural schema consistency biases ultimately overpower this initial advantage, as individuals alter this information during retellings to make it more culturally consistent by inventing new details. This new work re-energizes the classic two-step flow model (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) and supports the findings of parallel work on patterns of distortion of information flow in social media networks (Lee, Choi, Kim, & Kim, 2014; Mendoza, Poblete, & Castillo, 2010). Textual analysis and depth interviewing methodologies When the message as received is at variance from the message as sent, we are drawn to better understand what triggers the interpretive process in the structuring of the receiver’s thinking. This requires taking the complexities of polysemy seriously and offers a promising bridge between the humanistic and scientific traditions within communication research. Katherine Cramer (2016), for example, conducted a series of in-depth interviews and participant observations of citizens in rural Wisconsin focusing on their political views. Her manuscript title, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker, reveals what she found. Her participants felt they were being ignored and “just hung out to dry” by city folk who had all the power and derived all the benefits from government largess. Suspecting possible media effects, Cramer conducted an extensive content analysis of the local rural newspapers which revealed, perhaps surprisingly, that news coverage there reflected the same journalistic norms as the bigger city papers. The resentment was not being ignited by the local media; it appeared to be a contagious grassroots resentment that presaged the Trump election of 2016, which followed shortly after the publication of her research. This is empirically-grounded research that resonates strongly with Stuart Hall’s (1980) celebrated theoretical essay outlining the conditions under which audiences utilize their own lifeworld experience to negotiate oppositional interpretations of dominate media themes. Hall would likely have been fascinated with Cramer’s findings. It is unfortunate that the humanistic tradition of critical media theory that Hall helped to establish and which has such sophisticated tools for analyzing media content (McKee, 2003; Scannell, 2007) has been reluctant to apply those same tools to how audiences respond (Wolf, 1988). There are some interesting and important exceptions to the general paucity of work on the interpretive disjuncture between mass media themes and audience reactions (Jensen, 1986; Livingstone, 1998). A prominent example among them is Bill Gamson’s in-depth interview work on how audiences interpret media coverage of prominent issues, including affirmative action, nuclear power, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and industry-labor relations (Gamson, 1992). Although he does not use the terminology of miscommunication, there are numerous examples of how audience and media framing of these issues diverge. He summarizes: “Not all symbols are equally potent. Some metaphors soar, others fall flat; some visual images linger in the mind, others are quickly forgotten. Some frames have a natural advantage because their ideas and language resonate with a broader political culture” (Gamson, 1992, p. 135). Big data and social media The flow of mass communication—virtually all of what we now associate with television, radio, books, movies, magazines, recordings, and newsletters—is currently available online and will perhaps ultimately be routinely delivered in exclusively digital formats (Neuman, Park, & Panek, 2012). We are moving from newsprint and rabbit ears to laptops, ebook readers, iPads, iPods, smartphones, and internet-enabled video screens. Furthermore, increasing portions of interpersonal and small-group communication are electronically mediated through chat, email, and social media. This digital flow leaves detailed digital footprints that have come to be called “big data” (Shah, Cappella, & Neuman, 2015). Big data of various sorts have been around for years, but the future of communication research is likely to benefit greatly from these evolving developments. Actual fine-grained media exposure and selectivity can be assessed directly; Measurement is possible continuously, over time, and for extended periods; Many real-world behaviors online can be assessed directly in natural settings; and Individual perceptions and interpretations can be unobtrusively assessed in context and in real time. These are the top-level attributes of conducting media research online that makes use of the very same media technologies the audience members would normally use to contribute to public debate. All of these evolving measurement techniques, of course, need to be undertaken with the fully informed consent of the participants, with their right to withdraw as they wish made clear and with very careful attention to the protection of personal privacy. Manipulation of exposure in the experimental tradition is still possible. With the consent of the subjects involved, numerous techniques are possible to systematically steer and filter the flow of information they are exposed to over time. For obvious reasons, most volunteers would not want to have what they see and hear in the media manipulated for long periods of time, but experimental messaging for days would be a significant step ahead of the standard 30 or 40 minute experimental lab study, traditionally the cornerstone, indeed the gold standard, of the experimental tradition. For the last 50 years researchers have been watching TV and reading newspapers and magazines with a clipboard in hand and a detailed codebook for a rigorous content analysis of media messages. Analyzing text quantitatively and qualitatively with an interpretive flair has been an area where humanistic and social scientific traditions have converged. A question at hand is whether we have finally reached the stage where automated content analysis can approach human-coded analysis in its sophistication, reliability, and validity. It is increasingly practical to review and re-review content for a mix of automated and human-based exercises in both tracking message trends and linking those trends to attitudinal and behavioral responses among those actually exposed. When a burst of attention to a news story in the traditional media has no corresponding response among the general public in social media or when the response reflects misunderstanding or mistrust, that is not a failure of theory or of research design, but a finding of potential significance. Conclusion The evolving paradigm of communication research has flirted with concepts of uses and gratifications, selective attention, and active audiences, but has thus far been hesitant to draw such important questions about the dramatic variability of communication effects into the core of its theorizing and research design. I have suggested that the notion of resonance rather than effect helps to strengthen this perspective, and reviewed three theoretical and three methodological developments that offer particular promise to move beyond summative research proclamations that media “do indeed have effects.” Thomas Kuhn is well known for his analyses of structural revolutions and paradigm shifts in the physical sciences, with the classic case being the shift from geocentric to heliocentric modeling of the solar system (Kuhn, 1962). The paradox of the communication research paradigm as I have described it does not require an abandonment of extant theory for an entirely new model and for new and as yet unexamined variables. We may be asking the right questions but have a paradoxical paradigm-induced blind spot that leads us to ignore or explain away null findings or reverse effects. I am proposing a modest pivot: a scientific posture that asks straightforwardly for identification of the conditions under which communication is received as intended, when it is not, and why. We should be looking for a broader range of potential effects. The structure of our public communication system and the dynamics of interpersonal communication are arguably even more important a topic of scientific inquiry in the digital age (Neuman, 2016). 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TI - The Paradox of the Paradigm: An Important Gap in Media Effects Research
JF - Journal of Communication
DO - 10.1093/joc/jqx022
DA - 2018-04-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/the-paradox-of-the-paradigm-an-important-gap-in-media-effects-research-4ZEBpGxcfv
SP - 369
EP - 379
VL - 68
IS - 2
DP - DeepDyve
ER -