You can’t beat the feeling: How emotional responses to exemplars in news stories affect perceptions of expert sources and the message of the news story

2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Lene Heiselberg ◽  
Morten Skovsgaard
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Response ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Television News ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
News Story ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Conflicting Information ◽  
Rate Information ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Main Message

Journalists include ordinary people as exemplars – also known as case sources – in news stories to illustrate the general issue through their personal accounts. These accounts from exemplars tend to evoke emotions in the audience and carry greater weight than base rate information when people form perceptions or attitudes on the problem at hand. In this study, drawing on a news story in which an expert source and an exemplar provide conflicting information, we explore viewers’ emotional response to the exemplar and their perceptions of the expert source and the main message of the news story. We do this by presenting participants with two versions of a television news story – one with and one without an exemplar. We measure participants’ emotional response through a combination of open-ended and close-ended self-reports and directly through electrodermal activity, and we explore their perception of sources and the message of the story through open-ended questions. We find that viewers experience increased arousal when they watch the personal account of an exemplar, and that they tend to interpret the base rate information in the light of the exemplar’s account. Furthermore, some respondents tend to delegitimize the expert source that contradicts the account of the exemplar. We discuss the implications that these results have for journalists and provide tentative advice on which measures journalists can take to counter such effects.

Power of the people or the expert? The influence of vox pop and expert statements on news-item evaluation, perceived public opinion, and personal opinion

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Beckers
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Television News ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
News Item ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
The People ◽  
Personal Opinion ◽  
Rate Information

Abstract Vox pops, interviews with ordinary people on the street, are one of the most common ways to represent public opinion in television news. Research found that they influence audience judgments more than static base-rate information such as poll results. However, little research has compared vox pops with vivified base-rate information. Most research studying vox pops assumed they are included in the news because of their apparent attractiveness and trustworthiness to audiences. Using a television news experiment comparing statistical base-rate information vivified by an expert with vox pop statements, this study shows that news items containing vox pop statements are perceived as being less attractive and trustworthy than items containing the expert statement. No difference is found between the two types of public opinion information in their influence on perceived public opinion, but vox pops do influence audiences’ personal opinion more strongly.

Effects of Victim Exemplification in Television News on Viewer Perception of Social Issues

1996 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 787-803 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles F. Aust ◽  
Dolf Zillmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Issues ◽  
Television News ◽  
Food Poisoning ◽  
News Story ◽  
Local Problem ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Victimization Risk ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Problem Severity ◽  
Do So

Two broadcast news stories were manipulated to show victimization (food poisoning, handgun violence) in one of three versions: without victim exemplification, with exemplification by unemotional victims, and with exemplification by highly emotional victims. Male and female respondents, whose empathic sensitivity had been predetermined, recorded their own perceptions of each issue addressed: its severity as a national problem, the likelihood of it becoming a local problem, and the likelihood that they themselves might be placed at risk. They also indicated their reaction to each news story. Emotional victim exemplification fostered perceptions of greater problem severity than unemotional and no victim exemplification. Additionally, emotional victim exemplification, compared with no exemplification, fostered perceptions of increased victimization risk to self, whereas unemotional victim exemplification failed to do so. Empathic sensitivity did not interact with exemplar emotionality, but produced a main effect. Highly empathic persons perceived the severity of danger and risk to themselves as greater than did less empathic persons. Respondent gender similarly produced a main effect without interacting with exemplar emotionality. Female respondents assessed all dangers and risks as higher than did their male counterparts. Finally, exposure to emotional exemplification, but not unemotional exemplification, fostered reports of greater distress reactions than did exposure to the news stories without exemplification. Women reported greater distress than did men, and highly empathic persons reported greater distress than did less empathic persons.

Law, Love, and Marriage: Television News and the Production of Publicity in North India

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-243
Author(s):  
Amrita Ibrahim
Keyword(s):  
Television News ◽  
North India ◽  
News Story ◽  
Cultural Scripts ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Breaking News ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Social Scripts ◽  
Love Marriage

Journalism’s mandate is a paradoxical one: to publicize stories of social injustice and sustain their visibility in the public domain, while battling the decay of publicity that is inherent in the very genre of information that is daily news. In this article, I argue that the legitimacy and credibility that Hindi crime journalists create for stories relies on their keen understanding of a complex terrain of institutional scripts and social actions from which the news stories themselves emerge. Analyzing a breaking news story on Hindi channels in 2011, featuring a secret marriage, kinship role inversion, and a woman’s public plea for protection from family intimidation, the article explores the complex interpenetration of journalistic, institutional, and social scripts that make up the fraught terrain of “love marriage” in North India. I show, first, how journalists remediate the authority of photographic images through the news image to secure credibility for the story; second, how they locate the story within local and global discourses of criminality and “honor” that fits it into recognizable journalistic storylines. I conclude by suggesting that the production of publicity in television news, in which industrial constraints and the pressure for ratings plays a substantial role, nevertheless relies on existing institutional discourses and social norms with respect to the framing of love, marriage, and criminality. To understand how 24-hour news cycles generate sensationalism, we cannot ignore the sociological ground from which the news stories emerge and through which they circulate to reinforce or reinvent normative cultural scripts.

The Election News Story on Russian Television: A World Apart from Viewers

Slavic Review ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Mickiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Television News ◽  
The Other ◽  
News Story ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Viewpoint Diversity ◽  
Electoral Campaign ◽  
Election News

Winning elections is so vital for Russian leaders that competing viewpoints on national television news channels have been scotched, together with the channels that broadcast them. This study examines the other side of the screen: how participants in focus groups in four Russian cities process national channels' treatments of an important regional electoral campaign. The study was conducted during the last period in which viewpoint diversity was still available via TV-6. Unlike findings about other news stories, election stories appear to have little connection to viewers' experiences and values and deprive them of using familiar heuristics to make sense of the stories. For the public, the election story is a genre apart, framed by the same confusing template no matter what the office or region. Even TV-6, soon to be shuttered, broadcast its combative message using that template, thus extinguishing any opportunity for identifying genuine diversity and leaving the audience unable to distinguish between state and private channels, something they easily did for other types of stories. Election stories only cue other election stories. It is mainly younger, "post-Soviet" participants who bring an alternative frame to watching: norms, acquired through their education, by which election stories in a democracy ought to be constructed.

Motivated use of base rate information

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Lench ◽  
Peter Ditto
Keyword(s):  
Base Rate ◽  
Rate Information

BASE RATE NEGLECT FOR THE WEALTH OF INTERACTING PEOPLE

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (05) ◽  
pp. 607-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
DIEMO URBIG
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
Human Information Processing ◽  
Base Rates ◽  
Base Rate Neglect ◽  
Positive Externalities ◽  
Rate Information

Previous research investigating base rate neglect as a bias in human information processing has focused on isolated individuals. This study complements this research by showing that in settings of interacting individuals, especially in settings of social learning, where individuals can learn from one another, base rate neglect can increase a population's welfare. This study further supports the research arguing that a population with members biased by neglecting base rates does not need to perform worse than a population with unbiased members. Adapting the model of social learning suggested by Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer and Welch (The Journal of Political Economy100 (1992) 992–1026) and including base rates that differ from generic cases such as 50–50, conditions are identified that make underweighting base rate information increasing the population's welfare. The base rate neglect can start a social learning process that otherwise had not been started and thus base rate neglect can generate positive externalities improving a population's welfare.

scholarly journals The effects of constructive television news reporting on prosocial intentions and behavior in children: The role of negative emotions and self-efficacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris van Venrooij ◽  
Tobias Sachs ◽  
Mariska Kleemans
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Television News ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
News Story ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Video ◽  
Prosocial Intentions ◽  
And Behavior

Abstract To reduce negative emotional responses and to stimulate prosociality, constructive journalism promotes the inclusion of positive emotions and solutions in news. This study experimentally tested whether including those elements indeed increased prosocial intentions and behavior among children, and whether negative emotions and self-efficacy are mediators in this regard. To this end, children (N = 468; 9 to 13 years old) were exposed to an emotion-based, solution-based, or non-constructive news video. Results showed that emotion-based and solution-based news reduced children’s negative emotions compared to non-constructive news. No direct effects for prosocial intentions were found, but solution-based news led to less prosocial behavior (i. e., money donated) than emotion-based and non-constructive news. Moreover, negative emotions served as a mediator, self-efficacy did not. The more negative emotions were elicited by a news story, the higher the prosocial intentions and behavior. In conclusion, a constructive style of reporting helps to reduce children’s negative emotional responses but subsequently hinders prosociality.

scholarly journals Communicating sustainable environment and pro-poor policy in tourism in Indonesia: A discourse network analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 905 (1) ◽  
pp. 012143
Author(s):  
S Hastjarjo ◽  
R D Wahyunengseh ◽  
S A Hidayah
Keyword(s):  
Network Analysis ◽  
Poverty Reduction ◽  
News Story ◽  
Environment Policy ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Healthy Environment ◽  
Sustainable Environment ◽  
Central Java ◽  
Main Technique ◽  
Development Support

Abstract The development of tourism to increase the regional economy sometimes becomes a source of environmental damages. The problem that is addressed in this paper is: how can tourism development support the sustainable environment policy and at the same time increase the economy. This study aims to analyze how the values of sustainable environment and economic development are represented and discussed in the tourism policy of Geopark Karangsambung-Karangbolong (GKK), Kebumen, Central Java, Indonesia. This study employs a quantitative approach with Discourse Network Analysis as the main technique. The data is taken from the news stories published on the geopark.kebumenkab.go.id before the Covid-19 pandemic (January 2019 – March 15, 2020) and during the pandemic (March 16, 2020 – June 30, 2021). The unit of analysis is words or phrases in the news story which represent: (1) discourses on preserving the healthy environment; (2) discourses on improving the economic welfare and reducing poverty; and (3) network of actors related to the discourse. This study finds that the communication of GKK sustainable environment policy contains discourses on sustainable tourism, affirmative actions to poverty reduction in the region, and the involvement of the pentahelix elements.

scholarly journals Model-based fMRI reveals dissimilarity processes underlying base rate neglect

eLife ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean R O'Bryan ◽  
Darrell A Worthy ◽  
Evan J Livesey ◽  
Tyler Davis
Keyword(s):  
Computational Models ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
Imaging Data ◽  
Multivoxel Pattern Analysis ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Base Rate Neglect ◽  
Rate Information ◽  
Rare Category

Extensive evidence suggests that people use base rate information inconsistently in decision making. A classic example is the inverse base rate effect (IBRE), whereby participants classify ambiguous stimuli sharing features of both common and rare categories as members of the rare category. Computational models of the IBRE have either posited that it arises from associative similarity-based mechanisms or dissimilarity-based processes that may depend upon higher-level inference. Here we develop a hybrid model, which posits that similarity- and dissimilarity-based evidence both contribute to the IBRE, and test it using functional magnetic resonance imaging data collected from human subjects completing an IBRE task. Consistent with our model, multivoxel pattern analysis reveals that activation patterns on ambiguous test trials contain information consistent with dissimilarity-based processing. Further, trial-by-trial activation in left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex tracks model-based predictions for dissimilarity-based processing, consistent with theories positing a role for higher-level symbolic processing in the IBRE.

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