Media priming
Media priming describes an effect from media impact research that explains changes in evaluation patterns and thus in decisions made by media consumers based on information conveyed by the media. To put it simply, the effect means that media consumers prefer to judge specific political actors according to the criteria that were increasingly discussed in general media coverage.
The media priming effect was described by Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder in their study News that matters: Television and American opinion in 1987 .
Priming as an extension of the agenda setting approach
Media priming is generally viewed as an extension of agenda setting .
The agenda setting hypothesis assumes that the mass media, through the selection and weighting of the topics they report on, influence what the audience thinks about and which topics are important to them. It says that the audience takes over the thematic agenda of the media. The effect could be reliably demonstrated.
In contrast to the agenda-setting effect, studies on media priming do not examine the cognitive influence of the media agenda on media consumers , but rather the affective influence: changes in political attitudes and ultimately voting decisions.
Both approaches assume the same independent variable : The prerequisite for the investigations is the determination of the media agenda. While the audience agenda is measured as a dependent variable in agenda setting, media priming asks about the evaluation pattern according to which the audience (mostly) judges politicians. The priming approach assumes that when assessing politicians, the audience falls back on criteria that are specified by the media, or more precisely: by the media agenda:
"By calling attention to some matters while ignoring others, television news influences the standards by which governments, presidents, policies, and candidates for public office are judged."
There does not have to be a direct connection between media coverage (independent variable) and the measured (election) decisions (dependent variable). For example, increased reporting on environmental issues, even in distant regions, can create a priming effect in one's own country and cause politicians to be judged and elected more on the basis of their environmental competencies.
Research on media priming began in the mid-1980s. In the 1970s and 1980s, media impact research opened up to the characteristics of the recipient under the influence of cognitive approaches from social psychology . The already existing and empirically broadly based agenda setting approach was not sufficient to illustrate the media influence on certain patterns of perception and interpretation among the recipients.
Psychological explanation of media priming
In a more general form, the priming effect has been known in psychology since the early 1970s. It is based on a network model of memory: According to this model, units of knowledge are understood as nodes in a network that are linked to one another via associative pathways . During priming, such a node is more strongly activated by a stimulus, and with it the next connected units of knowledge (spreaded activation). A higher activation level means greater cognitive accessibility to the knowledge unit. The activation decreases over time.
The communication scientist Michael Schenk applies this explanatory model to media priming:
"If one understands human memory as an associative network in which ideas, concepts etc. are stored as nodes of the network and linked to other such ideas via semantic paths, then priming can be understood as the activation of such nodes through external stimuli."
Specifically, this means that news reports on a certain policy field prime viewers for this field and thus make these units of knowledge more accessible to viewers.
The actual priming effect only becomes apparent in a second step. The increased activation potential of the corresponding knowledge units then means that, for example, when assessing a politician, priority is given to such accessible knowledge units, i.e. the corresponding policy field serves as the main criterion for the overall assessment of the politician. Media priming can thus be described as a sub-form of general priming based on psychology.
Measurement of priming effects
The media agenda can be determined by content analysis.
The measurement data for determining the evaluation pattern are obtained, at least in the area of political media priming, through surveys and aggregation. Two variables are necessary: one value for the overall assessment of the actor to be assessed, and one for the specific assessment within one or more policy fields. The content analysis determines which policy fields are queried.
A regression analysis is now used to calculate the extent to which the overall assessment of the actor can be explained by the specific assessments. In order to determine the priming effect, the coefficient thus determined must be compared with a control value. In longitudinal studies , several measurements are made at certain time intervals. Changes in the calculated coefficient are now compared with changes in the media agenda. A high correlation between the coefficients and the media agenda indicates a priming effect.
variables
The phenomenon of media priming manifests itself in two separate steps. In the first step, the viewer is primed by media content, in the second step he applies this prime to a target stimulus. The time-dependent nature of the process evokes several time-dependent variables, namely the duration of the prime, its frequency and the interval between the priming and its application.
The latter in particular causes confusing findings: while psychological experiments have shown that priming effects fade after a time interval of seconds and minutes, research on political media priming finds effects over a period of weeks and months. This discrepancy leads Roskos-Ewoldson et al. To question the connection between political media priming and psychological priming in general. They suspect that the two effects represent different processes on the neural level and suggest that the effects of political media priming should not be located under priming, but under political cultivation .
In addition, previous studies on media priming have neglected the time-dependent variables, as Peter criticizes. Only by comparing experimental and field studies does he dare to carry out the analysis that also corresponds to the findings of psychology: the priming effect is stronger the less time has passed since priming, the more often the prime has been shown and the longer it has lasted. A study by Carpentier et al., Based on Roskos-Ewaldson et al. was the only work in the field of media priming that specifically examined time parameters.
A less uniform picture emerges for the other intervening variables , namely those of predisposition. The question of the extent to which prior knowledge, trust in media reporting, personal importance of the primed topic and media use strengthen or weaken the priming effect has not yet been reliably determined. In 1987, Iyengar and Kinder already included several characteristics of the recipients in their first experiments on political media priming: political interest, party membership and education. However, later studies have shown that a number of other variables have to be taken into account, such as the trust of the recipients in the media reporting and the specialist knowledge of the primed topic. All in all, these variables have not yet been fully explored.
Other forms of media priming
In addition to the political manifestation of media priming, research also deals with violence-related, entertainment-related, stereotype-related and persuasive media priming.
literature
- Jochen Peter: Media Priming: Basics, Findings and Research Trends . In: Journalism . No. 1/2002 , March 2002, p. 21-44 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Shanto Iyengar, Donald R. Children: News that matters: television and American opinion. American politics and political economy . Chicago University Press, Chicago [et al.] 1987.
- ^ Maxwell E. McCombs, Donald L. Shaw: The Agenda-Setting Function for Mass Media . In: Public Opinion Quaterly . tape 36 , no. 2 , 1972, p. 176-187 .
- ↑ Hans-Bernd Brosius : Agenda setting after a quarter of a century of research: methodological and theoretical standstill? In: Journalism . tape 39 , 1994, pp. 188-269 .
- ↑ a b c d Michael Schenk : Media Effects Research . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2007.
- ^ A b c David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen, Beverly B. Roskos-Ewoldsen, Francesca R. Dillman Carpentier: Media Priming: An Updated Synthesis . In: Jennings Bryant, Mary Beth Oliver (Eds.): Media effects: advances in theory and research . Routledge, New York / London 2009, pp. 74-93 .
- ^ A b Jochen Peter: Media Priming: Basics, Findings and Research Trends . In: Journalism . tape 47 , 2002, p. 21-44 .
- ^ Francis R. Dillman Carpentier, David R. Roskos-Ewoldsen, Beverly B. Roskos-Ewoldsen: A Test of the Network Models of Political Priming . In: Media Psychology . tape 11 , no. 2 , 2008, p. 186-206 .