Effects of Salient News Items on Information Acquisition and Issue Perception

A medical news report was manipulated to project either Alabama or Texas as the target region for the outbreak of a new (fictitious) disease. Residents of Alabama and Texas responded to these reports, making the report of the threat to their respective territories relevant to them, while rendering the report of the threat to other regions of the country comparatively irrelevant. Regionally defined issue salience was found to foster superior acquisition of both quantitative and qualitative information of diagnostic value. Issue salience also led to estimates of greater danger to the public and self. It increased the perceived newsworthiness and usefulness of the reports as well. These findings suggest that issue salience motivates attention to, and the acquisition of, diagnostically relevant information that tends to be poorly processed or ignored under conditions of insufficient relevance.

Reading between the Photographs: The Influence of Incidental Pictorial Information on Issue Perception

A news report on an Appalachian tick disease was differently illustrated. It either contained no images, an image of ticks, or this tick image plus three child victims. The victims were ethnically balanced (two White, one Black) or not (either all White or all Black). The text did not make any reference to the victims' ethnicity. Respondents assessed the risk of contracting the disease for children of different ethnicity. Partiality in pictorially representing a particular ethnic group fostered the relative overestimation of risk for that group. Inclusion of the image of ticks, especially when combined with victim images, prompted higher risk assessment overall.

Effects of Citation in Exemplifying Testimony on Issue Perception

Two sides of an issue were presented and exemplified with testimonials in a magazine-style news report. Testimony featured the interviewees' positions in citation or paraphrase. All combinations of citation-paraphrase were created and analyzed in factorial designs; i.e., position A (cited, paraphrased) was crossvaried with position B (cited, paraphrased). Issue perception was found to be greatly influenced by citation. Respondents adopted the cited position more than the paraphrased position. This effect was most pronounced when the opposing position was paraphrased. No presentation bias was detected, however.