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Action Theory and Communication Research
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Communications Monograph Vol. 3
Editors
Karsten Renckstorf Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen The Netherlands
Keith Roe Department of Communication, University of Leuven Belgium
Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York
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Action Theory and Communication Research Recent Developments in Europe
Edited by
Karsten Renckstorf Denis McQuail Judith E. Rosenbaum Gabi Schaap
Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York
vi Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
앝 Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines 앪 of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Action theory and communication research : recent developments in Europe / edited by Karsten Renckstorf … [et al.]. p. cm. ⫺ (Communications monograph ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 3-11-018080-4 (hc : alk. paper) ⫺ ISBN 3-11-018081-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Mass media ⫺ Research ⫺ Europe. 2. Social action ⫺ Europe. I. Renckstorf, Karsten. II. Series. P91.5.E85A25 2004 302.231094⫺dc22 2004042698
ISBN 3-11-018080-4 hb. ISBN 3-11-018081-2 pb. 쑔 Copyright 2004 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Sigurd Wendland, Berlin. Photograph: Garden of aerials, Carrara, Italy, 1980 ies 쑕 Eusebius Wirdeier, Köln. Printed in Germany.
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Acknowledgements
In the fall of 2001, Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research organized the 2nd International Colloquium on Action Theoretical Approaches in European Communication Research. Prepared in cooperation with the German Association of Communication Research and the Department of Communication at the University of Nijmegen, this three-day meeting was meant to bring together a group of European scholars concerned with action theoretical approaches to communication research. In total, 22 papers were presented and discussed. More than thirty scholars coming from six European scientific communities; i.e., Belgium, Finland, Germany, Israel, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and who represented eleven European universities, presented insights into their current communication research. The range of research topics presented was considerably broad, but the focus of the presentations was clear; to contribute to a rich and promising research tradition which has seldomly been thematized on a European level. In the present 3rd volume of the Communications Monograph, revised versions of 19 colloquium papers have been compiled to present an overview of current European communication research based on action theoretical perspectives. This volume should provide a comprehensive insight into the present state of the art in European communication research, even more than the Special Issue of Communications, edited by the present editors and entitled Action Theoretical Approaches in European Communication Research: Theory, Methodology, and Findings which presented a characteristic, but small selection of just nine colloquium papers. Many individuals have contributed to the successful completion of this project. We would like to particularly acknowledge Michelle Camps and Susanne Samuelsz for their assistance with the organization of the Colloquium, and Marieke Jansen for copy-editing this monograph. We are of course very indebted to the many contributors for their original work and their patience with the editorial requests and routines. Additionally, this project would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Nijmegen and the German Association of Communication Research. Last but not least we would like to thank our publishers Mouton de Gruyter for their support in bringing this project to a successful conclusion. Nijmegen, Summer 2003
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Contents
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Contents
Acknowledgements 1
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Action theory and communication research: An introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Denis McQuail and Karsten Renckstorf
1
I Theory 2
Action theory as part of social science . . . . . . . . . . . . . Erwin K. Scheuch (†)
3
With more hindsight: Conceptual problems and some ways forward for media use research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Denis McQuail
35
The ‘media use as social action’ approach: Theory, methodology and research evidence so far . . . . . . . . . . . Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester
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4
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The foundation of communication and action in consciousness: Confronting action theory with systems theoretical arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frank Huysmans
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85
II Methods 6
7
8
Media communication and social interaction: Perspectives on action theory based reception research . . . . . . . . . . . Angela Keppler Using protocol analysis in television news research: Proposal and first tests Gabi Schaap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reconceptualizing media literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Judith E. Rosenbaum and Johannes W. J. Beentjes
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115 141
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Contents
Elderly people’s media use in the context of personal meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Margot van der Goot, Johannes W. J. Beentjes and Martine van Selm
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‘Para-social interaction’: Social interaction as a matter of fact? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Charlton
177
Action theoretical approaches in organizational communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul Nelissen
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III Findings 12
Media use as an adaptation or coping tool in prison . . . . . Heidi Vandebosch
13
Juxtaposing direct experience with media experience: Does reality really matter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan Van den Bulck
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The home as a multimedia environment: Families’ conception of space and the introduction of information and communication technologies in the home . . . . . . . . . Veerle Van Rompaey and Keith Roe
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Patterns in television news use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ruben Konig, Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester
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Do well-balanced exemplars in news stories provide food for thought? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul Hendriks Vettehen and Leo van Snippenburg
17
Between altruism and narcissism: An action theoretical approach of personal homepages devoted to existential meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ellen Hijmans and Martine van Selm
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Ownership and use of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media among ethnic minority youth in The Netherlands. The role of the ethnocultural position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Leen d’Haenens, Cindy van Summeren, Madelon Kokhuis and Johannes W. J. Beentjes
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The stereotypical portrayal of Germans and its effect on a Dutch audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henk Westerik
345
Occupational practices of Dutch journalists in a television newsroom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Liesbeth Hermans
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Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Index
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Action theory and communication research
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1 Action theory and communication research: 1 An introduction Denis McQuail and Karsten Renckstorf
Social action perspectives in (mass) communication research Social action perspectives have played a major role in communication research from the start of the academic enterprise called communication science. Although far from being the mainstream approach to communication research in Europe, this tradition has developed its own theory, research methods and a considerable amount of fresh and promising insights into communication processes. It focuses primarily, although not exclusively, on audience activity and mass media use both the central objects of study for communication research from the very beginning (cf. Renckstorf & McQuail, 1996). Initially, the audience was conceived of as an undifferentiated mass, a passive target for persuasion and information, waiting, as it were, for media messages to come along so the audience members could respond to them in a more or less uniform, quite foreseeable manner. However, as students of mass media effects soon came to recognize, audiences were made up of real people, surrounded by and imbedded in social groups, which can be characterized as networks of interpersonal relationships through which media effects are mediated. That is, essentially, why audiences can resist the influence often intended by media campaigners. People have their own varied reasons for using the media, and it is they who choose to attend to media messages – or not. According to a well-known assessment, “the initial mistake, was to suppose that media choose their audiences. They aim to do so, but their selections are less decisive than the choices which audience members make of media channels and contents” (McQuail & Windahl, 1993: 132). Evidence of selective exposure, selective perception and selective retention soon accumulated, showing that audiences tend to match their media use – i.e., their choice of media channels and media content – to their own tastes, ideas and informational needs. Thus, the chance of change oriented effects from the media diminished and the chance of reinforcement increased (cf. Klapper, 1960). It was about the time of that insight when Katz (1959: 2) suggested mass communication researchers should pay less attention to the question “What do media do to people?” and more to that of “What do people do with the media?”. This is perhaps the most general for-
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mulation of the premise underlying all approaches of communication research which assume that there is an active audience. Since then, it is more or less considered common sense within important parts of the community of communication researchers that mass media use must be conceptualized in terms of social action and, consequently, processes of mass communication must be studied from a social action perspective. Accordingly, many efforts have been made to set up such a social action perspective for mass communication research (cf. Anderson & Meyer, 1988; McQuail & Gurevitch, 1974; Dervin, 1981, 1983; Renckstorf, 1989, 1994; Renckstorf & Wester, 1992, 2001; Renckstorf, McQuail & Jankowski, 1996, 2001; Hunziker, 1988; Vorderer, 1992; Charlton & Neumann, 1985; Charlton & Schneider, 1997; Altheide, 1985; Lull, 1980, 1988). These efforts all aimed to create a social action perspective that would go beyond the classical formulation of the social action principles within the uses and gratifications research, which derived its primary logic from functional analysis (Wright, 1960). The underlying logic of uses and gratifications studies has been summed up as follows: “They are concerned with (1) the social and psychological origins of (2) needs, which generate (3) expectations of (4) the mass media or other sources, which lead to (5) differential patterns of media exposure (or engagement in other activities), resulting in (6) need gratifications and (7) other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones (cf. Katz, Blumler & Gurevitch, 1974: 20). Clearly, a social action basis is implicit in the classical formulation of the uses and gratifications model for mass communication research: “1) The audience is conceived of as active, that is, an important part of mass media use is assumed to be goal directed … (2) In the mass communication process much initiative in linking need gratification and media choice lies within the audience member … (3) The media compete with other sources of need satisfaction. The needs served by mass communication constitute but a segment of the wider range of human needs … (4) Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by individual audience members themselves – that is, people are sufficiently self-aware to be able to report their interests and motives in particular cases … (5) Value judgements about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while audience orientations are explored in their own terms …” (Katz et al., 1974: 21–22; italics added) What is formulated here – some thirty years ago – is the concept of a selfaware, goal directed audience member, who is able to make sensible media choices in order to serve his/her interests (needs) and motives by means of media use. Thus, according to uses and gratifications research,
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media use normally does not happen by chance or at random, nor can it be imposed by the media themselves. Instead, media use is seen, albeit implicitly, as a form of social action. The term is even used in the Weberian sense, as media use is described here as an activity that is planned, shaped and carried out by self-conscious actors who are interacting with the surrounding social context and others in the environment and, thus, taking a whole set of subjectively perceived functional alternatives and potential consequences into account. Since then the action theoretical approach has proved its value as a framework for communication research in the US (e.g., Anderson & Meyer, 1988) as well as in European communication research, most especially in the study of media audiences and their media use (e.g., Vorderer, 1992; Charlton & Neumann, 1985; Charlton & Schneider, 1997; Renckstorf, McQuail & Jankowski, 1996, 2001; Renckstorf & Wester, 1998, 2001). It has deep roots in Weberian sociology, in Schütz’, Berger and Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge, in symbolic interactionism and phenomenology and it has survived the various storms that have beset the practice of the social sciences since the collapse of structuralist and social system paradigms (e.g., Sutter & Charlton, 2001). The social action approach privileges the perspective of the acting individual but offers guidelines for connecting the subjective orientation with networks of social interaction and for treating ‘behavior’ as a social process. Research within this framework takes account of the wider social context and calls for a careful combination of empirical observation and interpretation, with a corresponding diversity of methodologies. The appeal of this approach also stems from its flexibility, its wide range of applications and its sensitivity to cultural and social meanings.
Action theoretical contributions to European communication research For the purposes of the present volume we have adopted a broad formulation of the social action perspective as it has developed within the social sciences. We are more concerned with the general spirit of the approach than with making good a claim to a narrowly defined school of communication research. A number of contributors to the book would not – for instance – identify themselves primarily as followers of social action theory. This partly reflects differences of disciplinary origin and partly the variety of situations to which the approach has been applied. The articles assembled in the present volume of Communications Monograph, despite their diversity, can all be placed within the framework of so-
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cial action theory. Some are reports of empirical inquiries, others reflections on theory and/or methodology but each one sheds some light on the significance of media use in everyday experience and contributes to an understanding of communication in society. The contributions included are published in three sections. Theory The first section, theory, contains four articles. Erwin K. Scheuch (chapter 2) discusses the development of action theoretical approaches in recent communication research against the background of a more general shift within the social sciences from macro approaches and quantitative research, to micro approaches and preferential use of interpretative research designs. According to Scheuch, action theory seems especially applicable in situations of ‘strong’ media effects. Denis McQuail (chapter 3) looks back on uses & gratifications research and reviews successes and failures of this approach. This contribution benefits not only from the charm of updating a classical article (cf. McQuail, 1985) but also from a specific proposal McQuail develops, concerning the adequate conceptualization of the ‘moment of media choice’. Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester (chapter 4) sketch an action theoretical perspective for communication research and outline the general reference model of the so-called ‘Media Use as Social Action Approach’. In their contribution, the authors reflect on their research efforts up to now by re-assessing theory, methods and research evidence of some twenty empirical studies. Frank Huysmans in his contribution (chapter 5) presents arguments for incorporating some of Luhmann’s views – i.e., consciousness and communication as separate, but mutually observing systems – into action theoretical approaches to the study of (mass) communication processes. Methods Six contributions dealing with methodological, conceptual and/or problems of research methods and techniques appear under this heading. Angela Keppler (chapter 6) is concerned with perspectives on qualitative, action theory based reception research, presenting some basic considerations regarding methods for relevant research. In much the same way, albeit one step further into the field of empirical research, Gabi Schaap (chapter 7) suggests an alternative way to study the processing of television news items by means of protocol analysis. As the processing of news is conceptualized as an active, interpretive process by which viewers make sense of the news, an argument is offered for a research method which
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takes the viewer’s perspective into account by observing viewer’s thoughts and verbalizations. As the results of first tests indicate, one type of protocol analysis, the so-called ‘thought-listening technique’ seems to be superior to the other, the so-called ‘thinking-aloud method’. Judith Rosenbaum and Johannes W. J. Beentjes (chapter 8) present an effort to re-conceptualize the concept of ‘media literacy’, defined here as an indication of the extent to which people are critical media users. Their development of a ‘constructivist’ model of media literacy is based on the action theoretical reference model of media use, as is the case in the contribution of Margot van der Goot, Johannes W. J. Beentjes and Martine van Selm (chapter 9). These authors present a new model for the study of ‘media use in the context of personal meaning’, based on concepts drawn from the ‘media use as social action approach’ on the one hand, and from the ‘personal meaning from a life-span perspective’ as it is developed and used in recent psycho-gerontology. Mass communication is often seen as communication without reciprocity. According to Michael Charlton (chapter 10) it is not strictly necessary to restrict the phenomenon of ‘para-social interaction’ to the social cognition of individuals; the social usage theory of language offers an instrument to conceptualize language production as well as language comprehension as joint action, even if speaker and listener cannot see each other and do not act simultaneously. Last but not least, Paul Nelissen (chapter 11) presents an alternative way of looking at organizational communication. His perspective, based on action theoretical notions regarding the role of information needs and information use in everyday life, as well as Dervin’s sense-making methodology, may turn out to be a valuable alternative to present mainstream studies of organizational communication. Findings The third section, findings, includes nine studies into recent empirical European communication research. Heidi Vandebosch (chapter 12) reports on her empirical study on media use by people in prison. Some of the core assumptions of the media use as social action approach – such as that media use can function as a routine activity or as a problem solving action – are tested in a ‘captive audience’ situation, that is, the (stressful) prison context of five Flemish penitentiaries. Empirical data illustrate that routine media use softens the chronic ‘pains of imprisonment’, and that acute prison stress leads to additional coping behavior. Jan Van den Bulck (chapter 13) deals with some fundamental questions, such as; how do people construct their image of reality? What is the role of direct experience of ‘real’ events, and what is the role of ‘mediated’ experience of ‘pseu-
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do-events’? Van den Bulck draws on cognitive theories, suggesting that people use many inputs in order to construct their image of reality. His empirical research addresses the interaction between television viewing and direct experience in the case of ‘fear of crime’; empirical data show that fear of crime remains related to television viewing, even when direct experience is controlled for. By means of an integrated quantitative and qualitative research design, Veerle Van Rompaey and Keith Roe (chapter 14) study some of the ways in which the diffusion of new information and communication technologies is related to the disposition of physical and symbolic space within families. The following two contributions deal with news: Ruben Konig, Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester (chapter 15) explore patterns of television news use, using data from a national survey in The Netherlands (n=969), whereas Paul Hendriks Vettehen and Leo van Snippenburg (chapter 16) deal with the question whether the journalistic practice of exemplifying newspaper news stories by means of case histories really does have harmful effects on an audience. In their small-scale empirical study (n=51) they investigate whether readers of a exemplified news story use fairly balanced exemplars as opportunities to reflect on the issue in question. Analyses reveal that the story containing exemplifications of the various viewpoints led respondents to more differentiated reasoning concerning the issue than the story containing just base-rate information. From an action theoretical point of view, personal homepages are online multi-media documents of identity constructions. Usually addressing questions such as, ‘Who am I?’, personal homepages provide information on both the creator’s personal and public identity, sometimes including reflections on the ‘meaning of life’. Ellen Hijmans and Martine van Selm (chapter 17) examine these existential meaning constructions in personal homepages by means of qualitative content analysis. In a sample of 42 personal homepages they find that most answers to the ‘meaning of life’ can be interpreted as either ‘divine/religious’, ‘experience centered’, ‘cosmic’ or ‘utopian’, thereby showing striking similarities with findings of other studies on existential meaning. It becomes evident from their study that the Internet offers people new venues for expressing orientation (i.e., goals and objectives), beliefs, and experience reflecting answers to the ‘meaning of life’. In their contribution Leen d’Haenens, Cindy van Summeren, Madelon Kokhuis and Johannes W. J. Beentjes (chapter 18) address the research question to what extent culture-specific and socio-demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, SES, and country of origin, influence ownership and use of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. By means of a survey conducted among Turkish, Moroccan, and Surinamese youth, aged between 12 and 19, residing in The Netherlands, the
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question of which environmental factors play a role in this regard is investigated. The media are often blamed for being a source of stereotypes by portraying ethnic minority groups, or foreigners in a stereotypical manner. In his study, Henk Westerik (chapter 19) focuses on the effects of stereotypical portrayal of Germans on the attitudes of a Dutch audience towards them. The role of stereotyped portrayals on the interpretation of visual messages is analyzed using data from an experiment and survey among Dutch adults (N=492) in which an attempt was made to trigger anti-German prejudice in The Netherlands. Empirical results from this study indicate that although the response to the verbal label ‘German’ is less favorable than to the label ‘Dutch’, there is no difference in response to photographs of subjects labeled either German or Dutch. News making is not an individual affair. Journalists work for an audience, they are members of occupational groups, adhere to professional values, and work within the boarders and constraints of a news organization. Liesbeth Hermans (chapter 20) in her study used an action theoretical framework to gain a better understanding of the process that takes place when individuals act in their occupational role as ‘journalist’ in a television newsroom. Empirical data were gathered by systematic observations made in the newsroom of the Dutch public channel’s news program, the NOS-journaal, as well as interviews conducted with people working in this newsroom. Findings show that these journalists work in a news organization with a strong hierarchical structure; depending on differences in responsibility and the specific position journalists occupy within the news organization, journalists define and interpret situations differently. This process of meaning-construction appears to be rooted in different, but shared perspectives journalists use in order to make their daily decisions.
The social action framework and the further development of communication research From this set of nineteen studies, the notion that the core media phenomenon can be viewed in quite varied ways emerges. It can be viewed as a means of influence, as a set of material technologies occupying domestic as well as mental and social space, as a tool for coping with pressures, as a topic of conversation, as the basis for social interaction, as a work task for ‘communicators’, and as an informal social interlocutor. The social action framework allows us to connect fragments of observation and divergent perspectives to create a more coherent whole. Of particular im-
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portance is the potential for bridging the gap between those who favor quantitative-empirical methods of enquiry and advocates of qualitative or ethnomethodological research. This division has ceased to polarize audience theory and research, with strong claims being made for ‘audience reception analysis’ as opposed to traditional audience research, especially as it is employed for purposes of management (cf. Jensen & Rosengren, 1990; Alasuutari, 1999). The philosophical and epistemological differences that arise in this connection are essentially unbridgeable, but the social action approach offers possibilities for some cooperation in research. The nineteen studies also prompt us to ask questions about the shared framework and the further development of communication research, as done by Erwin K. Scheuch in his contribution to this volume. One such question concerns the range of topics that can be tackled using this framework. Does it take us much further beyond the immediate moment of personal choice and experience on the part of an ‘acting individual’? Does it help in shedding light on the larger system that shapes and constrains individual experience? Secondly, to what extent does the social action framework support or stimulate critical as well as descriptive and interpretative inquiry? This question is particularly important for, in spite of repeated claims, it is not always clear that the approach has set aside functionalist assumptions and logic. Thirdly, is it possible to use this framework to not only conduct cultural and social analysis, but to also determine to what extent both analyses are requisite? This relates especially to the distinction or connection between a more empirical communication science and a humanistic ‘cultural studies’ approach. Is the approach more socio-centric than media-centric? On the face of it, it is by definition socio-centric, with media use and consequences seen to depend on perceptions of the social environment and on social circumstances and contexts. Again it is not clear that this debate matters very much when it comes to tackling the questions our discipline is asked to address. Fourthly, does the approach help us to answer pressing questions about media effects and does it give us some assistance in designing mass media policy, especially in those areas where vulnerable groups are at risk? The contents of this volume suggest that the social action approach is a flexible tool for addressing policy-related questions. Some broader issues are also prompted by these remarks and by the research presented here, especially concerning the definition of our field of study and the boundaries that might be have to recognized, redrawn or transgressed. The social action approach takes us beyond any narrow or preconceived delimitation of any one particular field of media-related behavior. We are, for instance, drawn to create connections between media
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use and a range of related phenomena, including patterns of leisure and cultural consumption, lifestyles and social attitudes. The media often play a key role in connecting and making sense of diverse areas of personal experience. This makes it difficult to draw boundaries for this field of study and opens up an expanding horizon for research. But it can also be a source of disciplinary uncertainty. We may find ourselves in a grey zone where communication science ends and other branches of study, including psychology and cultural studies, begin (cf. Roe, 2003; McQuail, 2003). These various uncertainties are a sign of the depth and vitality as well as a possible weakness in the field, but they need to be openly addressed either individually or collectively.
References Alasuutari, P. (Ed.) (1999). Rethinking the media audience. London: Sage. Altheide, D. L. (1985). Symbolic interaction and ‘Uses and Gratification’: Towards a theoretical integration. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 11 (1), 51–60. Anderson, J. A. & Meyer, Th. P. (1988). Mediated communication. A social action perspective. Newbury Park: Sage. Charlton, M. & Neumann, K. (1985). Medienkonsum und Lebensbewältigung in der Familie. München: Psychologie Verlags Union. Charlton, M. & Schneider, S. (Eds.) (1997). Rezeptionsforschung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Dervin, B. (1981). Mass communication: Changing conceptions of the audience. In R. Rice & Paisley, W. (Eds.), Public communication campaigns (pp. 71–88). Beverly Hills: Sage. Dervin, B. (1983). Information as a user construct: The relevance of perceived information needs to synthesis and interpretation. In S. Ward & L. Reed (Eds.), Knowledge structure and use: Implications for synthesis and interpretation (pp. 153–183). Philadelphia: University Press,. Hunziker, P. (1988). Medien, Kommunikation und Gesellschaft. Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgemeinschaft. Jensen, K. B. & Rosengren, K. E. (1990). Five traditions in search of an audience. European Journal of Communication Research, 5,(2/3), 207–238. Katz, E. (1959). Mass communications research and the study of popular culture. Studies in Public Communication, 2 (1), 1–6. Katz, E., Blumler, J. G. & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Utilization of mass communication by the individual. In J. G. Blumler & E. Katz (Eds.), The uses of mass communications (pp. 19–32). Beverly Hills, London: Sage. Klapper, J. T. (1960). The effects of mass communication. New York: Glencoe. Lull, J. (1980). The social uses of television. Human Communication Research, 6 (2), 197–209. Lull, J. (Ed.) (1988). World families watch television. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
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McQuail, D. (1985). With the benefits of hindsight: Reflections on uses and gratifications research. In M. Gurevitch & M. R. Levy (Eds.), Mass communication review yearbook, vol. 5 (pp. 125–141). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. McQuail, D. (2003). Making progress in a trackless, weightless and intangible space: A response to Keith Roe. Communications, 28 (3), 275–284. McQuail, D. & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Explaining audience behavior: Three approaches considered. In J. G. Blumler & E. Katz (Eds.), The uses of mass communications (pp. 287–301). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. McQuail, D. & Windahl, S. (1993). Communication models for the study of mass communication. London: Longman. Renckstorf, K. (1989). Mediennutzung als soziales Handeln. In M. Kaase & W. Schulz (Eds.), Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (Sonderheft 30/1989: Massenkommunikation: Theorie, Methoden, Befunde) (pp. 314–336). Renckstorf, K. (1994). Mediagebruik als sociaal handelen. Een handelingstheoretische benadering voor communicatiewetenschappelijk onderzoek. Nijmegen: ITS. Renckstorf, K. & McQuail, D. (1996). Social action perspectives in mass communication research. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 21 (1), 5–26. Renckstorf, K., McQuail, D. & Jankowski, N. (Eds.) (1996). Media use as social action. A European approach to audience studies. London: Libbey. Renckstorf, K., McQuail, D. & Jankowski, N. (Eds.) (2001). Television news research: Recent European approaches and findings. Berlin: Quintessence. Renckstorf, K., McQuail, D., Rosenbaum, J. E. & Schaap, G. (Eds.) (2001). Action Theoretical Approaches in European Communication Research: Theory, Methodology, and Findings. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research (Special Issue), 26(4). Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (1999). An action theoretical frame of reference for the study of TV news use. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 24 (1), 39–59. Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (2001). The media use as social action approach: Theory, methodology and research evidence so far. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 26 (4), 389–419. Roe, K. (2003). Communication science: Where have we been? Where are we now? Where are we going? Or: Media versus communication research? Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 28(1), 53–59. Sutter, T. & Charlton, M. (Eds.) (2001). Massenkommunikation, Interaktion und soziales Handeln. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Vorderer, P. (1992). Fernsehen als Handlung. Fernsehfilmrezeption aus motivationspsychologischer Perspektive. Berlin: Edition Sigma. Wright, C. R. (1960). Functional analysis and mass communication. Public Opinion Quarterly, 24, 606–620.
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2 Action theory as part of social science Erwin K. Scheuch (†)
Abstract Ever since the late sixties, social sciences have moved from macro sociology and quantitative research to micro sociology with the preferential use of qualitative material. In economics, this has led to a shift from macro economics to micro economics, and in sociology to a waning of structural functionalism and an ascent of various forms of ‘interpretive sociology’. When applied to the field of mass media, this development leads to an emphasis on the subjective interpretation of media messages, and specifically to the view that the audience shapes the effects that media have. This contradicts earlier ideas stating that the media effects on people are weak. Katz, as supporter of this view, has later conceded that there are situations where media have strong effects, and ‘Action Theory’ appears especially applicable in such situations. Keywords: macro versus micro sociology, interpretive sociology and media, ‘strong effects’ and ‘weak effects’, action theory
Changing foci in theorizing There is still no general theory in sociology, despite bold attempts to the contrary and a widespread yearning that these attempts would be successful. The famous system-builders of the turn of the century, especially Spencer (1879), had few followers in successive decades. One of those followers was Leopold von Wiese (1933) in the 1920s and, since 1937, Talcott Parsons (1973). Both were very successful at the time when their general theories were formulated, and both were quickly forgotten after their deaths. The plausible reaction to this state of affairs would be an attempt to specify the realm in which various partial theories would be most applicable, but unfortunately this is not the case. Instead, various theories, that for non-believers have obviously restricted ranges of explanatory power, claim to be general theories, the latest being various versions of ‘rational choice’ (Axelrod, 1984; Elster, 1986). This provokes blanket rejections which are not helpful, either. Repeatedly, the accents have changed in singling out what used to be the
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focus of attention for theorizing. Prior to the 1920s, research focused on macro sociology, and especially the explanation of changes in large collectivities, such as nations, social classes and/or major institutions. Of course, there were always exceptions, such as Simmel (1970; especially Simmel, 1958) – with his descriptions of modern man – during the fin de siècle, and more recently George Herbert Mead (1934) – emphasizing individual perception. However, the most pervasive change regarding the research focus of sociology has been a shift from the long-term analyses of collectives, to the individual and his immediate environment in contemporary society1. This coincides with changes in empirical referents and in methods, namely from evidence for collectives to data on the behavior of individuals.
Conceptualizing the individual in a sequence of behavior Until the 1950s, individuals were often conceptualized as being at the mercy of structures. The extreme version of this view of man is behaviorism in psychology. In the stimulus response (SR) approach, the goal is to find the proper stimulus; if the search is successful, the stimulus will invariably trigger the response (Skinner, 1953; Hull, 1952). In sociology, the most prominent representative of this view became George C. Homans, who postulated that all behavior is reducible to a few basic mechanisms2 (Homans). Homans was one of the first to present the ‘methodological individualism’ that later turned out to be the foundation for various versions of ‘rational choice’: “Institutions are human behavior, and they are, therefore, to be explained by the characteristics of that behavior” (Homans, 1962: 35). Homans can be considered an exception in the rigid theoretical frame of sociology. Conversely, Durkheim’s structural sociology – usually considered a one-sided form of macro sociology – treats human beings as captives of social structure. His quantitative method of sociology treats individual cases as merely responding to their own social environment and structures. Esser, however, criticizes this routine as a ‘Variablen Soziologie’ that fails to explain anything3. This statement assumes an understanding of ‘explain’. Weber, for example, admonishes that explaining means to characterize action (Handeln) based on its meaning (Sinn). Talcott Parsons can probably be considered the most important scholar of the structural-functional approach. As such, he is usually seen as a major proponent of treating individuals as passive elements of structural forces. This is understandable if we concentrate on the ‘mature’ Parsons, and especially on the ones calling themselves ‘Parsonians’ (Parsons, 1952). However, in his “Structure of Social Action” he very deliberately uses the term ‘action’ instead of ‘behavior’4.
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However, at that time, Parsons’ basic unit of analysis did not concern the actor but the ‘unit act’. Somewhat simplified, the unit act could be seen as the result of the following factors: the actor, his goals, and the relevant norms for behavior in a given situation (Scheuch, 1975: 286 ff, especially 309 f.). Both ‘goal’ and ‘situation’ were understood as particular to a given actor; situation was Parsons’ subjective interpretation of an objective setting, and goal was Parsons’ misinterpretation of Weber’s category of ‘Sinn’ (cf. Girndt, 1967). Understanding this difference between Weber and Parsons clarifies the implications of interjecting subjective factors into a flow of behavioral acts. It is reasonable to try to include orientations that guide an actor’s behavior in micro settings. If such intentions exist, we then have a fuller understanding of a ‘unit act’. This is especially interesting for pluralist societies. Here, a variety of interpretations could apply to the same situations. I disagree, however, with most of the current writing in micro sociology that all behavior should be guided by intents. Some behavior is better modeled as habitual, such as switching on the TV every day at the same time, to see your favorite TV show. This opens the way for conceptualizing the subjective factor. ‘Goal orientation’ implies a conscious choice, yet this notion contradicts our experience that most of the time we do what appears ‘reasonable’ or ‘natural’ at a given time and place, such as returning a friendly greeting. Goffman has made the self-conscious violation of ‘natural’ expectations of others and their reaction to this a specialty in quasi-experimental field studies (Goffman, 1959, 1961).
Reconstructing the world of immediate experience Since decades, the most important variety of interjecting into micro sociology between stimulus and behavior has been conceptualizing it as a ‘Gestalter’ of reality. These approaches originated in social science in the United States, where social psychology attained its strong position within the social sciences. This American social psychology could be characterized by the notion of ‘perception’. The origins of the various forms of what is called ‘interpretive sociology’ or ‘symbolic interactionism’ can be traced back to Cooley. George Herbert Mead is credited to be the ‘father’ of all following approaches, even though most adherents consider themselves ‘modern’ compared to behaviorist approaches. Cooley is primarily remembered as a scholar of evolution and a proponent of dualism between primary and secondary groups. However, his notion of the ‘looking-glass self’ has also had a major impact. This concept is considered to be of great importance for the analysis of communication,
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although outside the American scene it is not as well-known. To Cooley (1972), ‘personality’ is a social construct, resulting from the perception of ego as he experiences himself in the reactions of others. In perceiving their mirror images in communications, the individuals actively create their social self. Thus, the core element of society are images as an outcome of personal interchanges. Cooley understands these images not as ephemeral but as hard facts with existential consequences for the actors. In his view of science, Mead rejects the hope that we shall arrive at an ‘objective truth’, as all we have are communicated perceptions. “Objects are constituted in terms of meanings within the social process of experience and behavior through the mutual adjustment to one another … an adjustment made possible by means of communication …” (Strauss, 1964: 164). Meaning is constituted by action and communicated by ‘gestures’, and these stand for ideas behind them. As actors exchange meanings, society is created. Central to this is what Mead calls the difference between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ as two responding sides of the self. The ‘me’ is the controlling, limiting, societal side of personality. The ‘I’ is the impulsive side of behavior, upon which the ‘me’ makes a judgment after an act has taken place (Strauss, 1964: XXIII). In playing games, children learn the difference between the I and the Me, the latter being experienced as a ‘generalized other’, that is, as perceived social standards. These processes are reflected, a process that Mead defines as “the turning-back of the experience of the individual upon himself” (Strauss, 1964: 196). The ‘I’ in these processes can act in a surprising manner, and, therefore, perception is not completely predictable. Regardless of the degree to which a perception is dominated by the ‘I’ or the ‘Me’, it is to be understood as the interpretation of signs, as an activity and not just a reaction. In discussing the grandfathers of the subjective shift in microsociology, one could add a third American, W. I. Thomas. His famous ‘Thomas theorem’ – “If people believe a situation to be real, it is real in its consequences” – can be read as the Leitmotiv of this whole orientation. During the ‘student revolution’ and its aftermath a subjective understanding of behavior, with the accent on communication, became popular in the US. It was Blumer who offered his vision of Mead to give this interest a place in the young generation. Although Thomas and Mead both had taught at the same university, Mead was primarily influenced by James and Cooley. Thomas had little influence on later developments5. At that same time, a parallel process was taking place in Germany. Here Schütz became one of the founding fathers of a subjective understanding of social reality, as he was popularized in a younger generation of social scientists. Blumer has been credited for introducing the term ‘Symbolic Interactionism’, which then served as a general label for various forms of what
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Günter Wiswede calls ‘Interpretive Sociology’. This version of ‘verstehende Soziologie’ concentrated on what we cited as Parsons’ ‘unit act’ (Wiswede, 1998: 118 ff.). It is a kind of social science that sees the individual as being endowed with free will and as creatively reacting to the world around him. This approach fits perfectly with the Zeitgeist of the late sixties and the seventies, the period in which Blumer was at the apex of his influence. Blumer lists the premises of his version of symbolic interactionism as follows: (1) In responding to the world around them, people react by assigning meaning; (2) Meaning is developed in social relations. Individuals act based on their beliefs about reality. In acting, people take the role of the other into account, and are, therefore, guided by unreflected knowledge used in everyday behavior. Blumer (1969) uses the decision process of juries in courts to show how such unquestioned beliefs are introduced into a deliberate decision process. The world is mediated through symbols, and in analyzing them, Blumer restricts himself to the world of immediate experience. The material he uses are mass media such as movies, and human documents such as life histories. Blumer rejects objective science and justifies the use of what he called ‘sensitizing concepts’ as adequate to a ‘fuzzy reality’. Garfinkel called his combination of ethnoscience (i.e., research on the knowledge members in preliterate societies use in dealing with their environment), the ‘verstehende Soziologie’ of Schütz, and writings of the late Wittgenstein ‘Ethnomethodology’ (Garfinkel, 1967). The object of this version of an interpretive sociology are the routines used in everyday behavior. Sociology is understood to be just one of the many ways of interpreting the world around us. Our ‘definition of reality’ depends on our immediate environment. This leads to the assumption that in differentiated societies several definitions of reality can coexist side-by-side (Cicourel, 1973: 100). There are various further versions of this ‘interpretive sociology’ (e.g., ‘constructivism’), some of which come close to solipsism. One of these versions, Giddens’ structuration theory (Giddens, 1993; also Giddens, 1990), shall be discussed in more detail. Giddens’ theory concerns bridging the ontological contrast between structure and action, and, in doing so, overcoming the conflict between a subjective and an objective sociology. Structure is regarded as part of action; there is no structure that does not express itself in action, and no action that is not molded by structure. The actor is conceptualized as an ‘agent’, that is, someone who interprets the conditions and execution of his mission. The mission itself – a standard-
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ization of expectations – is called ‘agency’. Actors use modalities of structure to reproduce interaction systems and, thereby, reconstruct structural properties. Structure should not only be considered a constraint; structure also enables action. Although Giddens states that his view of structure overcomes the constraints of a purely subjective sociology, it really remains precisely that. After all, to Giddens there is no reality outside the individual actors. The approach used to confirm his ideas, is based on hermeneutics, one of the most important characteristics of all subjective sociology, that is ‘Be part of the life that you wish to analyze!’ It is in line with this approach, that, in addition to quotes from empirical studies, Giddens uses citations from radio interviews, mixes prose and poetry, and includes in his publication caricatures from popular journals. Esser attributes the rise of this interpretive sociology to a major societal change, namely the partial destructuration in advanced societies and the resulting extension of an individual’s freedom of choice (Esser, 1996). This is in accordance with the views of a by now close collaborator of Giddens’, Ulrich Beck (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1994).
Deconstructing rationality It is part of the ‘Zeitgeist’ spilling over into sociological theoretizing to treat individuals as constantly reflecting about preferences, incessantly deliberating the pros and cons of alternatives (Beck, 1986; also Beck, Giddens & Lash, 1994). In micro sociology, the sociological denomination called ‘rational choice’ models man akin to the homo oeconomicus of classical economics6. The ‘Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology’ defines the simple version of the approach as follows: “Rational-choice theory locates the source of order in the personal advantage individuals gain through co-operative exchange” (Marshall, 1994: 163). This approach was first developed in the 1960s in the United States. It soon became one of the more popular approaches, attracting followers in the United States, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Germany (Olson, 1965; Buchanan & Tullock, 1965; Becker, 1968). ‘Classical’ works are Becker’s Theories on the family, Axelrod’s Analysis of Cooperation, and especially the publications by Coleman (Becker, 1974, 1981; Axelrod, 1984; Coleman, 1986a + b, 1967, 1992; Lindenberg, 1975, 1984). By and large, modeling behavior based on a simple model of rational choice has so far not shown itself to be equal to other approaches. An example is the attempt to quantify the effects of providing collective tickets for reduced fares of public transportation in a small university town. The model ‘explained’ behavior change as only one of three factors (Bamberg &
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Schmidt, 1998). The simple version of rational choice led to tautological results (Blinder, 1974; also Smelser, 1992), therefore ridiculing itself. The economic approach of rational choice has become more complicated. It allows various constraints to limit the scope of maximizing individual utility as rational choices. The overall term for these varieties of Rational Choice Theory (RCT) is ‘bounded rationality’. Examples of such bounds are constraints of choices by laws and norms, the chances of losing in a power contest, or bounds through affection (e.g., between relatives). The narrower the range of alternative actions, the greater the chance of rational choice. Behavior becomes ever more predictable from just knowing the bounds. The most far reaching adjustment to behavior in reality is the wateringdown of the assumption of rationality. Simon defines rationality as “… a style of behavior that is appropriate to the achievements of given goals, within the limits imposed by certain conditions and constraints. The conditions and constraints referred to in the general definition may be objective characteristics, or they may be characteristics of the organism itself that it takes as fixed and not subject to its own control.” The latter condition is called ‘subjective’ or ‘bounded rationality’ (Simon, 1982). Boudon (1989) refers to this understanding of subjective rationality in calling all actions rational “… where the behavior of a subject is governed by reasons, which, although they are objectively wrong, are perceived as good”. He refers to the results of an experiment, in which probabilities had to be estimated and where most subjects made wrong conjectures. Boudon, nevertheless, calls this behavior rational as the participants “… had good reason to chose this wrong solution …” To Boudon, even the belief of many non-literate tribes in witchcraft – such as the competence of a magician to cause rainfall – is rational in the sense of subjective rationality. The native just does not know any other reality (Boy & Michelat, 1986). In a more demanding language ‘he does not know any other reality’ becomes: “Subjective rationality is the product of the discordance between the complexity of the world and the cognitive capacities of the subject” (Boudon, 1989: 9).
Varieties of rational choice theories Why cling to the adjective ‘rational’ in referring to belief in the supernatural, why stretch the meaning of ‘rational’ to cover both (i.e., different interpretations of Keynesian economic policies and a belief in witchcraft)? Why is the belief in ‘rational choice’ – as a variant on the neoliberal economic doctrin of the Chicago School of Milton Friedman – so popular
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among social scientists? The fact that rational choice ‘explanations’ are formulated as mathematical models could be part of the explanation. Micro-economics are popular in the discipline, precisely because it invites econometric modeling which exerts ‘a l’art pour l’art’ attractivity. So far, the attraction of the rational choice models in economics has not been affected by their usual irrelevance to real life economics. It has, for example, even survived the multi-billion US Dollar failure in speculations by Nobel laureates Sholes and Merton. I suspect, however, that there is more to it than just the attractiveness of playing games. The tendency to apply a laissez-faire image of the economy on various spheres of life, including academia, seems to indicate an influence of the Zeitgeist. In a pluralistic society with ‘fun’ as a Leitmotiv, it becomes highly unattractive and extremely exhausting to invoke norms that limit choices. Under these conditions, the use of ‘rational’ functions as a camouflage for embracing the doctrine of enrichissez-vous, or, more sociologically phrased, to ‘maximize your personal utility’. Downgrading the use of non-egocentric orientations to explain behavior can work motivating in stretching the meaning of the concept of ‘rational’. The parallel misunderstanding in economics is the preoccupation with the stock market at the expense of the world of goods and services. The concept of micro-economics has recently invaded sociology. The economy is again viewed as part of society. The embeddedness of the various market economies in their respective societies is the topic of an international group of scholars that label their approach ‘varieties of capitalism’ (VOC) (Crouch & Streeck, 1997; Hampden, Turner & Trompenaars, 1993). Cultural diversities are viewed not as an impediment to market mechanisms but also as a precondition for order and effectiveness (Kirman, 1989). The economic systems of France, England, Germany, the US and Japan are understood as national specific fits in a worldwide system of trade (Hollingsworth & Boyer, 1998; Granovetter, 1992; Schenck, 2002). Decisions made at the top level of major corporations can best be analyzed as the outcome of political processes instead of using a model of economic rationality (Scheuch & Scheuch, 2001). Those having a preference for modeling behavior as rational choice should consider that “… over the last years the general theory of rational choice has been challenged on its home ground – the analysis of economic processes – by a wide range of arguments” (Jaeger, 1993; also Hollis & Sugden, 1993). There are not many situations in which modeling behavior along the line of a ‘pure’ model of rational choice is acceptable. It is important to choose the proper ‘bounds’ for modeling as bounded rationality increases the range of applications. However, one major explanadum concerns the choice of goals to be reached by ‘rational’ strategies (Miller, 1991). Even in
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limiting the bounds of rational choice models, the results of empirical studies that question rationality assumptions need to be considered. This concerns first and foremost the vast tradition of research on the relationship between disposition and overt behavior. Attitudes do not always predict behavior; a large number of intervening factors also influence a person’s attitude (Benninghaus, 1976). Results from many studies have shown that ‘irrational’ reactions to situations of risk taking limit the applicability of rationality assumptions. Complication of the models by nonlinear relations that prevail in reality is just one of many examples (Kahneman, 1982). Wiswede (1998: 115 f.) lists underestimation of the likelihood of large risks and the overestimation of small risks as anomalies in reactions towards risks. People will almost always show risky behavior in a losing streak and protective behavior in a winning situation; which also applies to underestimating the importance of the future and overreacting to the present. Results from some of my own studies showed that there is an inverse relationship between the attractiveness of tiny chances of winning large prizes and the availability of many smaller prizes, hereby assuming that the total prize-money will be equal. The minute chance of winning big has a much stronger motivation than the large chances of winning smaller prizes. This leads to the conclusion that the rational choice approach, even in its bounded versions, underestimates the frequency of behavior that is not oriented on maximizing personal advantages (Etzioni, 1993). Most rational choice approaches have problems in explaining irrational behavior, dictated by the spur of the moment. A dialogue with representatives of the rational choice approach on the ‘boundedness’ of the theory and when one should abandon this approach altogether, is very difficult. There is the dogmatic stance that only the explanation of behavior in terms of the meaning it provides the actors is worthwhile. This is, obviously, untenable as in the larger number of scientific fields the mere description by means of concepts, or the plain registration of correlations between variables is a considerable part of all research. Also, the insistence on explaining concepts on the basis of reductionism could be called dogmatism. However, this form of dogmatism is based on a completely erroneous image of how things are related in social life (more about this in closing). The persistence of the idea of many proponents of rational choice that Rational Choice Theory (RCT) would be the only approach deserving to be called scientific, was conducive to a camp-mentality. This, in turn, kept RCT largely out of focus for quantitative social researchers. Blossfeld and Müller (1996) emphasize that in the real world both norms and calculus guide action, and call Esser’s subjective expected utility’ (SEU) laudable as it overcomes this unnecessary juxtaposition7.
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Basic to Esser’s rethinking of Rational Choice Theory is his attempt to include Schutz’s central concepts into his modeling of behavior8 (Esser, 1991). This is a bold tour de force as Schütz (1974) is a leading phenomenologist, and this school of philosophy (or social philosophy) is usually considered to be incompatible with the rational choice approach (Denzin, 1990). Esser approvingly refers to Schütz’ observation, that human action in a ‘life-world’ (Lebenswelt) does not fit the assumptions of RCT. “Human beings live in a life world characterized by knowledge that is ‘unquestioned’ but in an ‘objective’ sense is by no means ‘rational’” (Esser, 1993a). Esser continues to quote Schütz, who states that people “… often act in everyday life on the basis of widespread ignorance or rough typologies. Their actions are more in accordance with routines and rules of thumb than with utilitymaximizing calculations … Thus there can be no doubt that ‘rationality’ is not and cannot be a peculiar feature of everyday thought, nor can it, therefore, be a methodological principle of the interpretation of human acts in daily life” (Schütz, 1964). Amen to rational choice? Esser agrees that human action is usually guided by past experiences. If, in a specific situation, one opts to repeat a course of action that benefited him in the past, than this choice can be ascribed to the subjective rationality of an actor. Accordingly, this version of Rational Choice Theory is christened ‘subjective expected utility’ (‘SEU’). Esser emphasizes ‘habits’ and ‘frames’ to be important limits of a truly rational analysis, weighing the expected consequences of options. The concept of ‘habit’ needs no special explanation, but ‘frame’ does. ‘Frame’ is a concept taken from symbolic interactionism. It is a central concept in the study of ethnomethodology, where it is used to characterize the relevance of a certain interpretation of reality for a person’s preference structure9. Individuals consider using habits and frames to be rational, as it is inconceivable that each behavior act is calculated. Therefore, habits and frames seem to have the same effect as institutions do in relieving individuals. In the context of this contribution it is not necessary to judge Essers’ claim that Husserl was at heart a proponent of rational choice. Relevant, however, is the understanding of behavior as varying between a mere reaction to the stimuli that signal past experiences and the readiness to reassess interpretations and actions. It seems impossible to stretch any one approach as much as to cover a whole range of behavior. This will lead to complications that makes such an approach unwieldy.
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The media as part of reality One of the central problems in contemporary sociology – perhaps the most central of all – is the gap between micro and macro sociology. Despite many claims to the contrary we can see no satisfactory way in which this gap has been bridged (Vanberg, 1975, 1982). One interesting field is the modernization theory, but the claims made in this body of literature which looks for the location of what is distinctive for modernity at the level of individual actors, exists side by side yet is unrelated to as claims by those social scientists who try to locate modernity in macro structures. Perhaps this must be so as in reality the links between the macro level of reality and the life worlds is in flux. The way in which mass communication is affected by this, and in turn influences these processes themselves should be a fruitful area of inquiry. Ever since Weber, the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucratic structures has been a central topic of macro sociology. Coleman (1986b: 20) conceptualizes these as ‘corporate actors’. According to Coleman, the number of corporate actors with whom an American had contacts has increased five times since 1944. This kind of social change is also central to newer writings of Habermas, where his concern is the relation between what he calls the world of systems (which is about the same as to what Coleman refers to as corporate actors) and the ‘Lebenswelten’, a concept taken from the phenomenologist Husserl. Habermas postulates that the ‘Lebenswelten’, the worlds of immediate experience, and the systems have different forms of integration but this difference blurs as the systems ‘colonize’ the lifeworlds (Habermas, 1981). It is unfortunate that Habermas – as is characteristic for him – uses a moralizing term to denote a real process. We already referred to the tendency to use a perspective taken from the model of a market economy to evaluate other areas of social life, for example, the world of learning or analyzing the family. This is the very opposite of what the prevailing theories of social differentiation would lead us to expect. Luhmann assumes that evolution is guided by an experience that the differentiated areas of a society function more effectively if they are granted their ‘Eigenlogik’ (i.e., steering mechanisms and standards specific to an area) (Luhmann, 1984, 1997). While granting that differentiation, complete with ‘Eigenlogik’ is dominant in modernization, the boundaries between areas and the relative weight of differentiated realms are constantly contested (Tyrell, 1978; Wagner, 1996). The media should be seen as a system that is still very much in flux, as it has been for the last hundred and so years. Each time a new medium is created, the existing media have to reposition themselves. Thus, when radio came into being, newspapers had to change, and later the advent of
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TV meant an adjustment for the radio. In recent years TV and its effects changes with the proliferation of channels. Unfortunately, we lack studies on the interaction between all the mass media, which also include books, various forms of recordings, comics, a variety of journals and film as well as all the media behind the media, such as news agencies, various press services and information services for specified audiences. There has been a tendency in mass communication research to concentrate on the medium that is the newest on the market, such as the large volume of radio research in the US in the fifties, and on TV thereafter. In addition mass communication research lacks the analysis of time series, and studies of changes in the media over time are also absent. Although advertisements are now routinely studied in laboratory situations by means of various observational techniques, as well as by surveys and panels, the data these studies generate is hardly ever analyzed from a social science perspective. Most theorizing and empirical research takes place on the micro level, and again it concentrates on TV, and specifically on the topics selection of channels, programs and the effects it has on viewers. This is understandable as this is where the funds are. However, it fails to look at the dependency of the results on the content offered, which cannot be understood without analyzing the media as institutions. Although the term media suggest that they are mere media, they are by no means just that. They themselves are obviously the topic about which they report, and they are by no means usually neutral. The very existence of the media change the reality. Events staged for reporting were an integral part of the so-called ‘student rebellion’ of 1968. A vivid example was the TV image of the burning barricades in Paris on which a student with an open shirt brandished a tricol-flag, a situation inspired by painting by Delacroix about the French revolution. The organization Greenpeace relies almost exclusively on staged events. During the race riots in the 1960s in the US, African Americans would set houses of other African Americans on fire because this provided provocative pictures for live television coverage. When television channels in New York decided that there would be only delayed reporting of such incidents, the arson died down. The latest effect of TV altering reality is a change in the criteria in selecting top managers for giant companies. They must by now be media personalities that their presence on TV can influence quotations on the stock market; Ron Sommer of Deutsche Telekom was once a past master in accomplishing this. All this should be understood as a two-way flow of influence between the media on the macro level, and groups of actors on the micro level. Who would deal with the topic ‘the societal importance of the automobile’ by ignoring the production and the distribution of the product, rely-
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ing only on the answers given in surveys by automobile owners? With events of major and immediate importance such as the Seven Days War in Israel or the fall of the Berlin Wall, the media have little latitude in giving messages their own imprint. However, in reacting to such ‘real’ processes as economic globalization the room for discretion is considerable. The selectivity of content and geographic location were subject of empirical studies as early as in the 1950s, and they would include tracing a news item from the first hand observation, then the translation into the language of news services, and finally the rewriting of the story by the newspaper editor. The study of social control of journalists by themselves and by third parties has been largely forgotten. With the present concentration of research on the effects of TV viewing, the study of media as social institutions has suffered considerably. This has left the field to the treatment of the media system by cultural criticism. An elitist perspective from which most of the newer developments that pleased the majorities were seen as deplorable, characterized ‘Kulturkritik’ in Germany. This included criticism of leisure that now became available to ordinary wage earners, and singled out for stern judgments the use of mass media. Adorno was an extreme representative of this elitist cultural criticism, where the mass media were the prime example of ‘cultural decay’ (Adorno, 1966). Given the fact that he would never ride in a tram because of the closeness of contact with ordinary people, this is understandable for him as a person, but his writings fail completely informing about the media. An example of such cultural criticism that fails to inform about the real world is Baudrillard (1978, 1992). One of the most successful cultural criticisms of the media was the Formula ‘the medium is the message’, and this has certainly a greater informative value than the elitist cultural criticism of Europeans (McLuhan & Fiore, 1967). Neil Postman (1985) was criticized for reducing the use of mass media to having fun, although the Bamberg sociologists around Ulrich Beck are sending out a similar message albeit in proper sociologies. Very close to the Frankfurt School’s type of cultural criticism, however, is the most recent fame of the proponent of the theses of the Mcdonaldization of the world, Ritzer (1993). Ritzer is unaware of the simple fact that the dissemination of a brand name around the world is not the same as spreading the same product; there is Néscafé around the world as a brand but it has been adjusted to local/regional variations in taste.
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Strong effects with active recipients After systematically evaluating professional journals in sociology and political science, Kaase concludes that mass communication as a topic is in these publications at least marginal, but in many cases inexistent (Kaase & Schulz, 1989: 24). The cultural criticism we just referred to is indeed irrelevant for social science but the empirical findings and the theorizing media do not seem to find much interest in the discipline at large, although they deserve better. The lack of cumulativeness in the field, and specifically the absence of a common perspective, is held responsible for this deficit (Renckstorf & Wester, 1999). This view motivates an attempt at creating such a common frame, but according to our previous considerations this is not without dangers. Given the variety of situations and actors, such a frame would have to be either so general that it has little informative value or frightfully complicated as is the case with the further specifications of SEU. However, if the limits for the realm of explanation that the title of Rencktorf’s contribution suggests are really adhered to, the doubts mentioned are probably not applicable. In contrast to the pessimism quoted above I conclude that major contributions from mass communication research for sociology in general already exist, if sociologists were to pay attention. And these are findings which fit into the conceptual scheme offered by Renckstorf and Wester (1999). When investigating the effects of election campaigning, Lazarsfeld (1948) observed that overall the media had little effect in influencing voters. The only noticeable effect of the media on ordinary citizens took place via opinion leaders (Berelson et al., 1954; 111 ff.). In further studies on propaganda around fifty or so years ago in the US, strong effects were observed which took place only in the absence of prior information and opinions on a topic (Klapper, 1960: 60). In publications for a general audience the proponents of mass society with their message of our helplessness vis-à-vis the mass media industry dominated, yet nevertheless, Katz’s position that media had weak effects became the general textbook wisdom in the social sciences (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). In response to the Yom Kippur War, Katz published a change of his position; in situations of dramatic disorientation, when existing knowledge provided no guidance, the recipients of mass communications are deeply influenced by them (Katz et al., 1973). The title of this contribution alludes to an earlier publication where he stressed the prevailing desultory use of media content, now acknowledging that a generalization to other situations is not acceptable (Katz & Foulkes, 1962). Meanwhile there is a volume of evidence that even one of the propositions of mass media teaching that was earlier considered nearly self-evident, the ‘agenda setting
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effect’, needs specification as to the content and the situation of recipients. McCombs, who is credited to have proposed this effect first, originally formulated this without qualifications as to time and content. Later he conceded that in regard to media effects, time-space coordinates need to be specified as well (McCombs & Shaw, 1993). Media effects are simply not free of contingencies, and consequently no one model can fit all occurrences. I interpret the ‘Action Theoretical Frame of Reference’ as an attempt to extend the Action Theory of Talcott Parsons to also cover the concept of Man in symbolic interactionism, which in principle is plausible as this can connect with the early Parsons of 1937. By relying heavily on Alfred Schütz, however, this comes close to a treatment of reality in the manner of constructivists, and this is in my understanding uncomfortably close to a reanimation of solipsism in classical Greek thought. I do not want to enter into a theoretical discussion of the internal merits of the model developed by Renckstorf in his newer presentation, but respond merely to the claim that this is a general frame of reference to study human behavior, or action, as the authors would prefer to phrase it. Since the ‘uses and gratifications’ approach was developed, the image of Man at the base of mass-theories of society, namely as a passive target of media, is being replaced by the view that the public actively shapes the messages emanating from the communicators (Blumler & Katz, 1974; Blumler et al., 1985). In the approach by Renckstorf the messages are interpreted by the recipients with reference to their ‘stock of knowledge’, a notion taken from Alfred Schütz. If messages are interpreted as contradicting what a subject can draw from its stock of knowledge, they are then conceptualized in the ‘action theoretical frame of reference’ as ‘problematic problems’. This pleonasm refers to the need to change the stock of knowledge, whether altering an already existing element or adding a new one. We believe that the concepts ‘problematic problems’ and correspondingly ‘unproblematic problems’, identify areas that in empirical research could in the future be very fruitful. However, the usefulness of this approach would be curtailed if its proponents were to insist that the only acceptable view of Man were to be the active citizen who uses media following the norm ‘it is a citizen’s duty to keep informed’. Informed about what? There is then the additional assertion that in the ‘action theoretical frame’ instrumental and ritualized forms of media use are integrated (Renckstorf & Wester, 1999: 45). The ‘action frame of reference’ focuses on an active watching of TV news and suggests a new model for those occurrences where the viewer is challenged to reorganize his stock of knowledge. In real life this is an important but rare moment in the viewing of TV news, as Renckstorf thinks it is highly ques-
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tionable whether such TV use only occurs at low activity levels. Even at moments when there is a more active stance, ‘problematic discrepancies’ are relatively rare. These acknowledgments by Renckstorf should make it easy for him to recognize the proximity to the new position of Katz, that while weak effects prevail in media use there are moments when the media have the strong effects that mass-theories of society assumed to be the norm. Viewed as a theory to model strong effects, the ‘action frame of reference’ could characterize processes of change better than other known theories. I think that it is highly questionable whether the authors of this theory should aim to develop their approach further into a frame of reference that would cover all contents and all situations, relating to all levels of society. For the foreseeable future it appears far more promising to develop frames of reference for specific kinds of contents, situations, and actors. By way of analogy, in medical therapy there is no searching for a drug that could cure all diseases, instead research is trying narrow down indications and counterindications for the use of specific medicines. Parsons attempted a kind of ‘world formula’ to cover all forms of human behavior, as is evident in his ‘Working Papers’ to a General Theory of Action. This would have been fine work if he could have achieved it, but he could not. This failure is no cause for lament as up to now (at least) you cannot have such a formula in e.g., physics either: see the failure of Heisenberg. Fortunately for the ‘action theory’ statement of Renckstorf it is not presented as a theory in the strict sense but as a frame of reference. Thus, the proper way to use it would be to ask how generally applicable it is in ordering empirical information on media use. Permit me to recall the way in which Weber describes the mechanism effective in the operation of ‘Gresham’s Law’; people are not fully aware of what they are doing, and even much less of why they are acting in a specific way. Who remembers the content of a casual conversation a few days later? Most conversations can be modeled as an exchange of friendly sounds, yet every once in a while some such exchanges affect lives. Why should this be different for mass communications? They are by now as much part of our lives as conversing, consuming, or riding a car. They are a backdrop of everyday life. The adequate perspective with which to catch this would be looking for cumulative effects rather than focusing on communications that as individual messages usually leave no distinct effect. Yet every once in a while there is content that challenges our equilibrium. The pictures of the destruction of the World Trade Center by terrorists are such a media content. There is nothing in our ‘stock of knowledge’ of most of our contemporaries where they could draw on it. It is here that we locate the usefulness of the new ‘action theory of reference’.
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Notes 1. Of course, there are also exceptions in this change of emphasis, such as Smuel N. Eisenstadt (1966, 1969, 1974, 1996) with his concentration on axial changes by large civilizations 2. It is largely unknown today, that Homans started criticizing Talcott Parsons’ functionalism by demanding in the fifties ‘Bringing man back in’ (Homans, 1958). 3. The phrase is a bit difficult to render in English. It means that this routine in quantitative research groups different cases into one box such as ‘length of TV viewing’ – the variable – without explaining why they have a reaction in common – such as ‘voting’ (cf. Esser, 1993b: 592 ff.; Esser, 1996) 4. This abandoning of his earlier approach described then by himself as a voluntaristic theory of action, is emphasized by James S. Coleman (1986a) 5. Blumer even wrote an essay on Thomas, but in his orientation toward Mead references to Thomas remain marginal. 6. An example is Karl-Dieter Opp (1994). The authoritative overview of this ‘school’ is James S. Coleman and T. J. Faro (1992). 7. This agreement with Esser is partly in error. Esser indeed uses non-rational orientations in behaving as ‘bounds’. In doing so he by no means refers to norms which he does not like as guiding behavior but to ‘habits’ and ‘frames’. 8. Alltagshandeln und verstehen. Zum Verhältnis von erklärender und verstehender Soziologie am Beispiel von Alfred Schütz und “rational choice”. Tübingen: 1991. To understand the argumentation it is necessary to recall our characterization of Esser’s restrictive understanding of “erklären”. 9. Habits are of special importance in opting for a course of action, frames in one’s understanding the goal that might be reached by the course of action (Esser, 1990; especially: 234–241).
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Becker, G. S. (1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press. Becker, G. S. (1974). A theory of marriage: Part II. Journal of Political Economy, 2, 11–16. Benninghaus, H. (1976). Ergebnisse und Perspektiven der Einstellungs-VerhaltensForschung. Meisenheim a. G.: Anton Hain. Berelson, B. et al. (1954). Voting – A study of opinion formation in a presidential campaign. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Blinder, A. S. (1974). The economics of brushing teeth. Journal of Political Economy, 82, 887–891. Blossfeld, H. P. & Müller, R. (1996). Sozialstrukturanalyse, Rational Choice Theorie und die Rolle der Zeit. Soziale Welt, 47, 383. Blumer, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. New York: Englewood Cliffs. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism. New York: Englewood Cliffs. Blumler, J. G. & Katz, E. (1974). The uses of mass communication. Beverly Hills (CA): Sage. Blumler, J. G. et al. (1985). A future for gratifications research. In K. E. Rosengren et al. (Eds.), Media gratifications research. Current perspectives (pp. 255–273). Beverly Hills (CA): Sage. Boudon, R. (1989). Subjective rationality and the explanation of social behavior. Paper presented at MPIFG Discussion, Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung, Cologne, Germany, June 1989. Boy, D. & Michelat, G. (1986). Croyances aux parasciences: Dimensions sociales et culturelles. Revue Francaise de Sociologie, 27, 175–204. Buchanan, J. M. & Tullock, G. (1962). The calculus of consent. Boston: University of Michigan Press. Cicourel, A. V. (1973). Cognitive sociology. London: Penguin Books. Coleman, J. S. (1986a). Social theory, social research, and a theory of action. American Journal of Sociology, 91, 1309–1335. Coleman, J. (1986b). Die asymmetrische Gesellschaft. Vom Aufwachsen mit unpersönlichen Systemen. Weinheim: Beltz. Coleman, J. S. (1987). Microfoundations and macrosocial behavior. In J. C. Alexander et al. (Eds.), The micro-macro link (pp. 153–173). Berkely: University of California Press. Coleman, J. S. & Faro, T. J. (Eds.) (1992). Rational Choice Theory – Advocacy and critique. Newbury Park: Sage. Cooley, C. H. (1972). Looking-Glass Self. In J. G. Manis & B. N. Meltzer (Eds.), Symbolic Interaction (pp. 231 ff.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Crouch, C. & Streeck, W. (Eds.) (1997). Political economy of modern capitalism. London: Sage. Denzin, N. K. (1990). The long good-bye: Farewell to Rational Choice Theory. Rationality and Society, 2, 504–507. Eisenstadt, S. M. (1966). Modernization: Protest and change. Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Eisenstadt, S. M. (1969). The political systems of empires (2nd edition). Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
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Eisenstadt, S. M. (1974). Post traditional societies. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Eisenstadt, S. M. (1996). Japanese Civilization. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Elster, J. (Ed.) (1986). Rational Choice. New York: New York University Press. Esser, H. (1990). “Habits”, “Frames” und “Rational Choice”. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 19, 234–241. Esser, H. (1991). Alltagshandeln und Verstehen. Zum Verhältnis von erklärender und verstehender Soziologie am Beispiel von Alfred Schütz und ‘Rational Choice’. Tübingen: Mohr. Esser, H. (1993a). The rationality of everyday behavior. Rationality and Society, 5, 7. Esser, H. (1993b). Soziologie. Frankfurt: Campus. Esser, H. (1996).What is wrong with ‘Variable Sociology’? European Sociological Review, 12, 159–166. Etzioni, A. (1993). The spirit of community. New York: Crown. Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall. Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Giddens, A. (1993). New rules of sociological methodes. A positive critique of interpretative sociologies (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Pess. Girndt, H. (1967). Das soziale Handeln als Grundkategorie erfahrungswissenschaftlicher Soziologie. Tübingen: Mohr. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City (NY): Doubledan. Goffman, E. (1961). Encounters. Two studies in the sociology of interaction. Indianapolis: Bobbsmerill. Granovetter, M. (1992). Economic institutions as social constructions. Acta Sociologica, 35, 3–11. Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Vol. 2). Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Hampden Turner, C. & Trompenaars, A. (1993). The seven cultures of capitalism. New York: Doubleday. Hollingsworth, J. R. & Boyer, R. (Eds.) (1998). Contemporary capitalism – The embeddedness of institutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hollis, M. & Sugden, R. (1993). Rationality in action. Mind, 102, 1–35. Homans, G. C. (1958). Social behavior as exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 63, 597–606. Homans, G. C. (1962). Sentiments and activities. New York: The Free Press of Glencoe. Homans, G. C. (1974). Social behavior: Its elementary forms. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Hull, C. L. (1952). A behavior system. New Haven: Yale University Press. Jaeger, C. C. (1993). The cultural evolution of rational choice. International Sociology, 8, 498. Kaase, M. & Schulz, W. (1989). Massenkommunikation – Theorien, Methoden, Befunde. Special issue of the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 30, 9. Opladen: West-Deutscher Verlag.
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Scheuch, E. K. (March, 2002). Die Wirtschaft in der Gesellschaft. Paper presented at the University of Hamburg. Schütz, A. (1964). The problem of rationality in the social World. In A. Schütz (Ed.), Studies in Social Theory. Collected Papers, vol. 2 (pp. 79). The Hague: Nÿhoff. Schütz, A. (1974). Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt – Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Simmel, G. (1917). Grundfragen der Soziologie. Leipzig: Suhrkamp. Simmel, G. (1958). Philosophie des Geldes. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Simmel, G. (1970). Grundfragen der Soziologie (3rd edition). Berlin: de Gruyter. Simmel, G. (1985). Philosophie des Geldes (6th edition). Leipzig: Suhrkamp. Simon, H. (1982). Models of bounded rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: MacMillan. Smelser, N. J. (1992). Rational Choice perspective. A theoretical perspective. Rationality and Society, 4, 381–410. Spencer, H. (1879). The study of sociology. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Srauss, A. (Ed.) (1964). George Herbert Mead on Social Psychology (revised edition). Chicago: The Universitiy of Chicago Press. Tyrell, H. (1978). Anfragen an die Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Differenzierung. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 7, 175–193. Vanberg, V. (1975). Die zwei Soziologien. Individualismus und Kollektivismus in der Sozialtheorie. Tübingen: Mohr. Vanberg, V. (1982). Markt und Organisation. Individualistische Sozialtheorie und das Problem des korporativen Handelns. Tübingen: Mohr. Wagner, G. (1996). Differenzierung als absoluter Begriff? Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 25, 89–105. Wiese, L. von (1933). System der Allgemeinen Soziologie (2nd edition). Munich: Duncker & Humblot. Wiswede, G. (1998). Soziologie (3rd edition). Landsberg a. L: Verlag moderne industrie.
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3 With more hindsight: Conceptual problems 3 and some ways forward for media use research Denis McQuail
Abstract Twenty years ago, I assessed the failure and future of the ‘Uses and Gratifications’ field of research (McQuail, 1984). In this paper, I will reflect on ‘Gratifications’ research and comment on conceptual problems and some ways forward in ‘Media Use’ research. This approach is assumed to have the capacity to provide a descriptive mapping of complex situations such as audience behavior and audience experience, especially at a time of media change and expansion. Against the background of a brief review of relevant developments in research, thinking about media use and some suggestions for progress, it is concluded that there is no escape from viewing the whole territory of media use and gratifications research from beyond the scope of any one theoretical perspective. As the intrinsic interest in the field of audience research remains – including a promise of interesting discoveries still to be made – it will require more perspectives than a single researcher is likely to be able to deploy. Keywords: media use, Uses and Gratifications, audience, behavior
Looking back on Uses and Gratifications research As time passes, my qualifications for looking back on this tradition of research increase, on the ground that I can look back over an even longer time period since I carried out any audience research, even though my claim to contemporary expertise diminishes. I was invited to write this paper because of a previous occasion when I tried to strike a balance on the failings and future of the Uses and Gratifications field of research (McQuail, 1984), but I do, nevertheless, feel some sense of inauthenticity about contributing to this issue. One reason for daring to do so is the impression that I have received, in refreshing my knowledge of what is going in and around this field, that not much has changed as far as the standing and potential of this kind of research are concerned. There are much the same aspirations on the part of researchers keen to chart the impact of new technology, new media and new circumstances. Much the same
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range of methods and techniques seem to be available. Much the same arguments are still carried on, although with less intensity, about the relative demerits of the approach and the merits of alternative forms of reception or ethnographic research (cf. Schroder, 1999). In fact, in a general way, empirical research into audience choice and motivation has been largely rehabilitated. None of this is particularly surprising and, aside from challenges of reality, it is part of a general normalization of a project that has had an uneasy journey through times that have been troubling but also interesting for all branches of the social sciences. I do not wish to imply that nothing has changed, but the changes that have occurred in the audience branch of communication research have involved extensions into new issues, adopting new frameworks for conceptualizing problems, rather than of a fundamental theoretical or methodological kind. Not least amongst the features of today’s environment compared to that of twenty years ago is the rapid acceleration of alternative media forms and of actual media outlets (multiplicity of channels). Accompanying this are increased fluidity about what actually counts as ‘media use’, given the variety of forms, behaviors and means of delivery. I am tempted to find in this simple fact a renewed motivation for adopting an approach that does have a capacity to provide a descriptive mapping of complex situations. The controversies that overtook the field of ‘Uses and Gratifications’ research came somewhat unexpectedly, although they could have been anticipated by paying more attention to the revolution in sociological thinking that was taking place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The objections had also been lying rather neglected in the work of Herbert Blumer and other followers of symbolic interactionism and the rise of critical sociology. As I experienced it, the particular heavy blow to media use research was delivered by Phillip Elliott in his paper published in the now seminal overview of the field edited Blumler and Katz (1974). In the same collection I had published a paper (with Michael Gurevitch) that explored alternative theoretical underpinnings for the research, but was still unprepared for the critical onslaught. There was much I could agree with in Elliott’s critique, although I was and remain unconvinced that the approach was flawed because it was too ‘psychologistic’ and not sociological enough (another war going on at the time) or that it was intrinsically doomed to be ‘uncritical’ and serve only the ends of the oppressors. Then and now there seemed and seems to be nothing intrinsically erroneous about perceiving aggregate media use as an ordered and relatively predictable outcome of individual perceptions, wishes and opportunities. In the history of audience research, even of mass media, few have really doubted that media use behavior was gratifying to the individuals engaged in it and that the kind and degree of gratification involved had something
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to do with the kind and degree of media use. Demonstrating this general notion, in terms of statistical associations has proved relatively simple, but finding causes of media use in the expectations expressed by the audience has not been at all easy. The problems of the approach have become apparent when scattered insights, axioms and fragments of evidence have been put together and systematically formulated as a theoretical model. As we know, this happened most clearly in the early 1970s, especially as reported in the volume edited by Jay Blumler and Elihu Katz (1974). Their paradigm, or that worked out by Rosengren in model form (1974), has been the starting point for research, or for debate and critique, ever since. There has been so much comment, reformulation, criticism and response concerning this paradigm, that it is now almost impossible to give an objective account or even a balanced assessment of the ‘Uses and Gratifications’ project and its history. The original model involved the following main assumptions: – of underlying rationality in media selection and use; – of interconnectedness between wider social experience and media use behaviour and evaluation; – of audience autonomy, arising from individual freedom of choice; – of the possibility of measurement and classification of variables which are mentalistic and/or cultural in nature; – of the systematic, logical, sequential and causally connected nature of media use processes. These propositions, when formulated in this way, acquire the characteristics of articles of belief but they can also be understood in different ways. There are clearly some built-in tensions, including those between cognitive and emotional factors, freedom and determinism, positivistic and phenomenological theories, quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The ghosts of most of the disputes in the social sciences are raised in one way or another by the old ‘Uses and Gratifications’ paradigm. It has been frequently attacked as too psychologistic, scientistic, behaviorist and functionalist. It has also been represented as uncritically serving the interests of media managers and as adopting a manipulative view of the audience.
Gratifications research lives on Nevertheless, the model has survived in much the same form in the hands of those who have any taste at all for empirical research into media preferences and choices, which was its original purpose. Despite plenty of co-
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gent attacks and deconstructions, not to mention its own failure to deliver on its own promises, the model is surprisingly difficult to escape from or to replace. Even approaches which are fundamentally different theoretically, such as Renckstorf’s phenomenological social action model (1996) and much of the reception research that became the preferred alternative (Alasuutari, 1999) show clear overlaps and similarities when it comes to actual application in data collection and in the analysis of audience practices. One reason for this, I suppose, aside from the very general common sense validity of the basic idea, is the fact that the media gratification approach does capture, albeit in a formal manner, the way many people as audience members, often express, when pressed, their own personal understanding of how they go about using and enjoying media. This is not surprising, given the claim made by gratification researchers that they always to listen first to the audience. The early Uses and Gratifications research from Herzog (1944) onwards typically took as its point of origin the audience’s own words and ideas (see also McQuail, Blumler & Brown, 1972), although critics of the interpretative school tended to ignore this fact. But perhaps the endurance of the basic approach has less to do with intrinsic validity than with the fact that the approach reflects the way in which the typical audience member would like to think it goes about using media, that is, in a more or less, consistent, coherent and motivated way, guided by acceptable values. In our own capacity as average audience members, our approximate understanding of what is going on – the ‘natural’ version of the how and why of media use – typically involves a rationalization in which one regards the media as a suitable source of satisfaction of informational and cultural needs and make one’s own choices according to circumstances of time and place in line with these needs. The main descriptive typologies of media gratification theory usually incorporate in a recognizable way the relevant value systems which are deployed in everyday media use experience as well as cognitive elements which match common sense ideas. All this, in itself, is not enough to provide any independent validation of the whole enterprise of uses and gratifications theory and research, but it does help to account for the degree of convergence which manifests itself when different theoretical perspectives focus empirically on how people themselves account for their own media choices and experience. In some respects, uses and gratifications theory is very close to the ‘commonsense theory’ of media use, as deployed by the audience (McQuail, 1994).
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Successes and failures While the media gratification research approach has survived, if only for want of an alternative, it cannot be said to have flourished, and its successes are patchy and uneven. It has proven to be upto the not very demanding, although useful, tasks of describing audiences in terms of tastes and expectations, identifying types and patterns of selection behaviors and characterizing audience perceptions of different genres, forms and content types. Such descriptive benefits are actually very extensive and significant and may well be sufficient to account for the continued appeal of the approach. They certainly facilitate classification of audience segments, comparative analyses of various kinds, general accounting of programming and the, planning of new media provision. The failures relate, nevertheless, to some of the most important aspirations of the gratification research ‘school’ in its heyday. These included the aim of predicting audience demand, finding causal explanations of actual choices and use patterns and identifying key intermediating variables in effects research. Sometimes the results of media use research can be criticized for the banality of findings. Kim Schroder, for instance (1999: 41) cites an extensive overview of many uses and gratifications studies by Gantz (1996) that concluded that “the primary gratification associated with exposure to entertainment television is the entertainment such programming provides … above all else entertainment programming is entertaining”. Some of the failures are not necessarily due to deficiencies of gratifications theory and research itself, but reflect more general and fundamental difficulties facing communication research. Effect research, for instance, has largely failed to produce unambiguous evidence of media influence, inter alia, because supposed effects have other and deeper roots. On the other hand, perhaps the failure to deliver independent evidence that media use does actually solve the problems and meet the needs of its audience, however plausible this supposition remains, cuts somewhat deeper.
Some reasons why gratifications theory does not work As with other branches of research, difficulties and failures encountered can also generate creative solutions and are always potentially educative about the phenomenon under investigation, even if the lessons learnt might well have been taken into account earlier. We are certainly not short of explanations of why a promising and rather convincing general theoretical formulation of the uses and gratifications approach has not delivered
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on its promise. An inventory of reasons for limited success is not in itself very helpful, but it may be necessary for clearing the ground towards a new path. The following of reasons for limited success are intended as challenges not fundamental obstacles. i) At the individual level of choice and media use (which is precisely where the Uses and Gratifications approach claims to work best), behavior is frequently not very rational, motivated or planned, but is the result of habit, circumstance and chance, as well as being moved by emotions. Figuratively speaking, there is a great deal of ‘noise’ in the channels that link desires and expectations with actual choices. There is even reason to suppose that there is often very little connection at the individual level between liking certain kinds of media content, actually choosing it and any subsequent evaluation of the experience, just because there is so much disturbance. ii) Media use in its particular acts is frequently, even typically, of relatively low salience and often subordinated to other activities and pre-occupations (despite the value placed on media use in general). There is plenty of evidence that media do not typically meet those communicative needs which people think are personally very important (Katz, Gurevitch & Haas, 1973; Rosengren & Windahl, 1989). Such needs are met by family, friends and relationships embedded in institutional contexts. We can also say that the longer term significance of media is often hidden from view and its origins hard or impossible to trace. iii) There is an intrinsic difficulty in finding an appropriate, shared and communicable language or terminology for expressing and recording ideas about motives, gratifications, uses, and so forth. The core concept is itself ambiguous and uncertain. The language available to most of us, whether as researchers or audience members, for describing media experience is not very rich and we are not very good at using it. Nevertheless, gratification research does tend to assume that everyone can talk easily about the satisfactions obtained or sought from media. iv) The various choices and moments of choice that precede media use are embedded in interactive and sequential relations with the operation of many other factors, of longer or shorter duration, some of them unpredictable and even random (McQuail, 1997). It is probably logically as well as practically difficult to presume to be able to discover the true causes of media use behavior except in some artificially controlled situation. v) The media ‘texts’ which form the object of interest to audiences are particularly resistant to adequate classification in terms relevant to audience needs, except at the most superficial level. In addition, for various reasons, gratification researchers have never been sufficiently interested in
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the actual content of what they study or, even if interested, unable to incorporate any sensitive measure of content into research (if only because of the scale of the task). vi) The outcomes of empirical research using typical instruments of scaling and variable analysis tend to lean towards maximizing reliability and generalizability rather than validity. vii) The problem area and field of enquiry is endless and complex, involving very diverse phenomena, concepts and multiple levels of analysis.
Developments in media gratification research Naming these difficulties helps one to understand the limited achievement of the approach. Much effort has since been put into both criticism and refinement of the original 1970s approach, with particular reference to the following matters, which are named without elaboration, although each merits extended discussion. I am not concerned here any further with responding to criticism, unless it has some positive implication for audience research. Some of the developments represent continued work within the original tradition, others stem from the development of alternative paradigms, particular those stemming from what is now called ‘reception research’ and applications of ideas from ‘cultural studies’ (see Jensen & Rosengren, 1990). Taken together, all the following points constitute evidence of continued theoretical and empirical vigor in this field of enquiry. i) The notion of audience activity has been developed since its early applications and alternative meanings and types have distinguished (e.g., Biocca, 1988). The simple notion of an ‘active audience’ has disappeared and efforts have been made to recognize the habitual and unselective character of much if not most audience behavior (Barwise & Ehrenberg, 1988). ii) Similarly, theory and research have come to pay more attention to the temporal order of stages in the media Use and Gratification process, from background factors, to expectations to use, to reflection on use (Levy & Windahl, 1983). iii) The distinction between cognitive and affective/evaluative elements of audience expectations and responses has been recognized and constructed into models (Palmgreen & Wenner, 1985), with a parallel differentiation between what can be considered more cognitive or more ‘cultural’ types of media content (McQuail, 1984). iv) Along with this, one can note the recognition given to matters of emotion and pleasure, the former stressed by psychologists, the latter by cul-
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tural studies theorists (e.g., Fiske, 1987), but also in psychological approaches (see Zillmann, 1994). The original model was far too rationalistic and perhaps simplicistic to cope with these aspects of media gratifications. v) Separate mention is due to advances in understanding of media involvement as an intrinsic physiological component in media use (various works of Zillman, 1980). vi) The normative character of media use has also been given more attention (e.g., Alasuutari, 1992; Krcmar, 1996). Although it is not a new discovery that what people do and say in relation to the media is influenced by social and moral norms, the original model tended to regard this as a distraction from the true driving forces. The recommendation of value neutrality made to audience researchers was taken somewhat too far and led to neglect of the significance of social norms in the gratification process as well as in the process of selection and use. vii) The importance of both media and social structure together in creating a general orientation to media and thus a general basis for more specific use decisions, has been given more adequate recognition (Weibull, 1985). viii) The original model always tended to locate uses along with gratifications in what was often a somewhat confusing manner. Uses were translated into the coin of gratification for purposes of data-collection and analysis. The particular emphasis placed in modern reception research on the social-contextual influences on media use and on intrinsic, but ‘secondary’, satisfactions of media use has helped to redress the balance, by refocusing attention on media use behavior itself. ix) More generally, the ‘everyday life’ school of cultural studies has helped to place media use in a wider context. It also looks at media use from a different perspective which helps to understand what people say about the media and to gain a better idea of its significance or relative lack of significance (Moores, 1993). x) A related but different type of research which has developed into the link between life-styles and patterns of media taste has much to offer (see Rosengren, 2000), especially as the methods of research are usually close to the preferred tools of uses and gratifications research (Sigrist, 1994). The older concept of ‘taste culture’ is also relevant. xi) Separate mention is due to studies of media fans (e.g., Lewis, 1992), especially as this is widened to include fans of different kinds of media content (e.g., of music, cf. Lull, 1992). The original tradition took the existence of fans for granted and built fandom into its research designs, but without much thought for the wider, collective, character of the phenomenon. Fans were simply individuals with heavier consumption patterns. xii) The arrival of new media (especially the Internet) and new uses of existing media has been a stimulus to research and one of the strengths of
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the Uses and Gratifications approach has come into its own – the capacity for comparative analysis of the appeal – for different media for different audiences. xiii) Finally, the considerable work done in neighboring fields on texts and genres, especially in relation to entertainment and fiction has indirectly helped would-be gratification researchers. These were, as noted above, hampered not just by insensitivity in respect of media content, but lack of developed tools and examples of text analysis. Research into how audiences ‘read’ or ‘decode’ media texts (e.g., television news or soap operas) is potentially very useful for media gratification research purposes. A classic example is provided by Radway (1984). A brief review of relevant developments in research and thinking around media use is incomplete without a reminder that these itemized points represent much broadening and changing of relevant theoretical approaches. In 1974, McQuail and Gurevitch distinguished three main variants of relevant theory under the names ‘structural/cultural’, ‘functionalist’ and ‘action/motivation’. The ‘functionalist’ variant represents the ‘mainstream’ gratifications model, subject to many changes and influenced as noted. The ‘structural/cultural’ approach has remained relatively underdeveloped, despite its great explanatory power in relation to aggregate (and individual) media selection behavior (see Weibull, 1985). However, it does have a continuing value, especially perhaps in the area of new media research referred to above. The social action approach, with its much stronger emphasis on media use as an outcome of subjective reflection on the life-world has since been more clearly specified and advanced theoretically in various writings by Renckstorf. The potential for application in empirical research is becoming clear (Renckstorf, McQuail & Jankowski, 1999). If one was sketching variant perspectives one would probably need to include the broad ‘culturalist/reception’ theory approach as a distinctive fourth alternative way into the territory of accounting for media use and satisfaction. This in spite of the fact that it is partly constructed out of elements of cultural, structural and social action theory. One conclusion to be drawn from this excursion into the record of critique and modification is that the original mission of charting media gratifications and their origins, as envisaged 30 years or so ago, was truly impossible. The scope and complexity of the task was simply too great and the multiplicity of alternative disciplinary and methodological perspectives too numerous. There is also quite a lot of encouragement to be derived from the richness of ideas and material generated over the years by curiosity and enquiry concerning audience-media interactions.
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Suggestions for progress: Some general reflections The purpose of this paper is to reflect further on the lessons derived from all this and to address a few limited aspects of the problem. It is quite clear that we are faced with a number of inter-related, but separate, tasks of problem-formulation and analysis. The terrain has to be subdivided into manageable plots, so to speak. There are different ways of carrying out this task of sub-division, to some extent depending on both the disciplinary starting point and on the chosen theoretical perspective. Without departing very far from the spirit of the original tradition of gratifications research, an initial and quite pragmatic subdivision can be made in terms of the main moments in a sequential account of media selection, attention and response. However, much more is involved than specifying and focusing on stages in a continuous and systematic process. There may be little or no system or process. Rather, these ‘moments’ constitute more or less autonomous topics or fields of enquiry which require different kinds of methods and have their own set of goals. Very provisionally, these fields can be identified as having to do with: taste culture and life style; media and content choice; involvement in the ongoing media experience and uses of media; reflection on and evaluation of the media experience. In a little more detail, the four areas can be summarized as follows. Four ‘moments’ in media selection and use A. Taste and life-style This refers primarily to historical, personal-biographical accounts of media likes and dislikes and general patterns of choice and use, with reference to the individual background, circumstances, personal tastes and preferences as formed or developed in response to the changing possibilities of media use. Basic habits and routines are explored and their influence assessed. The question of differences in media ‘affinity’ belongs both here and in the succeeding stage (e.g., between reading, listening, viewing). B. Media choice The process of choice-making and selection of media items at specific times and places, given the situation represented by what is outlined under A. Here we attend to search and choice strategies adopted by the audience member, the role of information, the role of chance, the influence of social context and of group dynamics. The influence of images of different media (Perse, 1992) and of key genres, the application of personal normative judgements and wider social norms relevant to content needs to be as-
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sessed. Developments in media have stimulated a valuable new body of research into media choice (e.g., Webster & Wakshlag, 1983; Heeter & Greenberg, 1988; McQuail, 1997). C. Involvement in media experience and uses of media Media use activity as ongoing and projected practice is the third moment for research attention, where there are in fact two separate objects of research interests. One relates to satisfactions directly experienced from the content and behavior of media use, which are generally expressed in various forms of ‘involvement’. Another relates to ‘secondary’ aspects and implications of media as they fit into everyday routines and customary practices associated with different life-styles and special occasions. The context of use is central, preferences for solitary or for sociable attention likewise being important. D. Reflection and evaluation The phase of evaluation is one where people reflect on their experience of use, answer questions to interviewers, converse with others about the past experience, compare their obtained expectations with what they expected (Palmgreen & Wenner, 1985), confirm or revise plans about future use, readjust selection strategies, learn new things about media content and so forth. It is almost inconceivable that one could really enquire deeply into all these matters and interrelate the findings concerning the separate moments in any single overall model or even in a single extensive research project. It is probably inadvizable to try. One of the failings of earlier research was the attempt to do too much; too many variables, too many levels of analysis, too much data collected. Essentially, it is a matter of choosing priorities about what questions to answer and constructing mixed designs as appropriate. There are quite rich materials available to draw upon. It would also seem that the notion of gratification which is chosen and the kind of operationalization which is indicated will differ widely as between these fields of enquiry. There are different ways of thinking about media gratifications as well as different ways of behavior in relation to media and their contents.
A specific proposal concerning the moment of media choice There are clearly many new opportunities for research and this suggestion is addressed to just one aspect of the problem; that which relates to media choice, the second ‘moment’ in the sequence just outlined. The focus on media choice is influenced by two main considerations; first, that the potential objects of enquiry in audience research, at whichever of the above
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‘moments’ we select, are always complex outcomes of cognitions, valuations and behaviors. Secondly, they are always subject to chance and unpredictable influence. Because of this variability, we have to be careful not to assume any fixed, consistent or predictable hierarchy or order in the elements of cognition, affect and action. Unpredictability is also intrinsic to media use behavior, which has its own dynamic, takes an interactive course and is rarely deeply motivated or significant in itself. Frequently, one cannot or do not plan or anticipate one’s media use gratifications. These points are most relevant to the moment or field of media choice, although there are some implications for other fields. The specific and brief suggestion made here is that we can learn from thinking about media effects, where it has proved fruitful to adopt alternative models of use and effect (Ray, 1973; Chaffee & Roser, 1986). Media exposure can be precipitated in different ways and there are variable sequential and dynamic relations between knowledge, attitudes (affective disposition) and behavior which have been shown to have implications for effects. This theory is not directly applicable here, but it is suggestive for our present purpose. I suggest the equivalents of the three elements as found in gratifications research to be as follows: Cognitions/information This refers to the general experience of media on the part of the (potential) audience member; beliefs or opinions about what is good for what circumstance, use or pleasure, based on experience; specific information about the content of what is available. Affective elements These cover feelings, emotions, attitudes (positive as well as negative), valuations (personal and social/normative) in relation to media use, to genres and to specific items of content. They also relate to feelings about ones own circumstances and situation. Conative level (actions) This refers to actions of search, selection, purchase, media subscription, consultation, ongoing attention, physical involvement, discontinued attention, zapping/switching, finding alternatives to media use, discussion or comment concerning the media. More widely it can refer to acquisition of reception equipment. Action often involves other people in a social relationship. To keep it simple, the following three variants of media gratification processes can be distinguished, involving different relations between the three basic elements as well as a difference of sequence.
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Variant I: The ‘traditional’ media need – gratifications model Here the basic sequence of the three elements is as follows: AFFECTIVE
–––
COGNITIVE
–––
CONATIVE
This reflects a version of the process of media use and gratification which begins with an awareness of needs, feelings, emotions which are problematic in one way or another. It is followed by a more or less motivated, rational and informed selection amongst the available means (including media use) for solving experienced problems; and is followed by choice amongst actual media alternative and use (behavior).
Variant II: Circumstantial model of media use Here the sequence is as follows: CONATIVE
––––––
AFFECTIVE
––––––
COGNITIVE
The situation is one in which ‘exposure’ or ‘attention’ is triggered or initiated by chance of circumstance or by unreflecting habit (e.g., opening the morning or evening newspaper, turning on television after coming in, dependence on other media use ‘gatekeepers’, random switching of television channels). The person responds to what is offered and experienced at first evaluatively, assessing its appeal or relevance positively or negatively. If circumstances permit, this can lead to some informed decision to continue or to discontinue, to make some new choice or to contribute to some decision with implications for subsequent behavior. Learning takes place based on experience and reflection (this is the cognitive phase).
Variant III: The rational consumer model of selective media use COGNITIVE
––––––
CONATIVE
––––––
EVALUATIVE
This applies when the audience member has access to alternative media suitable for different purposes, is well informed in advance about the content alternatives and is also conscious of certain needs and preferences. Media use is then the result of an informed selection (behavior), which is normally accompanied or followed by evaluation of the source and
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its utility, with implication for subsequent behavior. This version seems most appropriate for informational uses of the media and consultation for instance. It could also apply to cultural content in the case of the well organized and selective audience member and where ‘cultural’ content fits into a familiar and ordered set of categories. These models are overlapping and interrelated types of media selection and use, which may approximately characterize individuals, but which are more relevant to characterizing different aspects of the process of selection. They are primarily intended for their heuristic value rather than as bases for research design. As the comments indicate, all three models are likely to apply to nearly everyone at some time or another. If the argument is accepted, we should be careful, at the very least, not to assume that any one model is useful for all purposes and situations. We should also be aware that trying to fit empirical observations into an inappropriate model can only lead to confused results. Any single model (or pure type) is likely to be inappropriate.
In conclusion While multiplying models and categories helps analytically and may offer some guidance in designing research, it will not resolve the fundamental problem of great complexity of what is involved in audience experience. The proliferation and evolution of media has also made things more difficult since the early days of the Uses and Gratifications paradigm. From now on there is no escape from viewing this whole territory of media gratification research as beyond the scope of any one theoretical perspective or one person or team. It will require more perspectives than a single researcher is likely to be able to deploy. The intrinsic interest of the field of audience research as a whole remains and there is a promise of interesting discoveries still to be made, especially at a time of considerable flux in audience behavior as a result of media change and expansion.
References Alasuutari. P. (1992). “I’m ashamed to admit it, but I have watched Dallas”: The normative hierarchy of television programmes. Media, Culture and Society, 14 (1), 561–82. Alasuutari, P. (Ed.) (1999). Rethinking the media audience. London: Sage. Barwise, P. & Ehrenberg, A. (1988). Television and its audience. London: Sage. Biocca, J. (1988). Opposing conceptions of the audience. In J. Anderson (Ed.), Communication Year Book 11 (pp. 51–80). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Blumler, J. G. & Katz, E. (Eds.) (1974). The uses of mass communications. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chaffee, S. & Roser, C. (1986). Involvement and the consistency of knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. Communication Research, 3, 373–99. Elliott, P. (1974). Uses and Gratifications approach: A critique and a sociological alternative. In J. Blumler & E. Katz (Eds.), The uses of mass communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Fiske, J. (1987). Television culture. London: Methuen. Gantz, W. (1996). An examination of the range and salience of gratifications research associated with entertainment programming. Journal of Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1, 11–48. Heeter, C. & Greenberg, B. (Eds.) (1988). Cableviewing. Hillsdale, NJ: Ablex. Jensen, K. B. & Rosengren, K. E. (1990). Five traditions in search of the audience. European Journal of Communication, 5, 207–38. Katz, E., Gurevitch M. & Haas, H. (1973). On the use of mass media for important things. American Sociological Review, 156–181. Krcmar, M. (1996). Family communication patterns, discourse behavior and child viewing patterns. Human Communication Research, 23 (2), 251–277. Lewis, L. (1992). The adoring audience: Fan culture and popular media. London: Routledge. Lull, J. (1992) Popular music and communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Levy, M. R. & Windahl, S. (1983). Audience activity and gratifications: A conceptual clarification and exploration. Communication Research, 11, 51–78. McQuail, D. (1984). With the benefit of hindsight: Reflections on uses and gratifications research. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1 (2), 177–93. McQuail, D. (1994). Mass communication theory (3rd ed.). London: Sage. McQuail, D. (1997) Audience analysis. London: Sage. McQuail, D., Blumler, J. & Brown, J. (1972). Television: A new approach to the audience. In D. McQuail (Ed.), Sociology of mass communications. Harmondsworth: Penguin. McQuail, D. & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Explaining audience behavior: Three approaches considered. In J. Blumler & E. Katz (Eds.), The uses of mass communications (pp. 287–302). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Moores, S. (1993). Interpreting audiences. London: Sage Palmgreen, P. & Rayburn, J. D. (1985). An expectancy-value approach to media gratification. In K. E. Rosengren, L. A. Wenner & S. Windahl (Eds.), Media gratification research (pp. 61–73). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Perse, E. M. & Courtright, J. A. (1993). Normative images of communication media. Human Communication Review, 19 (4), 485–503. Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Ray, M. L. (1973). Marketing communication and the hierarchy of effects. In P. Clarke (Ed.), New models for communication research (pp. 147–176). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Renckstorf, K. McQuail, D. & Jankowski, N. (Eds.) (1996). Media use as social action. London: Libbey.
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Renckstorf, K. (1996). Media use as social action: A theoretical perspective. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Media use as social action: A European approach to audience studies (pp. 18–31). London: Libbey. Rosengren, K. E. (1974). Uses and gratifications: A paradigm outlined. In J. Blumler & E. Katz (Eds.), The uses of mass communications (pp. 269–286). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Rosengren, K. E. (2000). Communication: An introduction. London: Sage. Rosengren, K. E. & Windahl, S. (1989). Media matter: TV use in childhood and adolescence. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Schroder, K. (1999). The best of both worlds? Media audience research between rival paradigms. In P. Alasuutari (Ed.), Rethinking the media audience (pp. 38–68). London: Sage. Tannenbaum, P. (1980). The entertainment functions of television. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Webster, J. G. & Wakshlag, J. J. (1983). A theory of television program choice. Communication Research, 10 (4), 430–446. Weibull, L. (1985). Structural factors in gratifications research. In K. E. Rosengren, L. A. Wenner & P. Palmgreen (Eds.), Media gratifications research (pp. 123–147). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Zillman, D. & Bryant, J. (1985). Selective exposure to communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
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4 The ‘media use as social action’ approach: 4 Theory, methodology, and research evidence so far Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester
Abstract An action theoretical perspective for communication research is sketched and a general reference model of the so-called ‘Media Use as Social Action’ Approach is outlined; how an audience deals with the media of communication (including mass media) is considered a form of social action that is not only conceptualized as external action, but also as external action being accompanied by internal action during the process of self-interaction. This change in perspective obviously implies a shift of accent in communication research. Some of the implications for research designing and choice of adequate research methods are discussed and research evidence gained so far is critically reviewed. Keywords: media use, social action theory, audience studies, communication research, methodology, symbolic interactionism Some twelve years ago – the ‘Uses and Gratifications Approach’ had already lost its attraction for many colleagues and its perspective was suffering from a considerable loss of attention in professional journals and academic communication research – a group of Dutch and German scholars at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, started with the cooperative undertaking of initiating and conducting a series of empirical studies in communication research using a social action perspective as the main point of departure (Renckstorf, 1989; Renckstorf & Nelissen, 1989; Bosman et al., 1989; Renckstorf & Wester, 1992; Renckstorf & McQuail, 1996). Since then, a large number of studies has been published, for instance under the label of ‘Media Use as Social Action: A European Approach to Audience Studies’ (cf. Renckstorf, McQuail & Jankowski, 1996), and quite a number of studies are still underway or not even fully sketched out yet. Some of the studies published concentrated on theoretical (cf. Renckstorf & Wester, 1992; Renckstorf, 1996) and/or methodological issues (cf. Hendriks Vettehen, Renckstorf & Wester, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 1997; Hendriks Vettehen, 1998), whereas others focused on empirical findings (cf. Bosman & Renckstorf, 1996; Frissen,
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1996; Mutsaers, 1996; Renckstorf & Hendriks Vettehen, 1996a, 1996b; Hendriks Vettehen, Hietbrink & Renckstorf, 1996). Twelve years later, time has come to reflect again on our research efforts up to now. That is, to assess anew theory and methodology of the approach, as well as the research evidence gained so far.
Theory: Conceptualizing ‘media use’ as ‘social action’ At the core of an action theoretical perspective on human life one will find a concept of man as an action oriented being. Here, people engage in activity on the basis of their own objectives, intentions and interests; they are linked through a diversity of interactions, and are capable of reflecting on their own actions and interactions with others. During the course of everyday life people are confronted with a large number of material and immaterial events, other persons, objects, considerations and questions. They are able to act upon all of these ‘objects’ in the environment, of which the mass media and their messages are also a part. Such action, however, must be given form by the person himself. In contrast to the animal world, where behavior to a relatively large degree is determined by external factors or instinctively regulated (e.g., Claessens, 1968), man does not live in a type specific environment in which the instinctive capabilities of the organism readily provide acceptable reactions (Berger & Luckmann, 1967: 47). Human beings must therefore create their ‘life-world’ (Schütz, 1932), which is to be shared with others. In everyday life the individual is regularly confronted with repetitive situations in which solutions are developed and methods of response are tried out, to which others in turn react. In this manner the person develops ‘recipe knowledge’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1967: 42) with respect to potential situations and routines which can be employed therein. Society can be considered as the sedimented form of such shared meanings and actions. As social beings, that is to say, as more or less successfully socialized beings, people generally know how to behave, how to act relative to a particular role or position in relation to particular happenings, persons, objects or questions (see Helle, 1968; Zijderveld, 1974). According to the normative view of social action (cf. Wilson, 1970; Krappmann, 1969, 1972) such prescriptions for action and rules of behavior are central; the pregiven rules guide action. However, the concrete situation in which action takes place is seldom completely identical to the situation in which ‘correct’ action was previously exercised. Moreover, the role the person has to play consists in fact of an entire set of sometimes conflicting roles. In addition – and this point can be equally problematic – it is also the case
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that the ‘object’ for which the personal actions must be designed is generally understood, but that one can never be completely sure of this as the context is continually changing. So the individual’s actual action proceeds much less problem-free than one would expect on the basis of normative or dispositional assumptions of a theory of social action (see Wilson, 1970). According to the interpretive view of social action, such as symbolic interactionism (Mead, 1934; Blumer, 1969; cf. Manis & Meltzer, 1972), or the action theory of Schütz (1932, 1972; Schütz & Luckmann, 1979, 1984; Berger & Luckmann, 1967), which constitutes the foundation of the more recent variants of the sociology of knowledge (Zijderveld, 1974), the meaning-making activity of the acting person stands central. The exceptional nature of human action is marked by the fact that the acting individual must interpret all components of such action – the situation, the objects, the action of the other, and the action of the individual – in order to provide them with meaning and in so doing to give form to the action. This does not necessarily mean that each and every interaction situation will be experienced as being problematic. Schütz remarks that the majority of everyday experiences – that are in accordance with former experiences – are routinely stored in the everyday ‘stock of knowledge’ and are thus given an appropriate meaning without difficulty. A subjective problem with which an individual must consciously be concerned only arises: “… if an actual experience does not readily ‘fit’ into a type at hand in the stock of knowledge …” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1974: 202) The normal procedure regarding the performing of an action in everyday reality is that the everyday situation as a problem is characterized as nonproblematic. Such problems are naturally, and in a certain sense pre-reflexively (Zijderveld, 1974), provided with meaning whereby action is made possible (see Figure 4.1.). According to an interpretive, action theoretical perspective, human action in general, and human social action especially, is not to be considered a ‘reaction’ to an ‘objective’ action or even more generally an ‘object’, but as carefully planned activity (‘re-action’) in the light of the actor’s own hierarchy of relevances. Or, as Blumer expressed it: “The human being is seen as ‘social’ in a … profound sense – in the sense of an organism that engages in social interaction with itself by making indications to itself and responding to such indications … Instead of being merely an organism that responds to the play of factors on or through it, the human being is seen as an organism that has to deal withwhat it notes. It meets what it so notes by engaging in a process of self-
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Figure 4.1. Steps in the process of defining the situation (cf. Renckstorf, 1996; Figure 4.1. Renckstorf & Wester, 1999: 42)
indication in which it makes an object of what it notes, gives it meaning, and uses the meaning as basis for directing its action. Its behavior with regard to what it notes … is an action that arises out of the interpretation made through the process of self-indication”. (Blumer, 1969: 14, italics added, KR/FW) Of course, in defining the situation and in interpreting action and objects (Thomas, 1932) a certain degree of help is provided by the social stock of knowledge (Schütz & Luckmann, 1979, 1984) that is created in each culture and is transferred through learning processes. However, given that
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these patterns are applicable only within a particular cultural range and are relatively situation specific, they are, taken on their own, necessarily too general to really guide actions in the sense of making action problem free for the actor. Frequently, definitions of situations are to be created through negotiations with others, and thus frameworks for meaning and interpretation are formulated anew. The meaning attached cannot, thereby, be considered permanent, but is rather, in principle, subject to continuous re-interpretation and re-definition (see Wilson, 1970; Blumer, 1969). The above represents the general principles of the interpretive perspective of social action and social reality. Of course, these principles can also be applied to themes in communication research. The result of such application is evident: mass media and their messages are merely ‘objects’ in the actor’s social environment, which provide the person with situations to be defined. The actors and activities in the situation are also ‘objects’ for the media using person, which have to be perceived, thematized and diagnosed. From this perspective the messages of the mass media are not to be considered stimuli on their own, but rather events which, from the background of a (subjective) system of relevances (Schütz & Luckmann, 1979: 229–270; cf. Haferkamp, 1972), are perceived, thematized and diagnosed and thereby considered ‘objects’ which require interpretation. With regard to the mass media and their messages this means that the media form but a part of the meaning producing symbolic environment of human actors (cf. Hunziker, 1988). In this perspective, viewers, listeners and readers are shortchanged if they are conceptualized as mere ‘recipients’ of mass media messages. In the framework of this perspective, media users are acting persons who interpret media messages on the basis of their own objectives, values and plans, and then – more or less carefully – construct their (external) actions. It is important to realize that the process of interpretation cannot be entirely understood or explained on the basis of mere individual characteristics; of course, the person comes to an interpretation by himself, but this is not primarily an individual act (Lüscher, 1975). Instead, meanings are social products, they emerge from procedures for defining within social interactions, and they constitute part of the identity of the person as participant in the society (Blumer, 1969). Interpretation occurs on the basis of the image the person has of himself; it is a form of self-interaction in which experiences are confronted with the (subjective) knowledge system as well as with the structure of relevances (Kleefmann, 1985). Interpretation, in short, manifests itself within the framework of the person’s actual and potential patterns of social action and interaction (cf. Schütz & Luckmann, 1979, 1984).
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On the basis of these considerations we are able to design a reference model for mass communication research that structures processes of mass communication following an action theoretical perspective (see Figure 4.2). As McQuail and Windahl (1993) noted, the action theoretical reference model shows some evident similarity with Rosengren’s model (Rosengren, 1974). This implies that mass communication is an interactive and recurrent process. Nevertheless, the starting point of the reference model is different and alternative options are presented: “At the outset (1) we see the individual adopting or having a definition of the situation, in which experience from everyday life and interaction are perceived, thematized and interpreted. The … factors of individual make-up, social position and experience (2 and 3) enter into the defining and interpreting processes. The ‘route’ followed is then either conceived as ‘problematic’ (4) or ‘unproblematic’ (5). If the former, action on the problem is contemplated, motives (6) are formulated and decisions about action taken (7). These can include media selection and use as one type of external action (8). The alternative, unproblematic, route can also lead, by way of everyday routines (9), to similar actions, also including media use. … Whether motivated or not, media use is subject to evaluation (10) by the individual and is followed by a new sequence of definition and interpretation”. (McQuail & Windahl, 1993: 144) The reference model (see Figure 4.2) shows that ‘media use’ is not to be found on a single, fixed place. Obviously, this fact itself does not mean improvement, but with the aid of the model it is possible to identify, separate, but also, integrate various relevant aspects of media use within one model. For example, instrumental as well as ritualized forms of media use (cf. Rubin, 1984), which often have been described as antagonistic concepts of communication research, are here integrated within the same frame of reference. And, with regard to the process of defining the situation – in the ‘internal action’ phases of perceiving, thematizing and diagnosing – it is reasonable to conceptualize ‘media use’ as ‘referring to information’ formerly distributed via mass media, or, as making use of clusters of information related to complex images of reality which compare with what Lippmann (1922) once called the ‘pictures in our heads’. Furthermore, in the internal phase of the (ideal type of) action process – the phase relating to the ‘internal’ solution of a problem – ‘media use’ could be, once again, conceptualized as the preferred internal ‘reference to information distributed via the media’. In the phase of ‘external action’ – that is, what is often called ‘overt behavior’ (cf. Mead, 1934; Hulett, 1966), the phase relating to the ‘external’ solution of problems –, ‘media use’ can also be conceived of as the ‘adoption of models’ for action, as these have been found in mass mediated programs.
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Figure 4.2. General action theoretical reference model for empirical (mass) Figure 4.2. communication research (cf. Renckstorf, 1996: 28; Renckstorf & Wester, Figure 4.2. 1999: 44)
In Figure 4.2 the context of media use has been elaborated upon with regard to general factors contributing to the explanation of media use. This especially concerns the societal, biographical and situational factors that produce action patterns of which media use is a part. For more specific research purposes, however, this general action theoretical reference model can easily be adapted and specified to investigate special research problems. In the past years, several more specific frames of reference have been developed and employed in empirical communication research; for instance, in order to specify processes of using information offered by public information campaigns (Bosman et al., 1989: 126), in order to structure heavy viewer’s use of television (Frissen, 1992; 1996: 61), or, in order to specify relevant elements of processes of using TV news (Renckstorf & Wester, 1999: 47; Schaap et al., 2001: 51; Konig, Renckstorf & Wester, 1998).
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Methodology: Combining qualitative and quantitative research The ‘Media Use as Social Action’ framework conceives audiences’ coping with mass media and people’s use of mediated messages, as a form of social action which is not only concerned with external action (overt behavior) but also with internal action (covert behavior), or self-interaction, during interpretation processes. Above all, this means that – in comparison to conventional communication research – a shift in perspective is needed. The study of ‘media impact’ for instance, usually regarded as the study of the ‘effects of mediated messages on the behavior of their audiences’, here, instead, is to be conceptualized as the study of the ‘consequences audiences take after having perceived, thematized and diagnosed mediated material’. The implications of such a shift in perspective for research designing as well as the choice of adequate research methods have elsewhere been considered in more general terms (Renckstorf & Wester, 1992; Hendriks Vettehen, Renckstorf & Wester, 1996). Here, just some of the direct implications for communication research will be sketched; first, implications with regard to the research approach and, second, implications for the research strategy. Research approach While focusing on the consequences of communication processes, our framework implies a choice for a methodology which does justice to the perspective of the actor – as we are to understand his or her behavior. Since people act on the basis of the meaning they attach to objects, we are to understand the meaning people ascribe to the objects of their everyday life. This means, a ‘verstehende’ or interpretive methodology is to be employed which pays explicit attention to the reconstruction of the world of those involved. As for mass communication processes, this means – in principle – both communicators and recipients. Interpretive research shares a number of principles, four of which are briefly described here: (1) The basis of verstehen is the meaning people ascribe to their environment. People act on the basis of the meanings they attach to objects, which together constitute their ‘world’ (cf. ‘life-world’; Schütz, 1967). The object of research, then, is a pre-interpreted reality. (2) In order to study people’s behavior as meaningful conduct, interpretive research has to view the objects as they are perceived by actors in their everyday life situations. The researcher has, in fact, the task of reconstructing that reality (Schwartz & Jacobs, 1979). In Mead’s termi-
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nology (Mead, 1934/1970), this has to be done by ‘role taking’; that is, the researcher has to place himself in the position of an individual or group in order to determine the meaning of a situation – according to the actor’s definition of that situation. (3) There are two main implications regarding the research design. First, as Blumer put it, there should be a direct examination of the empirical world (Blumer, 1969: 33), and, second, the research procedure has to be as open as possible; that is, directed towards direct contact with the reality studied. This leads to a different research procedure. The procedure is not to first formulate concepts, operationalize and then measure them, but to respect the nature of the empirical world of everyday experience by becoming acquainted with the sphere of social life under study. Theories and concepts are to be elaborated through exploration and inspection of that world. Filstead (1970: 2), in this regard, considered qualitative methodology as “firsthand involvement in the social world”. To achieve an as detailed description of events as possible, different data gathering techniques, such as observation, interview and content analysis should be employed that complement each other (‘triangulation’). (4) A thus accomplished description in terms of the actor’s perspective towards social reality (‘inner perspective’), however, is not sufficient. This meaningful reality has to be objectified in concepts. This principle constitutes the core of qualitative analysis. Schütz (1972) and Bruyn (1966) mention in this regard the ‘ideal types’, whereas Blumer (1969) suggests the use of ‘sensitizing concepts’. That these well sounding principles are far from being trivial for methodology – that is, the consistent combination of theory and concrete research methods of an action theoretically based communication research – can be illustrated regarding content analysis. Content analysis is by definition an interpretive method, but this does not mean that any application of content analysis techniques is relevant. As to the perspective used here, mediated materials are not significant in their own right, but should be studied from the everyday life perspective of their producers as well as their users. The description of mediated material per se, whether possible at all, is inadequate and content analysis as a research method for an ‘objective’ description of mediated material rather irrelevant. Instead, mediated materials have to be studied (a) in the context of the work media users have to do in order to make sense of it, and (b) as the products of actions of media authors. As to the former, content analysis may be applied to give information referring to the context of media reception. With regard to the latter, one general application of content analysis as a research
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method in an interpretive perspective is the description of mediated materials as the objectified forms of the activities of media communicators. Although such a description may give insights into characteristics and variations in professional communicator behavior, these observations should be related to the perspectives relevant in that context. Thus, applied in an interpretive context, content analysis may be used in combination with, for instance, document study, interviews and/or participation in media production situations. Research strategy The action theoretical model focuses on the complexity of media use, which is conceived as social action taking place within the individual and social boundaries of everyday life situations. An adequate research strategy, then, should aim not only at an understanding of individual media use (including individual interpretation and meaning-making), but also at an understanding of its social embeddedness. Essentially, a convincing research strategy should be directed towards the study of regularities in media use, for example, the study of individual and social patterns of media use. That is, among other things, an integrated planning of various types of qualitative as well as quantitative research is needed – exploratory, theorydeveloping, hypothesis-testing and evaluation research – to enable investigation of such patterns. The shift in accent from external observable action to internal action processes – perceiving, thematizing, diagnosing and, further, projection and decision of action – and the related need for more insight into these processes also places certain demands on the research strategy. It is evident that internal action processes (‘covert behavior’) cannot be ‘measured’ in the same way as external action (‘overt behavior’). The former involves a more qualitative research strategy to determine whether and how internal action processes can be made visible. Qualitative research can provide both the necessary analytical framework and the research instruments (see Wester, 1995; Peters & Wester, 1989; Hendriks Vettehen, Renckstorf & Wester, 1996). In this regard, even biographical research, such as life history-research of (types of) recipients may be undertaken. The insights gained may later be used to develop larger scale descriptive or hypothesis-testing quantitative research. Quantitative research can help much in discovering regularities in the processes of defining situations and, thus, the interpretation of mediated material that bring about certain routines and/or patterns in media use. Thus, regularities in a whole series of actions are measured – and
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not just during one or two isolated action sequences. The same holds true for the characteristics of the actor’s social situation and his stock of knowledge; these structural aspects are the first to be measured. Next, regularities in actions are related to regularities in social situation and stock of knowledge characteristics. And, finally, regularities in the intermediating processes are to be inferred from these relations. In such a manner, quantitative research and quantitative methods may also help to provide some essential insights into the processes leading to and following media use (cf. Hendriks Vettehen, Renckstorf & Wester, 1996). In line with the research approach described above, the case study should be used more often as a research design (cf. Charlton & Neumann, 1985; Lull, 1980, 1988). This involves a clear reorientation towards the investigation of a relatively small number of cases chosen on an analytical basis rather than large representative surveys (see Barton, 1968; Strauss, 1987; Wester, 1995). Clearly, this is not to say that (large scale) survey research in particular, or quantitative research methods in general, could not be useful in approaching the problems within the field of mass communication; on the contrary, provided that the problem statement is clear and the researcher has got considerably elaborate concepts of the field in order to define hypotheses and operationalizations, quantitative research will prove to be extremely useful. Sometimes survey research is essential, but in relation to the framework presented here, survey research cannot be the only or, without further specification, the preferred research approach for empirical (mass) communication research. The above-mentioned implications lead, again, to the need for an integrated planning of various types of research – exploratory, theory-developing, hypothesis-testing and evaluation research – around questions formulated on the basis of the theoretical framework. In such a program for (mass) communication research, applied and fundamental research projects should be closely related. The status quo in communication research nowadays is still such that large scale continuous and quantifying research projects are solely characterized as relevant in a policy context. As is often not recognized, however, many small scale qualitative research projects also contribute substantially, and do often fit better in a policy context (cf. Patton, 1980). That is why an integration of both qualitative and quantifying research is proposed here (cf. Hendriks Vettehen, Renckstorf & Wester, 1996: 42). Qualitative methods are especially suitable as a method of exploration because of their flexibility (Wester, 1995). In using methods such as participant observation, in-depth interviews and group discussions it is possible to acquire very detailed empirical material. This enables us to
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reconstruct intermediary definition and interpretation processes more accurately and to develop theories on a more abstract level about the way these processes work. Quantitative methods, on the other hand, have attractive aspects such as the relatively easy processing of data and the possibility of generalizing research results statistically for larger populations than those investigated. Through planning and coordination, it should be made possible that these types of research yield cross-pollination. One may also consider the formula whereby research of the one type is in principle related to research questions of the other type. The action theoretical reference model may, therefore, function as source of guidance both for large scale quantitative and for small scale qualitative research – as well as for their integration.
Research evidence so far The function of research approaches in general, and reference models, such as the general action theoretical reference model in particular, is at least threefold and may be described as follows: (1) ordering and structuring of relevant literature and existing research findings, (2) steering and stimulating present and future research, and, (3) integration of findings of present and future research, and, thus, allowing the accumulation of insights and building up a professional ‘body of knowledge’. Ordering and structuring of research With regard to the first function, ordering and structuring of existing research findings, several attempts have been made to review specific fields of communication research. First of all, we started with an overview of existing literature in the field of people’s use of public information campaigns resulting in several advices for the reformulation of research questions and the reorganization of common research projects in this area (Bosman et al., 1989; Renckstorf & Van Woerkum, 1990; Nelissen, 1991). A specific reference model was developed, which has, since then, been serving as solid base for numerous empirical studies carried out by staff (cf. Van der Rijt, 1996, 1998, 2000; Van der Rijt & Need, 1996) as well as students at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen (cf. Nelissen, 2001). In all of these
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studies, audiences are not conceptualized as passive receivers of information delivered by public organizations, but as agents actively approaching mediated materials against the background of their own perspectives. Another attempt was made regarding the problem of heavy viewing. Despite the considerable social and scientific interest in the phenomenon of ‘heavy viewers’, research had been driven by a rather one-sided and stereotypical concept of this category of people, characterized by an extensive exposure to televised programs (Frissen, 1992, 1996). A theoretical perspective on heavy viewing was in fact absent and an adequate interpretation of research findings was, thus, impeded. Heavy viewing was often understood as being a part of a complex syndrome, which includes lower education, lower mobility, lower aspirations, higher anxieties and further class and gender related characteristics (cf. Gerbner & Gross, 1976). Instead, as Frissen’s empirical study showed, heavy viewing can – and should – be conceptualized as a multi-faceted phenomenon; that is, “… a pattern of social action which can take different forms and follow different definitions of the situation.” What Frissen found in her Ph.D. thesis, was not “one, all embracing explanation of heavy viewing, but … empirical clues for different, situation-specific explanations of the phenomenon of heavy viewing in different stages of the life cycle” (Frissen, 1996: 69). The – up to now – perhaps most ambitious attempt of ordering and structuring relevant literature and existing research findings was made concerning the field of TV news research. Three decades of academic TV news research; that is, some 250 empirical studies published in the period 1970–1998, were reviewed and the findings published as an ‘action theoretical inventory of issues and problems’ (Schaap, Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). The enormous amount and the diversity of the studies was considered one of the problems in reviewing TV news research. In light of this problem a specific action theoretical frame of reference for the study of TV news use (see Figure 4.3) was developed and applied in order to provide a systematic, consistent and theoretically coherent overview of recent research on TV news use for the sake of pointing out ‘gaps’ of past research and defining some ‘new’ issues for a future research agenda. By reviewing the relevant research literature, the presumed lack of theoretical coherence soon became evident, and the conclusion was drawn that research efforts up to then had not led to definite insights into either the impact of TV news or the social functions of televised news. According to the specified action theoretical reference model applied1, ten major research domains were discerned. As could be shown, past research efforts had not been evenly distributed among these domains. At least four somewhat ‘underdeveloped’ domains in TV news research were identified: ‘in-
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teraction situation’, ‘action strategies’, ‘social networks’, and ‘objectivation’ (Schaap et al., 2001: 71). For instance, little research has been done on the interaction situation in which the use of TV news is embedded. Evidence so far, we concluded “… allows for some sketchy conclusions about everyday viewing practices and activities, but much is still uncharted” (ibidem: 72). As media use is conceived of as a social activity, the influence of ‘others’ in the viewing surroundings should be studied more systematically, for instance, with regard to ‘para-social interaction’, or, with regard to the changing role the media may play for their users in times of changing media landscapes. The role of everyday time schedules, as well as the role ‘others’ play in developing television viewing routines and/or patterns of TV news use, have not been studied sufficiently. Further domains, such as action strategies, social networks, and objectivation, also turned out to be underinvestigated fields of TV news research; many of the relevant research questions to be posed here are still left unanswered, whereas others have not yet been answered in a really convincing way. It might seem quite evident – as to the domain of action strategies – that most of TV news use is a matter of routine. However, very little is known about situations in which people are confronted with information that is highly problematic to them. In other words, problematic and non-problematic coping with TV news has hardly been discerned and described – nor explained. Little is known about the effects of social networks on situation definitions of TV news users and little is known about how the viewer is socialized in news viewing. Still less is known about long-term effects of TV news use on behavioral patterns, or objectivation. In fact, not a single study was found which specifically investigates action patterns related to TV news viewing. Perhaps one of the most interesting, but hardly addressed questions concerning objectivation is how patterns of TV news use are influenced and shaped – that is, socially determined – by (sub)cultural forms of news viewing. On the other hand, four of the ten domains discerned – such as relevance structure, definition of the situation, institutions and information – had in fact enjoyed a great deal of past research efforts. However, as could be shown, much is still to be investigated and/or re-investigated. The research perspectives chosen so far have proved to be rather inadequate to tackle the problem at hand in a convincing manner. For instance, the interpretation of televised news, often conceptualized as recall and/or comprehension of TV news, has essentially been studied in cognitive processing terminology only. Research results, often showing poor recall ratings as well as low comprehension levels – in comparison to what had been delivered on screen –, have usually been interpreted from the standpoint of
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Figure 4.3. Specified action theoretical model for the study of television news use Figure 4.3. (cf. Renckstorf & Wester, 1999: 47)
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an ‘objective’ observer, whereas the results may also point to an integrated processing of TV news. Evidently, viewers tend to restructure the news and make inferences about news – following their own structure of relevances – when processing them. This calls for a ‘user perspective’ on the interpretation of TV news. Schaap et al., therefore, argued that it might be just the practice of present mainstream news research – based on an ‘objective observer perspective’ – that “… accounts for a great deal of ‘misunderstandings’ found in present recall or comprehension research” (ibidem)2. With regard to the domain of institutions – to give a last example, here – we suggested to investigate the role information sources may play in the process of news making. From an action theoretical perspective the process of news making, carried out by professional journalists, is assumed to be a process of continuously defining and re-defining what did happen and what did not, thus, a process of constructing a social reality by permanently taking decisions about which events, which developments in the world/the country/the region, respectively did take place and which ones did not. As journalists are almost always dependent on information they get from others, journalists’ use of information sources should play a crucial role in the process of news production (cf. Pleijter & Renckstorf, 1998: 84). For a more comprehensive overview over alternative research issues for the study of television news use suggested in our inventory, see Table 4.1.
Steering and stimulating research An important function of research approaches is, of course, the function of steering and stimulating research. By initiating and directing empirical communication research in accordance with the approach at hand, it is supposed to gain insights into the use people make of mediated communication – as well as the consequences this has. Much of our research activities up to now have been concentrating, though not exclusively, on the fields mentioned above3. For present purposes here, we will limit our overview4 to just some twenty empirical studies5 covering the following four areas: research on the use (1) audiences make of television, (2) people make of information delivered by public information campaigns, (3) communicators make of the media (making news), and (4) audiences make of television news.
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Table 4.1. Suggestions for television news research agenda (Schaap et al., 2001: 74) Research Issues Present (2) Institutions – norms & values of news making – news content characteristics
Additional – – – –
concept of news non-media institutions news information sources quality of media performance
(3) Social Networks – networks as sources – networks as socialization agents
– networks as knowledge provider – how the viewer is socialized
(5) Interaction Situation – exposure & everyday life – watching news as social activity – parasocial interaction
– time schedules – other activities (attentiveness) – ‘others’ presence (use patterns)
(7) Definition of the Situation process – interpreting news product – comprehension – recall – evaluation (8) Action Strategies – routine – active problem solving (9) Objectivation – viewing patterns – professional views
– interpretation differences (range) – emotional response (news definition) – incidental learning – power of the text – actual outcomes
– non-problematic coping – problematic coping
– professional groups
(1) On the use audiences make of television According to the action theoretical model, audiences are considered to be a central element in mass communication. They are actively engaged in processes of mediated communication on the basis of their own specific objectives, intentions and interests. Furthermore, the model postulates that all participants in the communication process – communicators as well as audiences – are capable of reflecting on their own behavior and continuously do so in interaction with others within their social networks.
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This active involvement forms the basis for the actor’s media use; that is, his/her interpretation of reality and, thus, his/her interpretation of media content. Research undertaken up to now addresses the use of television and televised messages by different audiences and focuses on the ways people within specific situations attend to, experience, and render meaning to television and television content. Issues investigated so far include heavy viewing, non-viewing, and attending to foreign TV channels, television-viewing in different social contexts, etc. Frissen (1996): Heavy viewing as social action In spite of the considerable social and scientific interest in the phenomenon of ‘heavy viewing’, research has been driven by a rather one-sided and stereotypical image of the category of ‘heavy viewers’. ‘Heavy viewing’ was supposed to be a part of a complex syndrome, which includes lower education, lower mobility, lower aspirations, higher anxieties and other class and gender related characteristics. Frissen developed an alternative theoretical perspective, which considers ‘heavy viewing’ to be a form of social action. Using data from a 1989 national survey in The Netherlands (n=956), no evidence is found for an all-embracing explanation of ‘heavy viewing’. Instead, some empirical support is gained in favor of different, situation-specific explanations of the phenomenon of ‘heavy viewing’ in different stages of the life cycle. Renckstorf & Hendriks Vettehen (1996a): Non-viewers in The Netherlands The authors examine the relative small proportion of the Dutch population that never watches television. The lack of interest in structural nonviewers in recent communication research was rather remarkable, inasmuch as they constitute a substantial part of our contemporary, western societies; the amount of structural non-viewers is estimated to be between 3 and 4 per cent of the adult population. Descriptive analyses of data from a 1989 national survey in The Netherlands (n=956) suggest that in The Netherlands there are two distinct types of non-viewers. First, there are the very religious Calvinist non-viewers, who often belong to the lower socio-economic strata and second, the non-Calvinist nonviewers often stemming from higher socio-economic strata. These two types of non-viewers hold totally different values and attitudes – and differ sharply in their social activities as well as the use of other media. The findings question – among other – the commonly held position that non-viewing indicates social disintegration. Renckstorf & Hendriks Vettehen (1996b): Watching foreign TV channels As a result of the deregulation of national and international communication markets, the availability of foreign TV channels in The Nether-
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lands has been increasing tremendously over the past couple of years – as it has in most of the European countries. It was feared/hoped that watching foreign TV channels might undercut ‘cultural identity’, or put differently, might help to educate people and prepare them for ‘world citizenship’. The analysis of data from a national survey in the Netherlands (n=956) suggests that a preference for foreign TV channels does not imply a greater interest in or appreciation of events happening outside the viewer’s immediate social and cultural environment. Instead, watching foreign TV channels seems to be a case of availability, general interest and program preference. Brehm (1994): Patterns of watching television An illustration of a qualitative survey conducted from the perspective of the social action model for media use is Brehm’s (1994) investigation of patterns of television viewing in the context of everyday activities through interviews with persons living together (n=15). She elaborates a typology of viewing patterns and finds that, although every household had a dominant pattern for watching television together, there were different viewing patterns for the partners when watching television alone. Mutsaers (1996): Television viewing as social activity Watching television usually takes place within the social context of family life. As a consequence, viewers must take into account interests and preferences for particular programs of other household members. Program choice and selection is, therefore, seldom an individual affair, but the result of group interaction. This is one of the factors that may lead to different patterns in viewing behavior and differences in the social uses of television between people living together and those living alone. Using data from a 1989 national survey in The Netherlands (n=956), results support the idea that program choice is normally not an individual, but a collective activity. Since co-viewers influence program choice, viewers are often forced to let program preferences of their housemates prevail over their own. Consequently, the larger the size of a household, the more often viewers have to comply with choices of their co-viewers. Furthermore, there is evidence for a correlation between the variety of TV program types watched and the number of people in a household. The more people to negotiate the program choice with, the more ‘impoverished’ the program choice of the family as a whole becomes. Huysmans, Lammers, Renckstorf & Wester (2000): Television viewing and the temporal organization of daily life in households A considerable share of free time is spent in the social context of a household (cf. Huysmans, 2001). The social character of living to-
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gether affects the time a day activities take place. Time use research in households provides an opportunity to study the extent of household members’ conducting the same activities at particular times of the day. Using data of a summer 1997 time use study, including several questionnaires and diaries, administered by a sample of households (n=136) in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, a multilevel analysis of data on television use shows to what extent television viewing is influenced by the temporal organization of the household. (2) On the use people make of information delivered by public (2) information campaigns How to explain presence or absence of an audience’s information need for information delivered by public information campaigns and/or public information services? Why do some people actively seek information and how do they manage to obtain it, whereas others are absolutely not interested? Questions like these have been important concerns for communication research on the ‘effects’ of public information campaigns, as understanding these matters may offer insights which could assist us in designing proper strategies to reach and inform people more adequately by public information campaigns. Research up to now has been concentrating, for instance, on the concept information needs as well as on types of information seeking. Bosman & Renckstorf (1996): On the concept of ‘information needs’: Problems, interest and media consumption The need for information as a predictor for information consumption has been criticized in recent years, particularly because it was often used in communication research as an autonomous explanatory factor. An action theoretical view on the use of public information campaigns (cf. Bosman et al., 1989) shows that subjectively experienced (perceived) problems are the central factor in the creation of a demand for information, and therefore in the pursuit of knowledge. In this study the authors try to establish the determinants of information needs. A distinction is made between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for information consumption. Based on a secondary analysis of data from a 1989 nationwide survey in The Netherlands (n=956), an examination is made into the relative importance of subjectively experienced problems as an extrinsic motivation in explaining information needs as well as information consumption. Van der Rijt (1996): Information needs of the elderly This study elaborates on the proposition that two main types of information seeking behavior can be distinguished, namely, the process of
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information seeking of a more routine character and, secondly, the process of information seeking that is much more specific in nature. As secondary analyses of data (n=319) from research on relevance and feasibility of a special health information program for elderly people on local TV in the city of Rotterdam, The Netherlands show, there is empirical evidence for the proposition. The first type of information seeking behavior implies a more general orientation to accumulate information with regard to a specific domain, while the second type is characterized by a specific orientation seeking out specific information on a special topic. Furthermore, it is suggested that each type of information seeking may have different roots or determinants; the first type may be determined by social position and professional interest, whereas the second type may be determined by ‘problematic’ problems which people experience. Van der Rijt & Need (1996): Problem-guided and interest-guided information seeking In their study the authors test the assumption that different patterns of information seeking behavior have different determinants. It is postulated that the search for specific, instant information in a certain domain is more problem-guided, while information seeking with a more routine character is more interest-guided. These propositions were tested in an evaluation study of a health information device (‘Youth and Health’) for primary schools and day care centers in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and surrounding areas. A mail questionnaire was sent to the persons at the primary school or day-care center who bear responsibility for children’s health. As analyses of the data (n=218) show, there are two different sorts of uses of the guidebook, with different explanations. A routine search for information, indicated by an extensive reading of the guidebook, is mainly determined by professional interest in health information, whereas a more specific search for information, as indicated by using the guidebook as a reference volume, is mainly determined by the number of actual health problems perceived. The results, thus, indicate clear evidence for the foregoing propositions. Van der Rijt (1998): Determinants of the consumption of health information in the media In previous research on the use of health information some evidence has been found for the supposition that at least two patterns of information seeking can be discerned: a problem-guided and an interestguided pattern. For the purposes of the first pattern (i.e., problemguided), the general mass media are supposed to be of little value, as the information supply is volatile and thus just seldom available when needed – in order to solve an instant problem. Mass media, therefore,
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are better suited for the second type of information seeking, that is, the interest-guided type, to scan available media on relevant health information. Using data from a 1994 national survey in The Netherlands, analyses of a representative sample (n=782) of the Dutch population, 18 to 70 years of age, strongly support the assumption that exposure to health information in the mass media is mainly interest-guided and much less problem-guided. Relevant factors that determine a person’s exposure to health information in the media appear to be gender, a preventive orientation towards health and professional involvement, as well as active avoidance of health information. Nelissen (2000): Informing cancer patients In The Netherlands, cancer patients can turn to a great many agencies to obtain information about their disease. Health practitioners in hospitals may play an important role in supplying relevant information, because they have direct and frequent contact with these patients. Using Sense-Making methodology, the author tries to answer the following questions: Which questions do patients have? How are they answered? What is the role of the medical care network in this? Interviews with health practitioners and their patients from two hospitals (n=17 and n=24, respectively) were conducted. Qualitative analyses showed that patients generally consider medical information supply to be satisfactory. Quantitative analyses showed even more clearly than qualitative analyses, that patients’ questions are largely of a non-medical kind, whereas health practitioners tend to restrict themselves to offering merely medical information. (3) On the use communicators make of the media (making news) Following the action theoretical model, professional communicators, such as newspapermen, radio or television journalists, are also seen as important participants of processes of mediated communication. They, like audiences, are actively engaged in mass communication processes on the basis of their specific objectives, intentions and interests. Issues investigated so far include the role information sources play for journalists in the course of their daily routines of defining news and constructing reality, the role audiences play for TV news journalists, as well as the role prejudice may play in the production and reception of TV news. Pleijter & Renckstorf (1998): Deciding what’s news. A case study on the use of information sources by regional newspaper journalists in The Netherlands How do journalists define what ‘news’ is, how do they construct ‘reality’ – and, what is the role journalists’ information sources play in the
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process of professional news production? The case study was designed to explore how, when and why journalists of a middle-sized regional Dutch newspaper make use of information sources. By means of a content analysis, including all news reports that appeared on the regional pages in a four-week period in 1994 (n=482), and by means of participant observation and open interviews with a sample of journalists (n=12) of that newspaper, daily professional routines of constructing reality and defining news were investigated. Results from the content analysis show that journalists tend to make use of socially acknowledged institutions and organizations as primary sources of information. More specifically, findings from participant observation and open interviews revealed that the organization of news gathering as well as the professional standards held by the journalists are factors responsible for the important role established institutions (such as the police and local authorities) play as sources of information. Hermans (2000): Professional activities of television news journalists This Ph.D. project aims at the perception TV news journalists have of their audience – and the way it involves their professional activities. It was decided to study the professional activities of Dutch TV news journalists in a broader context, for example the way the news production process is organized shapes the situational context for the professional activities of journalists. The global research question was reformulated in two more specific research questions: (1) How is the daily production process of TV news organized in which the journalists act? (2) Are there shared meaning schemes and reality constructs underlying the occupational activities of the TV news journalists? Qualitative field research was administered; that is, data were gathered in the natural setting of the newsroom of the Dutch public broadcasting system (NOS-journaal), responsible for about ten bulletins per day. The methods used to gather data for this case study were observations, including informal talks, and open interviews (n=31). Results show, among other, that journalists’ perception of their audience is specified by thoughts, conceptions and interpretations they have of the people for whom they make their news items. Journalists give various meanings to the concept ‘audience’: on the one hand they refer to the actual viewer of their program, on the other they refer to their potential target group; that is, all people for whom the news is made. It seems quite evident that journalists use their audience as a reference group to consider how to present a news item. However, journalists think the audience cannot and should not be involved in the decisions which events have to be defined as news. Because of their professional skills, journalists find themselves capable of making the best decisions – in the public interest.
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Konig (ongoing): On the influence of prejudice on the production and reception of television news An ongoing research project on the influence of prejudice on the production and reception of television news is introduced and outlined. The theoretical perspective of the project is derived from the sociology of knowledge of Berger & Luckmann (1967). Much emphasis is put on the definition and discussion of television news and prejudice from this perspective. The main research questions are introduced (including questions such as ‘Is prejudice against Germany and Germans really meddling with the production and reception of news?’, and, ‘How does prejudice against Germany and Germans influence the production and reception of news?’), and the research design is unfolded, using Dutch television news about Germany and Germans as a case. (4) On the use audiences make of television news Having reviewed the relevant research literature at least four somewhat ‘underdeveloped’ domains in television news research were identified: ‘interaction situation’, ‘action strategies’, ‘social networks’, and ‘objectivation’ (Schaap et al., 2001: 71). Not much research has been done so far on the interaction situation in which the use of television news is embedded. As media use is conceived of as a social activity, the influence of ‘others’ in the viewing surroundings should be studied more systematically, for instance, with regard to ‘parasocial interaction’, or, with regard to the changing role the media may play for their users in times of changing media landscapes. The role of everyday time schedules, as well as the role ‘others’ play with regard to the development of television news viewing routines and/or patterns of TV news use, have not been studied sufficiently. The issues investigated up to now include the role of prior knowledge and personal relevance in recalling TV news items, the use women make of TV news, the exploration of routines and patterns of TV news use, as well as the interpretation of televised news. Hendriks Vettehen, Hietbrink & Renckstorf (1996): Differences between men and women in recalling television news One of the most consistent findings of television news research is that men on the average recall TV news items better than women. Attempts to explain findings such as these, however, have seldom been undertaken. In this study hypotheses are tested in a laboratory setting (n=83) with regard to differences in prior knowledge and personal relevance between men and women. The findings from this study suggest that prior knowledge does have a mediating effect on recall. Men, in other words,
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do not necessarily recall all news items better, inasmuch as recall depends at least partially on prior knowledge of the items presented. Hermans & Van Snippenburg (1996): Women’s use of television news Although most people watch television news regularly, little is known about the meaning they attach to the genre ‘television news’ as a whole or to the various issues reported. In this qualitative survey (n=14) women from different social backgrounds were interviewed in order to explore Dutch women’s use of the news; that is, news exposure as well as rendered meanings. Analyses of in-depth interviews conducted suggest that – in addition to commonly cited variables like educational level and employment – type of employment and the cultural climate within the respondent’s childhood family are also related to exposure and involvement with TV news issues. Konig, Renckstorf & Wester (1998): On the use of television news: Routines in watching the news The action theoretical view on the use of TV news states that an appropriate concept of television news use should not only refer to internal and external actions of self-conscious audience members, but should also take into account the social and situational contexts in which news watching is embedded. The so-called ‘interaction situation’ consists of more than just a television set and a viewer watching the news. This study addresses some dimensions of the interaction situation of using TV news; that is, characteristics of the ways in which people routinely structure the social and situational contexts surrounding their daily news watching, are explored. Using data from a 1994 national survey in The Netherlands (n=969), routines in everyday use of television news use are explored and sociocultural profiles of everyday news watching are described. Two specific routines in everyday news watching can be discerned and clearly distinguished from three more general routines in watching television in general Konig, Renckstorf & Wester (forthcoming): Patterns in television news use In this study patterns of television news use are explored. In a previous study (Konig et al., 1998) routines were defined as the standard ways of using TV news in everyday situations, whereas patterns are defined here as combinations of such routines. Using data from a national survey in the Netherlands (n=969), results of quantitative analyses indicate that people are much more likely to prefer watching TV news selectively and attentively than watching the news while simultaneously engaging in other activities. The chances of this preference for watching TV news
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selectively and attentively are somewhat smaller for women, younger people and people without well-informed citizen’s values. No evidence of interaction between these determinants was found. Contrary to our expectations, education, occupation, and having children do not seem to influence self-reported patterns of television news use. Schaap (ongoing): The interpretation of television news The interpretation of televised news, in past projects has often been conceptualized as a problem of recall and/or comprehension of television news, and, as a matter of fact, has essentially been studied in cognitive processing terminology only. Research results, often showing poor recall ratings as well as low comprehension levels, have usually been interpreted from the standpoint of an ‘objective’ observer, whereas the results may also point to an integrated processing of television news. Evidently, viewers tend to restructure the news and make inferences about news – based on their own structure of relevances – when processing them. This calls for a ‘user perspective’ on the interpretation of TV news, and this is why, as we already mentioned above, Schaap et al. argued, it might be just the practice of present mainstream news research that “… accounts for a great deal of ‘misunderstandings’ found in present recall or comprehension research” (Schaap et al., 2001: 72). In this ongoing study an interpretive view on the use of TV news is used. Watching the news is regarded as one of the many ways by which people try to make sense of the outside world. They do so, it is assumed, by relating news items (events) to the things they already know: comparing them, weighting them, and sometimes using them to form an opinion on a given subject. This process, which is called interpretation here, results in thoughts. While it may be impossible to measure the process of interpretation, it is presumed here, that it should be possible to administer certain techniques which can bring us close to people’s thoughts, that is the results from that process. Thus, as is assumed here, it should be possible to get an idea of what these internal processes constitute by measuring the immediate outcome of interpretation processes. In the present stage of the project it is tried to achieve this by analyzing verbal reports (cf. protocol analysis). Integration of research findings and accumulation of insights The most important function of research approaches, evidently, is the third function. The integration of findings of present (and future) research, and thus allowing the accumulation of insights in order to build up a consistent professional ‘body of knowledge’ is, obvious enough, crucial to the
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development of communication science as an academic discipline. However, this contribution does not provide us the appropriate context for elaboration on this subject. Although it will appear to us that the integration of findings, for instance, of the projects sketched above should be possible in the context of a meta-analysis, we have to admit that this has not been the case yet. At this stage – with both past research efforts and ongoing research projects – there is yet no clear evidence available as to whether the ‘Media Use as Social Action’ approach really meets the demands of this third function.
In conclusion As stated at the outset, a colloquium on “Action Theoretical Approaches in European Communication Research: Theory, Methods & Findings”, is a good occasion to reflect again on our research efforts up to now. That is, to assess anew theory and methodology of the ‘Media Use as Social Action’ approach, as well as the research evidence gained so far. What did we learn from this assessment? First, the underlying theory was presented here in a rather compact version, including a general action theoretical reference model. Essentially, this modeling has up to now remained unchanged. Furthermore, several specified models have been formulated, relating to specific research issues. In the specified action theoretical model for the study of television news use ten domains could be discerned – and it seems as if the relevant research problems up to now could be structured by means of these domains. Secondly, with regard to the methodology both a research approach and a research strategy have been sketched which meet the demands of an action theoretical approach. The key issue of the research strategy, thus, is the interpretation of individual actions and perspectives in terms of social patterns. This asks for the integration of inventories (e.g., large scale survey research) and interpretive research methods (e.g., qualitative case studies) in order to discover action patterns – and define them in more generalized terms. Thirdly, the research evidence so far has been reviewed against the background of three functions research approaches should serve. As could be shown, some success in monitoring; that is, in ordering and structuring of past research efforts was booked. This success concerns both the field of
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people’s use of public information campaigns, the problem of heavy viewing and television news research. By means of specified action theoretical reference models, such as the specified action theoretical model for the study of television news use existing research projects were inventoried and new relevant research questions were generated. Regarding the stimulating function, it may seem that a rather rich tradition of empirical communication research has been emerging. As illustrated above, research projects within four areas of research have been formulated and carried out – showing some internal consistency and, thus, leading hopefully towards a coherent research program. But with regard to the most important function of research approaches, that is, integration of findings and accumulation of insights, we have had to state that at this point no work has been done yet. Whether the action theoretical approach outlined here, meets the demands of the third function could – and should – be assessed in the context of a meta-analysis. Evidently, much work remains to be done. But besides the series of ongoing research projects, including projects on the conceptualization and measurement of media literacy, the social embeddedness of media use and the use elderly people make of ICT, etc., it has become evident that we should strive to formulate and carry out such a meta-analysis of the approach at hand.
Notes 1. The specified action theoretical reference model for the study of tv news use has been introduced and discussed more extensively elsewhere (cf. Renckstorf & Wester, 1999; Schaap et al., 2001; Konig et al., 1998); the ten domains of tv news research discerned by this modelling are: (1) situations, (2) institutions, (3) social network, (4) information, (5) interaction situation, (6) structure of relevances, (7) definition of the situation, (8) action strategies, (9) objectivation, and (10) socialization (see Figure 4.3). 2. Despite of the fact that cognitive processes of news processing are now gradually better understood, the consequences of affective processes remain largely unclear. Consequently, we suggested that emotional reactions should be investigated, because they may provide information with evaluations and judgements, as the processing of news consists of both cognitive and affective components. How these components might be intertwined and influence each other, obviously, is difficult to investigate. Therefore, we suggested research on interpretation differences of viewers from different backgrounds. 3. Since virtually all of the reviewed fields of communication research, i.e., the use of public information campaigns, heavy viewing, and the use of tv news, have one main
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concern in common, i.e., how and why do people make use of media and mediated messages – and what consequences does this have?, we choose for the title Media Use in Everyday Life in order to indicate the efforts of our research program. 4. A more complete overview of the research projects carried out in the past years is available in the Department Communication’s Research Assessments 1995, and 2001, respectively (Faculty of Social Sciences/University of Nijmegen, 1995, 2001). 5. The studies are outlined here by means of the – sometimes slightly revised – abstracts of the quoted research publications.
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5 The foundation of communication and action 5 in consciousness: Confronting action theory 5 with systems theoretical arguments Frank Huysmans
Abstract In action theoretical approaches to the study of mass communication processes, media production and reception activity is interpreted (or ‘explained’) from the point of view of individual consciousness. The intentionality of the actor is viewed as the starting point for human (social) action. Communication is regarded as a process in which actors intentionally engage to exchange their minds’ contents – and is therefore seen as a special case of human action. This view is challenged by Luhmann’s social systems theory, which conceives of communication as taking place outside of consciousness. Although communication is a product of the mutual non-transparency of individual consciousnesses, both consciousness and communication should be seen as self-reproducing systems which cannot be a part of each other’s operations. According to Luhmann, thoughts cannot be communicated – only communications can be communicated, and thoughts can merely be thought. Actions should be seen as the products of communication, namely of the attribution (be it through communication or through thinking) of social descriptions to systems. Although it may appear to be a fundamental issue, this difference in opinion between action and systems theory can be overcome. In this article, arguments are presented for incorporating Luhmann’s view of consciousness and communication as separate, but mutually observing systems into action theoretical approaches. Keywords: action theory, systems theory, action, communication, consciousness, social action
The individualism of action theory and the collectivism of social theory In an essay published in 1985, Jeffrey C. Alexander (1988) describes what he calls the ‘individualist dilemma’ in phenomenological sociology and symbolic interactionism. Both of these theoretical schools in sociology
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have opted for an individualist instead of a collectivist approach to the problem of social order, i.e., how social order can exist given the fact that people have more or less the same desires, the objects of these desires are scarce and hence cannot be obtained by all. In stressing the individual creative moment in social action, explaining how social reality can be relatively orderly becomes a problem. In individualist theory, social life must be opened to contingency to such an extent that it, “in the final analysis, makes the understanding of order approximate randomness and complete unpredictability” (Alexander, 1988: 224). Since most theorists of society will not be satisfied with such randomness, Alexander posits that they will incorporate “some aspect of supraindividual pressure or sustenance” (224) in their conceptual schemes. But even in doing so, these theorists are not willing to give up their individualist presuppositions. The collectivist aspect of the theory, however, is not part of the theoretical core; it is just ‘attached’ to it, and therefore the collectivist reference will be indeterminate and vague. This indeterminacy and vagueness make it theoretically and empirically frustrating and incomplete. To resolve this problem, obviously, the dilemma itself (i.e., the choice between randomness or residual indeterminacy) must be transcended; this can come about, however, only if the formal adherence to individualism is abandoned (224–225). The fact that phenomenology and interactionism have not followed that last option is demonstrated in the remainder of Alexander’s essay. He goes into considerable detail to show that both traditions have eventually developed radical individualist positions in Harold Garfinkel and Herbert Blumer, respectively. Their followers, Alexander notes, have been caught within the individualist dilemma ever since (254). Not having read the original essay, one could have the impression that Alexander wished to do away with ‘individualist sociology’ in favor of the collectivist stance he himself advocates. However, this is not the case, for he makes a clear distinction between the presuppositions in regard to social order on the one hand, and doing empirical research on the other. Whereas he holds that the collectivist perspective is the sole basis for a general framework for social theory, empirical research of interaction between individuals “should incorporate whenever possible the empirical insight of individualistic theories into the concrete operations, structures, and processes of the empirical interactions of concrete individuals” (225). There is, after all, no inherent contradiction between the assertion that only individuals are capable of autonomous actions, and the simultaneous assertion that the results of these actions have ‘emergent’ properties which cannot be traced back to the intentions
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of individual actors (Alexander & Giesen, 1987: 20; see also Coleman, 1990). This is roughly the perspective I want to advocate here. In both phenomenology and symbolic interactionism, action is said to spring from the individual consciousness of the actor, who interprets his environment (including other actors, human artifacts, social institutions, cultural symbol systems, etc.) and decides to act on the basis of this interpretation. In this perspective, the social environment affects the situation only through the conscious elaboration of the actor(s). Although this may be a useful guiding principle for conducting empirical research, I want to argue that this proposition cannot be held on to if the development of a social theory is what is aimed at. The purpose, however, is not only to elaborate upon Alexander’s remarks by showing that it is the stress placed on the actor’s individual consciousness in both phenomenology and symbolic interactionism that prevents either approach from being able to conceptualize the ‘collective moment’ in social action (see the next two sections). Next, I will demonstrate a ‘way out’ by showing what can be gained for action theory by seriously considering some of Luhmann’s remarks about the relationship between consciousness and communication in social life. By distinguishing consciousness and communication as two separate but interdependent systems, the first termed ‘psychic system’ and the second ‘social system’, Luhmann offers an alternative perspective that, in my view, deserves being incorporated into action theory. What this means for the study of human action in general and for social action approaches in mass communications research in particular is sketched in the conclusion.
Phenomenological sociology: The foundation of action in the stream of consciousness If there is to be a founding father for the phenomenological branch in sociology, it must be Alfred Schütz (1974) with his classic Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, which was first published in Vienna in 19321. Schütz sets out to provide Weberian action theory with a phenomenological foundation. He first criticizes Weber for not having properly defined what is meant by the central category Sinn (meaning2) in his methodology, except that the meaning and the motive for an action appear to be synonymous (Schütz, 1974: 27). Weber (1984) analyzed the interconnectedness of human social actions in terms of means and ends, and posited that social actions can only be explained (in a second instance) after they have been interpreted (‘verstanden’ ) by the researcher in terms of the subjective meanings the actor(s) attach to it. In doing so, he instated individual con-
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sciousness in theory as the empirical locus of control in human social action. Schütz, referring to the work of the philosopher Edmund Husserl, replaces Weber’s means-ends-rationality by a phenomenological analysis of what goes on in the consciousness of the actor while acting. Consciousness directs its attention to itself by synthesizing actual experience with past and future Bewusstseinserlebnisse. This synthesis, Sinnzusammenhang (meaning context), provides the basis for projecting accomplished actions in the future. By visualizing a future state in which this action shall be accomplished, the actor mentally develops a project of his action, which, in Schütz’ view, must be seen as the actual Sinn of his action (Schütz, 1974: 126). In a next step, still firmly founding his analysis on strict Husserlian reasoning, Schütz explains how one consciousness can have access to the Bewusstseinserlebnisse of another. Here, he falls back on ‘mundane’ experiences of actors living in the ‘natural attitude’ (137ff; see also Schütz & Luckmann, 1979, 1984). In everyday life, as an actor I only experience segments of another actor’s stream of consciousness through my observations of his/her conduct and utterances, since most of the time I subsume my experiences of the other’s conduct in objective meaning contexts. That is, I only consider this actor’s finished meaning contexts, not the meaning-giving process that has led to them (187ff). In order to interpret the other’s actions, therefore, I only require access to my own inner consciousness. It is clear that Schütz, like Husserl, analyzes the social world strictly through the acts of consciousness of individual actors. References to social categories such as ‘social environment’, ‘social relationships’ and the like are made as if they can solely ‘exist’ through the eyes of individuals, the indivisible particles (‘atoms’) of social science. Also, the emergence of patterned conduct in society is seen in terms of a reduction of psychic complexity, of freeing the individual from the burden of having to choose each time anew how to behave in similar situations (see, following Schütz in this respect, Berger and Luckmann, 1966: 50–51). The collectivist moment, in Alexander’s terms, is continually mediated by individual consciousnesses. A prime example of the problems the theory runs into is tied to the concept of institutionalization as advocated by Berger and Luckmann (1966). In an attempt to overcompensate for the freedom of action that phenomenology bestows upon individual actors, these authors tend to attach positive value to institutionalization processes and the mutual integration of institutions. The opposite process, segregation, is valued rather negatively. But for the sociological observer, segregation of institutions is as much a phenomenon to be valued as is integration (Huysmans, 2001: 40)3. In short, due
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to the problems that phenomenological sociology runs into because of its individualist propositions, it has a tendency to theoretically ‘constrict’ individual freedom too tightly in order to arrive at explaining the relatively orderly state most social systems find themselves in. The same, in my view, is true for symbolic interactionism.
Symbolic interactionism: Definition of the situation and joint action As a branch of sociology under this heading, symbolic interactionism has established itself mainly through the collection of essays by Herbert Blumer, entitled Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (1986). The most prominent essays are very programmatic in character, trying to convince the sociological observer that the first thing (s)he should do is get in touch with empirical reality (33–34). Blumer draws heavily on work done in the Chicago School of sociology, in particular the work of George Herbert Mead. In Blumer’s view, sociology has been too much concerned with describing the “large parts or aspects” of society – institutions, classes, organizations, corporations – in terms of “system principles”. Human actors are seen as mere “media for the play and expression of the forces or mechanisms of the system”. Instead, Blumer proposes to analyze what happens in social systems “in terms of the process of interpretation engaged in by the acting participants as they handle the situations at their respective positions in the organization” (57–58). The point of departure in his analysis is the definition of the situation. An acting individual needs to interpret his immediate environment, give meaning to selected objects in that environment, and construct a line of action before being able, indeed, to act. ‘Joint or collective action’, as this takes place in groups and organizations, relies on the same principle, even if the outcome of the fitting together of individual actions takes a direction unforeseen – if not unwanted – by either participant. What prevents joint action from getting out of hand is that both participants have the capacity to reflect on their own actions in terms of how their counterparts interpret their behavior. They have developed an identity through repeatedly seeing their own actions through the eyes of others. By being able to evaluate one’s own conduct from an outer position, both interactants can consciously control their actions and thereby arrive at a ‘joint’ action (cf. Mead, 1967: 73ff; Blumer, 1986: 111). This point of view about the ‘nature of human action’ is extended to social science methodology: “one has to get inside of the defining process of the actor in order to understand his action” (Blumer, 1986: 16). It is there, as I have laid out elsewhere (Huysmans, 2001: 42–43) that Blumer starts
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to confuse his theoretical and methodological positions in speaking about the nature and observation of ‘joint actions’. First, he states that theoretically joint actions have a dynamic of their own, which is more than the sum total of multiple intertwining lines of action. So, in this stage of his analysis an organizational principle is put forward. Methodologically, the researcher who studies these joint actions is advised to seek contact with the interacting individuals in order to get a grasp on their respective definitions of the situation, which “yields a picture of the organized complex” of their joint action (Blumer, 1986: 58). Yet in a further, superfluous and erroneous, step Blumer uses his methodological dictum as an argument against theorizing joint actions in terms of organizational or system principles (e.g., 59). This contradicts his own position. But there is no inherent contradiction in both theorizing joint actions as having a dynamic of their own and studying its emergence as such from the standpoints of the interacting individuals (Alexander & Giesen, 1987: 20; cf., Alexander, 1988). Multiple variants of the prisoner’s dilemma, in which the amount of communication between the participants was varied, serve as a good case in point (cf. Sears, Freedman & Peplau, 1985: 363–367). Like in phenomenological sociology, the idea that each action arises out of conscious consideration and meaning attachment in each situation serves as a too restrictive argument against theorizing social collectivities as having a dynamic of their own, a dynamic which provides boundaries for individual meaning-giving. The point Blumer wants to make is that “the organization of a human society is the framework inside of which social action takes place and is not the determinant of that action. … Such organization and changes in it are the product of the activity of acting units and not of ‘forces’ which leave such acting units out of account” (Blumer, 1986: 87). Here, Blumer uses an old rhetorical trick; painting a caricature of the opponent’s (i.e., ‘mainstream’ sociology’s) position in order to make your own position look more acceptable. In doing so, however, he ties symbolic interactionism too tightly to an anti-collectivist stance. Whenever he speaks of social collectivities (like families, schools, churches), those collectivities are seen as if they were individual ‘acting units’. The actions of these ‘units’ are subject to the same situation definition and project-developing principles as are the actions of individuals. Despite claiming that each collectivity in the last resort consists of acting individuals, Blumer fails to describe how a collectivity succeeds in demarcating itself from its social environment and recognizes itself as such. What is more, no distinction is made between an insider’s and the outsiders’ views on the identity of the group. A social group’s definition of itself may be wholly different from the definition the outside world has of it (which is the case in individual identity formation as well). Since social
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attributions of identity are a main source of social conflict, this is a serious drawback of Blumer’s theoretical position. A social scientist trying to account for diverging identity attributions does not find, in symbolic interactionism, the tools with which to construct a social theory that takes social mechanisms like these into account. In stating that the social world and the meaning-giving processes taking place within it arise from individual consciousness exclusively, and have to be dealt with accordingly in a methodological sense, symbolic interactionism has foresaken the potential of Mead’s pragmatic sociology. As Alexander (1988: 251–252) puts it: “Whereas Mead usually, though not always, spoke of meaning as the product of an unconscious attitudinal specification of general cultural patterns, (…) Blumer’s individual is given incredible control over the meaning of his acts – a control contested only by the presence of other, equally separated selves”4. How far the twain have drifted apart gets clear, perhaps surprisingly, when Blumer’s work is confronted with systems theory.
Systems theory: Human action as communicative attribution As I have tried to demonstrate in the previous sections, both phenomenological sociology and symbolic interactionism have analyzed human action and meaning-giving from the standpoint of individual ‘subjective consciousness’. Either approach uses the ‘last resort’ argument to argue against collectivism, by on the one hand acknowledging that supra-individual categories like social structures and culture are important, but on the other hand maintaining that ‘in the last resort’ it is the individual who reproduces these categories in his actions. What is striking is that this has been the case whilst there was an inherent necessity in neither approach to take a polemicist attitude against collectivist positions5. Nevertheless, the ‘last resort’ argument, convincing though it may seem, has unduly prevented action theory from paying attention to the analysis of social collectives. For it is one thing to say that every collective arises from the situation definitions of actors engaged in joint action, but quite another to arrive at descriptions, let alone explanations, for collective behavior. An important thing to recognize is that the objects an actor finds present in the situation in which he is about to act are contingent upon the actions of others. Therefore, his definition of the situation depends, to a considerable extent, upon the definitions of his co-actors in that situation. Blumer has tried to take this insecurity into account in his description of the ‘joint action’ (1986: 109–110). But instead of first analyzing the problem, he immediately proceeds to its solution by mentioning the social
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character of definition schemes and the self-reflexivity each actor brings to the situation. Talcott Parsons, whose ideas are strongly opposed by Blumer, instead stresses the inherent insecurity in interaction situations with his description of the double contingency problem: The concept of interaction is the first-order step beyond the action concept itself toward formulating the concept of social system. (…) The crucial reference points for analyzing interaction are two: (1) that each actor is both acting agent and object of orientation both to himself and to the others; and (2) that, as acting agent, he orients to himself and to others and, as object, has meaning to himself and to others, in all of the primary modes or aspects. (…) From these premises derives the fundamental proposition of the double contingency of interaction. Not only, as for isolated behaving units, animal or human, is a goal outcome contingent on successful cognition and manipulation of environmental objects by the actors, but since the most important objects involved in interaction act too, it is also contingent on their action or intervention in the course of events (Parsons, 1968: 436). The inherent instability of the interaction situation leads in Parsons’s eyes to the genesis of a social system. According to Luhmann6 (1995: 103ff; 1984: 148ff), however, the solution Parsons brings to bear on the double contingency problem – the presence of a normative orientation in both interactants with the mutual assumption of consensus – already goes too far. Luhmann states that this normative orientation compensating for the mutual insecurity should not have been built, like Parsons did, into the concept of double contingency. Rather, Luhmann sees double contingency – “empty, closed, indeterminable self-reference” (Luhmann, 1995: 105; 1984: 151) as generating its own solution. In a situation of utter indeterminacy everything that happens has structuring value for the things to happen next. After an initial step by one of the interacting participants, every following step reduces complexity and thereby has determining value. Combining concepts from Parsons’s theory, general systems theory, Weber’s categories of verstehende sociology, Husserlian phenomenology and Mead’s pragmatism, Luhmann composes an abstract but at the same time illuminating perspective on the social world. The fundamental renewal Luhmann brings to social theory is that the double contingency problem, which arises in every situation in which two consciousnesses – mutually intransparent ‘black boxes’, or psychic systems as Luhmann terms them – meet, leads to the building of a social system which is nothing more or less than communication, a self-referent network in which one communication follows another. Communication, in Luhmann’s view, is not
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something that emerges from consciousness. People are not speaking their minds, translating their thoughts into words in what is called ‘communicative action’, like Habermas (1987) would have it (see Luhmann, 1995: 138, 1984: 192). Rather, both consciousness and communication should be seen as self-determining and self-referent wholes on the basis of meaning (Sinn). And subsequently, meaning is described as a phenomenon not exclusively restricted to the operations of consciousness. This is a decisive break with the phenomenological tradition of Husserl (Luhmann, 1995: 512; 1984: 93; cf. Kneer & Nassehi, 1993: 76) with farreaching consequences. Meaning refers to the ever-present difference, not only in psychic experience but also in communication, between what is actually present and what is temporarily pushed into the background of attention. As meaning-based entities, psychic and social systems are mutually dependent upon each other; i.e., communication ‘irritates’ consciousness and vice versa. But they cannot interfere in each other’s operations. It is precisely because of the mutual non-transparency of consciousnesses that communication comes about as a kind of ‘compensation’. It may not be clear from this brief sketch what is gained by such an abstract perspective on communication and consciousness. Nor may it be clear what it means for the conceptualization of human action, but I will turn to that now. In my view, Luhmann provides rather thought-provoking arguments, which should at least be reflected upon by action theorists. Already in 1971, in a discussion with Habermas, he argued that if ‘meaning’ is to be taken seriously as the basic concept of sociology, social (and psychic) systems cannot ‘exist’ outside of meaning (Luhmann, 1971a: 11–12). The boundaries of society are meaning-constituted boundaries and not of a physical or territorial nature. This is not to say that physical or territorial boundaries are irrelevant, but it does say that they are not ‘part of’ the system. Another implication is that a social system does not consist of human beings. Instead, as has already been said, social systems consist only of communications, and psychic systems consist of thoughts. In these networks of mutually referring thoughts and communications human beings are observed at most as entities in their environment. Meaning, as a concept, is to be defined prior to the subject concept, as the last necessarily presupposes the first (Luhmann, 1971b: 28). In action theory, where meaning is seen to spring from the consciousness of the subject, it is the other way around. The implications of this for the conceptualization of human action can be sensed now. Action is to be seen as a meaningful attribution of conduct to a system, be it a social system (as in utterances like ‘the police have taken precautionary measures’ or ‘my family has always travelled a lot’) or
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a psychic system (‘I have made good progress in my work today’; ‘you shouldn’t have brought me flowers’). There is always a potential difference – and here a strong point of Luhmann’s theory comes to the forefront – between self-attribution of actions by a system and the attribution(s) to that system by other systems. For instance, one can be pleased by one’s performance (‘I have done all I could to get the job finished today’), whereas others may be not (‘Why is he leaving the office already, can’t he work late for once?’). It is this difference in attribution that accounts for much of social dynamics. If one confronts it with the way phenomenology and symbolic interactionism conceive of human actions, it can be seen that judging human social action from each actor’s intentions leaves out the double contingency inherent in interaction. One can easily surmise that the dissimilarity of perspectives can be socially important, and even decisive, in juridical communication. What counts most in terms of the social consequences is not whether the suspect actually intended to kill the victim, or has actually committed the crime, but rather whether the judge or the jury deems it proven beyond reasonable doubt that this was the case and passes the according judgement (see Schneider, 1994). I will return to this briefly in the next section. What strikes one is that Luhmann distances himself from a long tradition in sociology from Weber via Parsons to various strands of modern action theory, which sees society as consisting of social actions, or human beings. Social systems are no longer seen as the products of human action. It is the other way around: “Sociality is not a special case of action; instead, action is constituted in social systems by means of communication and attribution as a reduction of complexity, as an indispensable self-simplification of the system” (Luhmann, 1995: 137, 1984: 191). That such a position will not be endorsed by symbolic interactionism is clear7; it is, however, closer to Mead’s thinking than many a symbolic interactionist is willing to concede (cf. Nassehi, 1993: 243).
Conclusion: Action theory between individualism and collectivism From the previous sections, one might have gained the impression that a substitution of action theory by systems theory is advocated here. My point is, however, more subtle than that. The question that will be answered in this concluding section is; what can action theory gain by a reflection on the criticisms that Luhmann brings to bear? A general answer to that question would be; it can correct assumptions which have been too one-sidedly individualistic, and thereby draw on the useful con-
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tributions of phenomenology (Schütz) and pragmatism (Mead) to social theory without incorporating the theoretical flaws added by either’s successors. Luhmann makes a very solid point in criticizing subjectivist theories, which start with the subject and from there try to get a grasp of what ties these subjects together. ‘Intersubjectivity’, in his view, is a formula which is introduced the moment one tries to stick to the subjectivity of consciousness and introduces something which cannot be conceived of in this theory. The ‘inter’ contradicts the ‘subject’, or rather each subject has its own intersubjectivity (Luhmann, 1986a: 42, see also 1995: 81, 146 [1984: 120, 202], 1997: 1027–1032). If one allows communication to be conceived of as a system organizing itself outside of consciousness, this does not mean, as is often claimed (for instance by Blumer), that the acting subject is determined from the outside, by the system. Even the opposite can be said to be the case; i.e., because human beings are seen not as the building blocks of society, but as objects in the environment of society, they have more freedom in their actions, particularly more freedom to act irrationally and immorally (cf. 1995: 212–213, 1984: 289). Communication, after all, cannot take part in the operations of consciousness, and thus can never tell consciousnesses what to think. Communication, on the other hand, is more free to develop its own dynamics. This is more in line with the common knowledge that once a conflict between two or more people has started, it is very hard to control its course. Luhmann’s elaboration on social conflict, in my view, serves as a case in point of the productivity of this perspective (1995, 1984, chapter 9). Furthermore, the point Luhmann makes about the Sinngrenzen (meaning-constituted boundaries) of consciousness and communication should be taken seriously both in action theory and in its methodology. Whereas in action theory the actual performance of the preconceived act in the outer world sometimes occupies a central place in the theory and these acts are analyzed accordingly in research (as ‘physical entities’ so to speak), this view is contested in systems theory. Everything that takes place in social systems (in communication) does so in the form of meaning. This is not to say that meaning would never refer to actual ‘things out there’. Of course, we do move our bodies when we go shopping, and we feel our vocal cords as we speak. There is a world out there, but for social and psychic systems it only ‘exists’ in meaningful reference. An implication of this for empirical research is that actions should be analyzed according to the theoretical scheme; i.e., as communicative or conscious attributions. In the past decade, a discussion has been going on in German sociology about the methodological implications of systems theoretical thought which reconceptualizes Weber’s ‘Sinnverstehen’ and applies it to
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the analysis of communication protocols (see Kneer & Nassehi, 1991; Nassehi, 1997; Schneider, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1997; Sutter, 1999; cf. Luhmann, 1986b) with illuminating results. The consciousness of the actor is no longer seen as the primary or single source of meaning attribution. The meaning of an action is constituted instead as a synthesis of self- and foreign attribution, and the potential difference between the two can be made productive (Schneider, 1994: 267). In conclusion, action theoretical approaches in mass communications research (see Anderson & Meyer, 1988; Charlton & Neumann, 1986; Renckstorf, 1989, 1994; Renckstorf, McQuail & Jankowski, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 1992; Schoening & Anderson, 1995) could develop a more detailed perspective on the position of the mass media as a societal subsystem (Luhmann, 1996). Describing the mass media as (a) social system(s) is one thing (see for instance Renckstorf, 1994: 38), it is quite another to explain their functioning from the situation definitions of the actors involved, as action theory would have it. A more productive position would be, in my view, to conceive of the mass media as a societal subsystem, without downplaying the contribution of individual actors to its functioning (see Scholl & Weischenberg, 1998; Huysmans, 2002). This enables one to study the media supply and demand sides in one overarching theoretical framework, which allows for human consciousness to observe reality, but for the mass media as a social system as well. As was the case in the study of juridical communication, the dissimilarity of perspectives between the media themselves, between media and their users, and between media users themselves, could be rendered productive in a more ‘holistic’ approach (see Früh 1991) to media use research.
Notes 1. The English translation is entitled The phenomenology of the social world (1967). 2. A problematic translation, since the distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung in German is blurred. A more apt translation, in my view, would be sense. I will use meaning nevertheless in conformity to common practice in social science. 3. Another example of the underdeterminedness of social categories in Schütz’ work is the concept of ‘social time’. The concept pops up every now and then (for example in Schütz and Luckmann, 1979, 1984) without being clarified. In Schütz (1982: 224) a conceptualization is announced, but the manuscript ends before the promise is redeemed. Nassehi (1993) concludes that social structures, and the social time category in particular, remain ‘underdefined’ in Schütz (see also Huysmans, 2001: 71–75). 4. The same point of criticism on Blumer’s “misinterpretation of Mead” (Alexander, 1988: 253) is made by Hans Joas in his dissertation Praktische Intersub-
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jektivität (Joas, 1989: 12), who attributes the ‘enormous divergences’ between symbolic interactionism and Mead’s work to ‘an extremely fragmentary reception’ of Mead’s work by Blumer. 5. “When we look at the most sophisticated and most successful strands of phenomenology and interactionism, we see that they were not intended to be epistemological and ontological confrontations with theories that posit supraindividual order; rather, they were intended to give greater urgency to an empirical aspect of order that has been neglected by most such collectivist theories, at least post-Hegel; the relationship between the prior, supraindividual order and the moment-to-moment unfolding of real historical time. The relations between order and contingency, these traditions have argued, can be illuminated only by a more detailed empirical understanding of the processes of individual consciousness” (Alexander, 1988: 253–254). 6. Luhmann’s Soziale Systeme, Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie (1984) will be cited here both in the original German version and in the English translation (1995). 7. “‘Symbolic interactionism’ (…) builds a contingently acting alter ego into the ego and sees, quite correctly, the process of mediation as the use of symbols. But it treats the problem only on one side of the interaction, assuming that all is the same on the other. It treats, so to speak, only half of double contingency and thereby remains a theory of action. Social systems emerge, however, through (and only through) the fact that both partners experience double contingency and that the indeterminability of such a situation for both partners in any activity that then takes place possesses significance for the formation of structures. This cannot be grasped via the basic concept of action” (Luhmann, 1995: 108, 1984: 154).
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Renckstorf, K. (1989). Mediennutzung als soziales Handeln: Zur Entwicklung einer handlungstheoretischen Perspektive der empirischen (Massen)Kommunikationsforschung. In M. Kaase & W. Schulz (Eds.), Massenkommunikation: Theorien, Methoden, Befunde. Sonderheft 30/1989 der Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (pp. 314–336). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Renckstorf, K. (1994). Mediagebruik als sociaal handelen. Een handelingstheoretische benadering voor communicatiewetenschappelijk onderzoek. Nijmegen: Instituut voor Toegepaste Sociale Wetenschappen (ITS). Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (1992). Die handlungstheoretische Perspektive empirischer (Massen-) Kommunikationsforschung: Theoretischer Ansatz, methodische Implikationen und forschungspraktische Konsequenzen. Communications, 17 (2), 177–196. Renckstorf, K., McQuail, D. & Jankowski, N. (Eds.) (1996). Media Use As Social Action. A European Approach to Audience Studies. London: Libbey. Schneider, W. L. (1992). Hermeneutik sozialer Systeme. Konvergenzen zwischen Systemtheorie und philosophischer Hermeneutik. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 21(6), 420–439. Schneider, W. L. (1994). Die Beobachtung von Kommunikation. Zur kommunikativen Konstruktion sozialen Handelns. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schneider, W. L. (1996). Die Komplementarität von Sprechakttheorie und systemtheoretischer Kommunikationstheorie. Ein hermeneutischer Beitrag zur Methodologie von Theorievergleichen. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 25(4), 263–277. Schneider, W. L. (1997). Die Analyse von Struktursicherungsoperationen als Kooperationsfeld von Konversationsanalyse, objektiver Hermeneutik und Systemtheorie. In T. Sutter (Ed.), Beobachtung verstehen, Verstehen beobachten. Perspektiven einer konstruktivistischen Hermeneutik (pp. 164–227). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schoening, G. T. & Anderson, J. A. (1995). Social action media studies: Foundational arguments and common premises. Communication Theory, 5 (2), 93–116. Scholl, A. & Weischenberg, S. (1998). Journalismus in der Gesellschaft. Theorie, Methodologie und Empirie. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Schütz, A. (1974). Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Eine Einleitung in die verstehende Soziologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Schütz, A. (1982). Das Problem der Relevanz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Schütz, A. & Luckmann, T. (1979). Strukturen der Lebenswelt, Band 1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Schütz, A. & Luckmann, T. (1984). Strukturen der Lebenswelt, Band 2. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Sears, D. O., Freedman, J. L. & Peplau, L. A. (1985). Social Psychology (5th Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Sutter, T. (1999). Systeme und Subjektstrukturen. Zur Konstitutionstheorie des interaktionistischen Konstruktivismus. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Weber, M. (1984). Soziologische Grundbegriffe. 6., erneut durchgesehene Auflage, mit einer Einführung von Johannes Winckelmann. Tübingen: Siebeck.
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6 Media communication and social interaction: 6 Perspectives on action theory based reception 6 research Angela Keppler
Abstract Media and communication science have long been calling for an empirical study into media and media-related communication processes as a whole. This demand is founded on the insight that the foundation of media communication is not just the one-sided influence of a sender on a recipient. In spite of all the differences between direct communication and communication transmitted by media, media communication also involves an interplay between media production, media product and the circumstances of reception in which no one factor can ever completely determine the others. This contribution is concerned with perspectives on qualitative action-theory oriented reception research. Some basic considerations will be presented regarding methods which could be ground-breaking for relevant research. The leitmotiv for this is the relationship between media communication and social interaction as alluded to in the title. Keywords: social interaction, media communication, meaning, mass-media reception, television, media production
Introduction This study aims to explain how only a combination of product and reception analysis can provide the right perspective for research on mass-media reception processes. The domain of reception must be understood more broadly than is usually the case. Reception involves not only the actual acquisition of media messages, but also and above all the further communicative processing of these messages, and especially their effects on peoples’ social praxis. Media action in the broadest sense – and this concerns not only the domain of production and its products, but also that of reception – should be understood and analyzed as meaning-understanding and meaning-constituting, in short; as meaningful action. Individual and societal interpretation patterns are produced, consumed and reproduced by individuals in the frame of spe-
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cific structural conditions. The aim of analysis should, therefore, not be to discover the subjectively-intended meaning of an individual actor’s actions, but rather to uncover the objective meaning structure1 of the respective action, that of the respective concrete context of action.
A communication theory frame of reference Research on communicative processes ought to be of central significance in studying the social construction of reality. From childhood on, the individual’s personal identity is built up in meaningful social actions; adults’ daily lives consist of mutually interwoven societal actions; individual and collective experiences and solutions for action and orientation problems are constantly condensed and rendered inter-subjectively available by means of communicative processes. Communicative processes with different orders of magnitude produce the historical reality of a society. The systematic study of the forms and functional multiplicity of communicative processes and activities, as well as of how they are embedded in social interaction, has developed over the past fifty years through the use of three approaches. These include, first of all, the newer sociology of knowledge, particularly as conceived and developed by Luckmann and Berger (1981), drawing on the phenomenological (proto-) sociology of Schütz. Secondly, the approach of ethnomethodology must be included, developed by Garfinkel. This approach adopted specific Schützian ideas about the meaningful construction of the social world and rendered them methodologically fruitful for the detailed study of communicative processes using conversation analysis. The third approach, the ethnography of communication approach is equally important. It was developed in the early sixties by Hymes and Gumperz, employing American cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics. Communication research is linked to these traditions. I regard it as a fundamental discipline of social theory which understands communicative action as “meaningful social action” in a Weberian sense (Weber, 1972: 1). Communication should accordingly be understood primarily as a social process, that is, a process in which people organize and produce understanding. This social process is in many ways predetermined: materially, formally, linguistically and/or symbolically. Additionally, human communication involves the use of already-accessible communication means and communication forms. Communication is always linked to both social and technological and media-technical preconditions. Researchers should never forget this when studying societal communication processes. The basic form of human communication continues to be a process of oral, direct and reciprocal exchange. As a result of technical develop-
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ments, however, indirect forms of communication have gained in importance and scope for modern societies. This makes it extremely important to note that different forms of communication do not exist independently of one another in the same social space. Rather, they have long been multiply linked, an amalgamation which – with slogans such as ‘new media’, ‘multimedia’ and ‘digital media’, is currently gaining in importance. Exerting their influence not only on the advanced forms and possibilities of digital communication, these various types of links between different forms of one-sided and interactive, indirect and direct communication must become a central field of communication research. Interpersonal face-to-face communication and communication using technical media are connected on quite different levels. Interpersonal communication plays, first of all, a major role in the production of media products by various media organizations. Secondly, on the level of presentation and mode of representation of media products, its scope is steadily expanding. And finally it plays a central role in reception, in the acquisition and further processing of media contents. However, the idea that communication should be understood as meaningful social action applies to communication research in all these domains. For the scientific study of communication this means that as analysts we draw on data which before any scientific consideration is already based on actors’ interpretations. And, as Soeffner (1989) has convincingly argued, this is as true of ‘quantitative’ research approaches as of ‘qualitative’ ones. In his article, Comments on shared standards of standardized and non-standardized procedures in social research, Soeffner emphasizes that all forms of social research – whether quantitative or qualitative – are based on acts of interpretation, since they relate to data constituted by understanding, and reach their conclusions through data interpretation (Soeffner, 1989: 51–65). Thus while quantitative and qualitative procedures differ in their methods, they do not differ in their premises and aims. However, in research praxis, that is, in the application of concrete research methods to concrete objects of investigation and approaches, this results in quite significant differences; because of their research designs and procedures, rigidly standardized methods start by narrowing down the social space in which their subjects locate their action and reaction possibilities. An open approach, on the other hand, accepts the communication between researchers and their subjects as a constitutive component of the research process. Openness is thus a necessary component of social research interested in the interpretive-, action- and communication patterns. These patterns become in a sense collectively binding, a characteristic which is constantly reproduced by members of society and is modified by their actions and interpretations. The central concern of action-theory
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oriented social and communication research is to document this process of constituting reality, analytically reconstruct it, and ultimately explain it. Subjects’ modes of behavior cannot be understood simply as static representations of an unchanging complex of effects, but rather as processual segments of the reproduction and construction of social reality.
The connection between production, product and reception The distinction between production and reception should also be discussed in light of the above-outlined perspective. Both are related to the construction of a product. Media production aims at a specific spectrum (and quantum) of reception; reception refers to a specific product perceived as being an intentional and more or less meaningful presentation. In the media product, in other words, the perspectives of production and reception come together in a certain way. Even if reception can by no means be understood as a response to the producer and mediator, as with direct communication, it is nevertheless always the acquisition of a product created in media production centers. The process of mass-media reception cannot be understood without a precise study of the respectively received products, and conversely the process of mass-media production cannot be understood without considering its possible reception. Furthermore, research must not only focus on producers’ intentions (what they want to evoke or avoid), but also on possible responses which escape their notice. Even determinedly reception-oriented research must always keep the entire context of media communication in mind. I have previously indicated that mass-media produced communication products themselves provide important information to guide their reception. Borrowing from Iser (1972), I have spoken of the ‘implicit viewer’ of media products. Using the reception aesthetics of literature studies, media content can be seen to render some perceptions more probable than others and encourage a preference for activities in which one form of reception is more probable than another, hence the concept of the ‘implicit viewer’. Unlike the textoriented approach of literary scholarship, however, the way in which a product influences its perception, its potential reception, as it were, is only one concern among others for the reception-oriented sociological approach. The study of the actual reception process must be given equal consideration. What matters in empirical study is how specific products are actually experienced, in other words; what free spaces for reception are used or dispensed, within which contexts and in what ways. Using the example of television viewing, it can be shown that different genres display quite different degrees of openness to individual forms of
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viewer reception. Empirical studies have shown that non-fiction television news reports tend to favor uncritical reception by encouraging viewers to accept only the familiar as true, whether in terms of content or manner of presentation (Keppler, 1985). It can be shown that non-fiction television programs leave viewers less room for distanced reactions than, for example, the various types of fictional television series. These findings thus reveal the different structures of media products through the various forms of actual reception. In contrast to numerous investigations in the field of Cultural Studies, it must, however, be emphasized that particularly in empirical research the analysis of media products should be regarded as intrinsically valuable. We should start from the premise that although the intrinsic characteristics of media products may appear individually, in the reception process they interact in within specific communication structures, which may result in a change in the perception of the product. Media communication would be nothing without the media product, and by the same token, the medium would be nothing without its social use. I would like to use two examples to illustrate this. First Example: Intermeshing of communication and reception: The communicative processing of media experiences Media reception should be understood as an interplay of technically-mediated and direct personal communication, based on both produced and acquired culture. For communication and cultural analysis this means that it cannot be limited to the study of mass-cultural objectivations such as, for example, the study of individual media products or genres, but must try to discover the meaning contexts and practices in which these are located, both for individuals and social groups. The interpretation of subjective meaning-assigning and opinion-forming processes is one of the most urgent goals. Studies which focus on the processing of media content in everyday conversation can provide insight into these interpretation processes. This is where Cultural Studies approaches meet those of ethnomethodology, the latter aiming to analyze the concepts of knowledge which social actors produce and employ in everyday life. For media research it is primarily important to observe and describe in detail how pre-structured meanings produced by various media are dealt with. Only on this basis can valid non-reductive statements be made on topics such as the significance of media in everyday life. The methods of conversation analysis developed by ethnomethodology provide excellent tools for analyzing communicative processes and pro-
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cedures, not only on the level of production and the product, but also on the level of reception. I will illustrate this briefly, using media reception research as an example. The modes of communicative and interactive appropriation of media offerings can be precisely observed and described using this approach, regardless of where one’s interest lies. Empirical research on these concrete ways of dealing with the pre-structured production of meaning by various media can provide insight into their actual use and thereby into their precise meaning in different social contexts. One of my conclusions in the frame of a broader analysis of family table conversation was, for example, that for contemporary families television is not necessarily a ‘communication-inhibiting device’. On the contrary, my studies of media-related conversations show that, particularly in intimate social communities, the media encourage conversation and thereby help create meaning (Keppler, 1994). Such results cannot be obtained if one limits one’s analysis to the ‘chronometric classification of types of activity’. Rather, one must choose research methods in accord with the epistemological premises I described in the previous paragraph. Research also shows that not only media productions complicate everyday conversation, there are also structural limits to the ‘power’ of the media. For the laws of direct communication are of a unique sort; if something has not been appropriated in an intersubjective realm it will be unable to have any kind of effect. In the meantime, quite a number of studies have emphasized the idea that people have a ‘free space’, a domain where they can determine their own interpretation of a received media product, thus rejecting a simple concept of one-sided communication. Examples include ‘Cultural Studies’ research, and also recent analyses in German-speaking countries of ‘media appropriation’ in everyday conversation (Hepp, 1998; Holly & Püschel, 1993). The perspective offered by a media product is seldom directly integrated into the everyday orienting-knowledge of socialized individuals, a notion supported by recent research. Only by way of specific social usage do the communicative intrinsic qualities of a product reach its addressees. And this usage often gives mass-media products their strongest effect precisely where it limits them in the filter of communicative processing. Second example: The relationship between media product and social use: The perception of media actors on television Even if under some circumstances we perceive actors on television, the silver screen or theater stage as persons, it is still constitutive for all recep-
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tion processes that we can only communicate and interact with them indirectly. A fundamental distinction between para-social interaction and direct social interaction is that the latter refers to direct, two-sided face-to-face communication in everyday life and the former to indirect, one-sided communication with media characters. In everyday conversation there are different ways of relating to the protagonists in television shows. Such conversations revolve around, for example, how the shows were produced, how the sets were presumably built, on what locations shows were filmed, and the quality of the acting skills (Keppler, 1993: 11–24; Keppler & Seel, 1991: 877–889). Television characters are clearly understood as representations. There also are, however, conversations about television series in which the boundaries between everyday reality and fiction become blurred. People talk about characters and the actors playing them as if they were equally real and fictional; both are, of course, confined to the closed world of the series. Third, there are also cases of people discussing television characters as if they were part of their everyday world. These three types, which must be distinguished for analytical purposes, often merge in everyday communication with viewers switching playfully and non-problematically back and forth between different levels of perception. In this connection the decisive question for media theory concerns the difference between media and everyday communication: Are ‘identification with and/or’ distancing from media personalities based on an equation of media reality with the reality of everyday action, or is a precondition a clearly-defined boundary between the two? My thesis is that it makes a major difference whether we find ourselves interacting with persons or characters, and that this difference has farreaching consequences for the identity-creating effects and socializing force of the respective interaction (Keppler, 1995: 85–99; Keppler, 1996: 11–24). This thesis entails the supplementary assumption that interest in (quasi)-interaction with fictional characters is based essentially on social experiences of interaction with (real) persons. The important thing is thus to differentiate between aspects shared by both types of interaction from those specific to only one of them. The main characters in a television series are typifications abstracted from social actors and their individual attributes. In contrast, real people are always particular individuals whom we sometimes, for example during a conversation, socially typify, that is, assign to a general category. Social typifications often form the background for moral or prejudicial judgments of a person as a whole, or of a specific behavior. These typifications are never of permanent duration; they can and do change, sometimes
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within the same conversation (Keppler, 1987: 288–302). In concrete interaction with a social partner, however, the individual attributes and individual manifestations of specific persons always provide guidance. As people change, the schemata assigned to them also change, and these two processes of change are united in social life. This distinguishes real persons from the characters in television series. The latter embody a specific type of person and therefore remain essentially unchanged as long as the script does not call for a change in their character. This must not happen too often if the ’series‘ character is to appear as a consistent personality. A certain personal continuity is a precondition for the viewer’s familiarity with characters, unlike real life, where people become acquainted with one another in quite varied social situations and can also distance themselves or break off relationships entirely. We know the ‘rules’ that apply to fictional characters and can follow the actions played out in their world according to these ‘rules’. We benefit from precise knowledge of the characters and can even predict their actions. This gives rise to a highly-specific kind of situation, because one can follow their easily grasped interactions with no practical necessity to react. The possibility of a change of attitude determined solely on one side, not to be coordinated with the other side, significantly distinguishes interaction with television characters from that with real persons. We perceive the people with whom we deal in everyday life as real persons. In contrast to this we (usually) perceive the persons we encounter when watching a television series as ‘like persons’, knowing that they are not real persons, but rather characters acting out fictitious roles. The characters of a film or a television series are generally understandable signs for a type of person, but they are not real persons. Real persons, to the contrary, are particular individuals without being mere signs of personal abilities and idiosyncrasies. The difference between ‘as’ and ‘like’ in behaving toward people illuminates the difference between social and para-social interaction. On the one side, quite different objects are perceived, sign-like constructs, for one thing, individual actors, for another. On the other side, behavior toward characters in a television series is often highly comparable to social exchange in the recipients’ primary life-world praxis. Thus, it seems to be a continuation of everyday interaction. But this type of interaction occurs by other means and with other possibilities. And precisely because this continuation of social experience takes place on an entirely different plane, a certain enrichment of the real social world of everyday life becomes possible here. What does it mean, then, to perceive the characters in a series as though they are real people and consequently to find oneself in a para-social interaction with them? The precondition for such identification is the possi-
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bility created by the show, together with the capability given on the recipient’s side, to comprehend the staged behavior of the characters presented. A character can only be perceived as a person if we can acquire a conception of what it is or would be like to be her. In the same way, we can only perceive someone as a person if we can, to a certain extent, from an at least hypothetically-assumed perspective, understand why the person acts as she acts and feels as she feels. The ability to, even if only hypothetically, assume the other’s role is a precondition for recognizing and comprehending her as a person. Identification with media characters is based on life-world experiences of dealing with other persons. And more still; it follows the same patterns as identification in the face-to-face situations of everyday life. This shared structure of social and para-social interaction explains not only the possibility of the latter, but also the fascination that has always been exerted by the possibility of identification with fictional characters. However, this fascination would be totally misunderstood if the major difference were overlooked which underlies ‘putting-oneself-in-a-relationship’ of one person to another. Para-social communication, as I have already emphasized, occurs in a broad free space for identification which renders it impossible to equate the real world with the fictional world. Here we have an entirely different free space from the primary life world. A far more arbitrary and non-binding sort of interaction with ‘others’ is offered, together with much more variability in the perceptual relationship to them. The object of identification (fictitious individual person, represented type, representing actor) can change, just as the type of identification can. Furthermore, this relaxed2 free space always permits the very real possibility of starting to view the characters of an episode not as persons, but only as aesthetic constructs more or less skillfully integrated into the text of the series. While we can, if we choose, react to television series characters in a participatory manner, we must do this with the social partners in our social world (at least insofar as we ourselves desire to be taken seriously as participants in this world). In regards to processes of media reception, one can conclude the following; not only can we discover behavioral patterns and make them accessible as means of identification (as Herzog already assumed), but in reflecting on the displayed behavior we can also play with these behavioral patterns, demarcate ourselves from them, satirize them, etc. (Herzog, 1941: 65–95). Not complete, but rather partial identification is the rule in perceiving media characters as persons. How, in the process of perception, the spectrum of varying degrees of identification is occupied and put to use is always determined by the individual viewer or group of viewers. In each case we find active engagement
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on the part of viewers, who bring their own life experiences to bear on their interpretation of these characters. Whatever they acquire beyond merely being entertained by a series always results from the interpretative activity of viewing, varying between distance and lesser or greater identification. Only by means of this active viewing can the effects of para-social learning arise which Herzog observed early on. Just as a life-world experience must be ‘made’ by the subjects of this experience, the media experience is performed with the creative participation of its subjects. In running through the range of distancing and identification possibilities which the fictional world of a television series offers, potential life roles are tried out by viewers under highly relaxed conditions, and if self-understandings are modified, in the long-run a transformation of self-understanding takes place just as in primary social experience. But, it must be repeated that this learning, even if it employs analogous processes, nevertheless occurs in a basically different situation: as a one-sided playing through and designing of life possibilities, whereas in everyday life we mainly engage in two-sided interactions.
Conclusions We will, for one thing, maintain that the full status of media products can only be studied together with the possible and actual forms of reception. The construction of these products always aims at specific reception possibilities inherent in the product and furthermore aims at actual reception success. Consequently, research should attach greater importance to the interdependence of the media product and its social use. Production, product and reception are thus to be treated as areas of research which are of course analytically separate entities and, to a certain degree, also methodically differentiated, but they cannot be isolated from one another. If the study of this interrelationship is meant to include the processes and procedures of actual media use, it is dependent on interpretive methods which permit the reconstruction of recipients’ understanding together with the social context of that performance. Not only the example of dealing with media personalities and characters, but also the example of the communicative appropriation of media experiences should make clear how distorting it would be to isolate media products from the individual and social praxis in which they come together. Media products cannot be understood independently of the possibilities used or rejected for their receptive appropriation. Since they only exist together with differing competencies of acquisition, it would be extraordinarily unproductive to try to methodically separate these products and their modes of use, whether aesthetically implied or socially realized.
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Basically, the forms of communication occurring in media can only be understood in terms of their position relative to forms of direct personal communication. We could not understand the, in part serious, differences between both forms of interaction if we tried to methodically isolate them from each other. It is similar, I believe, for communication and media research in general. All isolationism, whether of the products or their ‘effects’, whether of media or social interaction, fails to capture the phenomena.
Notes 1. The aim of the procedure is to analyze the socially objectively effective, i.e., the meaning mediated by societal institutions and the objective meaning structure of action. In this sense Thomas Luckmann writes: “An ‘objective’ social-scientific hermeneutics raises the claim to objectivity in two directions: (1) in regard to testability or the uncovering of the interpretive procedure and the pre-knowledge which enters into it (2) in regard to the direction and aim of the procedure, that is, in regard to the socially ‘objectively’ influence exerting – on societal institutions and their historically objective meaning as action determinants (in contrast to – the externally presumed – subjective action meaning of individual actors) and on the objective meaning structure of the action (in contrast to the subjectively-intended meaning of the action of an individual actor).” (Luckmann, 1981: 519). 2. It would be misleading to speak here of an “expanded” room for interaction, for in other regards this is naturally strongly limited.
References Hepp, A. (1998). Fernsehaneignung und Alltagsgespräche. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Herzog, H. (1941). On borrowed experience. An analysis of listening to daytime sketches. Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, 9 (1), 65–95. Holly, W. & Püschel, U. (Eds.) (1993). Medienrezeption als Aneignung. Methoden und Perspektiven qualitativer Medienforschung. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Iser, W. (1972). Der implizite Leser. Munich. Keppler, A. (1985). Präsentation und Information. Zur politischen Berichterstattung im Fernsehen. Tübingen: Narr. Keppler, A. (1987). Der Verlauf von Klatschgesprächen. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 16 (4), 288–302. Keppler. A. (1993). Fernsehunterhaltung aus Zuschauersicht. Beobachtungen bei Tischgesprächen. In H. O. Hügel & E. Müller (Eds.), Fernsehshows: Form- und Rezeptionsanalyse (pp. 11–24). Hildesheim.
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Keppler, A. (1994). Tischgespräche. Über Formen kommunikativer Vergemeinschaftung am Beispiel der Konversation in Familien. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Keppler, A. (1995). Person und Figur. Identifikationsangebote in Fernsehserien. Montage/AV, 4 (2), 85–99. Keppler, A. (1996). Interaktion ohne reales Gegenüber. Zur Wahrnehmung medialer Akteure im Fernsehen. In P. Vorderer (Ed.), Fernsehen als “Beziehungskiste.” Parasoziale Beziehungen und Interaktionen mit TV-Personen (pp. 11–24). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Keppler, A. & Seel, M. (1991). Zwischen Vereinnahmung und Distanzierung. Vier Fallstudien zur Massenkultur. In K. H. Bohrer & K. Scheel (Eds.), Kultur? Über Kunst, Film und Musik. Sonderheft Merkur (pp. 877–889). Stuttgart. Luckmann, Th. (1981). Zum hermeneutischen Problem der Handlungswissenschaften. In M. Fuhrmann, H. R. Jauß & W. Pannenberg (Eds.), Text und Applikation. Theologie, Jurisprudenz und Literaturwissenschaft im hermeneutischen Gespräch (pp. 513–523). Munich. Soeffner, H.-G. (1989). Anmerkungen zu gemeinsamen Standards standardisierter und nicht-standardisierter Verfahren in der Sozialforschung. Auslegung des Alltags 1, Der Alltag der Auslegung (pp.51–65). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Weber, M. (1972). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie [Economy and Society: Outline of Understanding Sociology]. Tübingen: Narr.
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7 Using protocol analysis in television news research: 7 Proposal and first tests Gabi Schaap
Abstract It is argued that research measuring viewers’ abilities to reproduce news items or news facts, while useful, is of limited nature. To obtain a broader view of what viewers ‘do’ with the news, an alternative way to study television news processing is proposed: protocol analysis. Acquiring verbalizations of thoughts may provide supplemental knowledge about television news processing. This chapter discusses how this technique, which originates in cognitive psychology, can be adopted in television news research. A short overview of television news processing studies will be given. After a review of protocol analysis literature, a possible research instrument will be outlined. Furthermore, the results of a small-scale study to test the practicality of the instrument are reported and the problems of validity as well as the implications for television news research are discussed. Keywords: Television news, reception research, Thinking Aloud Methods, method development
Introduction Research on the processing of television news by its viewers has mainly focused on assessing the reproduction of news facts (Schaap, Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). Results from this type of research indicate that people do not learn much from television news (Gunter, 1987; Robinson & Levy, 1986). Although this is in itself an important finding, some feel that it invokes a somewhat limited view of what people ‘do’ with information from the news (Al-Menayes & Sun, 1993; Berry, 1983; Hendriks Vettehen & Schaap, 1999; Woodall, Davis & Sahin, 1983). They argue that processing the news is an active, interpretive process through which viewers try to make sense of the information presented to them. This process involves more than remembering and the subsequent reproducing of facts. Thus, measuring reproduction of facts may not do justice to the complete process of news interpretation (Al-Menayes & Sun, 1993; Graber, 1984). Up
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to now, not many studies have been devoted to the internal interpretive activities of viewers, especially during watching (Höijer, 1989; Schaap et al., 2001). In this contribution, it is argued that it may be useful to take the viewer’s perspective into consideration when studying television news interpretation. As will be shown, the problem with using a more elaborate idea of television news processing is that there are no research instruments that satisfactorily correspond with this theoretical notion, and which can serve as an alternative for recall and comprehension measures. In this contribution, the use of protocol analysis (using verbalizations of thoughts as data) as an alternative instrument will be introduced. First, this chapter will provide a short overview of the types of methods used in, and the results of, studies on the interpretation of television news. Next, it will describe protocol analysis as it has been used in other disciplines, such as cognitive psychology, and the way this knowledge has been used in this study to construct a provisional research instrument. Finally, this chapter will report on a first exploratory study on the practical use of protocol analysis in television news interpretation research, which answers two questions: 1) Does protocol analysis provide us with relevant and analyzable data about the interpretation of television news? and 2) What are the practical advantages and disadvantages of two verbalization techniques in regard to television news research? In order to answer these questions a test was conducted in which the subjects were asked to verbalize their thoughts while watching the news, and interviewed to assess the problems that they had with the procedure.
The interpretation of television news in previous research: Methods, results, and conclusions This section provides a short overview of the research practices in studies on the processing of television news. The following questions will be answered: What do these studies measure and how do they measure it? For a more extensive listing of literature in this area, see Schaap et al. (2001). Methods used in previous studies Research on the processing of television news consists primarily of recall studies. Studies which measure recall and assess the accuracy of this recall (comprehension) are based on what the researcher decides are the important part(s), or the ‘gist’ of a news item or bulletin that the viewer should be able to recall, and not on what viewers find interesting or meaningful.
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What is considered important is an, often implicit, estimation of what journalists would consider important (cf. Robinson & Davis, 1990). Subjects are asked to list the factual information they remember of the news in a given period, for instance the previous week (in field studies), or what they remember of specific bulletins or items (in experimental designs). The questioning format varies, ranging from free and open to cued and closed recall questions. Pieces of information that the subject cannot recollect, or cannot recollect correctly are classified as ‘recall failures’ (Giegler & Ruhrmann, 1990; Gunter, 1987). In assessing comprehension, it is the researcher who defines whether a person’s interpretation of the news is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. For instance, in a study conducted by Findahl and Höijer (1985), subjects used already available knowledge to piece together parts of news items that they could not remember. When this was the case, subjects were said to have ‘misunderstood’ the item. Mostly, when researchers study interpretation (cf. Graber, 1984), their analyses are based on measures of recall of information (Woodall et al., 1983). In addition, research on the ‘reception’ of television news has used in-depth interview techniques, in which respondents give their general thoughts or views on the program they have seen (e.g., Höijer, 1990a; Jensen, 1998). Results A large number of studies have reported on forms of reproduction of televised information, and far less on comprehension. Results show that people do not remember as much from the news as the researcher or the journalist might expect (Gunter, 1987; Robinson & Levy, 1986). Also, people seem to misunderstand the journalists’ meaning, or the item’s ‘message’ on a regular basis, as extrapolated from recall scores (Findahl & Höijer, 1985; Giegler & Ruhrmann, 1990). Furthermore, we know that levels of recall and comprehension are heavily related to the possession of relevant previous knowledge (cf. Drew & Reeves, 1980; Graber, 1984; Hendriks Vettehen, Hietbrink & Renckstorf, 1996). Reception studies have shown that viewers often reconstruct the news into general themes which can cut across journalist-defined themes (Höijer, 1990a; Jensen, 1998). In addition, content and format features affect viewers’ recall and evaluation (cf. Brosius, 1990; Brosius & Berry, 1990; Crigler, Just & Neuman, 1994). Conclusions Wherein lies the problem with news processing research? While quantitative recall studies have yielded important information on how news is dispersed en processed, the possibility that some information about how
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television news is interpreted is systematically being missed cannot be ruled out (Al-Menayes & Sun, 1993; Berry, 1983; Woodall et al., 1983). When we focus on what viewers remember ‘correctly’, and rebuke ‘incorrect’ recall, we might be discarding valuable information. This approach leaves researchers with knowledge of what people do not do with television news information (that is, remember it or understand it) but lack knowledge of how people do use it (cf. Berry, 1983). Another problem, which affects qualitative interview methods as well, is that recall is by definition imperfect, and asking subjects about their interpretation retrospectively may suffer from this. Research using structured questionnaires, or experimental recall questions (quantitative measures), as well as (qualitative) interview techniques, may benefit from the use of alternative methods. The viewer’s point of view In this study an interpretive view of the use of television news by its viewers will be adopted (Renckstorf & Wester, 2001; Schaap et al., 2001). Watching the news is one of many possible ways for people to make sense of the outside world. This sense-making, or interpreting, is a constructive and cognitive activity in which a person relates events or information (for instance in the news) to the things he/she already knows. The result of these (re)constructive activities may be that viewers interpret the news partly or entirely in their own terms. They alter and elaborate news information with their own knowledge, ‘file’ it under cognitive headings that can be completely different from the journalist’s or researcher’s and regard events in the context of their own themes (cf. Al-Menayes & Sun, 1993; Jensen, 1988). As a consequence, when asked about information in the researcher’s terms as opposed to his/her own terms, a viewer may experience difficulties in retrieving information, thus accounting for the low levels of recall and high levels of miscomprehension found in general television news research. What might be useful, is research that takes the viewer’s point of view into account. If one is aiming at understanding the way people make sense of television news, one should drop the idea of ‘relevant information’ as a construct of the researcher. In the words of AlMenayes and Sun (1993: 58): “the meanings made by perceivers are what counts as data”. To explain the purpose of this study, I would like to refer to a very useful distinction made by Segal and Shaw (1988). They make a distinction between: 1) cognitive structures, and 2) cognitive processes (the structured knowledge of a person and how he/she makes use of it, respectively), and 3) cognitive products, the outcome of the processes in the cognitive struc-
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ture. The first two variables are not directly measurable, but the third one is. Cognitive products are sometimes more and sometimes less overt behavior, including thoughts. In addition to being cognitive, meaning construction is situational; the meaning an individual assigns to events changes across time and situations. Therefore it is necessary to study meaning at the moment of production (or close) and in the situation it occurs (Findahl, 1998; Hendriks Vettehen, Renckstorf & Wester, 1996). As we have argued, recall is imperfect, therefore retrospective interviews on how people interpret the news are probably not entirely sufficient. In sum, we are interested in the immediate outcome of cognitive processes. These outcomes are partly external actions, in our case thoughts said out loud. These thoughts in turn, are a good indication of the meaning that viewers assign to television news. The frames of meaning people apply when watching the news are of prime interest to communication scientists, and hopefully ultimately our research instrument can provide us with some insight in these frames of meaning. Therefore, we will focus on ‘measuring’ the thoughts people have when watching the news.
A proposal The goal of this study, then, is to develop an instrument that gives us an idea of 1) what people ‘do’ with the news in their heads; 2) while they are watching; 3) with as little interference of the researcher as possible. In short, an observation procedure should create “a situation in which viewers can communicate their reception” (Höijer 1990b: 33, italics mine). Furthermore, a procedure should provide a systematic way of analyzing data. Protocol analysis may enable us to do this (Van Someren, Barnard & Sandberg, 1994). Protocol analysis Protocol analysis is a generic term used for research techniques which have been applied mainly in cognitive psychology. These research techniques are used to gain insight in cognitive processes and their outcomes by means of verbal protocols produced by research subjects (Ericsson & Simon, 1984). The name is given both to techniques for acquiring data as well as analyzing them, although most authors seem to refer only to data gathering (cf. Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Gilhooly & Green, 1996). Since protocol analysis is relatively unknown in communication science, a general introduction seems in place.
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Protocol analysis is based upon premises from so-called cognitive processing approaches. It is assumed that people make sense of the surrounding world through information processing. This cognitive process can be seen as a series of internal states in which incoming information is manipulated and transformed (Ericsson & Simon, 1984). One of the most important concepts is that information is stored and manipulated in a long-term and a short-term memory. The short-term memory, or working memory, contains information that is the ‘current focus of attention’. It consists of highly accessible information that is ‘kept at hand’ for immediate usage. Its second function is to provide links between this information and information stored in long-term memory, which can contain vast amounts of relatively permanent information. All cognitive processes are regulated by what is in a somewhat uncanny way named the ‘central processor’ (Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Gilhooly & Green, 1996; Van Someren et al., 1994). Analyzing verbalizations of thoughts is possible, it is argued, because the information stored in one’s short-term memory is not only easily accessible, but can also be verbalized without great effort (Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Gilhooly & Green, 1996). While protocol analysis is not a method in a strict sense as it has no rigid set of rules, there are of course a number of general characteristics. Generally speaking, the method consists of asking people to say, out loud, what they are thinking (mostly whilst doing a task of some sort). Important in protocol analysis is that subjects are not asked to justify or explain their thoughts or way of thinking. Thus, it keeps rationalizations by the subject to a minimum. Of equal importance is the fact that this technique is as non-obtrusive as is possible. The only probe subjects receive is the instruction to talk aloud. This has the advantage that there is little possibility for a researcher to inadvertently guide or direct answers, which is often the case for a personal interviewer or a structured questionnaire (Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Van Someren et al., 1994). There are two major types of techniques for acquiring verbal protocols. Firstly, verbal reports can be acquired by asking the subjects to verbalize their thoughts at the moment they occur. Reports of this type are called ‘concurrent’ verbal reports. The method most associated with concurrent measuring is the Thinking-Aloud Method. Secondly, subjects can verbalize their thoughts shortly or directly after they have occurred; ‘retrospective’ verbalization. An example of this type of verbal reports is the ThoughtListing Technique. Below, both techniques will be briefly described.
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Thinking-Aloud Method The Thinking-Aloud Method is a type of protocol analysis that makes use of concurrent verbal reports. Verbal reports are the product of a subject who is instructed to perform a task and report his thoughts at the same time. That is, the subject is asked to “verbalize overtly all thoughts that would normally be silent” (Gilhooly & Green, 1996: 43). The resulting protocols can be transcribed, coded and analyzed. Until now, this technique has been used to assess processes of problem solving (e.g., math problems, puzzles or playing chess), to capture understanding of stories or sentences, or to help develop training or educational programs (Green & Gilhooly, 1996; Newell & Simon, 1972; Van Someren et al., 1994). Also, Thinking-Aloud Methods have been used to develop or test computer software (Benbunan-Fich, 2001; Henderson, Smith, Podd & Varela-Alvarez, 1995). Kushniruk and Patel (1998) cite a number of studies concerned with understanding how medical personnel uses software and how doctors assess a diagnosis. Finally, cognitive processes, social anxiety and self-efficacy have been studied using the Thinking-Aloud Method (cf. Chamberlain & Haaga, 1999). In some of these cases, subjects are required to think aloud while they listen to an audio tape, or place themselves in a hypothetical situation. One of the main concerns of this study is to assess whether Thinking-Aloud can be used in a meaningful way to obtain verbal protocols from subjects while they are watching the news, as opposed to performing a task. Thought-Listing Technique The second form of protocol analysis is retrospective. Subjects are asked to list all their thoughts directly or shortly after performing a task, such as looking at or listening to a stimulus (for instance, a text, a photograph, or an audio tape), or solving a math problem. In practice, longer tasks tend to be interrupted at small intervals in which the subject will verbalize his or her thoughts. Thought-Listing Techniques have been frequently used in some form or another in clinical psychology and less often in communication science. In clinical psychology, Thought-Listing Techniques have been used to assess psychological disorders, such as social anxiety (Blackwell, 1985; Prins & Hanewald, 1997) and to train patients’ behavioral skills (cf., Cacioppo, Von Hippel & Ernst, 1997). For instance, Halford and Sanders (1988) used the Thought-Listing Technique to assess differences in thoughts between distressed and non-distressed couples. Fichten et al., 2001, studied the role of negative thoughts in insomnia. In communication science, there have
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been studies on the relation between thoughts, recall and the framing of newspaper stories (cf. Price, Tewksbury & Powers, 1997; Valkenburg, Semetko & De Vreese, 1999). Both techniques, Thinking-Aloud as well as Thought-Listing, are by now reasonably well established in psychology. The theoretical assumptions and the validity of these techniques have been well documented (cf. Cacioppo et al., 1997; Davison, Vogel & Coffman, 1997; Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Halford & Sanders, 1988; Lodge, Tripp & Harte, 2000). I will speak about the problem of validity in the final section of this contribution.
A pilot study Before we can use one or both techniques to study the interpretation of television news, we must determine the exact procedure. In this section I will provide an overview of difficulties encountered and decisions made in constructing a technique that, first and foremost, should produce relevant material concerning the interpretation of television news. How can we adopt and reconstruct procedures from other disciplines so that they may be of use in the study of television news interpretation? Basic requirements The Thinking-Aloud Method and Thought-Listing Technique have a number of general requirements in common. The setting in which the Thinking-Aloud or the Thought-Listing takes place, for instance, should be such that the subject feels at ease and comfortable to talk aloud. Furthermore, the researcher should interfere as little as possible. Only when the subject stops talking for an extended period, should the researcher ask the subject to ‘keep talking’ (Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Green & Gilhooly, 1996; Van Someren et al., 1997). To avoid any involuntary ‘hints’ from the researcher, such as nodding or smiling, Green & Gilhooly (1996) even suggest the researcher to remain outside the visual field of the subject. The instruction can very well be called a key element in the procedure, on which the validity of the obtained data may depend (Höijer, 1989). It is of central importance that it is perfectly clear to the subject what is expected of him/her. In both techniques, instruction is given to the subject beforehand. The core of this instruction should be to ‘talk aloud’, or to ‘say out loud what you think’ (Cacioppo et al., 1997; Davison et al., 1997; Ericsson & Simon, 1984; Green & Gilhooly, 1996; Van Someren et al., 1994). In addition, some short phrases can be added to instruct the subject
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to be as complete as possible (‘say everything you think’) and not to explain or interpret what he or she thinks (Ericsson & Simon, 1984). Of course, a difference between the instructions given by the two techniques is that in one case, subjects are asked to talk aloud while watching the news, whereas in the other case subjects are asked to talk aloud after viewing a short segment of the news. Green & Gilhooly (1996) and Van Someren et al. (1994) have also suggested that the subject performs at least one warm-up task. After training, most subjects know what is expected of them and have little difficulties in doing what they are asked to do. The conditions for the Thinking-Aloud Technique The length of time the researcher will allow the subject to remain silent should be specified beforehand (Green & Gilhooly, 1996). There does not, however, seem to exist a general consensus on how long this period should be. For example, Lodge et al. (2000), allowed 10 seconds of silence before prompting the subject, while Gilhooly and Gregory (1989, in Green & Gilhooly, 1996) allowed one minute before prompting. It also may be kept flexible, depending on how the subject seems to be performing. To the best of my knowledge, studies on concurrent verbalization while watching a videotape or listening to an audio tape have not been conducted. Most research involving Thinking-Aloud Techniques is concentrated on task-performance, whereas my main concern is to find out if the same techniques work in a situation where the subject is watching the news. Therefore, I can only anticipate difficulties based upon common sense. The conditions for the Thought-Listing technique In several separate studies, Davison et al. (1997) used an audio tape to which the subjects listened. The short tape was divided into segments ranging from 10 to 15 seconds, after which there was a pause of 30 seconds in which the subjects would say out loud what they had previously been thinking. They called this a ‘near-concurrent’ approach, as close to the online tapping of thoughts as possible. No reason was given as to why this particular length of the segments and the pauses was chosen. In a similar fashion, other studies give subjects time (or space) to list their thoughts, without specifying why they are given as much or as little as they are given (Cacioppo et al., 1997; Lodge et al., 2000). The main line of reasoning seems to be that the segments and the spaces between them must be short to facilitate the recollection of information from short-term memory, but long enough to enable the subjects to verbalize all their thoughts.
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In quite a number of Thought-Listing studies the subjects are asked to write down their thoughts (cf. Cacioppo et al., 1997). A disadvantage of this way of working is that one is dependent on the subjects’ ability to articulate their thoughts in writing rather than in spoken words, which in itself requires verbalizing skills. Asking people to write down their thoughts might thus put an extra step in the thought process. For this reason I have chosen not to use this particular tactic.
Comparing two alternative techniques: A small scale test A small scale study was conducted to test the practicality of a procedure we designed based on the requirements described above. The very first question I will answer, is whether it is at all possible for people to watch the news while at the same time thinking aloud. Will people who are watching the news produce verbal protocols and will these protocols contain enough and relevant information for communication researchers to analyze? Perhaps the verbalization of thoughts works well in psychological research settings, but is it also effective or practical in audio-visual communication research? This is a valid question, as according to an overview by Cacioppo et al. (1997), protocol analysis is typically not used under conditions that require a high cognitive load, such as a task requiring a great deal of effort. Watching television news requires a lot of effort, as viewers must cope with various sources of sounds and fast-moving images all at the same time, and must deal with often complex information (cf. Cohen, 2001). Therefore, when asking people to think aloud while watching the news, it is not impossible that subjects will remain completely silent. If it can be achieved to have people voice their thoughts while at the same time watching the news, still another important question must be answered. How can one make sure that one capture as much relevant verbalizations as possible? In other words, how can one create an ideal situation in which subjects can verbalize their thoughts in an optimal manner? A third important question is: how can one make sure that the verbalizations one acquires actually represent (at least a large portion of) the interpretation? The goal of this study was to find out which of the two techniques (Thinking-Aloud Method or Thought-Listing Technique) and which setup would be the most effective and efficient way of getting people to talk aloud. In two studies the techniques were compared in terms of the amount of words and thoughts they generated (Blackwell, Galassi, Galassi & Watson, 1985; Lodge et al., 2000). In both instances the ThinkingAloud Method yielded more material than Thought-Listing. This study
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is set in a different context. It is exploratory, in the sense that it deals with highly complicated audio-visual ‘stimulus material’: television news. Therefore, this study’s working hypothesis is that I will merely find differences between the two techniques in amounts of words and thoughts. Furthermore, I expect differences between Thinking-Aloud and ThoughtListing Technique in amount of types of thoughts. Along the same lines, and finally, I hypothesize that the variance of types of thoughts differs between the two techniques. In addition to comparing the techniques on amount of generated material, it is important to assess specific problems that subjects might have in performing their task. Procedure Following the general requirements described above, I designed the following procedure. The two techniques were tested on a limited number of subjects (N=35). The research group consisted of 17 men and 18 women. They were selected to include a variety of age and educational background1. The ‘stimulus’ material was a recorded broadcast of the main news program in The Netherlands (NOS 8 o’clock news) of Tuesday 21 November 2000. To assure the task would not be too strenuous on the subjects, two news items were removed, resulting in a program with a running time of approximately 21 minutes. Two copies of the tape were used in two separate settings. The version described above (the entire broadcast minus the two items) was used for the Think-Aloud procedure (n=16). The other copy was edited into segments, adding space between them so the researcher would have time to stop the tape. This version was used for the Thought-Listing Technique (n=19). The segments were edited in such a way that they both represented a time-span that was neither too long nor too short (generally around 20 seconds), and that they were divided into more or less ‘natural units’ (for instance, no cuts in mid-sentences, or unnatural shifting of images). The logic behind this was that subjects must be able to retrieve their thoughts from short-term memory, before they were ‘lost’ to long-term memory. This resulted in a segmented news program of 24:16 minutes (including spaces between the segments), consisting of 67 segments with a mean length of a little under 18 seconds, with the longest segment running 27.4 seconds and the shortest 7.2 seconds. The first, 3.5 minutes item was used as a warm up item, and was not included in the analysis. The subjects participated in the verbalization task mostly at home, but in a few cases the test was taken in a viewing room. They were provided with specific instructions (see Appendix A) either to think aloud while
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watching, or to list their thoughts verbally after each segment. The subjects participating in the Thought-Listing procedure were given as much time as they needed to verbalize their thoughts. Immediately after the subjects were finished, the researcher would start the tape again. During the test, the researcher used an observation sheet with a transcription of the text and images of the news program in order to make notes of the subject’s behavior, which were used in interviews that were conducted afterwards. The verbalizations were recorded using a tape recorder and, afterwards, transcribed into protocols. After watching the news, the subjects were interviewed about their performance, watching the tape again if they needed a cue to remember what they thought during certain parts of the news (this was hardly ever the case). The interview consisted of two parts (cf. Van der Veer, Ommundsen, Hak & Larsen, 2003; Jansen & Hak, 2000). The first part was directed at the reconstruction of the thinking process, to clarify uncertainties. This included asking the subject about sounds or expressions that the researcher did not understand, or why he/she did not speak during a given period. In the second part of the interview subjects were asked about their experience with the procedure; how easy or difficult did they find it to express their thoughts, how did they report their thoughts and so on (see Appendix B). Coding The criteria used for assessing differences between the two techniques focused on amount and richness of material. Surely, other criteria could be just as informative, if not more so. However, as a first step in developing an instrument for television news interpretation, the aim is to investigate whether this sort of technique can be used on a very practical level in a context that radically differs from previous studies. Therefore, two techniques were tested and the results compared both in a context with television news and with research in different contexts. For this reason, coding focused on the amount of words and thoughts as well as the variance in types thoughts, and not so much in the actual content or meaning of the thoughts. A first step in the coding process consisted of counting the number of words used, omitting utterances directed at the researcher or statements declaring that the respondent did not think anything. The next, more complicated step, coding the material, consisted of two phases directed at discriminating between several types of ‘thoughts’. In this process, the protocols of the subjects’ verbalizations were grouped into segments representing ‘thoughts’ (cf. Blackwell et al., 1985; Höijer, 1989; Lodge et al., 2000). In the first phase, a rough division between different verbalizations
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was made. The first step in grouping verbalizations into separate segments was defining ‘meaningful units’. These are verbalizations representing one line of reasoning, containing one specific argument, or statement. Statements can range from being very short (“I don’t agree”) to rather long (“I don’t agree because … and …”). An additional way in creating segments occurred through taking verbalizations that were clearly separated by time or, when subjects themselves indicated that they distinguished between ‘thoughts’ (“first I thought …, then I thought …”). The second and final step in this phase was assigning a label to each segment/thought, which provided a short description of the statement. In the second phase, the goal was to distinguish between types, or classes, of statements. Different content categories were created based on the descriptive labels assigned in the first phase. Next, the various segments could be assigned to one class or type of statement. As there was no a priori hypothesis about the kinds of statements the subjects would produce (as psychologists often have), open coding was applied, and a coding scheme was developed along the way (cf. Green & Gilhooly, 1996; Höijer, 1989, 1990b; Wester, 1987). Segments would be classified according to the type of statement made. This means that the coder was less interested in the content of what was being said, as he was in what type of statement was being made. Classification in types of statements occurred in three basic steps. First, the coder distinguished between statements that were related to the news in any way and statements that were not (for instance, statements pertaining to the research situation). The reason being that, ultimately, the goal of this research instrument is to capture interpretations of the news, and not interpretations of the research context. The second step was aimed at creating more specific sub-classes, again looking at the type of statement made. One could, for instance, in the class of news-related statements, distinguish statements about content aspects from statements signifying some distance from the content, and from references to private matters. In the third and final step, after reading and rereading the protocols, the classes and labels were improved. After several rounds, classes with labels were narrowed down into a coding scheme that classified segments into 12 types of ‘thoughts’, 10 of which were news-related, and 2 non-news related.
Results The analysis of the material aimed at answering two different questions. First, is there enough relevant verbal response from the subject to analyze, and are there any differences in the amount of material (words, thoughts
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and types of thoughts) between the two tested techniques? Secondly, what problems do subjects encounter while verbalizing their thoughts in conjunction with watching the news? Is it possible for them to verbalize their thoughts? While the techniques succeeded in obtaining enough material to be used in the analysis (see Table 7.1), some notable differences between the two methods in amount and types of material were found. To assess differences in means between the two subject groups, both the number of words and thoughts were compared using a T-test for the equality of means2. Earlier, the expectation was to find differences between the two techniques in the amount of words subjects would produce while watching. As Table 7.1 shows, this hypothesis was confirmed. Subjects in the Thinking-Aloud Method setting used significantly less words (p= .002) than subjects in the Thought-Listing Technique setting. Analysis shows that subjects in the Thinking-Aloud condition reported a mean of 41.94 thoughts during the news, while subjects in the ThoughtListing Technique condition reported an average of 75.42 thoughts. While this shows that people in both techniques are able to report quite a large number of thoughts, it is also another indication of differences between the two techniques (p= .012). Thoughts that were not directed at the news, but at the procedure or the research setting, were then eliminated. This difference remains when only the number of news-related thoughts were analyzed (p= .01), pointing in a direction in favor of the Thought-Listing Technique (see Table 7.1)3. The final expectation, that one of the techniques would be better suited in allowing the subjects to report on the different types of news-related thoughts could not be confirmed (p= .12). However, when analyzing all types of thoughts separately, one important type of thought (thoughts having a direct relation to the textual content of the news) was found to differ significantly (p= .000), with Thought-Listing Technique subjects having more of this type of thoughts (M=36.12; SD=14.54) than Thinking-Aloud Method subjects (M=14.69; SD=7.08). This is remarkable, as this type of thought was by far the most frequently reported type in both techniques. Apparently, in the thought-Listing Technique subjects are better able to report the most frequent appearing type of thought. Levene’s test for the equality of variances showed that the final hypothesis (there is a difference in variance in types of thoughts between the two techniques in favor of the Thinking-Aloud Method) was not substantiated (p= .18). Both techniques do not differ in variance of types of thoughts. To answer another question for this test study; what problems do subjects encounter while verbalizing their thoughts in conjunction with watching the news? Is it possible for them to verbalize their thoughts?, I
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Table 7.1. Thinking-Aloud Method and Thought-Listing Technique: Table 7.1. Number of words and thoughts compared ThinkingAloud Method (n=16)
ThoughtListing Technique (n=19)
Mean
SD
Mean
SD
Sign.a
Number of words
560.94
489.16
1966.74
1585.03
.002
Number of thoughts (total)
41.94
32.38
75.42
40.60
.012
Number of newsrelated thoughts
38.31
29.27
68.84
35.33
.01
Number of non-news related thoughts
2.75
2.98
6.37
7.68
.09
Number of types of news-related thoughts
7.06
2.11
8.00
1.37
.12
a
2-tailed
interviewed the subjects on how they had experienced the procedure. Two types of problems are frequently mentioned by the respondents. The first problem has to do with the nature of the occurrence of thoughts. Nine subjects participating in the Thinking-Aloud Method and five of the Thought-Listing Technique reported having multiple simultaneous thoughts and not always being able to report them all. They indicated that thoughts sometimes occurred extremely fast (in ‘flashes’) or even at the same time, and that they had to choose which thoughts to report and which not, or that the thoughts just passed on and were forgotten. This concurs with other studies that found that subjects did not verbalize every single thought they had (Davison et al., 1997; Halford & Sanders, 1988; Höijer, 1989). A second type of verbalization problem was the inability of some subjects to verbalize and keep track of the news at the same time. As could be expected, this was a problem mostly reported in the Thinking-Aloud Method condition; all subjects, except two, reported so, versus five subjects involved in the Thought-Listing Technique. The problem results in the subject ending up doing one of two things; either he/she would follow the news and not talk aloud, or talk aloud and not follow the news for a few moments (and as a result, sometimes missing points crucial for understanding). This ‘synchronization’ problem has been indicated by Van
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Someren et al. (1994) in other research contexts. It is therefore a problem not unique to our study. In addition to actual problems, the subjects indicated several ways in which the research procedure may have affected their behavior. Although only a limited number of subjects said this was the case, this was a recurring theme in the interviews. One way the procedure sometimes affects performance, is that the verbalization task may either increase or reduce the number of thoughts. This may either be because a subject concentrates on thinking, he/she is listening and/or watching less or more intently than in a normal situation, or because thoughts are catalyzed by the subject’s verbalizations. A second manner in which the task influences the subjects, is that it may encourage subjects to focus their attention and thoughts more on particular aspects of the news than in a normal situation. For instance, they might look more at the visual aspects of the news, or in contrast may pay more attention to the text of the news than they normally would. Finally, another way in which the procedure could influence on the way people watch, is the level of concentration with which they watch. Twenty subjects (seven in the Thinking-Aloud Method condition; thirteen in the Thought-Listing Technique condition) said their concentration on the news was either higher or lower (because they were concentrating on performing the task). In contrast, eleven subjects claimed that the way they thought about the news was not in any way influenced by neither the task nor the procedure.
Conclusions and discussion The goal of this study was to assess whether or not protocol analysis could be a useful alternative to other methods in order to study the interpretation of television news during watching. In this small pilot study, I wanted to find out if two techniques could be of use on a practical level. As shown, both techniques are well established in other research areas, and can serve to study various issues. Before I will reach some conclusions, I will look at some of the limitations of this particular study. First, the data were drawn from a very limited sample (N=35). Conclusions must therefore be seen as preliminary and indicative at the most. Secondly, although the technique ensures that the researcher cannot guide the subjects’ answers, he is still present. There is no way in which one can entirely rule out the possibility that the research context and the fact that a researcher is present has an influence on the way subjects’ report their
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thoughts. One can however assume that the influence is seriously diminished compared to other approaches. What can be concluded from the results? The findings give some indication that people are indeed able to verbalize thoughts while watching the news, albeit not always without problems. Furthermore, this verbalizing leads to protocols which can be analyzed in at least a basic fashion. They do not, for instance, consist of merely basic cries or one-syllable utterances. An advantage of the material produced, is that it can be analyzed in a qualitative manner (focusing on meanings) as well as a more quantitative manner (e.g., psychologists’ analyses of number of negative thoughts). The amount of reported thoughts did show differences between the two techniques, albeit counter to results from previous research (Blackwell et al., 1985; Lodge et al., 2000). This study obtained some good indications that the Thought-Listing Technique yields more material than the Thinking-Aloud Method. The difference between my results and those of previous research may be explained by the different research context. As indicated by the subjects themselves, television news as a ‘stimulus’ (as opposed to for instance math problems) produces an ongoing stream of sounds and images. This proved to be especially problematic in the Thinking-Aloud Method setting. As the individual’s capacity to perform multiple mental actions at one moment is limited, this requires the subject to concentrate on either the task (reporting on thoughts) or (certain parts of) the news. Either choice results in loss of material. Subjects concentrating specifically on the verbalization task will miss information in the news, to which he or she cannot react. On the other hand, subjects may concentrate on following the news, but as a consequence will be unable to verbalize thoughts. This reasoning might also explain that some subjects in the Thinking-Aloud condition experienced extended periods in which they were virtually unable to verbalize their thoughts. The problem seems to be serious enough to render the Thinking-Aloud Method, while proven useful in other research settings, of limited practical use in television news research, at least compared to the Thought-listing Technique. Conversely, the Thought-Listing Technique has the advantage of separating the verbalization from the other mental tasks. This makes it easier for the subjects to report on what they thought seconds earlier while watching the news, resulting in a greater amount of reported thoughts. It must be noted, however, that it seems to be wishful thinking to assume that we can make subjects report every single thought they have (Davison et al., 1997; Halford & Sanders, 1988). A somewhat related issue concerns the difference in amount of words and thoughts in relation to the prompts given. While in both versions the initial explicit instruction given to the subjects was kept constant, a point
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could be made that the Thought-Listing Technique version, with its 67 sections of black space, contains 67 implicit prompt to think aloud. The Thinking-Aloud Method version only contains the one explicit prompt at the beginning and occasional explicit prompts by the researcher in the case of prolonged silence by the subject. What became clear in this study is that the way subjects are instructed to perform the task is of capital importance. It has to be absolutely clear to the subjects what is expected. In the Thinking-Aloud condition it must be emphasized that the subjects should report as often as possible. The practice item proved very helpful in this regard, as it gave the subject the chance to get acquainted with the task, and it gave the researcher an extra possibility to assess whether the subject had understood his task and to correct misunderstandings. For instance, during the practice item, some subjects seemed to be under the impression that what was expected was that they only give their opinion on events and not that they report every thought they had. This could be easily determined and corrected before the actual task was started. Now that I have demonstrated that the Thought-Listing Technique, at least in this very small study, is superior to the Thinking-Aloud Method in terms of amount of verbalizations generated, this leaves a number of important questions. First of all, how should the results be interpreted? I have only analyzed the amount of words and ‘thoughts’ that people utter when watching the news. Does this automatically mean that the material is more relevant as well? We, as communication researchers, are mostly interested in the interpretation frames or perspectives that people adopt while watching the news. The question that should be addressed in further research is whether the material generated by one technique is not only superior in amount, but also in quality. Does this technique also generate interpretations that are more relevant (to researchers) than the other technique? This calls for the analysis of the actual content of verbalizations. Secondly, and equally important, is the question of construct validity. Apparently, it is possible to obtain verbalizations, using the Thought-Listing Technique. In this study these verbal utterances were known as ‘thoughts’. However, what we got could be considered merely as spontaneous reactions to the news. Therefore, the question remains, whether these verbalizations have a close relationship with actual thoughts and interpretations. Again, the impossibility of looking inside people’s heads prevents any researcher from directly measuring what they think or verifying what they report. However, there have been some studies that provide secondary evidence that there is at least a strong correlation between thoughts and verbal reports. One indicator for construct validity is congruent validity; the ability of a method to discriminate between groups of people with different charac-
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teristics, assessed by means of another, preferably undisputed method. Davison & Vogel (1997) report on various studies in which validity for Thinking-Aloud type procedures has been assessed4. In a number of these studies (amongst others: Bates, Campbell & Burgess, 1990; Coffman & Davison, 1997; Davison & Zighelboim, 1987; Schwartz & Garamoni, 1989) scores obtained through standardized psychological methods for assessing personality traits (for instance, anxiety, or self-efficacy) were found to correlate with thoughts that could be expected on the basis of these personality traits. Another indicator for construct validity is concurrent validity; the ability of a method to distinguish between groups, based on the theoretical expectation that the groups should be different on certain features. One study, using the Thinking-Aloud method (Davison, Robins & Johnson, 1983), showed that through the analysis of thoughts of subjects one was able to discriminate between subjects exposed to a tape containing social criticism and subjects exposed to a control tape. Halford and Sanders (1988) report on a study where they found the Thought-Listing Technique to discriminate between distressed and non-distressed couples. Distressed couples were found to report more negative thoughts about their partners than ‘normal’ couples. Finally, some studies compare Thinking-Aloud procedures with other cognitive assessment methods. The extent to which different measures result in similar results for a construct is called convergent validity, which may act as another indicator for construct validity. The assessment of convergent validity of cognitive assessment methods has been problematic, mainly because of faulty comparisons in tests (Chamberlain & Haaga, 1999). Evaluations of construct validity of Thinking-Aloud procedures on the basis of this research therefore remain tentative. For instance, Blackwell et al. (1985) found significant differences between Thinking-Aloud Method and Thought-Listing Technique. However, they had the subjects report their thoughts verbally in one procedure and in writing in the other. This may account for a large proportion (if not all) of the differences. Although Chamberlain and Haaga (1999) state that there is usually low convergent validity between questionnaire methods and Think-Aloud procedures, a number of studies did find a (although not always very high) correlation of either the Thinking-Aloud Method or Thought-Listing Technique with different assessment methods such as questionnaires and interviews (Cacioppo et al., 1997; Fichten et al., 2001; Henderson et al., 1995; Prins & Hanewald, 1997) scale items on psychological traits (cf. Davison et al., 1997) video-mediated recall (Halford & Sanders, 1988; Lodge et al., 2000) and behavior (Cacioppo et al., 1997; Fichten et al., 2001; Henderson et al., 1995).
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Thus, although I have not, at this stage, tested the validity of ThinkingAloud techniques in a test situation with television news, there are some indications of the validity of these techniques. We must, however, address this issue in the future. Research in which answers to questionnaires or interviews on television news issues are correlated with verbalizations of thoughts, may provide us with clues on the validity of our instrument. Other instruments may also be helpful in this regard, such as video-mediated recall (Halford & Sanders, 1988; Lodge et al., 2000) or the signaledstopping technique (Hawkins et al., 1991)5. Combining several methods for optimal results may be useful (Van Someren et al., 1994).
Notes 1. Age varied from 20 to 64 years (mean 38 years). Education was distributed as follows: 6 subjects had lower education (20 %), 13 subjects had middle-range education (37 %), and 16 subjects had higher education (43 %). We assigned subjects to one of the two techniques in couples (of same sex, education, and age group) as much as possible to ensure a more or less even distribution of these characteristics over the techniques. The author would like to thank Solange Schlösser for her invaluable help in gathering data. 2. To assess differences between means we chose to carry out a T-test for the equality of means. We did this to have some indication about the status of the differences between the two instruments, regardless that we are aware of the fact that the formal conditions for a T-test are not met in our study. This means, of course, that significant differences reported here should be interpreted as just that: indications. 3. On average between 6.56 % (Thinking-Aloud Method) and 8.45 % (ThoughtListing Technique) of the subjects’ thoughts were devoted to non-news related issues. 4. They also find their method valid on face, concurrent and predictive validity. 5. Video-mediated recall is a retrospective technique in which subjects are asked to recall their thoughts while either rewatching a tape of stimulus material in short segments, or watching a tape of their own performances on a task. In the signaled-stopping technique, subjects watch a film, and must press a button whenever a ‘thinking change’ occurs or when they think something meaningful happens.
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Benbunan-Fich, R. (2001). Using protocol analysis to evaluate the usability of a commercial website. Information & Management, 39 (2), 151–163. Berry, C. (1983). Learning from television news: A critique of the research. Journal of Broadcasting, 27 (4), 359–370. Blackwell, R. T., Galassi, J. P., Galassi, M. D. & Watson, T. E. (1985). Are cognitive assessment methods equal? A comparison of think aloud and thought listing. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 9 (4), 399–413. Brosius, H. B. (1990). Vermittlung von Informationen durch Fernsehnachrichten. Einfluss von Gestaltungsmerkmalen und Nachrichteninhalt. In K. BöhmeDürr, J. Emig & N. Seel (Eds.), Wissensveränderung durch Medien? Theoretische Grundlagen und Empirische Analysen (pp. 197–214). München: K.G. Saur. Brosius, H. B. & Berry, C. (1990). Ein drei Faktoren-modell der Wirkung von Fernsehnachrichten. Media Perspektiven, 9, 573–583. Cacioppo, J. T., Von Hippel, W. & Ernst, J. M. (1997). Mapping cognitive structures and process through verbal content: The thought-listing technique. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65 (6), 928–940. Chamberlain, J. & Haaga, D. A. (1999). Convergent validity of cognitive assessment methods. Behavior Modification, 23 (2), 294–315. Coffman, S. G. & Davison, G. C. (1997). Test-retest reliability of articulated thoughts. Unpublished data, University of Southern California. Cohen, A. A. (2001). Between content and cognition: On the impossibility of television news. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Television news research: Recent European approaches and findings (pp. 185–198). Berlin: Quintessence. Crigler, A. N., Just, M. R. & Neuman, W. R. (1994). Interpreting visual versus audio messages in television news. Journal of Communications, 44 (4), 132–140. Davison, G. C., Robins, C. & Johnson, M. (1983). Articulated thoughts during simulated situations: A paradigm for studying cognition in emotion behavior. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 7, 17–40. Davison, G. C., Vogel, R. S. & Coffman, S. G. (1997). Think-aloud approaches to cognitive assessment and the articulated thoughts in simulated situations paradigm. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65 (6), 950–958. Davison, G. C. & Zighelboim, V. (1987). Irrational beliefs in the articulated thoughts of college students with social anxiety. Journal of Rational-Emotive Therapy, 5, 238–254. Drew, D. & Reeves, B. (1980). Learning from a television news story. Communication Research, 7 (1), 121–135. Ericsson, K. A. & Simon, H. A. (1984). Protocol Analysis. Verbal reports as data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Edwardson, M., Kent, K., Engstrom, E. & Hofmann, R. (1992). Recall immediately following video-change in television news. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 4, 395–410. Fichten, C. S., Libman, E., Creti, L., Amsel, R., Sabourin, S., Brender, W. & Bailes, S. (2001). Role of thoughts during nocturnal awake times in the insomnia experience of older adults. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 25 (6), 665–692.
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quality of written questions on alcohol consumption. Comparison of bureau research and field research]. Paper presented at the SIM/KOM/KEO congress, April, 14, 2000. Jensen, K. B. (1998). News of the world. World cultures look at television news. London: Routledge. Jensen, K. B. (1988). News as a social resource: A qualitative empirical study of the reception of Danish television news. European Journal of Communication, 3, 275–301. Kushniruk, A. W. & Patel, V. L. (1998). Cognitive evaluation of decision making processes and assessment of information technology in medicine. International Journal of Medical Informatics, 5, 83–90. Lodge, J., Tripp, G. & Harte, D. K. (2000). Think-aloud, thought-listing, and video-mediated recall procedures in the assessment of children’s self-talk. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 24 (4), 399–418. Newell, A. & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Price, V., Tewksbury, D. & Powers, E. (1997). Switching trains of thought. The impact of news frames on readers’ cognitive responses. Communication Research, 24 (5), 481–506. Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (2001). An action theoretical frame of reference for the study of television news use. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Television news research: Recent European approaches and findings (pp. 91–110). Berlin: Quintessence. Robinson, J. P. & Levy, M. R. (1986). The main source: Learning from television news. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Schaap, G., Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (2001). Three decades of television news research: An action theoretical inventory of issues and problems. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Television news research: Recent European approaches and findings (pp. 47–90). Berlin: Quintessence. Schwartz, R. M. & Garamoni, G. L. (1989). Cognitive balance and psychopathology: Evaluation of an information processing model of positive and negative states of mind. Clinical Psychology Review, 9, 271–294. Segal. Z. V. & Shaw, B. F. (1988). Cognitive assessment: Issues and methods. In K. S. Dobson (Ed.), Handbook of cognitive-behavioral therapies (pp. 39–81). New York: Guilford. Someren, M. W. van, Barnard, Y. F. & Sandberg, J. A. C. (1994). The think aloud method. A practical guide to modeling cognitive processes. London: Academic Press. Stauffer, J., Frost, R. & Rybolt, W. (1986). The attention factor in recalling network television news. Journal of Communication, 4, 29–37. Swanborn, P. G. (1987). Methoden van sociaal-wetenschappelijk onderzoek [Methods in social science]. Meppel: Boom. Valkenburg, P. M., Semetko, H. A. & De Vreese, C. H. (1999). The effects of news frames on readers’ thoughts and recall. Communication Research, 26 (5), 550–569. Veer, K. van der, Ommundsen, R., Hak, T. & Larsen, K. S. (2003). Meaning shift of items in different language versions. A cross-national validation study of the
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Illegal Aliens Scale. Quality and Quantity: European Journal of Methodology, 37(2), 193–206. Wester, F. (1987). Strategieën voor kwalitatief onderzoek [Strategies for qualitative research]. Bussum: Coutinho. Woodall, W. G., Davis, D. K. & Sahin, H. (1983). From the boob tube to the black box: Television news comprehension from an information processing perspective. Journal of Broadcasting, 27 (1), 1–23.
Appendix A: Verbalization Instructions Instruction I: Thinking-Aloud Method We are interested in what you think while you are watching the news. For this reason, we ask you to think aloud while you are watching. We want you to tell us everything you are thinking from the moment the broadcast starts, right until the end. We would like you to think out loud constantly, until the end of the broadcast. In sum, you tune in to what you are thinking and say that out loud. The important thing is to keep talking. It is important that you are as complete as possible: this means that you should report seemingly ‘irrelevant’ thoughts as well. It does not matter whether your thoughts are about the news, about yourself, the situation, or something different. It does not matter whether they are positive, negative or neutral. All thoughts matter. If you should remain silent for an extended period, I will ask you to keep talking. Do not try to formulate your thoughts in advance, or to explain what you are saying. Just pretend that you are alone in the room and are talking to yourself. It is not a test; you cannot perform poorly or well. Do you have any questions? We will start with an item to practice. Instruction II: Thought-Listing Technique We are interested in what you think while you are watching the news. For this reason, we ask you to think aloud. We ask you to list all thoughts you have while you are watching the news broadcast. Every now and then we will stop the broadcast. You then have time to say your thoughts out loud. After you’ve finished, we will continue the broadcast. In sum, you tune in to your thoughts while you are watching and say them out loud later.
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It does not matter whether your thoughts are about the news, about yourself, the situation, or something different. It does not matter whether they are positive, negative or neutral. All thoughts matter. It is important that you are as complete as possible: this means that you should report seemingly ‘irrelevant’ thoughts as well. Do not try to formulate your thoughts in advance, or to explain what you are saying. Just pretend that you are alone in the room and are talking to yourself. It is not a test; you cannot perform poorly or well. Do you have any questions? We will start with an item to practice.
Appendix B: Interviews I Cognitive Interview Topic list Respondent number: _____ Date:
__________
Introduction This part is meant to check whether I have understood everything you said correctly. If needed, we can rewind the tape of the broadcast, to help you to recollect the thoughts you had. Then, I can check whether or not I have missed some things and whether I understood the things you said.
Interviewer: Consult your notes on the observation sheet to ask questions! The questions below do not necessarily have to be asked in the presented order.
1. You said: “…” [consult notes] What did you mean? 2. You said: “…” [consult notes]. Why did you say that? What were you thinking when you said it? How did you come to that thought? 3. Can you tell me, when you review the item, what you were thinking? 4. What else did you think? 5. During some parts, you did not say much or anything. Didn’t you think anything at that moment?
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II Qualitative interview Topic list Introduction This part is meant to look at the procedure we followed, and your experience with it. 1. Was the instruction clear to you? Did you understand what was expected? 2. Did you find it difficult or easy to think aloud? 3. Did you encounter any problems? 4. Were there specific moments when you had these problems? 5. Did you find it difficult to verbalize your thoughts? 6. Did you find it difficult to keep following the news because of your task to think aloud? 7. You had to think aloud: do you think that it has affected your thoughts? 8. Was the stream of thoughts interrupted by the thinking aloud, or by the news? 9. To what extent does the manner in which you just watched the news differ from the normal situation? Do you normally talk aloud while watching the news? 10. Did you have other types of thought than you normally would? For instance due to my presence. 11. Did you have less or more thoughts than you normally would? 12. Were you less or more concentrated during watching, or was there no difference? 13. Do you think the procedure, or the interview situation affected what you said aloud? For instance, did you not say certain thoughts aloud? 14. Do you watch the news on a regular basis? How many times a week? Which bulletin do you watch? 15. Did you happen to see this particular broadcast before?
Year of birth: Sex: Education: Were there other persons present? Did the procedure take place without interruptions?
19__ M/F _______ Y/N Y/N
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8 Reconceptualizing media literacy Judith E. Rosenbaum and Johannes W. J. Beentjes
Abstract This contribution describes the first step in a research project aiming at the development of an instrument to measure media literacy. In short, media literacy can be defined as the extent to which people are critical media users. Although media literacy has been a popular research topic for several decades, so far no attempt has been made to develop an instrument and measure the level of media literacy of the general population. In light of the increasing importance of the media in our daily lives, finding out the extent to which people appraise the media in a critical manner is worthwhile. This contribution outlines the first step towards the creation of such an instrument: the reconceptualization of media literacy1. Keywords: media literacy, social constructivism, social action theory, model development
Why media literacy? The importance of media literacy is related to the assumption that the media are institutions that play a large role in people’s lives. This role becomes apparent on both the individual and societal level. The role of the media on the individual level First of all, research has shown that people spend a large amount of time using the media; people are bombarded with thousands of mediated messages every day, and children grow up in a world saturated with media messages (Dorr, Browne Graves & Phelps, 1980) An example of this research is a survey carried out in the U.S. on behalf of the Kaiser Family Foundation. This study found that children between the ages of 8 and 18 spent 6 hours and 32 minutes per day using the media (Roberts, Foehr, Rideout & Brodie, 1999). Second, people are likely to obtain most, if not all, of their knowledge about aspects of the world not directly accessible to them from the media
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(Alvardo & Boyd-Barrett, 1992; Robinson & Levy, 1996), a notion which leads to the assumption that the media seem to have the power to shape people’s ideas about and opinions on subjects with which they have had no direct experience. Additionally, research has discovered that the portrayal of people, events and situations in the media is usually far from unbiased and objective (Entman, 1989). Hence, one can conclude that the media are capable of leaving people with an image of (a part of) reality which is biased and, at times, incorrect. Third, the media serve various functions in people’s lives, for not only do they provide people with information and entertainment, but they also serve as a mediator in people’s personal relationships and the creation of their personal identity. According to Winnick (1988), the media function as a user’s friend, clock and minister, by providing punctuation and the opportunity for para-social interaction. Additionally, the media and particularly television serve two cultural functions. First, the media teach people about their own culture, as well as about others, through the stories they tell. In oral cultures, the values, norms, laws and history are passed on by the recounting of society’s myths and stories. In contemporary Western societies, television has been described as the reviver of this tribal transmission of myths and stories, by reinforcing norms and values through its messages (Brown, 1998; Fiske & Hartley, 1978; Gerbner et al., 1978). Hence television can be described as an important socializing agent, on a par with traditional socializing agents such as the family and church. Additionally, television has a second cultural function as bard; i.e., it contributes to the maintenance of one’s cultural identity by making media users feel that their way of seeing and structuring reality really does work, and that other people share this reality with them (Fiske & Hartley, 1978; Berry, 1988). The role of the media in society On a societal level, the media play an important role, for there appears to be an organic link between communication and democracy. Keane (1991), who described this link in great detail, explained that direct democracy is only possible in small states, whereas in modern, larger states, a democracy requires mechanisms of representation; i.e., the mass media. Taking the increasing pervasiveness of the media into account, Keane concluded that the public sphere, defined by Habermas (1989) as the forum of public discussion, has moved into the domain of the media. As a result, it is often argued that the media have gained control over most democratic processes (Potter, 1998; Silverblatt, 1995). This raises the question what the consequences of this development will be for the quality of the democ-
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racy. Entman (1989), who examined the relationship between communication and democracy, noted that the latter is definitely affected by the power and performance of the media. How the media affect democracy will be explained in the following paragraphs. A ‘true’ democracy has two basic requirements. As Bagdikian (1985) pointed out, in order to maintain a democracy, the media must, first, sustain a plurality of voices where both the majority and the minority can be heard. He added that in a modern, dynamic and rapidly changing society, a lack of diversity in the media leaves people partially blinded and thus unable to fulfill their role as participating citizens. Additionally, a lack of such diversity could lead to a population becoming apathetic and disinterested which will in turn also weaken the democracy. Thus, the second prerequisite for a well-functioning democracy is a competent citizenry which has access to and is fed by information relevant to issues on the political agenda (Brants & Neijens, 1998: 149; Hobbs, 1998a). Recent developments in the media suggest that the diversity in the content offered by media institutions, which, as described in the previous paragraph, is very important to the maintenance of democracy, is threatened by the commercialization of the mass communication industries. Although advocates of market sovereignty claim that economic competition between different newspapers, television or radio stations will meet the needs of the audience, it can also be argued that the increasing importance of financial gains within the media have led to less diversity in media content. First, the budget available for the production of news has, in the case of a large number of television stations, been decreased, since audiences are known to prefer entertainment. This is an important development since, in terms of democracy, news programs are of vital importance for they are one of the main sources of information that people use when reflecting on, and making decisions about the future of their society. Since this focus on financial gains means that news producers will try and cut back expenses, it will also mean that journalists are more likely to spend as little money as possible on finding information. In practice this means that reporters have come to rely more and more on the political elite for most of their information, which has resulted in the news being more one-sided and superficial than when reporters relied on more than just one source (Entman, 1989). Secondly, Keane (1991) suggested that the profit-oriented attitude of most media institutions works against the opinions of minorities and promotes those of the majority. Keane (1991), like Bagdikian (1985), noted that the increasing importance of media advertising actually appears to restrict the listening, reading and viewing choices of many media users as
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well as the quality of media content. This development appears to be caused by the fact that program content is adapted to the lowest common denominator in order to attract the largest possible audience. The decline in the quality of the information provided by the media, as described above, suggests that citizens need to be more than merely engaged in order to uphold a democracy. Citizens can only obtain a complete picture of societal developments, if they know how to access and select a wide variety of sources of news, and are able to critically evaluate media content. According to Entman (1989), however, most citizens seem to shy away from such a critical attitude and prefer cosmetic images and airy promises. Therefore, the news, in order to attract large audiences (and thus sell advertising slots), has no choice but present simple, superficial news. Hence, the poor quality of the news is probably not only related to the profit-minded nature of the media institutions, but also to the audience’s tastes. The role that the media play in the maintenance of democracy makes it clear that if one wishes to sustain a well-running democracy, media users must be media literate. This entails three items: first, they must know how to access varying sources of information, secondly, they must know how to critically select, analyze and evaluate messages, and finally, they must be aware of the fact that the media do not present the entire scope of opinions regarding a specific issue, but highlight only a few.
Previous media literacy research: Lack of theory This research project will differ from previous projects on one important point, namely through the development of a theoretical framework. Although media literacy has been defined in various ways, no definition has been constructed using any kind of theoretical framework. This is most likely the result of the ‘grassroots’ nature of the research into media literacy; i.e., most media literacy research is based on the practical experiences of educators in the field of media education. The lack of a theoretical basis has one very important consequence for research into media literacy. It means that there is no clear idea of what it is that people need to know in order to be considered media literate. Each scholar uses his/her own approach to the concept of media literacy which has resulted in numerous different versions of what media literacy entails (cf. Brown, 1991; Van der Voort & Vooijs, 1989). As a result of this lack of unanimity about how to define media literacy, a confusing diversity of ad hoc approaches to the subject of media literacy has arisen (Considine, 1997). This lack of a common definition means that one is unable to com-
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pare either the content of all the various media education projects or the effects of such programs, and that as a result researchers can learn very little from one another’s mistakes or successes. Additionally, because there is no common ground between the various researchers, it has been impossible to create a common body of knowledge and findings from which research into media literacy can move forward.
Uses of an instrument to measure media literacy Concern about the potential influence of the media on the general population, as underlined by the previous paragraphs, has led to the creation of numerous media literacy projects (e.g., Brown, 1991; Criticos, 1997; Greenaway, 1997; Hobbs, 1998a, b; Hobbs & Frost, 2001). In spite of this concern, however, little is known about the level of media literacy of the average media user, as testified by Buckingham, Hey and Moss (1992). This is because media literacy research has been concerned mostly with testing the effectiveness of various media literacy programs (cf. Hobbs & Frost, 2001; Vooijs & Van der Voort, 1989, 1990) and little research has been concerned with measuring the so-called entry condition; i.e., knowledge of the media that pupils possess before entering a media education project (Alvardo & Boyd-Barrett, 1992; Bouwman, 1989; Duncan, 1996; Fuenzalida, 1992; Hobbs, 1998a; Piette & Giroux, 1997). In 1989, Van der Voort and Vooijs already suggested that the development of an instrument to measure the level of media literacy of the general population would be very useful, and in 1992 Hart noted that effective learning in media education depends on three factors, the first of which is knowing about students’ current state of knowledge and understanding. Brown (1991) also suggested that a media program should be evaluated for its effectiveness with subjects through time, an observation which implies the need for an instrument to measure students’ level of media literacy. In our research project, an attempt will be made to create an instrument to measure what people know about the media, and their own use of the media. Developing such an instrument could be very beneficial to future research for the following two reasons. First, the results obtained with this instrument could provide information about the way in which media consumers approach the media. It could supply answers to questions such as; how critical are media consumers, are they aware of how they use the media, and of the possible impact of the media? Secondly, the information received from this instrument could render future media education projects more effective, because media education
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projects can be adapted more adequately to students’ ability. Van der Voort and Vooijs (1989) noted that the problem with most media education projects is that because of the lack of information on the entry behavior and/or knowledge of the participants, they are not based on what students already know about the media, but instead on what researchers feel media consumers should know about the media. This implies that the goals that these media education projects have set may not be realistic or appropriate. Thus, the eventual aim of this study is to develop an instrument to measure media literacy. However, the development of such an instrument requires a well-conceptualized and theoretically grounded concept of media literacy, which will be developed in the following paragraphs.
Conceptual foundations for media literacy Various scholars concerned with media literacy or media education have, most of them without actually referring to it, adopted a social constructivist perspective, a perspective which, according to McQuail (2000), assumes that the media create a symbolic environment. First, many authors observed that two of the basic requirements of a media literate audience are: 1) that they are aware that the messages produced by the media are constructed representations of reality, and 2) that individuals construct meaning from these messages, thus constructing their own perspective on reality (e.g., Alvardo & Boyd-Barrett, 1992; Brown, 2001; Masterman, 1980). Both of these aspects of media literacy closely resemble the principles of the social constructivist perspective. Second, during the National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy in 1992, various media literacy researchers discussed the specific meanings and uses of media literacy. Aufderheide (1997), in her report of this conference, described five precepts which the majority of the different media literacy projects appear to have in common: (1) media and media messages are constructed; (2) media messages are produced within economic, social, political, historical and aesthetic contexts; (3) the interpretative meaning-making processes involved in message reception consists of an interaction between the reader, the text and the culture; (4) media have unique languages, i.e., characteristics which typify various forms, genres and symbol systems of communication; (5) media representations play a role in people’s understanding of social reality. Various other researchers also advocated these same precepts as forming the foundation for media literacy research (Brown, 2001; Hobbs, 1997). These concepts suggest a constructivist approach to the media due to
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their resemblance to the principles of constructivism as advocated by constructivists such as Berger and Luckmann (1967) and Adoni and Mane (1984). The constructivist approach to the media assumes that reality is not an objective entity, but a social construct, created through people’s actions (Van den Bulck, 1996). McQuail (2000) adds that this process of reality-construction is two-fold. First, the media construct a version of social reality by “… framing images of reality in predictable and patterned ways” (421), and second, people construct their own view of social reality in interaction with the symbolic constructions offered by the media.
Developing a constructivist model of media literacy The development of a model which could serve as a theoretical framework for the concept of media literacy is based on the action theoretical reference model of media use as developed by Renckstorf (1996) and specified by Schaap, Renckstorf and Wester (2001) (see Figure 8.1). The action theoretical perspective on media use is based on social constructivism, for it presumes that people construct their own realities, using the media as one of the means to achieve this construction. The Schaap et al. model describes the role that the media play in people’s lives, and specifies this role by naming three societal domains which play a part in determining how people construct reality: institutions, information and interpretation. It describes, in great detail, all the steps that individuals take in order to arrive at an interpretation of a media message, and a construction of reality. The first reason why we decided to use this model as the base for the development of a theoretical framework was because media literacy, like the action theoretical reference model of media use is all about how people deal with the media. The second reason is related to the notion that a great deal of previous research into media literacy implies a link to the constructivist perspective (see previous paragraph), which forms the theoretical basis for this model as well. When constructing a model of media literacy based on the Schaap et al. model, only those elements and relations were included which were relevant for a study into media literacy. This led to the creation of the following heuristic model (see Figure 8.2). The first element in the newly developed model, ‘Institutional features’, refers to the economic, legal and technological aspects of the production of mediated messages. Because ‘institutional features’ in the constructivist model of media literacy refers to features of media institutions only, the name of this element has been changed into ‘media institutions’. In terms
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Figure 8.1. Action theoretical reference model for the study of TV news use: Figure 8.1. Reduced Version (Schaap, Renckstorf & Wester, 2001)
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Figure 8.2. A constructivist model of media literacy
of media literacy, this element entails knowledge about the economic, political and legal contexts within which media messages are produced, and how these contexts influence the actual media institutions and the type of contents they produce. The next two elements in this model are called ‘social network’ and ‘situations’. Both refer to the social environment surrounding an individual. Schaap et al. (2001) describe the element ‘social network’, as the social situation which can affect the content of a media message as well as a person’s attitude towards the media. In regard to media literacy, this element suggests an awareness of societal structures, and how these interact with
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the media; i.e., how the media influence the social structures and how the cultural and social structures in a given society influence the media and their messages. It also suggests an understanding that other people, because they may live in different social circumstances, may interpret the same message differently. The third element is called ‘situations’ and refers to “All events of which the media may take notice” (Schaap et al., 2001: 52). Regarding media literacy, this element suggests that people should know that what one sees, hears or reads in the media is a skewed and biased reflection of reality. This element includes the knowledge that what one perceives through the media is a representation of selected events. Additionally, this element includes the ability to understand that the media do not provide a perfect reflection of reality. The first three elements, ‘media institutions’, ‘social network’ and ‘situations’ together make up the social cultural context of media use. The fourth element, ‘information’ is described as “… the entire range of situations a person is confronted with” (Schaap et al., 2001: 53). Although the Schaap et al. model focused on all incoming information, in the constructivist model of media literacy this element refers to the representation of people, places, events and situations by the media only. First of all, this element refers to the manner of representation; i.e., the extent to which a message is biased. Secondly, this element refers to the awareness that a media message is a construction, and to the understanding of the way in which the representation is created; i.e., the codes and conventions used in a media message. Finally, this element refers to the notion that people should be aware of the fact that there are multiple sources of information. In this model the elements information and the social cultural context are portrayed as being related to each other. This relationship symbolizes the notion that the content of a media message is influenced by not only the nature of the situations that determine the content, or by the institutions that produce the message, but also by the social structures that help define the boundaries within which a message will be produced. In terms of media literacy, this relationship entails the awareness that dominant social norms and values, as well as the nature of the institutions in which a message is produced, influence the content of the message. Additionally, the relationship between information and social cultural context also runs in the reverse direction. In this case it refers to the extent to which a media message reflects the dominant social cultural norms and actions in a society, and/or the extent to which a media message affects the social cultural environment. The following elements, ‘interaction situation’, ‘structure of relevances’, ‘definition of the situation’, ‘action strategies’, ‘objectivation’ and ‘sociali-
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zation’ may be regarded as aspects of the interpretation of media content or ‘information’. The fifth element, ‘interaction situation’, refers to the situations in which people use the media. In respect to media literacy, this element suggests that media users should be aware of the types of situations in which they use the media, the extent to which the media are used for para-social interaction. The sixth element, ‘structure of relevance’ refers to the “conditions of internal action” (Schaap et al., 2001: 53), and is concerned with the structure of an individual’s knowledge. In terms of media literacy, this element refers to people’s awareness that ‘everything inside their head’ determines how they respond to the media. In this sense, this element does not differ from the element ‘definition of the situation’. The latter posits that people should be aware of the process through which they analyze the media, and thus implicitly includes an understanding of the knowledge, motives and goals that aid people in reaching their interpretation. In short, since both ‘structure of relevances’ and ‘definition of the situation’ refer to the same aspect of knowledge about media use, we have decided to combine these two elements into one, namely ‘definition of the situation’. ‘Definition of the situation’, element 7, refers to the interpretation process, wherein one uses one’s structure of relevances to come to an understanding of the media, as well as to the result or product of this interpretation process (Schaap et al., 2001). In terms of media literacy, this element refers to people’s ability to analyze and interpret media content. It also includes people’s awareness of the way in which they interpret media messages, and that everything inside their mind, such as motivation, goals and knowledge, influences how they look at media messages. The eighth element ‘action strategies’ refers to the action designed by the individual as a result of the received information and the subsequent definition of a situation (Schaap et al., 2001). In regard to media literacy, this element refers to three issues. First, it suggests that people know what kinds of situations inspire them to use the media. This includes both situations that involve media use, and situations that do not. Second, this element refers to an awareness of how the media inspire people to take certain actions. More specifically, this element also refers to the ability to access and select multiple sources of information. The ninth element, ‘objectivation’, refers to the creation of habitual behavior patterns, which can include media use. This element suggests that media literate people should be aware of their routine use of the media; i.e., their patterns of media use. It also suggests that media literacy includes knowing how routine patterns of media use came about. The tenth and final element, ‘socialization’, refers to the process through which an individual becomes a member of a society, and internalizes its
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norms, values and accepted patterns of behavior. Regarding media literacy, this element suggests that media users should be able to see how the media socialize people into society by teaching them the dominant norms and values. In the model the element ‘interpretation’ is linked to both ‘information’ and ‘social network’. First of all, the relationship between ‘information’ and ‘interpretation’ runs both ways. On the one hand, it refers to the influence that the content of a media message might have on the way in which the process of interpretation occurs. On the other hand, it refers to the process through which people construct their own version of the information presented to them through this process of interpretation. Second, the relationship between ‘social network’ and ‘interpretation’ refers, on the one hand, to the extent to which one’s interpretation is influenced by one’s culture. On the other hand this relationship also points to the notion that one’s interpretation of a mediated message can influence the dominant norms and values, and culture in general. An example of this would be when the broadcasting of, what at first seems a provocative program, gradually renders what used to be considered transgressive behavior more accepted. In short, we have used the action theoretical reference model as explained by Schaap et al. (2001) as a heuristic model to identify the essential elements of media literacy. These elements are presented in what can be called a constructivist model of media literacy (see Figure 8.2). The model is characterized as constructivist because all the components imply that media use plays a role in people’s construction of reality. This model differs from the action-theoretical model as developed by Schaap et al. (2001) because it does not have the intention to display the process through which people construct their actions. Instead it outlines a conceptualization of media literacy by showing the main components of media literacy, as well as the relationships between the components. The model reconceptualizes media literacy as knowledge and abilities concerning the production, interpretation and content of media information within a socio-cultural context, as well as knowledge about the relations between these elements.
A constructivist model of media literacy: A synthesis? How does this newly developed model relate to previous research in the field of media literacy? This question is explored by briefly comparing the components of the model to previous ideas about what media literacy should entail. The elements ‘social cultural context’ and ‘information’ as defined in the constructivist model of media literacy appear to be a com-
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pendium of most of the features of media literacy discussed in previous research. Conversely, although some of the steps described in the element ‘interpretation’ are discussed by various researchers, on the whole this element is not often discussed or mentioned in relation to media literacy. Descriptions of media literacy in existing literature that can be categorized under the element ‘institutions’ emphasize different aspects of the institutional context in which media messages are produced. Some authors focus on specific aspects of the institutional context. Dorr, Browne Graves and Phelps (1980), Lewis and Jhally (1998), Meyrowitz (1998) and Thoman (1999) for instance, mentioned the knowledge people should have about the economic goals of the media; i.e., their profit motive. Swinkels (1992) posited that people should be familiar with the producers’ intentions and the conditions of production. Vooijs and van der Voort (1989) pointed at insight into the different kinds of television stations, the various broadcasting systems and an understanding of the tactics of programming. Others provided a broader description of the institutional context. Brown (2001), for instance, notes that people should learn about: “… forces shaping media content, including advertising, economics and government regulation and interest groups” (684). This description is echoed by several other researchers, such as Aufderheide (1997) and Hobbs (1997; 1998a; 1998b). Buckingham (1998) argued that media literacy should include knowledge about ‘media agencies’, or “… knowledge about who communicates what and why, who produces, what are the media institutions, economics and ideology, intentions and results” (32). Alvardo and Boyd-Barrett (1992) and Davies (1997) also referred to this aspect, which was first developed by the British Film Institute. Finally, Lloyd-Kolkin, Wheeler and Strand (1980) when discussing what people should know in regard to the institutional context of media production, mentioned: “… the television industry, including the networks, local stations, public television … the role of the advertiser, the importance of ratings and of scheduling. Basic federal regulations regarding television and the financing of programs and the relationship between producers, networks and affiliates” (123). The next element, ‘social network’, is often touched upon in descriptions of media literacy. Some authors note that media literacy involves the understanding that people from different backgrounds tend to interpret the same message differently, as well as the ability to describe how these different groups of people will interpret media content differently (Criticos, 1997; Hobbs & Frost, 2001; Meyrowitz, 1998; Thoman, 1999). In addition, Criticos (1997) described media literacy as the ability to look at the media from a political, social, racial or gender perspective that is different from one’s own.
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Some authors focused on a second aspect of element ‘social network’, namely the knowledge of the social conditions of the production of a message (Lewis & Jhally, 1998; Hobbs, 1998a; Alvardo & Boyd-Barrett, 1992). Brown (2001), for instance, noted that “Critical viewing is one major component of media literacy, referring to understanding of and competence with television, including its social, cultural, psychological aspects” (681). A final aspect of ‘social network’ that some researchers focused on was the relationship between media content and culture (Swinkels, 1992). Greenaway (1997) claimed that understanding that media texts influence one’s culture and the society’s dominant ideology is a core concept of media literacy. Quin and MacMahon (1997) posited that media literate people should be able to explain the way in which stereotypes in the media serve the economic and social interest of particular groups in the community. Finally, Lloyd-Kolkin et al. (1980) mentioned the awareness of the social responsibilities of the creators of media content, and the extent to which the media influence lifestyles and values. The third element of media literacy is ‘situations’. Authors who discussed this element focused mainly on the relationship between reality and the media when discussing media literacy. Criticos (1997) described media literacy as the ability to see how the media reflect reality, Alvardo and Boyd-Barrett (1992), Buckingham (1998) and Davies (1997) all claimed that media literacy includes understanding the relationship between media texts and actual places, people, events and ideas. Media literacy also includes an awareness of the fact that messages are a representation of social reality and that mediated messages define perceptions about the world that people share with one another (Hobbs, 1997, 1998a). Hobbs also claimed that media literacy includes the awareness that messages have a relationship to the lived experience of individuals in many cultures, and that these messages help people make sense of the past, present and future; i.e., these representations play a role in people’s understanding of social reality. The next element of media literacy is, according to the constructivist model of media literacy, ‘information’, or the content of mediated messages. As is the case with the two elements discussed in the previous paragraphs, various researchers have focused on different features of the same element. Some authors focus on the awareness of the constructed nature of media content. Worsnop (1992) claimed that media literacy entails the awareness that media content is a construction. Criticos (1997) seconded this idea, and noted that students should be able to see human agency and the manufactured nature of media content below the surface. They should
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also be able to discern falsification, bias and absences in media reportage and representation. Lloyd-Kolkin et al. (1980) included knowledge about the construction of news stories. They also claimed that media literacy includes understanding the portrayal of social and personal values in the media. Other authors emphasized the textual analysis of media content. Aufderheide (1997) alleged that people should know that form and content are related in every medium, each of which has a unique aesthetic, codes and conventions. Quin and MacMahon (1997) stated that textual analysis begins with a study of the text’s construction, the symbols, the narrative and the encoding of a message. Lloyd-Kolkin et al. (1980) were more specific in their description of media literacy; they noted that media literacy includes the ability to analyze content in terms of plot construction, characterization, dialogue and pacing. Brown (2001) and Finch and Jackson (2001) added the ability to discern and describe more technical codes and conventions, such as those related to the creation of specific images and sounds. Additionally, Vooijs and van der Voort (1989) deemed recognizing stereotypes through watching television an important aspect of media literacy. Finally, some authors note that media literacy includes knowledge about which production techniques are expected to elicit specific responses from a certain audience and why. Meyrowitz (1998), for instance, argued that media users should be able to recognize the variables typically used to shape perception and response to mediated communication. Buckingham (1998) claimed that people should not only be familiar with the different kinds of media categories, but also how this categorization related to people’s understanding of media content. The same claim was made by Alvardo and Boyd-Barrett (1992) and Davies (1997). Lastly, Hobbs and Frost (2001) claimed that audiences should be able to identify specific visual elements designed to draw the attention of specific target audiences. As opposed to the previous components, ‘interpretation’ is a relatively little discussed element of media literacy. Various authors, if they focus on the ‘interpretation’ element of mass communication, restrict their description of media literacy to a very general outline of the element ‘interpretation’, especially when compared to the model. Hobbs (1997, 1998a), for instance, emphasized that individuals negotiate meaning by interacting with messages, and that the meaning of a message is found in the act of interpretation. She added the notion that the interpretative meaning-making process involved in message reception consists of an interaction between the reader, the text and the reader’s culture. Additionally, Worsnop (1992) noted that people will use the combination of the text and their own per-
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sonal experiences to create a whole new meaning for a specific part of one’s social reality Other authors provide a more detailed description of what people need to know in order to be considered media literate. Some, for instance, propose that media literacy includes the awareness of how much time people spend with the media, and why. As Lloyd-Kolkin et al. (1980) pointed out, one should not only be aware of the quantity of one’s media use, but also the role that the media plays in one’s life. This view on media literacy reflects the element ‘interaction situation’. A large number of media literacy researchers, when outlining a definition of media literacy, discuss the element ‘definition of the situation’. For instance, Worsnop (1992) stated that people should be aware that they bring their own personal experience into the interpretation process. Hobbs and Frost (2001), on the other hand, noted that one should also understand one’s motivation for using the media. Additionally, according to Alvardo and Boyd-Barrett (1992) media education included students being able to understand how they make sense of a message, and Thoman’s (1999) notion of media literacy also entailed the ability to challenge and question media content. Vooijs and van der Voort (1989), when providing a summary of existing television literacy projects also entailed a few aspects which belong to the ‘definition of the situation’ category. For starters, they noted that a television literate viewer is one who is critical of media content, one who not only understands media content, but who can evaluate it as well. They claimed that television literacy also included the ability to critically evaluate television commercials, thus reducing their impact. The element ‘action strategies’ received far less attention than ‘definition of the situation’. Vooijs and van der Voort (1990) claimed that media literacy entails the ability to manage one’s own use of the media as well as a readiness to compare media content to outside sources of information. This claim was echoed by Lloyd-Kolkin et al. (1980), who noted that media literacy included the ability to compare portrayals of specific groups of people to the real world, as well as the ability to compare different sources of news. Thoman (1999) and Hobbs (1997) also posited that media literacy included the ability to access and select as well as verify, organize and remember information. Only a few authors discuss the last two elements ‘objectivation’ and ‘socialization’. In regard to ‘objectivation’, Desimoni (1992) mentioned that the media education project taught in the Swiss canton of Vaud included rendering people aware of the amount of time they spend using the media, and teaching them to make conscious decisions about their use of the media (cf. Vooijs & Van der Voort, 1989). The element ‘sociali-
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zation’ is briefly touched upon by Thoman (1999) when she noted that media literacy includes the ability to know how; “The media shape what we know and understand about the world we live in” (51; cf. Lloyd-Kolkin et al., 1980). So, in past media literacy research, ‘interpretation’ is described in a manner limited to either a general idea of what it entails, or to a very meager discussion of, in most cases, only a few of the five steps outlined in the model. This is where the constructivist model of media literacy is more than just a synthesis of existing research, for the model describes, in great detail, a total of five steps involved in the process of interpretation. Each step outlining an important part of the process through which people come to an interpretation of a media message. Besides these nine elements of media literacy, the model also depicts several relationships between the various elements, some of which have been discussed in previous research, others which have not. The relationship between ‘social cultural context’ and ‘information’ is discussed briefly by a few researchers. Brown (2001) emphasized the influence that media institutions have on the content of a media message, while Greenaway (1997) and Lloyd-Kolkin et al. (1980) focused on the extent to which a media message might influence one’s culture. The notion that the dominant culture influences the content of a mediated message appeared to be ignored in media literacy research. The relationship between ‘interpretation’ and ‘social network’ is limited to a brief, general description by Hobbs (1997, 1998a). She claimed that the interpretative meaning-making process involved in message reception consists of an interaction between the reader, the text and the reader’s culture. The link between ‘information’ and ‘interpretation’ is only discussed from one point of view, namely that people will bring their own personal experience into the act of interpretation (Worsnop, 1992). Hobbs (1997, 1998a) also briefly touched upon this relationship when she mentioned that individuals negotiate meaning by interacting with messages, and that the meaning of a message is found in the act of interpretation. The notion that the specific content of mediated message might influence the process of interpretation is not mentioned. Thus, when it comes to outlining the concept of media literacy, the constructivist model of media literacy is more than just a summary of previous research. Not only does it discuss the element ‘interpretation’ which is largely ignored by most researchers, it also provides a more complete picture of the relationships between the elements of media literacy than is the case in previous research. In short, one can conclude that the model expands current knowledge and assumptions about media literacy.
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Moving forward In this study an attempt was made to construct a theoretical foundation for research into media literacy through the creation of the constructivist model of media literacy. This model defines media literacy as knowledge and abilities concerning the production, interpretation and content of media information within a socio-cultural context, as well as knowledge about the relationships between these elements. The eventual aim of this research project is to develop an instrument to measure media literacy, for little is known about how media literate people actually are. The constructivist model of media literacy can be used to lay the groundwork for the development of such an instrument, because it outlines the elements of media literacy, and the relationships between those elements, that people should be aware of. In order to develop such an instrument, this research project will move through the following phases. First of all, the aspects and relationships as defined in the constructivist model of media literacy will be operationalized. The next step will be to use these operationalized concepts to develop open-ended questions, which can be used in a one-on-one interview. The results from these interviews will, in turn, be used to create a quantitative survey, which will be used to measure the level of media literacy of a much larger population, which should produce some insight into the knowledge and understanding that people have of the media.
Notes 1. This reconceptualization was completed in a previous article (Rosenbaum & Beentjes, 2001). In this contribution the definitions of the various aspects of media literacy have been re-examined and where needed, adapted.
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9 Elderly people’s media use in the context 9 of personal meaning Margot van der Goot, Johannes W. J. Beentjes and Martine van Selm
Abstract Our aim in this chapter is to develop a theoretical model that describes the connection between elderly people’s media use and personal meaning construction. This theoretical model is the starting point of our research project on elderly people’s media use. Personal meaning construction refers to the process in which persons assign meaning to themselves and their lives. The (re)construction of personal meaning is important especially for elderly people, because later life is characterized by changes (for example losses) that may lead to experiencing daily life as less meaningful (van Selm & Dittmann-Kohli, 1998). The central question in our research project is how media use contributes to this process through which elderly people experience their daily lives as more or less meaningful. We developed our theoretical model (MUPM-model: Media Use in the context of Personal Meaning) by integrating two theoretical approaches. The first approach studies media use as social action (Renckstorf, 1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). The second approach studies personal meaning from a life-span perspective (Dittmann-Kohli, 1990, 1994, 1995; van Selm & Dittmann-Kohli, 1998). Keywords: Elderly, media use, personal meaning, social action
Introduction Much of the research on elderly people’s media use was conducted in the 1970s in the United States and was focused on television. Several authors (Rubin, 1982; Schulze, 1998) summarized this research and argued that in future research on media and the elderly, elderly people should no longer be considered to be a homogenous group and age should no longer be considered to be the factor that explains media use. In research on elderly people’s media use, more attention should be paid to the situational circumstances and psychological characteristics of seniors. Schulze (1998)
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emphasized the role of socialization and personality. She states that future research on communication and ageing should try to explain the primary and secondary communication of the elderly by looking at their (media)biography, their situation, their personality and their media competences. We agree with these authors that in research on elderly people’s media use attention should be paid to differences within the elderly population regarding their media use. In our research project we emphasize personal meaning construction because we think that personal meaning construction plays a central role in the connection between people’s circumstances and their media use. That is to say, people interpret situations and subsequently construct media use in a way that is meaningful to them. Personal meaning is also central when studying media biography and socialization, as people, during their lives, learn in which context which media are meaningful to them. This chapter focuses on the theoretical model that we are developing for this project. On the basis of the MUPM-model (Media Use in the context of Personal Meaning) we are able to study how media use is connected with the way elderly people experience their daily lives. The MUPM-model is based on concepts that are drawn from two approaches. The first approach is related to communication science and considers media use to be social action (Renckstorf, 1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). The second approach is part of psychogerontology and studies personal meaning from a life-span perspective (Dittmann-Kohli, 1990, 1994, 1995; van Selm, 1998; van Selm & Dittmann-Kohli, 1998; Thissen, Westerhof, Dittmann-Kohli & Stevens, 2000; Westerhof & Dittmann-Kohli, 1997). In this chapter these two approaches will first be discussed separately. Next, the similar roots of these two approaches and the relevance of both approaches for studying elderly people’s media use will be described. Finally, the MUPM-model and its application in empirical research will be explained.
Media Use as Social Action The Media Use as Social Action model has been developed by Renckstorf (1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001) and is meant to yield insight in how individuals deal with the media in their daily lives. In our present society, media use is one of the actions that people construct in their daily lives. Media use, therefore, should not be analyzed using theory that is only applicable to media use, but theory that is also applicable to other actions as well (Renckstorf, 1977).
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In this approach, media use is seen from an action-theoretical perspective. A central tenet is that people interpret the ‘objects’ that they come across, before they construct action. Action is thus always constructed by individuals on the basis of the meaning they assign to situations (Renckstorf, 1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). For research on media use, this central tenet means that people who watch television or who read the newspaper should not be considered ‘recipients’ of media messages, but rather as subjective producers of meanings. They are not passive, but they actively construct media use and interpret media use in accordance with their own objectives, intentions, and interests (Huysmans, 2001; Renckstorf, 1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). Regarding media messages this central tenet implies that these messages are interpreted. If individuals observe media messages, they will interpret the messages based on their individual stock of knowledge. The same media message may thus be interpreted differently by different individuals. Media messages in turn may influence individuals. On the one hand, the message can correspond with the knowledge in the individual’s stock of knowledge and to that extent confirm individuals in what they already know. On the other hand, a media message might cause problems when it does not comply with the individual’s stock of knowledge (Huysmans, 2001; Renckstorf, 1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). The model distinguishes between ritualized and instrumental media use. Media use is constructed by individuals based on their stock of knowledge. If past experience has taught that media use is suited for a specific type of context, individuals will use media without further reflection. This is called ritualized media use. When, on the other hand, a situation does not correspond with the stock of knowledge, individuals may actively construct media use as the solution to a problem. This is called instrumental media use (Frissen, 1996; Huysmans, 2001; Renckstorf, 1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). The Media Use as Social Action model posits that media use consists of internal as well as external action. Media exposure is a form of external action that is constructed by individuals on the basis of their interpretation of a situation. Internal action regarding media use takes place, for instance, when individuals use information from media messages in order to solve a problem (Huysmans, 2001; Renckstorf, 1994, 1996; Renckstorf & Wester, 2001).
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Personal meaning from a life-span perspective Personal meaning system The personal meaning system is a reservoir of thoughts that individuals have about themselves and their lives. It is an internal model of the subjectively experienced personal reality. It is regarded as a structure of cognitions in which insights, as well as feelings and goals are represented. Not only cognitions about the internal world and the personality are represented in the personal meaning system, but also cognitions about the relationship between individuals and their environment (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). Although personal in nature, the personal meaning system is also influenced by culture in which collectively shared opinions prevail on, for example, life stages, meaning in life, and the rights and duties of individuals. These opinions influence what people think about themselves and their lives (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995; Westerhof & Dittmann-Kohli, 1997). An important aspect of the personal meaning system is the dimension of time, by which individual stories obtain ‘depth’ in terms of past, present and future (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). In addition, a spatial organization is defined between objects, persons and events, and the ‘Lebensraum’ is subdivided in zones. The space-dimension is more static than the dimension of time, but over a longer period the spatial subdivision is also subject to change (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). Experiences and stimuli that individuals come across, have to be processed. An essential element in this processing is that individuals feel the need for cognitive consistency and that they strive for experiencing their lives as positive (Thissen et al., 2000). This implies that changes in the personal meaning system may be induced by changes in environmental or bodily changes. When changes in the environment of individuals take place, a discrepancy may occur between the situation and the personal goals or ideals individuals are striving for. The discrepancy normally is reduced in order to maintain an adequate understanding of self and life and to maintain a certain degree of internal balance. This means that the personal meaning system is a dynamic reservoir (Dittmann-Kohli, 1994). Components of personal meaning Reker and Wong (1988) were the first authors to formulate a model in which elderly people’s experience of personal meaning was subdivided in a cognitive, a motivational and an affective component. Subsequently, several other authors (van der Lans, 1992; van Ranst, 1995; van Selm &
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Dittmann-Kohli, 1998; Thissen et al., 2000) have used these components when studying the personal meaning of elderly people. Positive meaning indicates that individuals interpret their experiences and understand their lives (cognitive component); that they evaluate what is good and important, that they set goals and make plans (motivational component); and that they experience happiness and satisfaction (affective component) (Thissen et al., 2000). The cognitive component refers to the view individuals have on their own lives, life in general, and the world (van Ranst, 1995). Reker and Wong (1988) call this a ‘belief system’ or ‘world view’. Functions of these beliefs are interpretation, evaluation, and prediction (Thissen et al., 2000). These views on reality affect a person’s understanding of life and experiences as a coherent whole. Van Selm (1998) points out that the cognitive component of meaninglessness may be experienced for two reasons. First, when the individual’s stock of knowledge fails to provide ‘repertoires’ needed while dealing with (new) situations. This failure may cause daily life to become confusing, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Second, when individuals experience that their stock of knowledge differs fundamentally from other people’s. This may lead to social isolation and alienation. The motivational component refers to a person’s value system. Values are guides in daily life; they determine the goals individuals pursue and the way individuals live their lives. Both pursuing goals and reaching goals assign meaning to life (Reker & Wong, 1988). This component indicates the drives individuals may have, and what they strive for (Thissen et al., 2000). The motivational component of meaninglessness is experienced when discrepancies occur in the sphere of goals. For instance, a discrepancy may occur regarding the probability of a goal being reached (van Selm, 1998). The affective component refers to personal feelings. Meaningfulness is accompanied by positive feelings, whereas the affective component of meaninglessness refers to negative feelings (Reker & Wong, 1988; van Selm, 1998; van Selm & Dittmann-Kohli, 1998; Thissen et al., 2000). Domains of the personal meaning system Cognitions in the personal meaning system can be subdivided in several domains. Domains can be regarded as the thematic fields of the personal meaning system. Between individuals, domains vary with respect to their content and their significance (Westerhof & Dittmann-Kohli, 1997). Dittmann-Kohli (1995) remarks that some overlap exists between the several domains. Moreover, specific cognitions can simultaneously be part of different domains, as different domains emphasize different aspects of the cognitions.
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Dittmann-Kohli (1995) distinguishes the following domains: psychological self, physical self, social environment, non-social environment, time and evaluation. Cognitions within the domain psychological self reflect the mental model individuals have of their internal worlds and psychological processes (Dittmann-Kohli, 1994). This domain contains cognitions about, among others, personality, skills, and mental processes such as social comparison (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). Cognitions about the physical self refer to physical aspects of the individual, for instance one’s own body, health, psychophysical skills, autonomy, sexuality and appearance (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). Next, cognitions that refer to the relationship between individuals and their environment are part of the personal meaning system. These cognitions are subdivided in cognitions that refer to the social environment and cognitions that refer to the non-social environment. Cognitions on social environment refer to personal relationships individuals maintain with other people, such as cognitions regarding social skills or loneliness. Cognitions on people in general and on religion are also considered to be part of this domain (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). Cognitions about the non-social environment refer to issues such as study, work, achievements, spare time, and material resources such as money, property and housing conditions (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). The last two domains, time and evaluation, partly differ from the other domains. On the one hand, they cannot be considered domains, since they belong to another level. They are the cognitive dimensions of putting in a time order and evaluating, that are imposed on the other domains mentioned. On the other hand, they do represent domains, namely domains that consist of cognitions regarding time and cognitions regarding the evaluation of self and life (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995). Personal meaning and later stages of life The approach that studies personal meaning from a life-span perspective assumes that individuals come across changing circumstances during the course of life. They adapt their motivations, insights and feelings to these changing circumstances in order to maintain a sense of meaningfulness. Several authors allege that personal meaning can play an important role in the lives of elderly, inasmuch later life is a period of change. Change may both undermine the construction of positive meaning, as well as stimulate positive meaning (van Selm, 1998; van Selm & Dittmann-Kohli, 1998). Van Selm and Dittmann-Kohli (1998) distinguish five aspects of ageing potentially endangering the experience of positive meaning in the second half of life. First, biological ageing. Biological ageing may result in
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a diminished ‘world within reach’ (Dittmann-Kohli, 1990). Second, the time to realize plans and goals diminishes. Third, age-related social structures and stereotypes may deprive elderly people of social status and respect. Fourth, the loss of a spouse is a potential cause of social isolation. Additionally, the end of life as a couple involves the loss of a culturally highly valued life style and the loss of identity as part of a couple (van Selm, 1998). Moreover, the loss of people nearby draws attention to the finiteness of life. Fifth, this stage of life involves a process of evaluating the balance between achievements and missed changes, between investments and rewards during the past life. This life review may result in a sense of pride in one’s achievements in life, but it may also generate a sense of meaninglessness.
Comparison of two approaches: ‘Media Use as Social Action’ and ‘Personal Meaning from a Life-span Perspective’ The approach that studies media use as social action, and the approach that studies personal meaning from a life-span perspective, share several premises. Both approaches state that individuals actively construct their actions on the basis of their interests and goals. The individual stock of knowledge is a central concept in both approaches. Individuals interpret new situations on the basis of this stock of knowledge and action is constructed on the basis of this interpretation. Both approaches assume that a discrepancy may arise between the situation and the individual stock of knowledge. However, the two approaches also differ in several ways. The Media Use as Social Action model focuses on a process; the model describes the different steps of the process of the interpretation of situations and the construction of media use on the basis of the individual stock of knowledge. On the contrary, the approach that studies personal meaning from a life-span perspective does not focus on a process; the composition of the stock of knowledge of an individual at a particular point in time is described. In this second approach, the term personal meaning system is used instead of the term stock of knowledge. This reservoir of thoughts that individuals construct and reconstruct about themselves and their lives can be subdivided in thematic units (domains). Additionally, in this second approach three components of personal meaning are distinguished. Therefore, on the basis of these theoretical concepts that are developed within psychogerontology, more insight can be yielded in the individual stock of knowledge as mentioned in the Media Use as Social Action model. Within the approach that studies personal meaning from a life-span per-
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spective it is assumed that the personal meaning system helps individuals to understand events and to construct action. New information is judged on its relevance and is evaluated with the help of the personal meaning system (Thissen et al., 2000). Within this approach it is emphasized that individuals adjust their personal meaning system following new situations. The different steps of these processes are not described within this approach, but they are described in the Media Use as Social Action model. The MUPM-model is developed by combining the personal meaning system with the process that has been described in the Media Use as Social Action model. The individual stock of knowledge that is a central element of the Media Use as Social Action model is replaced by the personal meaning system so to speak. In this manner, media use can be studied in connection with personal meaning.
The MUPM-model: A theoretical model for media use in the context of personal meaning The MUPM-model shows how media use can be part of the process of personal meaning construction (see Figure 9.1). In the model, the personal meaning system is regarded as part of a person’s stock of knowledge. Individuals define or interpret situations on the basis of their personal meaning system, that is, the cognitions they have regarding themselves and their lives. This interpretation process is seen as a comparison between the situation and one’s personal meaning system. People compare the current situation with their insights, goals, and feelings. A discrepancy occurs when a situation does not correspond with one’s personal meaning system. People may, for instance, not understand a situation, not be able to reach personal goals, or feel lonely. In these cases, questions regarding meaning in life might be asked and life might be experienced as less meaningful. Discrepancies may be reduced by adjusting one’s personal meaning system to the emergent situation. However, people may not be able to reduce all discrepancies. In this case, they experience a particular part of their lives as less meaningful. Alternatively, a discrepancy may be reduced by constructing external action. Media use is regarded as one instance of external action. Media use may play a role in reducing discrepancies either because of media use in itself, or because of the content of media messages. Media use that is constructed to reduce a discrepancy is called instrumental media use. Instrumental media use may play a role in how people deal with changes in their lives. An example of the reduction of a discrepancy by media use in itself is a woman who watches more television in the evenings after her
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Figure 9.1. MUPM-model: Theoretical model for media use in the context of personal Figure 9.1. meaning
husband died. An example where the content of media messages plays a role in the reduction of discrepancies, is a man who feels confirmed by the content of a television program that going into retirement was the right thing for him to do. In these examples, media use contributes positively to personal meaning. Media may also contribute positively to personal meaning by showing people how they can reduce discrepancies. An example is a woman who feels bored and useless. After watching a television program about voluntary work she decides to find voluntary work herself. Doing voluntary work becomes a new goal for her. Media use is not only intentionally constructed to reduce discrepancies but media use may also be carried out in a ritualized manner. Ritualized media use has been constructed by individuals, earlier in their courses of life, following a discrepancy, and this media use then turned out to be useful in that situation. Therefore, this media use is now constructed in a ritualized manner in comparable situations. An example of this is when individuals read a regional newspaper every day giving them the feeling that they are participating in social life. This type of ritualized media use does not contribute positively to personal meaning in the sense that it helps re-
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ducing a discrepancy, but it may contribute positively to personal meaning in the sense that it confirms one’s insights, motivations, or feelings. Additionally, it can prevent the emergence of discrepancies. People do not only construct media use, they also interpret their media use. Media use may be said to contribute negatively to personal meaning when it leads to discrepancies with one’s personal meaning system. This discrepancy caused by media use in itself might, for example, be a man who says that he is reminded of the emptiness of his life because he spends most of his time watching television. A discrepancy caused by the content of media messages might be a the woman who feels that she looks old because people on television always have such young appearances. A special case of a discrepancy that is related to media use is a discrepancy caused by not using media. For instance, a woman who does not know how to surf on the Internet, and feels excluded because of this. If media use concurs with one’s personal meaning system, media use will not lead to a discrepancy. In these cases, media use may contribute positively to personal meaning as it confirms one’s insights, motivations, or feelings. An example might be a woman who watches quiz shows in order to test her memory and who subsequently concludes that she is still able to bring up the answers quite quickly. Components and domains In the MUPM-model, the personal meaning system is conceptualized in terms of three components, referring to the basic functions of personal meaning, and four domains, referring to the thematic areas of the personal meaning system (see Table 9.1). This model shows that each cognition in a personal meaning system may be characterized by a combination of a component and a domain (see the cells in Table 9.1). As discussed above, cognitions regarding insights in situations, life in general and the world are defined as belonging to the cognitive component; cognitions regarding goals and values are categorized under the motivational component; and cognitions regarding feelings are subsumed under the affective component. In terms of domains, cognitions may refer to the psychological self, the physical self, the social environment, and the non-social environment. As literature on this subject gives a rather broad definition of the domain social environment (Dittmann-Kohli, 1995), we propose to subdivide this domain in two sub domains, namely individuals and society. Cognitions in the domain individuals refer to relationships with other people, for instance friends, family, love, social skills, loneliness and the need for being appreciated. Cognitions in the domain society refer to people in general, the society, politics and institutions.
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The extent to which media use by elderly people is connected to their personal meaning system can be described in terms of the components and domains of personal meaning (see Table 9.1.). As an example we take a woman who watches more television after her husband has died. Her husband’s death makes her feel useless in the evenings. This indicates a discrepancy concerning the motivational component (she feels useless) and the domain individuals (referring to a loss in the interpersonal sphere). Watching more television is a way for her to reduce this discrepancy. The woman who watches quiz shows to gain insight into the quality of her memory and subsequently concludes that her memory is still good, may be another example. Here, media use contributes to the cognitive component (as the cognitive component refers to insights that people have) and the domain psychological self (ideas about one’s memory are part of this domain). Table 9.1. Table of components and domains of personal meaning Psychological self
Physical self
Social environment
Individuals Cognitive component
Motivational component
Non-social environment
Society
Watching quiz shows confirms ideas about how well the memory still works Media use to fill the evenings after husband has died
Affective component
Surrounding society, and individual and social characteristics Both the surrounding society, and the individual and social characteristics of individuals influence the process that has just been described. The surrounding society influences individuals through for example the media organizations present in a society, and through the values regarding what is
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considered to be appropriate. Additionally, individuals differ from each other regarding their individual and social characteristics, such as sex, age, level of education and social class. Schulze (1998) mentions several elements of the ‘personal totality’ that influence the media use of elderly people: aspects of socialization, their (media)biography, current living conditions, media available to them, competence to use the media, and dimensions of the personality. In research on elderly people’s media use it is important to pay attention to these individual characteristics. Of particular importance are the changes that elderly people go through that are characteristic for this stage in life. Examples of these changes are biological ageing and the loss of a spouse. Elderly people may experience discrepancies because of these changes. The MUPM-model shows that media use can be constructed to reduce discrepancies. In other words, media use can play a role in the reconstruction of meaningfulness after an age-related change in life. The media biography is also of particular interest for research on elderly people, because the current seniors grew up at the time when television did not exist and they experience the rise of new media such as the Internet when they are already in the later stages of life.
Application of the MUPM-model in empirical research We presented a theoretical model (entitled MUPM-model) that describes the connection between elderly people’s media use and their personal meaning construction. The MUPM-model describes the extent to which media use of seniors contributes to the process of experiencing every day life as more or less meaningful. Media use can, then, be described in terms of the components and domains of personal meaning. The MUPM-model is the starting-point of our study on elderly people’s media use. In this research project, we focus on personal meaning construction, because we consider personal meaning construction to play a central role in connecting people’s circumstances to their media use. Namely, people interpret situations and subsequently construct media use in a way that is meaningful to them. A research method that is particularly suitable for studying elderly people’s media use in connection to their personal meaning, conducting indepth interviews with elderly people about their media use. The MUPMmodel can be a guideline in constructing those interviews and in analyzing them. Additionally, the MUPM-model may be used to perform a secondary analysis on interviews already performed in earlier research on elderly people’s media use. The table consisting of the components and domains
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(Table 9.1) is of particular importance here. The table can be used for systematically creating interview guides and for categorizing what came to the fore in in-depth interviews. This categorization shows the way in which media use is connected to elderly people’s personal meaning. In a pilot study, we conducted in-depth interviews with eight seniors. The interviews were set up on the basis of the MUPM-model, the table of components and domains being the central element of the analysis. The results of this first small empirical study were promising. First, attention was paid to aspects of media use that had received little attention in earlier research on the meaning of media use for elderly people, for instance people’s feelings regarding media use. Second, the subdivision in components and domains turned out to be an interesting basis for systematically comparing the results of this pilot study with the results of earlier research. The next step in our project will be the design of further interview studies based on the model in order to refine the definition of the components and the domains. A refined model will enable us to gain more insight in the role of media use in people’s personal meaning construction.
References Dittmann-Kohli, F. (1990). The construction of meaning in old age: Possibilities and constraints. Ageing and Society, 10, 279–294. Dittmann-Kohli, F. (1994). Cognitieve veranderingen in de volwassenheid: Interpretatie van zelf en leven [Cognitive changes in adulthood: Interpretation of self and life]. Tijdschrift voor Ontwikkelingspsychologie, 21, 23–37. Dittmann-Kohli, F. (1995). Das persönliche Sinnsystem. Ein Vergleich zwischen frühem und spätem Erwachsenenalter [The personal meaning system. A comparison between early and late adulthood]. Göttingen: Hogrefe. Frissen, V. (1996). Heavy viewing as social action. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Media use as social action. A European approach to audience studies (pp. 53–70). London: Libbey. Huysmans, F. (2001). Mediagebruik en de temporele organisatie van het dagelijks leven in huishoudens [Media use and the temporal organisation of daily life in households]. Amsterdam: Thela Thesis. Lans, J. van der (1992). Zingeving en levensbeschouwing. Een psychologische begripsverkenning [Personal meaning and philosophy of life. A psychological exploration of concepts]. In F. Eijkman (Ed.), Weer zin leren. Over levensbeschouwing en educatie (pp. 7–20). Best: Damon. Ranst, N. van (1995). Zingeving in de ouderdom. Structuur en correlaten van persoonlijke zingeving en individuele beleving van zinvol ouder worden [Personal meaning in old age. Structure and correlates of personal meaning and individual experience of getting old meaningfully]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Leuven, Centrum voor ontwikkelingspsychologie, Belgium.
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Reker, G. T. & Wong, P. T. (1988). Aging as an individual process: Toward a theory of personal meaning. In J. E. Birren & V. L. Bengtson (Eds.), Emergent theories of aging (pp. 214–246). New York: Springer. Renckstorf, K. (1977). Neue Perspektiven in der Massenkommunikationsforschung [New perspectives in mass communication reserach]. In K. Renckstorf (Ed.), Neue Perspektiven in der Massenkommunikationsforschung. Beiträge zur Begründung eines alternativen Forschungsansatzes (pp. 7–59). Berlin: Spiess. Renckstorf, K. (1994). Mediagebruik als sociaal handelen. Een handelingstheoretische benadering voor communicatiewetenschappelijk onderzoek [Media use as social action. An action theoretical approach for communication research]. Nijmegen: Instituut voor Toegepaste Sociale Wetenschappen (ITS). Renckstorf, K. (1996). Media use as social action: A theoretical perspective. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Media use as social action. A European approach to audience studies (pp. 18–31). London: Libbey. Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (2001). The ‘Media use as social action’ approach: Theory, methodology, and research evidence so far. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 26, 389–419. Rubin, A. M. (1982). Directions in television and aging research. Journal of Broadcasting, 25, 1–13. Schulze, B. (1998). Kommunikation im Alter. Theorien-Studien-Forschungsperspektiven [Communication in old age. Theories, studies, research perspectives]. Opladen/Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Selm, M. van (1998). Meaninglessness in the second half of life. Nijmegen: Nijmegen University Press. Selm, M. van & Dittmann-Kohli, F. (1998). Meaninglessness in the second half of life: The development of a construct. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 47, 81–104. Thissen, T., Westerhof, G. J., Dittmann-Kohli, F. & Stevens, N. (2000). Negative meaning: A neglected aspect of personal meaning. Nijmegen: University of Nijmegen, Department of Psychogerontology. Westerhof, G. J. & Dittmann-Kohli, F. (1997). Zingeving, levensloop en cultuur. Verschillen en overeenkomsten tussen jong en oud in Nederland en Zaïre [Personal meaning, life-span, and culture. Differences and similarities between young and old in the Netherlands and Zaïre]. Medische Antropologie, 9 (1), 115–135.
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10 ‘Para-social interaction’: 10 Social interaction as a matter of fact? Michael Charlton
Abstract Action theories about the process of mass communication are often theories explaining the behavior of individuals dealing with a social matter. Either they describe how individuals are dealing with the hardware of media transfer; i.e., interaction between man and machine. Or they describe the cognitive and emotional interaction between the text base and the corresponding mental model of the text; i.e., interaction between concept formation and evaluation processes in the mind of the subjects. Hence, so-called para-social interaction between media protagonists and media recipients is often reconstructed as a special kind of individual mental behavior. Both producers as well as consumers are meant to act separately and independently. Hence mass communication is often seen as communication without reciprocity. But, as will be argued in this contribution, it is not strictly necessary to restrict the phenomenon of para-social interaction to the social cognition of individuals. The social usage theory of language offers an instrument to conceptualize language production and language comprehension as a joint action, even if the speaker and listener cannot see each other and do not act simultaneously. This point of view may be useful for a better understanding of the reasons why and the manner how people perform certain communicative acts in the frame of mass communication. Keywords: mass communication, individual communication, media distribution, media reception
Introduction In the majority of action theories, mass communication is seen as nonreciprocal communication. However, in my opinion, it is not necessary to restrict the phenomenon of para-social interaction to individuals’ social cognitions, because it may be possible and reasonable to conceptualize media production and perception as a social action based on exchange and co-operation. In order to validate this opinion I will first present a social usage theory for language, which is, according to its authors’ opinions,
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also valid for the explanation of mass communication. Secondly, I will refute some of the arguments made by critics of this theory. Next, I will present the process of production and perception as two interpenetrating demonstration acts. The first circle of action, only incompletely reciprocal, refers to text production and text understanding. The second, completely reciprocal circle of action refers to text dissemination and text acquisition. By embedding the first circle of action into the second circle of action the incompletely reciprocal circle of action is moved into the social framework as well. In this contribution, I will mainly focus on text reading and writing as social action. The reason for this is that the research I have conducted into this area so far, is mainly occupied with reading. However, I see no obstacles in applying the argumentation developed for the present research to other media, such as television or radio, in future studies.
The social usage theory of language by H. H. Clark The social usage theory of language, as proposed by Herbert H. Clark and others, offers an instrument to conceptualize language production and language comprehension as joint action, in spite of the fact that speaker and listener can not see each other and do not act simultaneously. This point of view is useful for a better understanding of the reasons why and the manner in which people perform certain communicative acts in the frame of mass communication. Clark (1996) defines the “… face to face conversation” as “basic setting”, which is formed by its decisive components “co-presence, visibility, audibility etc. …”(9). If some of these premises are no longer given in media based communication, Clark talks about “non basic settings”, which he refers to as gradual but not principle deviation of the standard situation. According to a suggestion made by the English psychologist Markovà (1990) I chose the term ‘dialogism’ for the special relationship between the co-operation between the author and reader of a text. By using this term I intend to, following Clark, stress the fundamental equality between text production and reception, and a dialogue, without losing sight of the distinctive features of the former, such as the lack of a co-presence.
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Criticism of the social usage theory and partial refutation Equating mass communication and individual communication is criticized among others by Klaus Merten who claims: “Structural elements of the dialogue such as symmetry of communication, equality of communicators, and mutual perceptibility cannot be found in mass communication. An adaptation is scientifically simply not permissible” (2000: 8). Thus, Merten denies the comparability of dialogue and mass communication. He substantiates that the reciprocity and the mutual perceptibility are not a part of mass communication. In a similar way Goody & Watt (1968) as well as Ong (1982) theorized about the meaning of co-presence and mutual perceptibility. They came to the conclusion that mediated communication (literacy) and unmediated orality differ in many features. The special research program Orality and Literacy in which I participated was inspired by this debate. Over 12 years 33 research projects worked on this question which resulted in the conclusion that a definite relationship between the kind of the medium and the way of communication cannot be proven (‘language of proximity, language of distance’; cf. Raible, 1998). Instead, the distinction between conceptual and medial orality respectively literacy, which vary independently of each other, proved to be helpful and appropriate. The question remains, if reciprocity and equality of speaker and listener can also be found in the relationship between author and reader. It has often been claimed that reciprocity is not given in mass communication just because of the fact that feedback from message receiver to transmitter is not possible. In my view however, the postulate of mass communication having a special position starts from inappropriate assumptions. Admittedly it is correct that a single transmission is structured like a monologue. Nevertheless, this monologue is undoubtedly part of a chain of action, in which media producers as well as the audience participate in mutually organized turns (i.e., sequences of interrelated actions as defined in linguistic pragmatics). The impression of lacking reciprocity originates merely from the long time-span of single turns. If turns are distributed over long periods of time the sequential structure is no longer easily visible even though communication would not have come into being without it.
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Text production as a demonstration act: Text reception as compliance with instruction I regard the events that happen before reading as well as during and after reading texts as a process of bargaining. The text producer, e.g., the author of a novel, wants the recipient (by reading his text) to activate specific knowledge and emotional states, to see known facts in a new light, to learn something new, to get involved with the perspective of the characters in the novel and so forth. Like all linguistic communication, each text, e.g., a novel, consists of demonstration acts and denomination acts. After the German communication researcher Siegfried J. Schmidt (1973), this structure of demonstration acts can be described as instructional semantics (‘Instruktionssemantik’). By the demonstration act the author instructs the reader to develop certain characters and events in his or her world of imagination against a more or less thoroughly presented background. Led by the author’s instructions the reader constructs a situational model for him or herself (cf. Rink, 2000). Not only oral speech and written text production can be understood as demonstration acts. In film production, demonstration acts are carried out through the presentation of actors in on stage (presented characters and actions), locations (presented living environment of the characters), and requisites (presented objects). If the recipient is not willing to co-operate and does not at least partly get involved in the author’s instructions he/she will not understand the text. However, both co-operation and resistance are typical for every text reception. It is known that Stuart Hall (1980) distinguishes between three different kinds of ‘unruly’ reader behaviors: the preferred reading, the negotiated reading, and the oppositional reading. Frequently, the recipient will gather information even beforehand from experts (e.g., literature critics) or friends (e.g., other people who have already read the novel or still want to read it) about what consequences it might have when one pays attention to the text; e.g., will it presumably bore or grip, scare or amuse, disconcert or reassure its readers? Using a small reading extract, the potential reader examines if the novel ‘appeals’ to him or her. This ‘conversation’ with the text is continued during the reading. The reader most often does not read the text the way it is presented to him (linearly, without breaks, without back-and-forth-hopping) but takes breaks, browses, thinks, and hence something like a discussion between the reader and the text develops. In our recently finished survey about novel reading which included 1025 novel readers (the sample is representative for Germany), it has been shown, that novel reading ‘against the grain’ is not at all untypical. Even
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though literary texts are generally structured by their authors to be read through all the way from the front to the back, many readers deviate from this pattern and formulate own questions to the text or do not read the text in the given sequence. Survey Results Questions from a telephone interview with 1025 German people who read novels on a regular basis
‘frequently’ or ‘occasionally’
I browse forward while reading, e.g., to the end of the chapter.
22 %
I read the end of the novel prematurely.
16 %
I browse backward while reading.
53 %
I read several novels simultaneously.
17 %
I write comments into the book or on an extra sheet when I read a novel.
11 %
I mark certain passages while reading.
20 %
I finally break off the reading if I dislike the novel.
54 %
There are certain passages in a book I read several times.
64 %
Figure 10.1. Survey results on styles of reading novels
Thus, on the one hand, readers react to a text as expected, e.g., by getting emotionally affected or by constructing a fictional world in which the characters can move in accordance with the rules of action. The Prague semiotic Mukarovsky´ describes this dialogical alternating relationship in a work critic as follows: “… the reader here is a silent partner in the conversation, who is constantly being told that his opinion of the matter is important; to him are addressed the minute, humorous distortions of reality, on his emotional participation are calculated the lyrical passages; here we can really begin to speak of an interpenetration of prose with dialogue” (Mukarovsky´, 1964: 147). On the other hand, the readers also behave like interaction partners in a face-to-face dialogue by listening repeatedly to certain aspects while ignoring and overlooking others, by questioning statements, by not keeping to the text flow and so forth. Thus the text courts for the attention of the reader with the promise to fulfil his reading needs, if only the reader is willing to follow the text instructions. The reader either co-operates or refuses, s/he manipulates the text or asks for help. In the library, some of the textbooks carry the signs of this dialogue in the form of marginal notes (e.g., the remark ‘you can’t
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be serious!’ as a sign of disagreement between author and student). In an extreme case, the recipient will render any chance for communication with the text impossible by finally putting it aside.
Text dissemination and text acquisition as reciprocal social acts The reading process requires that somehow, text producer and text recipient co-operate. However, no closed circle of action, which would be interpreted completely by reciprocity and symmetry, develops through mere co-operation. Neither can the producer check if the recipient is following the instructions, nor can the recipient lead the producer to certain actions. This complete reciprocity is now established through a different relational structure, which both participate in equally; the market. Mass communication is only possible if text producer and text recipient have met each other preliminarily. In the literature, TV, and radio-market, the symmetry and reciprocity sought after are found in the sequence sales promotion, contracting, and finally supply of the, seemingly monologue-like structured, communication. It thus appears that this form of communication, against what its first appearances may suggest, can also be taken as sequence of mutually organized turns1. However, it remains to be examined if reciprocity can be proven here only in regard to the external framework (offer and acquisition of texts), or to the reader-text-interaction in the narrow sense as well. When examining this, one must first determine what kind of relationship authors, texts, and text recipients go into while reading or watching. We have already seen that the mass media follow the sequential principle, which is also prominent in the reciprocal oral speech. Strictly speaking, in mass communication we are often (but not always, see below) dealing with two or more interpenetrated demonstration acts. On the one hand, the demonstrating and naming is inherent in the text (every text demonstrates and names something), on the other hand, it is also present in the act of showing the text. For instance, the television station shows the newsreader, whose news text points to the facts. One might take this conclusion to be exaggerated, but the mass medial demonstration act must be conceptualized as a potentially multiple demonstration merely because some phenomena could not be explained otherwise. Thus, on the one hand, it is possible that apart from the demonstrator (e.g., the broadcasting station who records a stage production for television) the demonstrated person wants to show something as well (e.g., an actor, who presents himself as a certain character). It occurs just as often that the depicted ‘actor’ has no demonstration intention (e.g., an
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animal in a documentary who does not want to show anything presumably). On the other hand, a demonstrator (e.g., a literary critic who appears on a televison program) might point to a text, which again is pointing to something itself, without the necessity that the person who wants to criticize the novel, points to the same as the author of the original text. If one conceptualizes mass communication as a multiple demonstration act, it is possible to take further facts into account, e.g., that authorship can rest on many shoulders; that texts keep their demonstrating function even beyond the author’s death; that the production and dissemination of texts is mostly not in the same hands as the authorship and so forth.
Conclusion: Mass communication as social act So far, texts have been understood as monologues, which in fact are ‘acquired’ by the recipient in a social negotiation process, but which are then silently and willingly ‘consumed’. Due to the double structure of the demonstration act, however, this description provides only an incomplete picture of the reception process. On the one hand, the text itself constitutes a whole structure of different demonstration acts, which can lead the readers or viewers to completely different facts. On the other hand, the viewers accept one text instruction while they refuse others; i.e., the viewer not only negotiates a contract with the text supplier in advance of the reception, but he/she still struggles or interacts with the ‘author in the text’ while interpreting the text. It is in the nature of mass communication that those who initiate the demonstration act (director of a broadcasting station, editor, author, etc.) cannot observe the debate of a reader or a viewer with their instructions to produce a certain text-environment. In general, the reader is silent. Only few people use the possibility of so called ‘follow-up communication’ (Huth & Krzeminski, 1981)2. It cannot be completely denied, however, that even the viewer’s silence is some kind of reaction, which, like the silence in daily life communication or on stage (e.g., Meise, 1996), must often be seen as a fully valid response, or turn. Just because the previous action of ‘offering and buying’ is firmly established by contract, this does not mean that the ‘interactively weak’ action of silence cannot be taken as speech act or talking turn. Even if in our society writing a text, physically producing a book, and selling are done by different persons, author and reader still continue to meet in a common social field of action; the market with its constitutive exchange processes. Thus far, the same is valid here as in all other contract relations, which control the exchange of goods and money. Following the seller’s
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offer of goods for sale and the customer’s purchase of goods, it is only very rarely that the consumer issues a formal feedback about his or her satisfaction with the quality of the goods. Nevertheless, the customer communicates his/her satisfaction or dissatisfaction indirectly to the seller, by either doing further purchases or not, by recommending the product or not, etc. Thus, as a rule, the sequential position of the consumer following the agreement of the contract is weak. As a consequence of these assumptions, mass communication is not representing a one-way-communication as long as it remains integrated in the national economic relations of exchanging goods (compare Figure 10.2). If publishing companies and broadcasting stations orientate their production to the successful selling, respectively to the number of viewers, then merely the reception of the goods ‘text’ represents important information for the originator, even if this reception occurs without feedback. Readers ‘vote’ through their purses; that is, as long as they obtain and pay for the product, it does not matter, from the producer’s point of view, if they give no feedback about the product. According to Habermas (1981: 367), action always receives its meaning from the social context in which it is embedded. The free enterprise context of the reader-text-relationship is a special case, which only takes place in the general reciprocity of communication postulated above. Presumably (or hopefully), the context factor ‘exchange of goods’ is not even the most important one in regard to media production and reception; however, the function of this context can be illustrated especially well. Besides the market as context factor of the reading action, the mutual participation of author, text, and reader in the cultural context must be considered most important in a model concerned with explaining text reception. Recently, the German sociologist Wenzel (2001) has outlined and more thoroughly justified this chain of argumentation in the tradition of the social theories of George Herbert Mead and Talcott Parsons for the production and use of electronic media. Some counter-arguments against this position can be found in Sutter (2001). So, what does that mean for the so-called para-social interaction? Here too, numerous demonstration acts, which neither have to fulfil the postulate of symmetry nor the reciprocity of social actions in every detail, are integrated into the closed social circle of action. To see it as a whole, parasocial interaction is part of a social-reciprocal action.
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level 1 joint action on the market mutually coordinated turns sequentiality, reciprocity, equal power media producer speaking in his role as a partner on the information market
media consumer speaking in his role as a partner on the information market
“Pay attention “I don’t know if I’ll see it, to this program!” but at least, I will pay for it” ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– media producer speaking media consumer speaking in his role as a sender in his role as a recipient of the media message of the media message “See the world this way!”
“I’ll do it my way, but show your point of view”
level 2 para-social interaction viewer addressed, but monological speech no sequentiality, no reciprocity, one-sided power Figure 10.2. The two action circles, in which text producer and reader are involved* * Media producer and media consumer are simultaneously involved in two entwined common actions. On level 1 they meet each other as an equal powerful partner on the market. On level 2 they differ in their access to the information channel.
Notes 1. The described sequence can be found wherever products distributed through mass communication must be ordered and paid by the recipient (books, magazines, pay TV, etc.). Even the receipt of free-TV-channels in Germany is bound by a contract. In the case of programs or printed material that are free of charge, the situation is more complicated but just as reconstructable in action theoretical terms. An Actor, B, who is interested in the dissemination of persuasive advertising, contacts a broadcasting organization. A chain of actions develops: A offers broadcasting time, B buys broadcasting time from A, A sends commercials for B; A offers programs to C, under the condition that C is willing to accept commercial breaks in return; B appeals to C via commercials to
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buy his products, C orders the products and B sells. The difference to Pay-TV is that the ‘sale relation’/consumer relation between C and B is not a normative commitment but is only empirically realized by a large enough part of the audience. Even though not each viewers trades with B, they still do so with A, who is allowed to lead him into temptation on B’s behalf. 2. At the moment, there is an increasing tendency in German TV to include the viewer. Thus, for example, the fixing of persons, who have to drop out of the game show ‘Big Brother’, is determined through interpenetrated nominations by participants and viewers; the viewers’ participation is increased by prices for those who call. Possibly, an even higher percentage of participation can be reached in the future by feedback via the internet. However, only certain readers/viewers write letters, which also do not reach everybody who is involved in the text production process. TV stations most often subordinate the department responsible for reader’s letters under the director’s office. The information exchange with the single editorial offices is not always ideal.
References Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goody, J. & Watt, I. (1968). The consequences of literacy. In J. Goody (Ed.), Literacy in traditional societies (pp. 21–68). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns. Bd. 1: Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, media, language (pp. 128–138). London: Hutchinson. Huth, L. & Krzeminski, M. (1981). Zuschauerpost – ein Folgeproblem massenmedialer Kommunikation. Tübingen: Narr. Markovà, I. (1990) Introduction. In I. Markovà & K. Foppa (Eds.), The dynamics of dialogue (pp. 1–22). New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Meise, K. (1996). Une forte absence. Schweigen in alltagsweltlicher und literarischer Kommunikation. Tübingen: Narr. Mukarovsky´, J. (1964). K. Capek’s prose as lyrical melody and as dialogue. In P. L. Garvin (Ed.), A Prague school reader on esthetics, literary structure, and style (pp. 133–149). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. W. Raible (1998) (Ed.). Medienwechsel. Erträge aus zwölf Jahren Forschung zum Thema “Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit. Tübingen: Narr. Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy. London: Methuen. Rink, M. (2000). Situationsmodelle und das Verstehen von Erzähltexten: Befunde und Probleme. Psychologische Rundschau, 51, 115–122. Sutter, T. (2000). Sinnstrukturen der Medienkommunikation. In T. Sutter & M. Charlton (Ed.), Massenkommunikation, Interaktion und soziales Handeln (pp. 21–45). Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Wenzel, H. (2001). Die Abenteuer der Kommunikation: Echtzeitmassenmedien und der Handlungsraum der Hochmoderne. Weilerswist: Velbrück.
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11 Action theoretical approaches in 11 organizational communication Paul Nelissen
Abstract Organizational communication policies are becoming increasingly important in organizations (e.g., de Moor, 1997; Van Selm & Nelissen, 2000). Being well-informed is not only crucial for the quality of employees’ performance on the work floor; it also keeps employees informed about company policy and strategic short and long-term decisions. In this paper, the importance of a systematic approach to communication or information systems in organizations is emphasized. This means that a theoretical anchoring is needed to explain and predict the effectiveness and efficiency of organizational communication. I assume that action theoretical approaches can be useful in tackling theoretical and methodological questions in this field of research. Next, I will briefly present an impression of mainstream theories and studies in this field so far. Most studies take organizations as units of analysis. Differences in organizational structures and cultures, and variations in styles of management are used to explain the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational communication. In my perspective, an organization is not an abstract, physical object or entity but the result of a dynamic process. Employees interact with each other within a well-defined context – creating and sharing knowledge – making sense of their situation – playing and taking different, sometimes conflicting, roles. In this contribution, I try to increase our understanding of the fundamental processes underlying the search and use of different types of information by employees. I present several implications of the use of interpretive approaches to the study of organizational communication, in particular the Sense-Making Methodology (Dervin, 1989; Nelissen, 2000). Finally, I will end with some examples of research questions, using an action theoretical approach. Keywords: organizational communication, Sense-Making methodology, knowledge sharing, information participation
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State of the art in brief In the early beginnings of organizational communication, communication systems were seen as management tools (see Van Putte, 1996: 57). The ‘dominant coalition’ within an organization used media, consultations and directives to inform and control employees. Researchers, implementing a media centered approach, stated that “a transmissional perspective of communication research conceptualizes communication as a transfer of information from source [management team, P.N] to destination [employees, P.N.]” (Renckstorf & McQuail, 1996: 6). The ineffectiveness of organizational communication gave rise to alternative conceptualizations of communication within organizations. Recent studies on the role of organizational communication focus on structural characteristics of the organization, different types and flows of information and cooperation between employees (Koeleman, 1995; Van Putte, 1996; de Moor, 1997). Authors stress the importance of structure and culture in organizations, management styles, socio-demographic and structural characteristics of employees in order to describe the use and effects of organizational communication (Mintzberg, 1979). Several studies have considered the perceptions of employees within an organization (Simons, Derksen & de Ridder, 2000). In these studies, special attention is paid to the involvement and commitment of employees with the organization. Other studies have focused on categorizations of information types and information flows. Reception of the various types of information is important for both employees’ individual everyday performance on the work floor (work instruction) and the adjustment of one’s own activities to those of other employees (control information). Koeleman (1995) adds that knowledge of the organization’s short and long-term objectives and the consequences of strategic decisions for the individual employee (strategic information) are also of importance. He also mentions the increase of self-actualization and commitment to the organization (motivational information) as important elements of perception. Researchers distinguish several different flows of information: topdown and bottom-up, but also horizontal and parallel flows. Effectiveness of communication systems through several information flows is often analyzed using organizations as units of analysis (McPhee, 2000). In my opinion, there is no one theory to connect the different categorizations of important concepts determining the effectiveness and efficiency of organizational communication. In most studies, the order of dependent and independent variables is not theoretical underpinned, leaving the following questions unanswered. Are characteristics of employees, such as involvement, a precondition or a consequence of the use of organ-
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izational communication? Do needs for information regarding innovations in organizational structure or culture lead to active information seeking behavior or do people await information provided by the management team? This theoretical and methodological problem is surely recognized by communication scientists (see Hendriks Vettehen, 1998). What is missing is a frame of reference or conceptual model in which relevant concepts are adequately determined and convincingly interconnected. In creating such a theory, effects of organizational communication can be explained and predicted.
New ways of looking at organizational communication: An action theoretical approach This discussion will be based on Van Putte’s approach of organizational communication. She defines organizational communication as “… the intentional production of messages, that can be followed by reception and interpretation within an organizational, relational and informational context. Hence, a relationship between sender(s) and recipient(s) is given shape. The organizational context consists of the following elements: strategy and policy, structure, culture, and environment that are unique for each organization individually.” (Van Putte, 1998: 80 [translation by author]). Key concepts in this perspective on organizational communication are participation in organizational openness and integration of information types and flows. The concepts of transparency and knowledge sharing are related. The concept of information participation emphasizes the idea that employees, both sender and recipient, engage in an exchange of (informal and formal) information (see also Evers, 1999: 39). Employees, for example, act as sending agents in order to meet the information needs of other employees. Information participation, one of the key concepts, shows that action theoretical elements are present in this approach; people interact with each other within a well-defined context, creating and sharing knowledge, taking and playing different roles, making sense of their situation. Hence an organization is not an abstract, physical object or entity, but instead the result of a dynamic process. In elaborating this concept, McPhee (2000) refers to Weick (1979); “For Weick (1979), organization was the process of organizing, of interpreting an enacted environment in a way that led to orderly action”. The action theoretical perspective explicitly shows that organizations are dynamic, constantly changing systems, producing and reproducing themselves in the employees’ heads. Demographics of employees and categorizations of structure and culture are necessary, but cannot completely
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account for subjective definitions and perceptions on which employees act and communicate. These structural characteristics of organizations give insight into the context of communication participation; they cannot, however, explain or predict communication effects. We state that employees should be seen as actors within a well-defined social cultural organizational context, this being an important part of people’s everyday life. Different roles are taken on and played simultaneously: the professional, the confidante, the friend, the superior, the subordinate (and even, some cases, the lover). In this chapter, I attempt to increase understanding of the fundamental processes underlying the search for and use of information, and the consequences for design and evaluation of communication systems in organizations. I will use the Sense-Making Methodology as a theoretical foundation for using organizational communication (Dervin, 1981, 1989).
Theoretical foundation: Sense-Making methodology The quality of communication systems in organizations can be analyzed by examining the extent to which employees are enabled to handle their work situation. Sense-Making Methodology (Dervin, 1983, 1998) consists of a coherent set of meta-theoretical concepts and assumptions, and a related set of methods that has explicitly been designed to tap the way in which people make sense of the world around them. The construction of situational definitions by employees is central to this perspective, as I assume that all employees experience their work situation in their own way. With these (subjective) constructions in hand, the management team can build (and rebuild) an appropriate, effective and efficient communication system. It is important to be receptive to employees’ information needs. The management team should show empathy towards employees’ perspectives as to meet individual and collective needs as completely as possible. One needs to understand employees’ problem-handling processes and the role both information seeking and information use may have in them. The needs employees have during their daily work are crucial to the form and content of information services. In order to assess the quality of organizational communication, one can use Sense-Making methodology. Information as a thing versus Information as a construction From the perspective of Sense-Making, information is used to make personal sense of the world around us. Information is not considered to be something that exists independently of the individual. Information has a
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largely internal existence, being one component of the individual’s frame of reference. Dervin emphasizes the difference between communication as transmission (information-as-thing idea; a brick thrown into an empty bucket) versus communication as dialogue (information-as-construction idea; clay formed into a shape of one’s own choice). Other action theoretical approaches make a similar distinction between a mechanistic, behavioral approach and an interpretive, action approach to communication (Renckstorf & McQuail, 1996). In organizational studies, communication in organizations is often conceptualized to be the transmission of messages with different types of information, between employees. Effectiveness is limited by structure and culture and by involvement and motivation of employees. From an interpretive point of view, information has no meaning of its own, being separated from its production or consumption context. This concept of ‘information as a construction’ may influence the process of designing organizational communication systems. The main precondition of effectiveness for such a system is not only the attainability of internal target groups (transmitting information), but also, and more importantly, the usefulness of the system as a whole for employees to realize their organizational and individual goals. In order to study these qualities of communication systems, a deeper understanding is needed of people’s everyday life, and especially their occupational situation. What answers are people looking for, what solutions are offered and what answers are given? Moving through time-space The application of Sense-Making draws on the central metaphor within the approach – the idea that humans move through time-space mandated by the nature of the human condition to bridge gaps (Dervin, 1999). In my application, then, I will focus on three of Sense-Making’s central concepts – situation, gap, and use. The situation is the temporal and spatial context in which people rationalize things. People judging situations may be influenced by different aspects of a situation, such as the importance of the situation for the individual, previous experiences, skill in handling the situation, and the social context. As these aspects influence the individual’s situational definition, they can also influence and predict information needs and uses (Dervin, 1983; Dervin, Jacobson & Nilan, 1982). Gaps are questions or information needs people have when they wish to make sense in a space-time context (situation). Trouble-free movement is obstructed here and can be investigated by analyzing a Micro-Moment Time-Line step. One can retrace the subject of the gaps, the situation in which gaps arise, and the importance of a gap.
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The uses, finally, consist of the information or aid that enables the individual to make sense again. In reconstructing the nature of the information search process and the degree of its success, detail is important. Therefore, questions about the ease of addressing a question, the relevance of an answer, the reason for relevance, and strategies for bridging gaps should be addressed. Basically, the intent, following Dervin (1983), is to attend to and be able to codify the extent to which a person’s sensemaking (seen as required for movement) is facilitated or blocked. The key research question to be answered during the design, the implementation and the evaluation of a communication infrastructure is whether it enables all members of the organization, to move through time-space and to bridge different gaps easily, in their ways to fulfill individual and collective needs and goals. The quality of organizational communication can only be determined in the situations it is used. The non-use of information is not always the result of an obstinate attitude. It may be the result of a lack of insight into the different sense making strategies within the organizations. We conceptualize participation in organizational communication as an everlasting, continuing dialogue between individuals and groups, aimed at defining and bridging gaps on the one hand but on the other hand on giving solutions to others in order to reach organizational targets. It is not just the managers but also the co-workers who are constantly confronted with information seeking colleagues. Managers and co-workers select from the many solution strategies they have in their repertoire. We presume that employees will differ in their offers of solution strategies depending on their function and position in the organization and their knowledge of possible solutions. People in higher ranks will not necessarily have the best solutions. Actors (both managers and co-workers) who can place themselves in their colleague’s situations will be more successful than those who only use their own frame of reference to interact and to come up with solutions. As we have already pointed out, actors are not completely free defining their professional situation. McPhee (2000) emphasizes that many aspects over time become collectively shared and (re)defined. McPhee refers to Max Weber who offered an interpretive analysis of bureaucracy: ‘… members use the ideal type conception of bureaucracy to understand the conduct of other members and to guide their own actions; because they all act in patterns organized by the ideal type, their actions coordinate in such a way that organizations consequentially and meaningfully exist.’ (McPhee, 2000: 1). The fundamental processes underlying information seeking and information use ask for a flexible communication system. Integration, transparency, participation and knowledge sharing are important starting
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points for designing an appropriate communication system. New Information and Communication technologies might be helpful to meet the challenges brought forth by this new way of looking at organizational communication. As dialogue needs to be a key concept in organizing communication, an interactive medium such as Intranet might be of use. An Intranet can be designed as a flexible platform for different types and flows of information (see Van Selm & Nelissen, 2001). Furthermore, an Intranet offers the possibility of participating in organizational communication as a receiver of adequate solutions but also as a sender of information for others.
Research questions Finally, I would like to present some of the consequences this perspective could have on research. In order to assess the quality of communication systems in organizations one should determine whether employees are enabled to make sense of their professional situation. In other words, one has to obtain a full portrait of the gaps employees face, its consequences, attempts to bridge them and the success, and the outcomes (helps and hindrances). To gain an understanding of the contexts, gaps, and uses people experience, Dervin (1983) has proposed using a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative research should be used to expose employees’ personal, subjective interpretations of their own situation and their construction of gaps and uses. A quantitative approach allows for the enumeration of the differences between people and to systematically capture them so as to come to a useful communication system design. The employees’ sense making can be analyzed by answering the following questions: – What questions do employees have? – What is the experienced and/or expected usefulness of sources of information in the organization? – How accessible are sources of information and aid in the organizational communication system? – Can questions be dealt with satisfactorily? – Are there any common denominators in employees’ questions? Systematical enumeration by coding questions, based on content-analytic templates, gives us the opportunity to determine and improve the quality of the organizational communication system. It also gives us insight into the questions that can be expected in the future, given the assumption that
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people in similar situations will have comparable questions. These insights could help managers to better attune their agendas to their employees. Sense-Making studies to date have relied heavily on various content analytical and text analytical procedures for translating actor responses into systematically coded categories of extracted themes. In this approach, the gap facing of employees can be conceptualized as an instance of question-asking – and thus the questions employees have become the unit of analysis. Questions can be categorized into different content-analytical schemes, developed in different Sense-Making studies (Dervin, Jacobson & Nilan, 1982; Nelissen, 2000; Nelissen, Van Eden & Maas, 1999). Examples of these often-used content analytical schemes are (see also Nelissen, 2000: 308): Time focus: the period of focus: past, present, or future. 5W focus: the unit (what, who), time (when), space (where), or the connection between time and space (why) of focus. Valence focus: the evaluation of the time-space context, or, in other words, the evaluation of the road chosen or to be chosen: bad, neutral, good. Entity focus: the unit of focus: the employee him or herself, others, or a situation or object. Movement focus: the movement through time and space: from past to present (how did I get here?), present (where am I now?), from present to future (how do I get there?), and future (where will I be?). Descriptive focus: coding in this template takes place through content descriptions. For each research situation, a specific descriptive focus needs to be developed.
Conclusion In this contribution, I have tried to present a new perspective of organizational communication. I have focused on the individual employee, finding his way within the organizational context. This perspective, based on action theoretical notions regarding the role of information needs and use of information in everyday life, might be a fruitful addition to mainstream studies of organizational communication.
References Dervin, B. (1981). Mass communicating: Changing conceptions of the audience. In R. Rice & W. Paisley (Eds.), Public Communication Campaigns (pp. 71–87). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Annual Reviews.
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Dervin, B. (1983). An overview of Sense-Making research: Concepts, methods and results. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Dallas, TX, May. Dervin, B. (1989). Audience as listener and learner, teacher and confidante: The Sense-Making approach. In R. E. Rice & C. Atkin (Eds.), Public communication campaigns. 2nd edition (pp. 67–86). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Dervin, B. (1998). Sense-Making theory and practice: An overview of user interests in knowledge seeking and use. Journal of Knowledge Management, 2(2), 36–46. Dervin, B., Jacobson, T. L. & Nilan, M. S. (1982). Measuring aspects of information seeking: A test of a quantitative/qualitative methodology. In M. Burgoon (Ed.), Communication Yearbook 6 (pp. 419–443). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Evers, W. (1999). Informele openbaarmaking. Een studie naar de massacommunicatieve betekenis van onderlinge gesprekken. Nijmegen: ITS. Hendriks Vettehen, P. (1998). Conceptualisering en operationalisering van het begrip ‘motief ’ in Uses & Gratifications onderzoek. Nijmegen: ITS. Koeleman, H. (1995). Interne communicatie als managementinstrument: Strategieën, achtergronden en middelen. Houten/Diegem: Bohn Stafleu Van Loghem. McPhee, R. & Zaug, P. (2000). The constitution of organizations: A framework for explanation. The Electronic Journal of Communication/Revue Electronique du Communication, 10 (1,2). Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations: A synthesis of the research. Englewood-Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Moor, W. de (1997). Grondslagen van de interne communicatie. Houten/Diegem: Bohn Stafleu Van Loghem. Nelissen, P. (2000). Informing cancer patients: Two studies on the effectiveness and efficiency of information services in hospitals. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 25(3), 305–323. Nelissen, P., van Eden, D. & Maas, S. (1999). The quality of information services to cancer patients in the hospital. The Electronic Journal of Communication/ Revue Electronique du communication, 9 (2,3,4). Putte, M. van (1998). Interne communicatie: Van theorie naar praktijk. Bussum: Coutinho. Renckstorf, K. & McQuail, D. (1996). Social action perspectives in mass communication research: An introduction. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Media use as social action (pp. 1–17). London: Libbey. Simons, M., Derksen, M. & Ridder, J. de (2000). De invloed van ICT op de organisatiestructuur. Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap, 28 (4), 367–381. Selm, M. van & Nelissen, P. (2000). Informatieparticipatie via Intranet. Verkenning van de inhoud van een Intranet. Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap, 28 (4), 334–348. Selm, M. van & Nelissen, P. (2001). Sharing organizational information through ICT: Exploration of the content of a hospital’s Intranet. Communications, 26(3), 285–296. Weick, M. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. Reading: Addison-Wesley.
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12 Media use as an adaptation or 12 coping tool in prison Heidi Vandebosch
Abstract In this contribution some core assumptions of the social action approach to media use; i.e., the interactive relationship between people and their environment, the interpretative role of the individual, and the fact that media use can function as a routine activity or as a problem solving action, will be tested in the prison context. I will first pay attention to the ‘transactional’ stress model, which emphasizes that stress is a psychological state that is the internal representation of a particular and problematic transaction between a person and his environment. Subsequently, the relationship between stress and media use will be discussed. These general theoretical assumptions are then applied to the (stressful) prison context. Finally, some quantitative and qualitative data in regard to the experienced problems and the media use of prisoners in five Flemish penitentiaries will be presented. These data illustrate that routine media activities soften the chronic ‘pains of imprisonment’, and that acute prison stress leads to additional coping behaviors. Keywords: media use, ‘transactional’ stress model, Flanders, prison, (non)gratifications
Introduction Taking Renckstorf’s (1989) theoretical model of the social action perspective as a starting point, one sees that people’s definition of a situation is the basis for their external actions. A situation can be defined as an ‘unproblematic problem’, generating everyday routine actions, or as a ‘problematic problem’ requiring motivated (coping) actions. According to Renckstorf most everyday situations are characterized as ‘unproblematic problems’. “Such problems are naturally, and in a certain sense pre-reflexively (Zijderveld, 1974: 70) provided by meaning whereby action is possible”. A subjective problem with which an individual is consciously concerned, on the other hand, “only arises if the actual experience does not readily ‘fit’ into a type at hand in the stock of knowledge”
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(Schütz & Luckmann, 1984: 202, in Renckstorf, 1996: 26). This definition of a ‘problematic problem’ is a rather theoretical one. It seems to underemphasize the practical nature of most problems, and their relationship with human needs. Schütz and Luckmann (1974: 14–15), however, also note that “My stock of experience serves me for the solution of practical problems” and their example illustrates how such problems are linked with human needs; driven by famine I want to know if a certain mushroom is eatable or not. If this knowledge is not available, I can undertake action to solve this problem (Schütz & Luckmann, 1974: 13). In Rosengren’s Uses and Gratifications model (1974: 271), with which Renckstorf’s model shows great similarities, this connection between needs and perceived problems is also stressed. Even empirical communication studies in the field of social action research seem to concentrate on the relationships between subjective experienced (practical) problems, media motives and actions. Bosman and Renckstorf (1996), for instance, have demonstrated the links between people’s worries about certain topics (criminality, science, disasters, politics, health and finances) and their information needs and consumption. Similarly, Van der Rijt (1996) has investigated the relationship between older people’s problem experience (i.e., the extent to which they have to cope with a number of problems believed to be related to aging, such as psychological and physical problems of aging, financial problems, problems of spending leisure time and problems of safety), and their interest in specific information. In what follows, I will focus on problem experience and media use of people in prison.
Stress Imprisonment is usually described as a stressful situation. According to the ‘transactional’, ‘appraisal’ or ‘interactional’ stress model, stress is a psychological state which is the internal representation of a particular and problematic transaction between a person and his environment (Cox & Ferguson, 1991; Gaillard, 1996). In a first phase there are the environmental demands, pressures or stressors to which a person is exposed. ‘Appraisal’ is the consecutive, evaluative process during which a person matches these stressors against his or her personal abilities to cope with them. Stress arises whenever a person experiences an imbalance. The recognition of such a stress condition is accompanied by psychological and physiological changes (e.g., the individual feels excited, fearful, depressed, furious; has a high blood pressure, an increased heart rate, or suffers from insomnia). These conditions lead to ‘secondary appraisal’ – the individual thinks about what (possibly) can be done to eliminate or to reduce the stress – and to ‘coping’.
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Coping refers to cognitions and actions that follow the stressful transaction and – whatever their outcome – have the primary function of eliminating or reducing the stress and the psychological (and physiological) conditions that go along with it (Cox & Ferguson, 1991). Coping reactions can be focused on the problem itself, or on the accompanying emotions, and can be categorized as ‘approach’ or ‘withdrawal’ reactions. Steptoe (1991), for instance, notes that ‘problem focused behavioral approach coping responses’ are overt actions intended to deal directly with the situation (i.e., active problem solving or attempts at control). Avoidance or escape from the situation, are examples of ‘problem focused behavioral withdrawal coping’. Coping responses performed at the cognitive level that are directed towards dealing with the problem involve attempts to change the way in which stressful situations are perceived (situational redefinition or restructuring), whereas wishful thinking and daydreaming are categorized as ‘problem focused cognitive withdrawal coping’. Among the coping responses that are focused on the emotions, Steptoe distinguishes ‘emotion focused behavioral approach coping responses’ such as seeking social support and information, ‘emotion focused behavioral withdrawal responses’ like seeking distraction and avoiding information, ‘emotion focused cognitive approach coping responses’ such as the expression of emotions, and ‘emotion focused cognitive withdrawal coping responses’ like emotional inhibition, repression and denial. People differ in the way they handle stress situations, and thus have their own coping style. ‘Coping’, however, is not uniformly defined in the psychological literature. Some authors use this concept to refer to effortful and conscious responses, ruling out activities that are automatic (see for instance: Cox & Furgeson, 1991; Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996). Others think that even behaviors that appear to be rather automatic and effortless, such as smoking (Roskies, 1991) and drinking, may be considered ‘coping responses’ (Holahan, Moos & Schaeffer, 1996). Most psychological models also refer to coping as a reaction to stress. Behaviors intended to avoid or to prevent stress, are, strictly speaking, not coping actions. Carpenter (1992: 6–7), however, notes that: “We may well find that such behaviors do indeed operate like coping behaviors performed in response to a current stress reaction, arguing against the distinction”. A third disputed point concerns the distinction between ‘coping’ and ‘adaptation’. Sometimes coping is considered a special form of adaptation, elicited by a situation that is particularly problematic (a ‘crisis situation’), induces stress, and demands new, conscious efforts. Adaptation then refers to routine, even automatic, modes of getting along. According to an alternative view, however, the line between routine problem solving and coping is blurred (Costa, Somerfield & McCrae, 1996). In some cases the
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word ‘adaptive’ is also used to refer to the effectiveness of coping behaviors and cognitions (see for instance Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996), since not all coping responses solve or soften the problem and the accompanying negative emotions. Some even worsen the problem, or have no effect at all. Ideally, ‘adaptive coping’ leads to a permanent problem resolution with no additional conflict or residual outcomes while maintaining a positive emotional state. Anyway, ‘adaptive coping’ protects a person by eliminating or modifying the conditions that produce stress or by keeping the emotional consequences within manageable bounds (Zeidner & Saklofske, 1996). Generally speaking, people that rely more on ‘approach coping’ (than on avoidance behavior and cognitions) handle stressors better (Holahan et al., 1996), since this type of coping, in the short and in the long run, has positive effects on people’s psychological well-being, health and social functioning. The above-mentioned stress model attributes an important role to the individual. Whether certain pressures or stressors from the environment are indeed experienced as stressful, depends upon the appraisal by the individual, who defines the situation as threatening or not. Factors influencing this appraisal are: the socio-demographic characteristics and the personality of the individual (including his or her personal coping resources, psychological strength, and problem-solving abilities, resulting, for instance, from previous encounters with similar situations), the social support from family and friends, the degree of control about the occurrence of the event, and so on. Even when a person (originally) experiences stress, coping strategies – which also differ from individual to individual – can solve or reduce the impact of the problem that causes stress. The mental and physical well-being of a person thus depends on his or her susceptibility to stress and his or her coping resources. The psychological literature also makes a distinction between two types of stress: acute stress and chronic stress (see for instance Jenkins, 1991; Wheaton, 1997). Acute stress is often linked with ‘stressful life events’. These are “discrete, observable events standing for significant life changes and possessing a relatively clear onset and offset; between the onset and offset, they are made up of a relatively well-defined set of sub-events describing the ‘normal’ progress of the event” (Wheaton, 1997: 52–53). Examples of stressful life events are: the death of one’s spouse, a divorce, a jail term, or a marriage (Thoits, 1983: 38). Chronic stress, on the other hand, does not necessarily start as an event, but develops slowly as a permanent problematic condition in people’s social environment and roles, and has a longer time course than ‘life events’. Some forms of chronic stress are: threats, structural limitations, insecurity, conflict, and limited choice (Wheaton, 1997). Gottlieb (1997: 9) however, notes that “acute and
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chronically stressful experiences may shade into one another and interact in a variety of ways”. Furthermore, he describes coping styles that are more likely to be elicited by chronic than by acute stressors. According to Gottlieb, people who are constantly challenged to react to immediate, specific and repeated biological, environmental, or psychosocial demands, or who re-experience traumatic events internally through intrusive thoughts, sensations or images, tend to employ two ways of coping: “They adopt a vigilant stance that assists them to prepare for, detect and respond rapidly to fluctuations that can affect their well-being, and they employ various strategies of gaining respite or relief that help them return to baseline levels of arousal and regain their energy”. It is, for example, typical for people who are regularly exposed to stressors, to use coping strategies that help them to temporarily remove or mask these stressors. According to Gottlieb (1997: 24): “Television viewing is the prototypical respite strategy that can become a habitual means of dividing one’s attention and therefore by softening somewhat the impact of harsh realities. Eventually, the television may be left on permanently, providing easy escape from unpleasant intrusive thoughts, interactions or other stressful demands.” As is evident from this citation, media can function as coping tools. The relationship between stress, problems and media use will be investigated more in depth in the following section.
Stress and media use As already suggested by Rosengren (1974) and Renckstorf (1989), external actions such as media use can solve a particular (stress producing) problem (people who are bored, for instance, may go to the cinema to be entertained). But even when media activities do not classify as (partial) solutions for certain problems, they can support other problem focused coping reactions by suggesting solutions for the problem, stimulating the redefinition of the situation, providing distraction, and reaching themes for wishful thinking and daydreaming. Negative emotions can be suppressed or expressed by media activities, and even some physical side effects of stress (such as insomnia) can be remedied, for example, by watching television (Bantz, 1982). The fact that media can be used in different ways to cope with stressful or problematic situations, is evident from communication studies conducted (mainly) within the framework of the mood management theory, the uses and gratifications approach and social action research.
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Bryant and Zillmann (1984), for instance, illustrate how watching TV can be used to alleviate boredom and stress (i.e., work pressure). Their study shows that people who are bored are more likely to tune into exciting TV programs. Excited or stressed persons, on the other hand, prefer relaxing contents (see also Zillmann, 1985). Bryant and Zillmann (1984) also refer to specialized TV shows ‘featuring soaring birds’, rippling waterfalls, logs burning in a fireplace, gently crashing ocean waves, slow moving clouds or tranquil country scenes complemented by ‘muzak’ all designed to bring peace of mind. Furthermore, they show that watching television can be used as a remedy for insomnia by stressed people. Kubey (1986) notes that less affluent, less educated and divorced respondents are more inclined to watch television, to avoid negative moods that often coincide with loneliness and unstructured time. As indicated above, poorer and lower educated people are often exposed to chronic stressors, while divorced people may be experiencing a stressful life event. The relationship between chronic stress and TV use is also measured in the study of Perse en Rubin (1990). More particularly, these authors pay attention to the affect of chronic loneliness (which is the result of a cognitive evaluation, whereby a person judges the quantity or the quality of social interaction as being insufficient) on watching local news and soaps. Chronically lonely people appear to watch both kinds of programs to fill unstructured time. Anderson, Collins, Schmitt and Smith Jacobvitz (1996), on the other hand, have concentrated on the links between stressful life events and watching TV. They argue that TV programs can only reduce stress effectively when they generate thoughts that are not related to the stress inducing thoughts, and invoke emotions that are neutral or positive. Comic TV programs, game shows, entertaining programs and so on, seem to meet these requirements, but news and information programs do not. Since action/violent/horror programs engage conscious cognition, they may help to displace unpleasant thoughts. These programs, however, may also be avoided because they invoke negative moods. The study of Anderson et al., shows that, as far as their male respondents were concerned, there is a positive correlation between the experience of stress and the amount of TV viewing. For women, there is a positive correlation between stress and the scores on a TV addiction scale. Stressed men view more violent/action/horror programming; stressed women more often tune into game and variety shows. Potts and Sanchez (1994) come to similar conclusions. They note that depressed people use TV viewing as a coping strategy; more specifically as a way to avoid or surpress their dysphoric moods and to increase pleasurable experiences. Although the television news may provide additional
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information to depressive people (which can help them determine how to act in a certain – problematic – situation), may be partly entertaining, is often viewed within an agreeable social situation, and shows people who live in even more tragic circumstances (Zillmann & Bryant, 1994), it appears again – at least for men – that ‘no news is good news’. Social action studies about the information needs of the general public (Bosman & Renckstorf, 1996) and of elderly (Van der Rijt, 1996), and research about heavy viewing (Frissen, 1996) also stress that people often search information (in the mass media) in order to cope with their subjectively experienced problems. Furthermore, the latter study points to the fact that watching television offers the chance to forget about the problem (through distraction or escape). As this short literature review shows, problems and stress thus lead to different kinds of motives for the use of media as part of a particular problem or emotion focused coping strategy. It should be mentioned however, that media can also be the source of stress and problems. Schaap et al. (2001: 65), for instance, note that violent pictures “seem to leave people with problematic and ambivalent feelings with which they must cope.”
Prison stress When we apply stress theory to imprisonment, it is obvious that the prison environment itself is an important source of stressors. The classic ‘pains of imprisonment’ by Sykes (1958) and the ‘environmental concerns’ by Toch (1977), refer to the fact that certain basic human needs are frustrated in correctional institutions. More specifically, prisoners suffer from the deprivation of freedom, autonomy, goods and services, heterosexual contacts, safety, privacy, structure, support, emotional feedback, activity, communication (Keve, 1974), and variety (Cooke, Baldwin & Howison, 1990). On the other hand, there are ‘imported’ stressors, originating from the broader environment, such as the death of a family member, problems with children (Cooke et al., 1990), or related to the past or the future of the prisoner, such as feelings of guilt concerning the crime or doubts about life after prison. Although a ‘jail term’ is classified as a stressful life event in the psychological literature, imprisonment also shows great similarities with forms of chronic stress. Certain negative aspects of prison life, for instance, can be softened but not totally removed. Moreover, the long duration of some prison terms also makes possible a comparison with chronic stress. Thus, parallels can be drawn between the rather constant negative aspects of prison life (Flanagan, 1995) and the ‘ongoing life stressors’ in a ‘normal’
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life, and between so-called ‘situational triggers’ in prison (the end of a relationship, bad news from ‘outside’, the cancellation of a visit, a transfer to another institution, an unexpected punishment, the delay of the release date, or the worsening of the normal negative aspects of prison life (Liebling, 1992) and ‘life crises and transitions’ (Holahan et al., 1996). Toch (1982: 28) also notes that “prison demands occur as onslaughts (such as a menacing cell mate with a knife) or as cumulative wear and tear (noisy tier mates)”. The kinds of chronic and acute stressors prisoners are exposed to, and the degree to which these stressors are experienced as problematic and stressful, depend on a series of personal and environmental factors such as; the prisoner’s socio-demographic and criminal background, sentence length and phase of imprisonment, the kind of institution the prisoner lives in and the personal regime he or she is subjected to (Johnson & Toch, 1982; Tittle, 1972; Goethals, 1980; Parisi, 1982). These different mosaics of problems evoke different adaptation styles or coping strategies. In criminological literature, these concepts are mostly used to refer to the constellations of behaviors and cognitions that prisoners develop as a reaction to the rather constant negative elements in their environment, which are guided by a basic psychological orientation towards imprisonment. Such adaptation or coping reactions are an attempt to solve or soften the experienced problems and to remove or reduce the (initial) stress and the negative emotions and physical side effects that accompany it. To avoid further confusion, I will reserve the concept ‘adaptation style’ to refer to the responses that inmates develop shortly after their arrival in prison to soften the influences of chronic stressors related to imprisonment (and which become routine internal or external actions). These responses are situated in the prison context and imply the inmate’s acceptance of his/her imprisonment. They (ideally) reduce the initial stress to an acceptable level. The obtained equilibrium is however precarious, and explains the existence of acute stress, which leads to additional ‘coping reactions’ (Vandebosch, 1999). Prison problems and media (non-)gratifications in (Flemish) penitentiaries Studies about the media use of prisoners are scarce. Inspired by strong media effects theories, communication scholars have mainly been interested in captured criminals as an ideal research population to investigate plausible (causal) links between preferring or consuming certain types of media contents (e.g., violent TV programs and pornography) and committing certain types of crimes (e.g., violent and sex crimes). Fisher (1989)
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and Lindlof (1986, 1987), however, have departed from the cultivation and the uses and gratifications approach, respectively, to study the long and short term ‘effects’ of media use in prison. The fact that media use can generate gratifications and soften the harsh prison experience, is also occasionally mentioned in criminological studies (Clemmer, 1958; Galtung, 1967; Auberson, 1973; Fabiani & Soldini, 1996). In this part of the paper I will concentrate on the results of a study into the media use of Dutch-speaking, convicted prisoners, in five Flemish penitentiaries with varying regimes and prison populations. This research combined quantitative and qualitative methods: a survey among 177 inmates, and follow-up in-depth interviews with 33 of them, (for a more extensive report on the research methods and techniques, the selected prisons and inmates, see: Vandebosch, 1999, 2000a.) With the standardized questionnaire, administered during a face-to-face interview of approximately one hour, variables such as the subjectively experienced problems, the importance of prison media and non-media activities and the motives for television use were measured. As is evident from Table 12.1, the most important problem for the respondents was their isolation from the outside world, and more specifically, their separation from family members, friends and acquaintances. This probably explains the enormous importance attached to interpersonal contacts with loved ones. External actions like receiving visits, making telephone calls, and receiving/writing letters obviously softened the most important pain of imprisonment. The mass media (and especially television) were also often used to keep in touch with the outside world. 96 % of the respondents owned a TV set (which they had bought or rented in the institution). The average viewing time was 309 minutes (almost five hours) on weekdays, and 341 minutes on Fridays. On Saturdays and Sundays, prisoners spend even more time in front of their television screen, namely 6 hours and 40 minutes. The top three of television motives consisted of ‘I watch television to keep informed about what’s happening in the world’, ‘I watch television because I like certain programs’, and ‘I watch television to relax’. It is not surprising then, that news and other informative programs scored best in the respondents’ list of favorite programs, and were followed by entertaining programs such as action movies, music and comic programs. Work was also considered very important, because it allowed prisoners to earn money (which they could use to buy additional products in the prison canteen), and because it was a (useful) way to pass time. The prison experience, however, was not uniform. The lack of privacy was a more serious problem for those respondents who had to share a cell with one or more fellow inmates, and for those prisoners who had been in prison for a longer time. Respondents with a cellmate also felt more
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strongly that their autonomy was limited. Feelings of insecurity were most prominently present among respondents who had just arrived in prison, and were not yet familiar with the prison environment. Younger persons apparently missed the outside world (goods and services, persons and sex) more than older prisoners. And one ‘deviant’ problem (missing drugs), was more often mentioned by persons with a higher criminality score. This subjective degree of criminal involvement also correlated positively with the degree to which a person perceived the lack of sexual contacts as problematic. This experience was also sex-related; female prisoners attached less importance to the lack of sexual contacts than male inmates. Feelings of guilt about the committed crimes were most prominently present among those individuals convicted of very serious crimes (such as rape and murder), and were experienced to a lesser degree (or not) by prisoners with higher criminality scores. Problems such as the lack of activities, the lack of professional support, and the lack of movement, were strongly connected with the institution where the respondent resided. The inmates of the penitentiaries in Hasselt and Dendermonde complained more about these prison deprivations than their colleagues in other institutions. The lack of physical movement was also more frustrating for younger people, who furthermore gave higher problem scores to ‘the lack of professional support’. The latter deprivation was also more problematic for respondents without a prison job and for inmates who had spent more time in prison. The fear of mental deterioration increased with the sentence length and the time spent in prison. Both factors also correlated with the degree to which respondents felt appreciated by people from outside; the longer the sentence, the less appreciated the inmate felt by friends and acquaintances from ‘outside’, and the more time one had spent in prison, the more the lack of appreciation by family members was considered a problem. Finally, the fear of becoming unworldly was more widespread among older prisoners and long-termers. Because of the limited sample size it was difficult (if not impossible) to completely isolate the influence of each subjectively experienced problem on media use (or in other words, to control for background characteristics of prisoners, institutional factors, the phase of imprisonment, and the experience of other problems). Nevertheless, simple (partial) correlations between problem scores and (media) action variables did reveal some significant relationships. The direction of these (possibly) causal relations, can, however, be discussed in some cases. Among those prisoners who had a cell of their own, for instance, there was a negative correlation between experiencing a privacy problem and the importance attached to talking with members of the personnel (who could possibly disturb this privacy), and a positive correlation between ex-
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periencing a privacy problem and the importance scores given to listening to the radio and listening to CDs and/or audio tapes (activities that allow prisoners to exclude disturbing noises from the prison environment, especially when they have a headset). Respondents who had a greater fear of becoming unworldly, watched more television on weekdays, gave higher importance scores to watching TV, displayed a greater appreciation for Flemish soaps, and watched TV more to ‘chase away negative thoughts’. These correlations could indicate that prisoners who were more dependent on television, and more often tuned into relaxing TV programs, in this way were losing their sense of reality. This was at least suggested by prisoners (especially long-termers) who participated in the in-depth interviews (see infra) when they were talking about the negative long-term effects of watching television in prison. These results, however, could also be interpreted in the opposite direction. Maybe persons who felt they were losing touch with ‘normal life’ (outside the prison walls) thought that local soaps could teach them more about this (although this action clearly couldn’t ‘solve’ the problem). Persons who suffered more from the fact that they were separated from their family, friends and acquaintances, attached more importance to receiving visits. Those who perceived the lack of sexual contacts as more problematic, gave higher scores to erotic TV programs (even when controlling for degree of criminal involvement and age). Stronger feelings of insecurity went along with lower importance scores given to (potentially dangerous) collective prison activities, such as doing sports and walking in the prison yard. Those who felt neglected by family and friends from outside said that making telephone calls and receiving visits – activities they probably had to miss (more) – were less important to them. These persons also thought that TV motives like ‘I watch TV to feel less lonely’ and ‘I watch television to chase away negative thoughts’ applied better to them. Prisoners who had the impression that the prison personnel didn’t like them gave lower scores to ‘talking to the prison personnel’, ‘attending concerts and theatrical performances’ (activities under supervision of prison guards) and ‘reading books’ (another ‘intellectual’ activity that is appreciated by the personnel). Those who suffered more from ‘the lack of physical movement’, ‘the lack of activities’ and ‘the lack of opportunities to meet fellow inmates’ attached more value to collective activities that took place outside their cell (such as doing sports and walking in the prison yard). The lack of alternative activities also led to higher media consumption (for instance, prisoners watched more TV) and the perceived insufficient contacts with fellow inmates made respondents watch TV ‘to feel less lonely’.
1. Miss persons from outside 2. Miss sexual contacts 3. Miss things (goods and services) from outside 4. Feelings of guilt towards people left behind 5. Lack of privacy 6. Lack of professional support in prison 7. Feelings of guilt about the crime 8. Lack of autonomy 9. Lack of activities in prison 10. Feeling unloved by society 11. Doubts about future 12. Uncertainty about prison rules 13. Lack of movement 14. Feel like nobody in prison knows you like you really are 15. Fear of mental deterioration 16. Fear to become unworldly 17. Having a low self-esteem
Experienced problems (0=no problem at all, 10= a very serious problem)
2.5 2.4 2.2 2.1
2.9 2.8
4.6 4.2 3.7 3.3 3.2
4.7
5.1
7.7 5.8
8.9 7.8
1. Receive visits from family, friends, etc. 2. Make a telephone call 3. Receive letters 4. Work 5. Watch television 6. Listen to tapes and/or CDs 7. Write letters 8. Talk with a fellow prisoner 9. Listen to the radio 10. Consult teletext 11. Walk in the prison yard 12. Read magazines 13. Do sports (outside or in a sports or fitness room) 14. Watch the info channel of the institution 15. Talk with the personnel 16. Read newspapers 17. Attend movie performances 18. Activities in the recreational room (play billiards, cards, table-tennis, …)
Score Importance of prison activities (0= not important at all, 10= very important)
5.06
5.73 5.46 5.25 5.19
6.13
8.90 8.51 8.45 7.80 7.68 7.62 6.78 6.62 6.47 6.35 6.33
9.06
1. To keep informed about what’s happening in the world 2. Because I like to watch certain programs 3. To relax 4. To have a laugh 5. To pass time 6. To learn useful things 7. Because I’m bored 8. To be diverted 9. To get information about crime and justice 10. Because I have nothing else to do 11. To see what has changed ‘outside’ 12. To keep mentally fit 13. Because it is thrilling 14. To forget for a while that I’m in prison 15. To feel less lonely 16. To chase away negative thoughts
Score TV motives (0=absolutely not true, 10= very true)
Table 12.1. Experienced problems, importance of prison activities and TV motives (Source: Vandebosch, 1999, 2000a)
4.23
4.34
5.06 5.04 4.97
5.68
6.18
7.48 6.91 6.90 6.89 6.80 6.44 6.18
8.67
8.78
Score
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18. Too few opportunities to meet fellow inmates 19. Feeling unloved by friends and acquaintances from outside 20. Feeling unloved by the prison personnel 21. Feeling unloved by family members 22. Feeling unsafe 23. Miss drugs 24. Feeling unloved by fellow inmates
Experienced problems (0=no problem at all, 10= a very serious problem)
0.7
1.2 0.9 0.7
1.3
1.4
1.4
19. Attend concerts, theatrical performances in prison 20. Follow courses 21. Play computer games 22. Indulge in hobbies (in cell: e.g., draw, paint, do puzzles, write, etc.) 23. Study in cell 24. Read books 25. Read/look at advertising brochures 26. Pray 27. Read prison brochures 28. Participate in concerts, theatrical performances 29. Go to the chapel 30. Read comic strips
Score Importance of prison activities (0= not important at all, 10= very important)
2.32 2.07 1.07
2.93 2.58 2.41
4.09 3.72 3.07
4.72 4.16
4.82
17. Because it’s exciting 18. My TV set replaces a radio set 19. To have a topic to talk about 20. To be on my own 21. Because I recognize myself in certain characters 22. To keep away from trouble 23. Because it reminds me of home 24. To be together with other inmates
Score TV motives (0=absolutely not true, 10= very true)
2.25 1.11
2.42 2.32
3.75 2.68 2.61
4
Score
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Finally, the ‘fear of mental deterioration’ correlated negatively with the frequency of book reading and a preference for informative radio programs. Here again, mutual influence was possible. A person who did not function very well mentally, could experience difficulties with reading books and listening to informative radio programs. On the other hand, these intellectual activities could foster the inmate’s mental well-being. In the in-depth interviews data were gathered about the motives for (non-)participation in prison media and non-media activities, and about the obtained (non-)gratifications. The inventory displayed in Figure 12.1, shows that activities were indeed selected because prisoners thought they softened a particular routine prison problem, or at least did not worsen it. Activities from which people expected the opposite were avoided. In the case of acute stress, media and other activities were also used to express negative emotions (or to invoke positive ones) and to soften the accompanying physical side effects of stress (such as insomnia). On the other hand, the list of avoided and obtained non-gratifications shows that (media) activities could also create or worsen problems, and induce stress (For an extensive report on the media (non-)gratifications in prison, see: Vandebosch, 2000b, c).
Conclusion This chapter, which is concerned with the problem experience and media use of prisoners, illustrates some core assumptions of the social action approach to media use. For instance, it points to the active, interpretative role of people in defining their situation. In prison, this meaningful interaction between individuals and their environment creates unique mosaics of prison problems. This study also shows that media actions can indeed be an answer to situations defined as ‘unproblematic or problematic problems’. Prisoners use audio-visual and print media to soften their routine prison problems (the so-called ‘pains of imprisonment’). In the case of acute stress, inmates undertake (non-routine) media actions, to cope with their situation. These media actions fit into the behavior or emotion focused coping strategies described in psychological works. Media use, however, not only generates positive effects (or gratifications), it can also create problems and induce stress, thereby worsening the prison experience. Finally, this research shows that combining quantitative and qualitative research techniques (i.e., a survey and in-depth interviews) may indeed be a fruitful strategy in social action research. For example, while quantitative methods allow us to statistically test the relationships between perceived problems, and (non-) media actions, qualitative methods allow us to re-
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Motives for the participation in activities (gratifications sought) & gratifications obtained
Motives for non-participation in activities (avoided non-gratifications) & obtained non-gratifications
Pass time.
Stop the time.
(e.g., watch television to pass time) Variation.
Monotony. (e.g., avoid listening to the radio because commercial radio stations play the same hits several times a day)
Good for physical health. (e.g., watch television to catch sleep when stressed)
Bad for physical health.
Safe.
Unsafe. (e.g., avoid watching television in the recreational room)
Good for mental health. (e.g., read books or watch informative TV programs such as current affairs programs, quizzes, …)
Bad for mental health.
Useful with the prospect of release. (e.g., crimewatch programs show how investigators work; this is useful in the light of future criminal activities)
Not useful with the prospect of release.
Affirmation of personal identity, values and norms; beneficial for self-image. (e.g., consume socially valued versus socially disvalued media contents, depending on one’s criminal or non-criminal self-image (see: Vandebosch, 2001)
In conflict with self-image, values and norms; negative influence on selfimage.
Contacts with other people, support and appreciation from other people (including the appreciation from society, contacts with the other sex). (e.g., consume media contents that remind of home, watch TV programs to see(handsome) people of the opposite sex, …)
No contacts with other people, no appreciation or support from other people.
Privacy. (e.g., use headphones to ban prison noises)
Intrusion of privacy.
Contact with nature. (e.g., watch nature documentaries) To keep informed about what’s happening ‘outside’, get ‘criminal’ information. (e.g., read newspapers, magazines, … to keep informed)
Incredibility of information.
Obtain goods and services, earn money. (e.g., sell erotic magazines for a pack of cigarettes or a telephone card)
Too limited remuneration.
Autonomy.
Restrains autonomy.
Express negative emotions, relief stress. (e.g., cry while listening to a favorite song) Invoke positive feelings. (e.g., laugh while watching a comic movie)
Invoke tension and negative emotions.
Distraction.
Remind of problems. (e.g., avoid romantic movies because they remind of own relationship problems)
Figure 12.1. Motives for (non-)participation in media and non-media activities, Figure 12.1. obtained (non-) gratifications, and obstructions for participation Figure 12.1. (media examples) (source: Vandebosch, 1999, 2000b, c)
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veal the processes of meaning-creation that underlie people’s situational definitions and their obtained (non-)gratifications from consecutive (non-) media actions.
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13 Juxtaposing direct experience with media 13 experience: Does reality really matter? Jan Van den Bulck
Abstract A number of authors have struggled with the interaction between direct experience and TV effects. Some went as far as to say that the effect of TV on, for instance, fear of crime is in fact an artifact of the viewer’s actual experience with crime. Such authors assume that a clear hierarchy of experiences exists in which direct experience (the ‘highest’ form of experience) always takes precedence over mediated experience (the ‘lowest’ form of experience). This paper draws on cognitive theories to suggest that people use many inputs in trying to construct an image of reality. Schema theory has shown that people often believe first impressions until they become untenable. Many of the perceptions influenced by television are partially disconfirmable. This means that they are not easily contradicted by direct experience. Empirical data show that fear of crime remains related to TV viewing even when direct experience is controlled for. Keywords: direct experience, hierarchy of experiences, TV effects
Mediated experience and relevance A number of authors have remarked that watching television sometimes seems to mimic direct experience. Thus Bandura (1978) mentioned ‘vicarious reinforcement’ (as part of learning processes); others coined concepts such as ‘vicarious role-taking’ (Ellis, Streeter & Englebrecht, 1983; Peterson & Peters, 1983), ‘vicarious involvement’ (Altheide & Snow, 1979) or ‘parasocial interaction’ (Horton & Wohl, 1979). The addition of ‘vicarious’ or ‘para-social’ indicates, however, that the authors consider these processes not to be ‘real life’. Boorstin (1964) expressed this most explicitly by discussing ‘pseudo-events’ – events, such as press conferences, which only take place for them to be reported or covered by the media. In Boorstin’s opinion such events are therefore not entirely ‘real’. More recently, Dayan and Katz (1992) did not use the word ‘pseudoevent’ to refer to events such as royal weddings or cycling contests. Even
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though the carefully edited images television shows of these events are very different from what those physically present at the event witness, the authors do not believe that the TV viewing experience is any less ‘real’ than the experience of standing in the middle of the crowd outside the church. Indeed, many viewers will answer ‘yes’ when asked whether they ‘saw’ the wedding of the British Prince Charles with Diana Spencer. Because such events are often carefully scripted to make sure they look good on television, the authors believe that in a way only the TV viewer has actually seen ‘the real thing’. Those people physically present during the event are little more than stage props, necessary to create the right atmosphere on television. In TV effects research many authors have struggled with the concept of ‘experience’. Some of the criticism of George Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory deals with the question of whether TV effects are actually possible when viewers have direct experience of the same issue. This discussion was triggered by the findings of a Canadian study. Doob and MacDonalds (1979) interviewed people from four areas. They selected a high crime and a low crime area in both the center of a city (Toronto) and a more rural area. While there appeared to be a relationship between TV viewing and fear of crime, the relationship disappeared in three of the four neighborhoods when the areas were looked at separately. Authors who claim that cultivation effects are spurious usually refer to these findings. People who live in high crime areas are more at risk. As a result they are more frightened. Because of their fear they stay home more and because they stay home more they watch more television. The relationship between watching a lot of television and fear of crime therefore appears to be an artifact (cf. Tamborini, Zillmann & Bryant, 1984; Weaver & Wakshlag, 1986; Potter, 1988). The conclusion of this line of reasoning seems to be that direct experience makes television effects impossible. Direct experience always takes precedence (cf. Tamborini et al., 1984; Heath & Petraitis, 1987). Tyler (1984), therefore, discerns three levels of experience. The first level is that of direct, personal experience. The second level is that of social contacts, or ‘interpersonal’ experience, where people learn from the experiences of others. The third level is mediated experience. Weaver and Wakshlag (1986), who make a similar distinction, believe there is a hierarchy of experiences. Direct experience is the highest form, while mediated experience is the lowest form. They claim that ‘it appears that social perceptions are formed and reinforced on the basis of the highest order experience available’. This is the rationale behind the theory that television can only influence perceptions in matters of which the individual has no direct or interpersonal experience (cf. Shapiro & MacDonald, 1992;
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Adoni, Cohen & Mane, 1984; Weaver & Wakshlag, 1986; Hawkins & Pingree, 1990; Shapiro & Lang, 1991). It has been shown that most viewers know they are watching fiction when they do so (cf. Potter, 1988). How, then, can this be construed as any kind of experience leading to assessments of the real world? There are three different theories which can be used to answer this question. One school of thought believes that a distinction should be made between the ‘literal’ reality of, for instance, the news on the one hand and other types of reality on the other hand (cf. Potter, 1988). When they watch a murder in a movie most people know that they are not witnessing a real murder, but they may well believe that they are watching a careful dramatization of what a real murder would look like. As Meyrowitz (1979: 75) put it: “We do not respond to the televised situation as we would to a real situation, but we respond to the concept of the real situation”. Movies and television drama suggest in many ways that what they show mimics reality. Typically, for instance, actors and directors will stress in press-interviews how they rode with police officers to learn how to make their acting more realistic. According to Bauer (1992) viewers have actually come to expect and demand a high level of ‘apparent facticity’. When a movie does not look realistic enough watching it may be annoying or irritating. The second school of thought believes that television effects are a kind of processing error. Shapiro & Lang (1991), for instance, believe that people can only learn from television fiction if a kind of ‘coding error’ is made. This means that people occasionally and by accident remember fictitious information as if it were real. Likewise, other authors remark that people remember information more easily than the validity of that information (Shrum, 1995; Shrum & O’Guinn, 1993; Mares, 1996). Heavy viewers are people who have seen more fictitious information and will therefore have more of these faulty memories (Shapiro & Lang, 1991). Television effects then become little more than an accumulation of small memory errors. The third school of thought believes that effects only occur in areas that do not really concern the viewer. Adoni et al. (1984) refer to Berger & Luckmann’s sociology of knowledge to distinguish ‘fields of relevance’. Some areas in life are very relevant because they refer to ‘immediate pragmatic interests’ (Berger & Luckmann, 1976). These Adoni et al. define as ‘close’. Others refer to ‘my general situation in society’. These are ‘remote’. Adoni et al. (1984) believe that what is close will be learned through direct experience, while what is remote may be learned through mediated experience (cf. Adoni & Mane, 1984). Other authors have made similar distinctions. Heath and Petraitis (1987: 99) remark that Doob and MacDonalds’ ‘fear of crime scale’ is actually a ‘fear of neighborhood crime scale’.
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Many authors believe that television will only (or mainly) influence perceptions, feelings or opinions regarding situations at societal level. To make judgments at the personal level people are more likely to be influenced by personal experience only (cf. Cook, Kendzierski & Thomas, 1983; Tyler & Cook, 1984; Tyler, 1984; Tamborini et al., 1984; Heath & Petraitis, 1987; Ferraro & Lagrange, 1987; Hawkins & Pingree, 1990). A hierarchy of experiences The distinctions between, on the one hand, ‘close’ and ‘remote’ life areas and, on the other hand, direct and mediated experience suggest that TV effects are only likely in an area which is ‘remote’ and/or when direct experience is missing. Both conclusions are questionable. First, a closer look at Doob and MacDonalds’ results seriously challenges the idea of a hierarchy of experiences. In one of the four neighborhoods those respondents who watched a lot of television did report higher levels of fear than those who watched less. Strangely enough, the relationship between TV viewing and fear only existed in the high crime neighborhood. According to the Hierarchy of Experiences hypothesis these are the very people who should not be influenced by television because they have direct experience with crime. Gerbner, Gross, Morgan and Signorielli (1980, 1981) noted this contradiction too. They explained the relationship as a case of ‘resonance’; when people have direct experience of a situation that is related to what is shown on television, they receive a ‘double dose’. Neither Weaver and Wakshlag (1986), who assume that a hierarchy of experiences exists, nor Gerbner et al., who claim that different types of experiences may reinforce one another, offer an explanation of the underlying psychological processes. Second, the idea of a distinction between ‘close’ and ‘remote’ is less convincing than Adoni et al. (1984) suggest. The authors appear to confuse directness of experience and importance of experience. Some aspects of life can be very important and hence ‘close’, while direct experience may be missing or unreliable. When a shocking event, such as the killing of a nation’s president, occurs, people will automatically turn to the media for corroboration of the rumor. While the matter is perceived as important and ‘close’, direct experience is probably less reliable than mediated information. Similarly, during puberty information about ‘how to seduce women’ may be very important for a young heterosexual boy. Direct experience may be missing or unconvincing and the experiences of his peers may not be seen as very effective or worthy of imitation. Such a person might turn to television-fiction for compelling examples of heterosexual seduction, which is an integral part of much mainstream drama (cf. Davis
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& Baran, 1981). Boyanowsky, Newston and Walster (1974, cf. Boyanowsky, 1977) offer interesting evidence of such processes. The authors studied the behavior of girls in two dormitories of a school in which a girl had been murdered. Girls for whom this experience was extremely ‘close’ because they slept in the same dormitory as the murdered girl started to consume more violent movies than a comparable group that had no direct experience with the crime. The realistic experience of the girls in the first dormitory did not stop the appeal and influence of fiction. Instead they appeared to seek out all vicarious experiences and information which might help them to come to terms with what that happened. In other words, the fact that certain aspects of life are close may cause people to actively search for information and ‘experiences’ wherever they are available and regardless of the kind of media concerned. Furthermore, direct experience is no guarantee for a realistic and correct image of reality. Classic behaviorist experiments show how a rat can be made ‘superstitious’. If a rat gets food each time it touches a lever it will eventually learn that pressing the lever produces food. If, however, the rat turned around three times before pressing the lever it is possible that the animal believes that turning around three times is part of the behavior necessary to produce the food. The rat now has a distorted image of reality but direct experience will always confirm the theory; each time the rat turns around three times and presses the lever food will be produced (Watzlawick, 1976). These observations call for a different classification of experiences. Clearly, direct experience or the importance of events do not necessarily impede television effects. Experiences should therefore not be classified according to their physical attributes (direct, interpersonal or mediated) but rather according to the contribution they make to people’s processing of information about reality. Attribution and schema theorists have shown that people have a tendency to “treat information as reality” (McLeod & Chaffee, 1972: 50). People make a lot of inferences about reality from all sorts of information (cf. Ross, 1978a, 1978b; Ross & Anderson, 1982; Fiske & Taylor, 1991). Logically, conclusions are true only if the premises are true but in real life people usually do the opposite. If a theory is acceptable and credible it is often adopted and remains true until it is explicitly contradicted. Reeder and Brewer (1979) and Fiske and Taylor (1991) discuss the interaction between experience and perception of reality and propose a hierarchy of schemas based on the extent to which they are logically disconfirmable. However vague a theory about reality (or ‘schema’) may be, it is contradicted only in very particular circumstances. First of all, theories can be partially or fully restrictive. A fully restrictive theory only permits “a narrow range of behavior, so it is easily discon-
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firmed” (Fiske & Taylor, 1991: 153). Should a person believe his or her neighborhood to be very safe he or she will probably change that perception if he or she is mugged in broad daylight. Many perceptions, however, are partially restrictive, meaning that “they permit a rather wide range of behaviors, so that they are difficult to disconfirm” (Fiske & Taylor, 1991:153). The perception that the neighborhood is a very dangerous place is confirmed if a neighbor is mugged, but a month without any mishap or misdemeanor is no reason to doubt one’s judgment of the area. Typical of this kind of example is that it is a hierarchically restrictive schema. It can easily be disconfirmed at one extreme, but not at the other. If a neighborhood is considered safe that perception will change immediately if a heinous crime is committed. If it is considered dangerous even a long period of calm may be perceived as a temporary lull. Finally, Fiske and Taylor remark that schemas can also differ in the extent to which they are practically disconfirmable. As they point out, there are traits most people can display only rarely (such as bravery) as a result of which perceptions regarding such traits will almost never be disconfirmed. Such a cognitive theory of experiences sheds a different light on the discussion of media effects. If direct experience is missing, perceptions become practically not disconfirmable. This does not, however, suggest that the reverse is automatically true. Direct experience does not make mediated experiences ‘fully restrictive’. In fact, a closer look at many of the variables customarily used in effects research shows that they are usually only ‘partially restrictive’. Typical variables are ‘fear’, ‘trust in other people’ (cf. Hawkins & Pingree, 1981), ‘perception of the world as a mean place’ (Rubin & Peplau, 1975), etc. Perceptions such as ‘most people can’t be trusted’ or ‘the police do not do enough to safeguard the safety of ordinary citizens’, which are typical of television’s ‘mean world’ are not automatically disconfirmed by direct experience. Research question This contribution examines the interaction between TV viewing and direct experience. If the Hypothesis of a Hierarchy of Experiences (in which direct experience takes precedence over mediated experience) is correct, then no relationship between TV viewing and traditional ‘effect’ variables should be found when controlling for direct experience. This contribution, however, hypothesizes that many of those effects variables are ‘partially restrictive’. Experience with crime usually does not disconfirm the image of the world cultivated by television. It is generally considered good practice in behavioral sciences to ‘balance’ scales by asking questions which are alternatively worded either
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positively or negatively. One should not only ask respondents whether they distrust people, one should also attempt to rephrase such questions and ask whether they trust people. Reeder and Brewer’s theory about disconfirmability of perceptions challenges this. The item ‘people can be trusted’ (which is fully restrictive) is not just the mirror-image of the item ‘people cannot be trusted’ (which is partially restrictive). This papers tries to show that variables that appear to refer to the same latent concepts may behave quite differently, depending on whether they are partially or fully restrictive. In fully restrictive items, direct experience may play a central role. In partially restrictive items it may not.
Method Subjects Seventy-seven undergraduate students in media studies, all living in Flanders, received credit for taking part in a research project. They were carefully trained as interviewers using documented and tested techniques (Billiet & Loosveldt, 1988). Each student was sent to a randomly selected area. In this area twelve addresses were randomly selected from the telephone directory. To reduce bias resulting from non-ownership of a telephone or non-registration the interviewers selected the house to the immediate left of the selected address. In this house they were to interview the member of the household older than eighteen who was next to celebrate his or her birthday (cf. Oldendick & Link, 1994). They were not allowed to interview any other member of the household when met with a refusal or when the selected person was not at home. After three attempts they had to move to the next selected address where the same procedure was repeated. This method resulted in a sample that reflects the demography of Flanders rather well. One province was underrepresented and there was a slight overrepresentation of respondents with a university degree. After careful examination of the data for coding errors and other abnormalities 909 questionnaires were retained for analysis. Measures Television exposure. To measure total television viewing respondents were asked to indicate how many hours of television they watched on an average weekday, on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They were also asked about their frequency of viewing; did they usually watch TV every weekday, three out of four, two out of four, one out of four or no weekday? The
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same was asked for Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Frequency of viewing for each day was multiplied by the number of hours for that day and the results were added to create an estimate of weekly viewing volume. Experience with crime. Seven questions were asked to ascertain whether the respondents had any experience with crime: (1) Have you ever been mugged or attacked on the street? (2) Has your house ever been burgled? (3) Has your house been burgled in the past year? (4) Has one of your neighbors been mugged or attacked on the street in the past year? (5) Has one of your other acquaintances or members of your family been mugged or attacked in the street in the past year? (6) Has the house of one of your neighbors been burgled in the past year? (7) Has the house of one of your acquaintances or members of your family been burgled in the past year? Distrust. A ‘trust in other people scale’ was based on Hawkins and Pingree (1981). Questions included: (1) Most people only think of their own interests; (2) Most people can be trusted; (3) You can’t be too careful when dealing with other people; (4) Most people will try to help you; (5) Given half a chance most people will try to take advantage of other people; (6) Most people try to be honest. Respondents had to answer on a fivepoint scale ranging from ‘totally agree’ to ‘totally disagree’. Background variables. These included gender, age, level of education, number of organizations the respondent was a member of, and whether or not the respondent had a job.
Results Experience with crime and trust A little less than a third of the respondents (30.4 %) had personal experience with crime. A little over a third had no personal experience but had indirect experience through what had happened to friends, neighbors or relatives (43.3 %). About a quarter of the respondents did not reply positively to any of the experience questions. They were classified as people without direct or indirect experience of crime. These are the people with only media experience. Using the three positively worded questions from the ‘trust’ scale a ‘trust in other people’ scale was constructed. All three variables loaded above .76 on one factor (E=1.855, R2=61.8). The three negatively worded
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questions were combined to construct a ‘distrust in other people scale’. Two variables loaded above .76, the third variable loaded above .45 (E=1.404; R2=46.8). In both cases standardized factor scores were saved. Fully restrictive perceptions An analysis of variance was performed to establish whether having personal, interpersonal or media experience influenced trust in other people. As control variables gender, age and level of education were entered. No interaction effects were found. Only significant variables were kept in the final model (R2=.03; F(3,853)=9.045, p<.0001). Trust in other people appeared to increase with age (Beta=.15, p<.0001) and with level of education (Beta= .15, p<.0001). People who have personal experience with crime, however, display less trust of other people (Beta=-.08, p=.023). Television viewing did not seem to be related to this variable. Partially restrictive perceptions An analysis of variance was performed to establish whether having personal, interpersonal or media experience influenced lack of trust in other people. As control variables gender, age and level of education were entered. No interaction effects were found. Only significant variables were kept in the final model (R2=.11; F(2,858)=53,226, p<.0001). Only two variables seemed to affect levels of distrust. Distrusting people decreases with level of education (Beta=-.23, p<.0001), but it increases with amount of TV viewing (Beta=.17, p<.0001).
Discussion In behavioral sciences it is sound methodological practice to use balanced scales. The concepts of Reeder and Brewer and the findings presented above seem to challenge that approach if it is used to establish the role and position of mediated and direct experience in people’s construction of an image of reality. In this view ‘trust’ in other people is not just the positive mirror image of ‘distrust’. It is the opposite end of a continuum. Trust is a fully restrictive concept. Any experience to the contrary will force people to change their beliefs (or schemata). Distrust, on the other hand, is partially restrictive. One counterexample (a generally mistrusted person exhibiting honesty) is no reason to change one’s perceptions. It is therefore no surprise that personal experience with crime affects trust in people, while it does not add anything to perceptions of distrust. The role of televi-
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sion is more complex. Given what is known about the contents of television’s mainstream it is no surprise to find that television does not affect trust in people in a positive way. On the other hand, personal experience seems to be strong enough to force people to review their optimism about other people, while television’s ‘scary world’ does not seem to have the same effect. Perhaps fully restrictive views require salient, distinctive events for them to be challenged. In the partially restrictive mode, television did have an effect while direct experience did not. In that case one might argue that confirmation of the schema works through constant repetition, while individual events do not add much to the whole. This contribution tried to show that direct experience and mediated experience are not necessarily juxtaposed. Direct experience does not automatically make TV effects impossible. Television shows powerful images that can offer information which the viewer may consciously or subconsciously try to test in reality. People are not necessarily logical when they do this. As long as their schemas and theories about reality are not disconfirmed they are likely to remain credible. Many such perceptions about the real world are only partially disconfirmable. Television may feed overestimation of crime in society. Direct experience is not likely to disconfirm these perceptions for a simple reason; negative experiences with crime (e.g., being a victim or a witness of crime) confirm the partially restrictive view. All evidence to the contrary is lost because of the partially restrictive nature of the experience. One night, month or even year without being attacked is not experienced as evidence of safety. On the contrary, not unlike the superstitious rat people may regard any direct experience with crime as a confirmation of the television image, even if the real incidence of crime is much lower than the elevated crime rates of television’s drama and news. This study offers support for perspectives which look at media use from a social action point of view (cf. Renckstorf & Wester, 2001, for a recent overview). The Renckstorf model redefines media use as a form of social action. The present contribution does a similar thing. Media are not presented as a foreign body which ‘distorts’ perceptions of reality which would otherwise have been correct. Media images or media experiences are defined as just one type of experience amidst several other types. Whether or not the experience (mediated or other) leaves a trace and has an effect does not depend on the characteristics of the media, but on the type of experience it presents. The level of disconfirmability of experiences resembles Renckstorf’s model of external action, which makes a distinction between ‘problematic problems’ (which would occur when a mediated experience challenges existing beliefs and forces a viewer to change his or her believes) and ‘non problematic problems’ (which can be equated with
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experiences which are partially disconfirmable and therefore do not force the viewer to change his or her perceptions) (cf. Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). Further research should look at two things. First, the distinction between direct experience and mediated experience could be examined in other settings, with other variables. Maybe direct experience with crime is too traumatizing and constitutes a special case. Other examples may yield different results. Second, the implication of Reeder and Brewer’s concepts should be studied in depth. How much of the previously conducted research has been affected by these processes without acknowledging it? Rubin, Perse and Taylor (1988) have discussed the fact that whether one used positively or negatively worded questions appeared to make a big difference when testing the validity of certain media effects theories. The authors felt they had found a flaw in media effects theory. Shrum (1995) on the other hand remarked that Rubin et al. did not test attitudes (as they claimed), but rather perceptions which had been influenced by the process referred to as ‘confirmatory hypothesis testing’ (clearly an example of the development of partially restrictive schemata). Some authors discussing the link between media exposure and direct experience have taken the idea of partially disconfirmable schemas to its extreme and have, as it were, described the opposite hierarchy of experiences. C. Wright Mills already mentioned in ‘The Power Elite’ that “the individual does not trust his own experience (…) until it is confirmed by others or by the media” (1956: 312). Anthony Giddens (1991) probably went furthest by remarking that in a society dominated by media a ‘reality inversion’ may occur whereby mediated experience becomes the primary and most important experience people have of certain situations. When people are confronted with ‘the real thing’ they will show a tendency to judge reality by their media experience. The latter will often be experienced as ‘more real’ than daily life. It is the validity of information and the processing strategy employed by an individual which will decide how perceptions of reality are affected. Whether or not the experience was mediated or direct, probably does not matter too much.
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The home as a multimedia environment: Families’ conception of space and the introduction of information and communication technologies in the home
Veerle Van Rompaey and Keith Roe
Abstract An integrated quantitative and qualitative research design was employed to study some of the ways in which the diffusion of new information and communication technologies (ICT) is related to the disposition of physical and symbolic space within families. A typology of family types based on possession of media appliances was constructed based on over 900 telephone interviews. This typology consisted of four types of families: ‘traditional’, ‘intermediate’, and ‘multimedia’. It was then used as a basis for selecting 38 families for indepth-interviews. Out of these, ten families were chosen as case-studies to participate in a Family Interaction Game (FIG). The results of the FIG indicate first, that it is not only media appliances that induce compartmentalization, but also the conceptions and organization of space that families employ and, second, that besides the television set, the computer appears to be an important factor in shaping family space and should be studied accordingly. Furthermore, the interviews indicate that privacy is not always attainable in the family context, especially not for teenagers. Keywords: Media in the family, new media, media appliances, family context
Introduction It has always been assumed that the media affect family life. There have been many studies into the impact on family life of television (Kubey, 1986; Lull, 1980, 1988; Morley, 1986; Krcmar, 1996), the VCR (Levy, 1980a, 1980b; Morgan, Shanahan & Harris, 1990), and computers (Brimm & Watkins, 1985; Caron, Giroux & Douzou, 1985; Dutton, Kovaric & Steinfield, 1985; Haddon, 1992). Currently, however, families are confronted with radical changes in the structure of the media environment (such as digitalization, the Internet, and multimedia technology), changes
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which pose new challenges to family life. Furthermore, more and more families live in houses that are equipped with many different media appliances (Livingstone, 1998; Morley & Silverstone, 1990). These changes raise questions about spatial organization. The use of space has frequently been investigated by the Family Studies discipline which makes a distinction between physical and symbolic space (Morgan, 1996). Physical space can be defined as the architectural structure of the house in which the family lives. According to Wentling (1990) this structure can be either traditional or transitional. Traditional houses are privacy orientated, emphasizing separated and one-purpose rooms that are completely closed off from other rooms in the house. Transitional houses are less private, more open and community-oriented. Every home may contain both components. Symbolic space, on the other hand, the concept which has been studied most often, refers to the meaning that families ascribe to the spaces in their home or in their environment; spaces which are guarded by boundary management between the public and the private. As such, Goffman’s (1959) concepts of ‘frontstage’ and ‘backstage’ behavior can be seen as aspects of symbolic space. ‘Frontstage’ behavior is public and observable and defines the situation for anyone else present at the time. ‘Backstage’ behavior is not always visible to the other persons present. Rasmussen (1997) indicates that when using ‘older’ media such as books, newspapers, magazines, television and radio in the presence of another family member, frontstage and backstage behavior mostly coincide, since what we do is apparent to the other person present. What researchers are now beginning to find is that new ICT, such as the Internet, are blurring the boundaries between private and public space (cf. Meyrowitz, 1985; Frissen, 1992). Hence while frontstage and backstage behavior used to coincide while using the media, with the emergence of these new technologies, backstage and frontstage behavior may become disconnected (Rasmussen, 1997; Gumpert & Drucker, 1998). For example, through telephone calls, Internet chat lines, and E-mail one can communicate beyond place, thereby ‘disconnecting’ from our surroundings. Physically one can be in the same room as another family member but mentally one is somewhere else. As Rasmussen indicates, this is typical of a ‘virtual context’. The emergence of a virtual context, combined with an increasing density of media appliances, and especially ICT, in the home, has led to the emergence of a popular thesis postulating greater privatization and individualization within the home, leading to more and more social isolation both of the family as a whole and of its various members (Gottlieb & Dede, 1984; Vitalari & Venkatesh, 1988; Livingstone, 1998, 1999). In this context we propose to adduce the concept of compartmentalization. According to Gumpert and Drucker (1998: 431):
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233
The personalization of media technologies coincides with a design emphasis on separate places for separate functions and inhabitants that partition adults from children and men from women. The architectural style of the home and the positioning of media appliances in the home can therefore create different compartments. However, we argue that there are two types of compartmentalization: physical and symbolic compartmentalization. Physical compartmentalization is a consequence of the architectural structure of the house (e.g., a child is separated from its parents when it is in his own bedroom while the parents are in the living-room). It is not a condition for symbolic compartimentalization. Symbolic compartmentalization occurs when family members are mentally separated from each other and as such create their own private space. Although, at the moment, privacy is of growing importance and it appears as if privacy can be obtained by everyone, it seems that in the family context this democratic view might be somewhat exaggerated. As Allan and Crow (1991) have indicated, teenagers are not always able to create their own private spaces, and react by turning to leisure activities outside the home in order to evade their parents. The purpose of this paper is further to investigate families’ conception of space in relation to ICT. In this paper we will try and answer the following research questions: 1. Where are media appliances placed in the home? 2. Which appliances are central and which are peripheral? 3. Do media appliances induce physical and/or symbolic compartmentalization between family members?
Method The data reported here are drawn from a major study concerned with the role played by the media in Flemish family life conducted in the spring of 1999. In the first stage computer assisted telephone interviews (n=965) were conducted with a representative sample of Flemish families (oneperson households were excluded). The resulting data were then subjected to a K-means Cluster Analysis (Sharma, 1996; SPSS Inc., 1997) for the purpose of constructing a continuum from which a typology of families based on density of ICT in the household could be drawn. The number of different media appliances at home were used to calculate a three cluster solution. For this purpose standardized values were used.
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Table 14.1. Final cluster centers (means of the standardized variables for each cluster) Cluster widescreen TV tape recorder cd player cd-rom player PC decoder for pay TV digital video camera discman wireless telephone portable PC e-mail address fax mobile telephone internet connection cable colour TV modem multimedia PC answering machine record player radio satellite dish semaphone stereo telephone TV with teletext VCR video camera radio alarm clock
1
2
3
–,01216 –,49657 –,53745 –,52042 –,21440 –,06364 –,13857 –,33595 –,21630 –,22522 –,31868 –,34689 –,31941 –,38145 –,19531 –,32218 –,43193 –,49518 –,27038 –,24622 –,40912 –,09847 –,16300 –,52554 –,29747 –,31265 –,33753 –,24124 –,41232
–,00967 ,61078 ,63408 ,24565 ,25361 ,09219 ,09166 ,35827 ,14290 –,05460 –,31260 ,03406 ,27021 –,37613 ,11687 ,35410 –,16859 ,17498 ,16010 ,31900 ,56223 ,04861 ,09087 ,62200 ,20656 ,28862 ,26229 ,21455 ,54210
,04419 ,49660 ,66223 1,31500 ,28206 ,02808 ,29254 ,48184 ,50651 ,93171 1,81239 1,13760 ,52142 2,12129 ,20220 ,39467 1,80844 1,31965 ,57572 ,20493 ,36307 ,25514 ,27666 ,59424 ,58637 ,39544 ,54785 ,35433 ,28276
2
3
3,261
6,121 4,496
Table 14.2. Distances between final cluster centers Cluster 1 2 3
1 3,261 6,121
4,496
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235
Three types of families were thus identified: Type 1 (54 %). This consisted of ‘traditional families’ characterized by low media density (i.e., television, telephone, and a limited number of audio appliances). Type 2 (31 %). This consisted of ‘intermediate families’ characterized by average possession of media. They differ from type 1 in having more appliances (more television sets and audio media) and from type 3 in not having newer ICT such as Internet and E-mail. Type 3 (15 %). This consisted of ‘multimedia families’ with a high density of appliances and the presence of E-mail, Internet, cd-roms and so forth. The means of all variables differ across the three clusters. These variables were therefore all important in identifying the three clusters. However, the means of Internet connection (F=1859,35), modem (F=727,502) and E-mail address (F=623,759) differ the most. These variables were therefore more important in identifying the three clusters. On the basis of this typology 38 families were then selected for a qualitative study involving in-depth interviews: 6 families from type 1, 15 from type 2, and 17 from type 3. Of these, 31 (4 in type 1, 13 in type 2 & 14 in type 3) contained children. The interviews were conducted in the home with parents and children together. Out of these, ten families (5 from type 1, 2 from type 2, and 3 from type 1) were then chosen as case-studies and these families make up the subject of this chapter. The sample was restricted due to the time-intensiveness of our research design. However, it is not in the scope of this investigation to generalize findings. The aim is to give an insight in the ways in which families introduce media in their spatial framework. In order to study families’ conception of space in relation to ICT, the Family Interaction Game (FIG) was employed. This method is based on the work by Cromwell and Peterson (1981). In each of the ten cases, family members are given the assignment to draw their ideal home together. They have to draw the ground-plan of the house and furnish it. They are asked to label each room and to point out which family member may use that particular room. When the groundplan is finished, the family is given the opportunity to buy media appliances to put into their ideal home. For this purpose they are assigned an amount of money (8678 €/ approx. 7300 USD) and a price-list containing the price of each media appliance. This way the family is forced to reach a consensus and make decisions about the house and about the placing of media appliances that they find important enough to buy.
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Table 14.3. One-way analysis of variance Cluster
Error
Mean Square
df
Mean Square
df
,180
2
,998
897
,180
,835
tape recorder
128,604
2
,699
897
183,977
,000
cd player
156,063
2
,674
897
231,558
,000
cd-rom player
193,142
2
,577
897
334,550
,000
25,542
2
,951
897
26,871
,000
decoder for pay TV
2,217
2
,997
897
2,224
,109
digital video camera
11,714
2
,971
897
12,061
,000
discman
61,173
2
,884
897
69,233
,000
wireless telephone
31,834
2
,923
897
34,481
,000
portable PC
72,552
2
,865
897
83,923
,000
e-mail address
264,762
2
,424
897
623,759
,000
fax
118,516
2
,741
897
159,966
,000
53,557
2
,868
897
61,679
,000
365,358
2
,196
897
1859,349
,000
widescreen TV
PC
mobile telephone internet connection
F
Sig.
cable
13,303
2
,353
897
37,688
,000
colour TV
53,304
2
,898
897
59,366
,000
modem
274,660
2
,378
897
727,502
,000
multimedia computer
183,611
2
,567
897
323,595
,000
answering machine
44,078
2
,866
897
50,876
,000
record player
31,733
2
,918
897
34,584
,000
radio
93,566
2
,801
897
116,856
,000
satellite dish
7,162
2
1,000
897
7,161
,001
semaphone
12,721
2
,862
897
14,761
,000
145,035
2
,689
897
210,548
,000
telephone
51,031
2
,849
897
60,114
,000
TV with teletext
45,876
2
,887
897
51,714
,000
VCR
57,707
2
,863
897
66,879
,000
video camera
29,105
2
,927
897
31,400
,000
radio alarm clock
87,526
2
,785
897
111,428
,000
stereo
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237
Since this is a task that confronts the family with a hypothetical problem, it provides the opportunity to find out how different media appliances are incorporated in the family home. It also gives us an indication as to which appliances are the most important to own and which are more peripheral according to the different families. After they have completed this task, the family members are asked to fill in a short questionnaire in which they can rate their satisfaction with the family solution. Family interactions are recorded and transcribed.
Results Physical space In order to get a clearer view of Flemish family homes, data from the quantitative survey, with regard to architectural style and media density, will be combined with results from the FIG. Architectural style. The following results are based on the survey data from families with children (n=617). Table 14.4. Percentages of separate rooms in Flemish homes (n=617) Number Room
0
1
Bathroom
0.6
storage room
>4
3
89.8
9.1
0.5
0
0
100
12.7
67.7
13.5
4.5
0.8
0.8
100
Kitchen
22.5
76.3
1.1
0
0
0
100
dining-room
47.2
50.2
2.6
0
0
0
100
kitchen + dining-room
89.1
10.7
0.2
0
0
0
100
living-room
33.9
64.8
1.0
0.3
0
0
100
living-room + diningroom
80.1
19.9
0
0
0
0
100
kitchen + living-room + dining-room
88.0
12.0
0
0
0
0
100
Study
58.8
38.4
2.3
0.3
0.2
0
100
0
0.6
16.2
53.8
22.0
7.2
100
parental bedroom
0.3
99.4
0.3
0
0
0
100
children’s bedroom
2.3
28.8
50.6
14.9
4.9
0.5
100
73.1
23.5
2.8
0.3
0.2
0.2
100
Bedroom
Guestroom
4
Total
2
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An average Flemish family home consists of eight separate rooms. The modal home consists of one bathroom (90 %), one kitchen (76 %), one living-room (65 %), one storage room (68 %), one dining room (50 %), one parental bedroom (99 %) and two children’s bedrooms (51 %). There is a trend towards open spaces, so that the living-room, dining-room and kitchen, or in some cases, only the living-room and dining-room (20 %) can be situated in the same space (12 %). This trend leads to more transitional houses. Physical compartmentalization seems to be a feature of the traditional homes. Transitional homes, on the other hand, are more open, implying fewer strictly separated compartments. However, in line with previous research (Wentling, 1990), the results of the FIG indicate that the ideal family home is mostly not just transitional or traditional. In most cases they are a mixture of both. More specifically, we found that most families drew homes that were transitional downstairs and traditional upstairs. This could be due to the fact that the more community oriented places such as the living room, kitchen and dining-room are to be found on the lower level of the ideal home. Upstairs one will find the children’s and parental bedrooms and the bathroom which in all ten cases are places that are separated from one another by walls and doors. As this family discussion and design of the upstairs and downstairs of their ideal home shows: Mother: That’s the kitchen and that will be the living room, this large corner. (to her son) You can make the door here. Son (14 years old): That isn’t a door, we leave that open. That’s a new design. And then we make the dining room here. Mother: yes, and the sitting area. Son: So does everybody agree, or should we look at it again? Mother’s partner: Look at what? Son: Well here (points at the open space) Mother’s partner: It’s O.K. like that. We’re just going to leave that open. In this design, it is more plausible that physical compartmentalization occurs because family members retreat to the traditional oriented spaces. Media density. Our survey results suggest that more and more Flemish family homes are equipped not only with more than one set of ‘old’ media appliances but also with lots of ‘new’ ICT. As a result family homes are more and more becoming centers of multimedia activities.
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239
Figure 14.1. FIG: One families’ design of the downstairs and upstairs of their ideal Figure 14.1. home.
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Table 14.5. Percentages of Flemish households with children number of media Table 14.5. appliances at home (n=617) Number media appliances
0
1
2
>2
Total
television
1.5
54.8
32.4
11.3
100
VCR
8.4
75.2
13.6
2.8
100
radio
10.1
27.0
24.6
38.3
100
5.4
43.1
29.4
22.1
100
PC
67.9
29.9
1.3
0.9
100
multimedia PC
54.9
39.4
4.7
1.0
100
993.0
6.7
0.3
0
100
CD-ROM player
47.4
46.4
4.9
1.3
100
E-mail
84.4
12.9
1.3
1.4
100
internet connection
82.1
17.8
0.2
0
100
4.4
62.4
22.4
10.8
100
63.7
29.7
6.0
0.6
100
CD-player
portable PC
telephone GSM
In 1999, 45 % of Flemish families with children were in possession of a multimedia computer. Slightly more had a CD-ROM player (53 %), 16 % of Flemish families with children had one or more E-mail addresses and 18 % were connected to the internet. 64 % Flemish families with children owned video-and/or computer games and 47 % of these had a game console such as Playstation or Nintendo. Silverstone, Hirsch, and Morley (1992) already recognized this changing media context within the family home, although they still regard television as the ‘leading object’ in the household. However, they acknowledge that the presence of other media appliances has certainly changed the context and even the meaning of ‘watching television’. Indeed, the results of our FIG show that, in all ten cases, the television remains the most important focus of the family home. It is situated in a central space of the ideal living-room and is in all cases, except one, accompanied by the video recorder. The family ground-plans also show that furniture and especially sofas are often placed in a circle facing the television in order to create a cozy sitting area. Very remarkable in this regard was that every family wanted to have a large television set in its ideal living-room. Even the one family that did not have television in their real life (because the father was opposed to it) incorporated a large television set into their ideal home which was situated in the center of the living-room with the sofas pointing towards it.
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241
Figure 14.2. FIG: One families’ design of the living-room of their ideal home
In some cases families even began designing their ideal home by identifying a space to accommodate the large television set. When designing their ideal living-room many families compose it around the space where they want their television set to be placed. This is illustrated by a family who, while they were drawing their ideal living-room, wondered where to put the television: Mother: I want a long chair to be put here (in the living room) … Daughter (12 years old): Or we could put it like that (points at where she wants to place the sofa). Here, and that’s the television set, OK?! Mother: In the middle of the room? Daughter: Yes, here you have the sofas (around the TV), and then you can watch it like that. Mother: So where do you want to put the television set? In the middle of the sofas?
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Daughter: Here you have the kitchen, and then you can put your television set over here, so that when you sit here, you can see it … Mother: No, no, the kitchen is over there! Daughter: So what is this then? Mother: That’s the dining table. That’s this table and it’s going to be a rectangular one not a round one. Son (10 years old): (is a bit puzzled) So this is where we put the TV then, is it? Mother: Those are the chairs (around the dining table)! In another family: Mother: So, when you enter the living room … Father: You can put your sofa like this, in the middle. Mother: (adjusts the placing of the sofas) Father: the three-seater, and the two-seater opposite each other. Son (16-year old): And then we need a very large cupboard for the television set. Father: A TV, my son? Son (12-year old): And a very big one … When given the chance to buy media appliances the large television set was seen as an important family purchase, without which ‘one just could not go on living’, as some families put it. This was also reflected in the fact that in all ten cases it was one of the first and least contested media appliances to be bought from our list. This is contrary to the small television set which was usually purchased as a second TV and which was, in accordance with their demands, put in children’s ideal bedrooms: Interviewer: Now that the ground-plan is done, you can start buying media appliances. Mother: So, first the basic stuff. Son (18 years old): Television in my room. Mother: Let’s do this systematically. Furthermore, the use of this small TV in children’s ideal bedrooms differs along developmental lines. Younger children tend to want one in order to play with their game console in their own bedroom while adolescents tend to want one in order to actually watch television. In addition, we found, in our intermediate and multimedia families in particular, that the computer has the same importance attached to it as the television set. It is also regarded as an obvious presence in the home:
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Son (9 years old): So everybody can choose which media appliance he wants? Mother: No no, that’s not how it’s done. Listen guys, we’ve got a certain amount of money and with that we can buy whatever media appliance we want for the house. So you can’t say: “I want this and I want that!” because then we’re out of money. We should first look into what is very important for us to have. You first have to purchase those things that you can’t live without. Son (11 years old): So instead of a TV in the bedroom … Father: We spend it all on computers! (laughs) Also in line with the findings for the large television set, we found that families accommodated the computer from the beginning: Father: I think we should bear in mind …, well I often think about a computer corner. A separate corner. And I even thought … for myself that is … a computer corner, somewhere … Son (11 year old): In a study? Father: In the living room or so. A study, but more like a separate corner, perhaps with a man’s height division, but that you’re still in the same room. Perhaps the front here (points at the living room), but with a very low wall here. And there we put everything: my computer and mother’s computer (laughs). And it has to be very pretty, you can see that sometimes in some places where they have these beautiful computer tables. Children also seemed very interested in having a PC in their ideal bedroom. Overall, children splash their ideal bedroom not only with ICT but also with swimming pools, waterbeds and jacuzzi’s. As illustrated by this 10-year old boy’s bedroom design (see Figure 14.3). In accordance with this finding, our survey data indicate not infrequently that the computer related media are situated in the children’s bedroom, this being the case for almost half of the computers (ordinary PC and multimedia PC) and 16 % of the modems reported.
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Figure 14.3. FIG: a 10-year old boy’s ideal bedroom design
Table 14.6. Percentages of Flemish families with media appliances in the children’s Table 14.6. bedroom, living-room, parental bedroom, kitchen and study room media appliance
children’s bedroom
livingroom
parental bedroom
kitchen
study
n
PC
30
24
3
2
26
198
multimedia PC
19
31
2
2
41
278
modem
16
26
1
1
49
155
3
73
18
15
13
590
CD
45
82
4
9
7
582
radio
44
62
11
44
7
553
TV
19
97
12
6
3
606
stereo
38
87
3
5
5
570
VCR
9
92
4
3
1
565
telephone
In line with previous research (Beentjes et al., 1999; Livingstone, Holden & Bovill, 1999), our data suggest that children’s bedrooms, unlike parental bedrooms, are increasingly equipped with all sorts of media appliances. This becomes obvious when the results of the FIG are studied. An im-
The home as a multimedia environment
245
portant question to be asked, in this regard, is whether or not children’s bedrooms are becoming secluded multimedia islands where children go to evade family life and as such create a physical compartmentalization between themselves and their parents. We argue that this is also dependent on the child’s stage in development. Teenagers seem especially interested in creating a private space of their own. As such, during the entire FIG, they spend most of the time designing and decorating their ideal bedroom. These become cozy multimedia relaxation areas. Not infrequently sofas and audio appliances are put in them. One 16-year old wanted to guard this private space by putting a surveillance camera at the bedroom door:
Figure 14.4. FIG: a 16-year old boy’s ideal bedroom design
Symbolic space. Although teenagers design ideal bedrooms that are very private, this does not always convey the real life situation. New ICT, however, may induce new opportunities for the creation of privacy. Previous research has already indicated that teenagers may use a computer to be more independent of their parents (Murdock, Hartmann & Gray, 1992). We also observed that teenagers often use computer games to create a screen between frontstage and backstage behavior, thereby creating their own private space and, as such, a symbolic compartmentalization between themselves and other family members:
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Interviewer: Do you find it annoying when they (16 year old son and 12 year old son) are playing on the computer? Mother: Yes. Father: They close themselves off at that moment, socially speaking. The only contact they have at that moment is with the computer not with us and that really gets on my nerves. Especially when they put on a headset to hear the tunes that accompany the game. Kraut et al. (1998) have also indicated that the Internet might be used by teenagers to withdraw from social contact as a means of obtaining greater privacy within the family. We also found that the Internet is often used for privacy creation in our multimedia families. In addition, we observed that teenagers in our multimedia families liked E-mail and chatting, indicating that a ‘virtual context’ is ideal for teenager’s privacy creation since the frontstage is totally separated from the backstage and, as such, they can create a space of their own which cannot be invaded by parents or other family members, even when they are in the same room. This is illustrated by a mother talking about the use that their children make of the sole PC that is connected to the Internet. In this family this connection was situated in the living-room and even though the children had a computer in their own bedroom, without an Internet connection, they still preferred the computer downstairs in the living-room. Mother (about her children): They don’t have any notion of time when they’re sitting in front of their computer. If we didn’t say anything they would be busy on the Internet from eight o’clock in the evening for hours on end until late at night. … If we don’t draw the line they would keep on doing it. That’s why I’m a bit concerned about having an Internet connection in all their bedrooms. We’re thinking about that but then it’s difficult to supervise in each room whether they are sleeping or still chatting. We found that chatting and E-mail seem to be very popular with teenage girls. Perhaps this could be because chatting is analogous to another favorite female pastime; telephoning (cf. Rakow, 1988; Anderson, Arceneaux, Carter & Miller, 1995). Daughter (13 years old): It’s absolutely wonderful. I can never stop with it. I chat with this one boy and then I just can’t stop. I say to him ‘bye, I’m off’ and five minutes later, there I am still chatting! Mother: Most of the time you are chatting with ten people at the same time. When I say ‘It’s time to stop’, then she has to say goodbye to ten people, so that half-an-hour later she’s still busy saying goodbye.
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247
Interviewer: Do you always chat to the same people? Daughter: Yes, especially, well there are a few boys from school, but also my friends. Mother: She doesn’t chat with strangers! Daughter: I use the phone less. With regard to the telephone, Rasmussen (1997) indicated that conflicts between communication and physical space can be solved by placing the telephone in a place where family members can talk without being overheard by other family members. However, according to our data, in most Flemish families, the telephone is placed in the living-room (73 %), which wittingly or unwittingly leads to a decline in privacy for the person who is using the telephone. It will then be very difficult to create a mental wall between back and frontstage. It might be easier to create this division by chat and E-mail. This process can even be facilitated by having an internet connection in the children’s bedroom which was already the case in the oldest son and daughter’s bedroom of one family – as is shown by the upstairs of their ideal home (see Figure 14.5). In this case, frontstage and backstage behavior are no longer relevant since symbolic compartmentalization is replaced by physical compartmentalization.
Discussion In this study an integrated quantitative and qualitative research design was employed to study some of the ways in which the diffusion of new information and communication technologies (ICT) is related to the disposition of physical and symbolic space within families. First, the concepts of physical and symbolic space are elaborated on and an increasing compartmentalization of family life is postulated. From over 900 telephone interviews a typology of family types based on possession of media appliances was constructed, divided into ‘traditional’ (low media density), ‘intermediate’ (average media density), and ‘multimedia’ (high media density) families. This typology was then used as a basis for selecting 38 families for in-depth interviews. Out of these, ten families were chosen as case-studies which participated in a Family Interaction Game (FIG). Families are more and more equipped with all sorts of media appliances. Our FIG indicates that the computer is a media appliance that seems to be of equal importance to that of the television. Furthermore, in
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Figure 14.5. FIG: One families’ design of the upstairs of their ideal home
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line with previous research, our data suggest that children’s bedrooms, contrary to parental bedrooms, are increasingly equipped with all sorts of media appliances. An important question to be asked is whether or not children’s bedrooms are becoming secluded multimedia islands where children go to evade family life, thereby creating a physical compartmentalization between them and their parents. This seems to be especially desirable for teenagers. They design cozy and secluded multimedia bedrooms. In addition, we found that physical compartmentalization can be induced by designing a more traditional oriented home, although most homes seem to be a mixture of both architectural styles. It follows that it is not only media appliances that induce individualization but also the conception and organization of space within the family that allows for physical compartmentalization. Although they design privacy-oriented bedrooms, privacy is not always attainable in the family context, especially not for teenagers. For them two options remain: they can either participate in lots of leisure activities outside the home or they can use the Internet (especially for chatting and E-mail) to create their own private space. The first option seems to be popular in our traditional and intermediate families which are not in possession of an Internet connection, the second is popular in our multimedia families. Future research into the impacts of new ICT on family life should bear in mind that families’ organization and conception of space is an important factor in regard to the degree of impact families permit ICT to have on their lives. Second, the computer has become an important factor in shaping family space and should be studied accordingly. Furthermore, it would be interesting to investigate whether teenagers’ preference for the virtual context could lead to a retreat from leisure activities outside the home because they seem less important for the creation of a private sphere.
References Allan, G. & Crow, G. (1991). Privatization, home-centredness and leisure. Leisure Studies, 10 (1), 19–32. Anderson, P. B., Arceneaux, E. R., Carter, D. & Miller, A. M. (1995). Changes in the telephone calling patterns of adolescent girls. Adolescence, 24 (2), 145–166. Beentjes, J. W. J., d’Haenens, L., van der Voort, T. H. A. & Koolstra, C. M. (1999). Dutch and Flemish children and adolescents as users of interactive media. Communications, 24 (2), 145–166.
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Brimm, D. & Watkins, B. (1985). The adoption and use of microcomputers in homes and elementary schools. In M. Chen & W. Paisley (Eds.), Children and microcomputers. Research on the newest medium (pp. 129–150). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Caron, A. H., Giroux, L. & Douzou, S. (1985). The presence of microcomputers in the home: Uses and impacts. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, Honolulu. Cromwell, R. E. & Peterson, G. W. (1981). Multisystem-multimethod assessment: A framework. In E. E. Filsinger & R. A. Lewis (Eds.), Assessing Marriage. New behavioral approaches (pp. 38–54). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Dutton, W. H., Kovaric, P. & Steinfield, C. (1985). Computing in the home: A research paradigm. Computers in the Social Sciences, 1, 5–18. Frissen, V. (1992). Trapped in electronic cages? Gender and new information technologies in the public and private domain: An overview of research. Media, Culture and Society, 14 (1), 31–49. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday. Gottlieb, D. & Dede, C. (1984). The social role of the personal computer: Implication for familial mental health. Houston, TX: University of Houston-University Park, Center for Public Policy. Gumpert, G. & Drucker, S. J. (1998). The mediated home in the global village. Communication Research, 25 (4), 422–438. Haddon, L. (1992). Explaining ICT consumption: The case of the home computer. In R. Silverstone & E. Hirsch (Eds.), Consuming technologies. Media and information in domestic spheres (pp. 82–96). London: Routledge. Kraut, R., Patterson, M., Lundmark, V., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T. & Scherlis, W. (1998). Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? American Psychologist, 53 (9), 1017–1031. Krcmar, M. (1996). Family communication patterns, discourse behaviour and child television viewing. Human Communication Research, 23 (2), 251–277. Kubey, R. W. (1986). Television use in everyday life: Coping with unstructured time. Journal of Communication, 36 (3), 108–123. Levy, M. R. (1980a). Home video recorders: A user survey. Journal of Communication, 30 (4), 23–27. Levy, M. R. (1980b). Program playback preferences in VCR households. Journal of Broadcasting, 24 (3), 327–336. Livingstone, S. (1998). Mediated childhoods. A comparative approach to young people’s changing media environment in Europe. European Journal of Communication, 13 (4), 435–456. Livingstone, S. (1999). Personal computers in the home – what do they mean for Europe’s children? Intermedia, 27 (2), 4–6. Livingstone, S., Holden, K. J. & Bovill, M. (1999). Children’s changing media environment. Overview of a European comparative study. In C. von Feilitzen & U. Carlsson (Eds.), Children and media. Image, education, participation (pp. 39–51). Göteborg: The UNESCO International Clearinghouse on Children and Violence on the Screen at Nordicom. Lull, J. (1980). Family communication patterns and the social uses of television. Communication Research, 7 (3), 319–334.
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Lull, J. (1988). World families watch television. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No sense of place: The impact of electronic media on social behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. Morgan, D. H. J. (1996). Family connections. An introduction to family studies. Cambridge: Polity Press. Morgan, M., Shanahan, J. & Harris, C. (1990). VCRs and the effects television: New diversity or more of the same? In J. Dobrow (Ed.), Social and cultural aspects of VCR use (pp. 107–124). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Morley, D. (1986). Family television. London: Comedia. Morley, D. & Silverstone, R. (1990). Domestic communication – technologies and meanings. Media, Culture and Society, 12 (1), 31–55. Murdock, G., Hartmann, P. & Gray, P. (1992). Contextualizing home computing. Resources and practices. In R. Silverstone & E. Hirsch (Eds.), Consuming technologies: Media and information in domestic spaces (pp. 146–160). London: Routledge. Rakow, L. F. (1988). Women and the telephone: The gendering of a communications technology. In C. Kramarae (Ed.), Technology and women’s voices: Keeping in touch (pp. 207–229). New York: Routledge. Rasmussen, T. (1997). Social interaction and the new media. The construction of communicative contexts. Nordicom Review, 181 (21), 63–76. Sharma, S. (1996). Applied multivariate techniques. New York: Wiley. Silverstone, R., Hirsch, E. & Morley, D. (1992). Information and communication technologies and the moral economy of the household. In R. Silverstone & E. Hirsch (Eds.), Consuming technologies. Media and information in domestic spaces (pp. 15–31). London: Routledge. SPSS Inc. (1997). SPSS base 7.5 for Windows. User’s Guide. Chicago, IL: SPSS Inc. Vitalari, N. P. & Venkatesh, A. (1988). The social impact of computing in the home. Irvine, CA: University of California-Irvine, Public Policy Research Organization, Graduate School of Management. Wentling, J. W. (1990). Housing by lifestyle: The component method of residential design. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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15 Patterns in television news use1 Ruben Konig, Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester
Abstract In this study we explore patterns of television news use, using data from a national survey on Media Use in The Netherlands conducted in 1994 (n = 969). Results indicate that people are much more likely to prefer watching television news selectively and attentively than watching the news while simultaneously engaging in other activities. Moreover, the chances of this preference for watching the news selectively and attentively are even greater for men, older people, and people endorsing well-informed citizen’s values. They are somewhat smaller for women, younger people, and people without well-informed citizen’s values. No evidence of interaction among these determinants was found. Contrary to our expectations, education, occupation, and having children do not seem to influence self-reported patterns of television news use. A possible explanation for the difference between men and women, is the subjective definition of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure for men and a sphere of labor for women, which traditional role-expectancies may still engender. A possible explanation for the inclination of older people and people with well-informed citizens values to prefer watching the news selectively and attentively, may be found in a relatively strong feeling that watching the news is important. Keywords: television news use, traditional gender role expectancies, subjective relevance, well-informed citizen’s values, age, birth-cohort
Introduction Qualitative research shows that people use television and television news in their everyday life as an everyday activity. Watching television or television news appears to be nothing special and, as with any other everyday activity, people seem to develop routines in watching television and television news (e.g., Morley, 1986; Van der Molen, 1989; Morley, 1992; Hermans & Van Snippenburg, 1993; Hagen, 1994a, 1994b). Using quantitative research methods, Konig, Renckstorf and Wester (2001) explore such everyday routines in watching television and television news for the Dutch population as a whole. On the basis of survey data, they show that
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at least three routines of watching television can be discerned in The Netherlands in 1994. The first routine involves watching television gregariously. People using this routine hardly ever watch television alone and talk a lot in front of their television sets. The second routine involves watching television habitually and unselectively as primary activity. People switch on the set because they want to watch television, not because they want to see a specific program. This routine comes closest to what is often called ‘heavy viewing’ (cf. Frissen, 1996). The third routine involves watching television as a background for other activities such as eating, talking, reading, working, and domestic activities. Konig, Renckstorf & Wester (2001) also describe two routines of watching television news in particular, that the present study will elaborate on. These two routines of news watching can clearly be discerned from the three routines of watching television in general. One routine involves selectively and attentively watching the news as primary activity, whereas the other routine implies that people not only watch the news, but simultaneously engage in other activities as well. The authors show that these routines are not distributed evenly across people with different individual and social-structural background characteristics. For instance, they show that men are more likely to display a routine of selectively and attentively watching the news as a primary activity than women, whereas women more often show a routine to engage in other activities while watching the news than men. However, what the authors did not investigate, is whether men or women tend to prefer one of the two routines; that is, in their actual behavior2. In general, it is not yet clear whether or not different people report a different routine to apply more strongly to their own news-watching behavior than the other routine. That is, routines in watching the news were explored, but the authors did not explore patterns of television news use that may have evolved out of preference for one of these routines3. Routines are defined here as standard ways of using television news in everyday situations, whereas patterns are defined as combinations of such routines. The aim of the present study is to gain additional insight in people’s television news use by exploring such patterns – that is, combinations of routines – of television news use. Is it possible to identify social categories that have developed different patterns of television news use? That is, is it possible to identify social categories of which the members have typically developed a preference for one of the two routines in watching television news? One may expect that people with different social-structural backgrounds, with their different roles and situations in life, develop different patterns of television news use (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1991; Merton, 1968; McQuail, Blumler & Brown, 1972; Wright, 1986). In this contribution, these different patterns
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of television news use will be explored both theoretically and empirically. Theoretical reasoning will serve as starting-point for the empirical exploration. From an action theoretical point of view (Renckstorf, 1996; Renckstorf & McQuail, 1996), this means that we will have to find theoretical reasons for differences in the typical ‘interaction situation’ in which members of specific social categories usually watch the news, or differences in the typical context in which these members watch the news in everyday situations. The context concerned does not only consist of the physical surroundings such as the couch on which the viewer is seated and the other people present in the room, but also of internal processes of the viewer such as his or her preoccupations and drowsiness after a hard days work. In fact, the ‘interaction situation’ consists of everything that influences the processes of giving meaning to the news and the items in the news (Renckstorf & Wester, 1999: 49–50). Or, as Dahlgren (1988: 289) puts it: “The meanings the programmes have for the viewers arise in the programme/audience interface”. Therefore, reasons for differences in the typical ‘interaction situation’ are manifold and one can never be complete in summing them up. As a result, theoretical and empirical explorations like the present one cannot be complete either, but one may still hope to at least shed some light on the complex matter of patterns in television news use.
Different interaction situation, different pattern of television news use? Three kinds of differences in interaction situations will be elaborated upon, assuming that these differences are relevant to the patterns of television news use that people develop. First, the subjective definition of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure or labor is suggested as a possible ground for preference of different routines in television news use. Second, the subjective relevancy of watching the news may lead to different patterns. Third, differences in preference for a specific routine in television news use may evolve out of people’s time budgets. Subjective definition of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure or labor If ‘home’ is subjectively defined as a sphere of leisure, people may indulge at will in selective and attentive news watching as a primary activity. However, if in contrast, ‘home’ is subjectively defined as sphere of labor, some domestic task is always waiting to be attended to, and selectively and at-
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tentively watching the news may not be experienced as an appropriate thing to do. In the latter case, people may choose to watch the news while engaging in simultaneous activities as well. Two reasons for different subjective definitions of ‘home’ will be explored here: a) traditional role-expectancies about the division of labor between men and women, and b) people’s daily occupation in or outside the family home. Traditional role-expectancies about the division of labor between men and women could be a prominent reason for differences between (subjective definitions of) interaction situations in which men and women watch the news. Morley (1986, 1992; cf. Gray, 1996; Meier & Peeters, 1988; Deem, 1996; Gilroy, 1999) suggests that the traditional role models for men and women define ‘home’ as a leisure situation for men and a sphere of labor for women. Traditionally, women are expected to do the domestic work – whether they have a job outside the family-home or not. Morley (1986: 150) reports that “… many of the women feel that to just watch television without doing anything else at the same time would be an indefensible waste of time, given their sense of their domestic obligations, [and that] men state a clear preference for viewing attentively, in silence, without interruption ‘in order not to miss anything’”4. Studies by Meier and Frissen (1988) and Hermans and Van Snippenburg (1993, 1996) also suggest that women may prefer a routine of watching the news while engaging in simultaneous activities, whereas men may prefer a routine of watching the news selectively and attentively as primary activity. But differences in people’s television news use patterns need not necessarily be based on the difference between the traditional role models for men and women. Whether ‘home’ is defined as a sphere of leisure or labor, might depend on people’s actual occupation – caused by traditional role models or not. The difference between people’s television news use patterns might be based on whether or not their main occupation lies within the family home. If one goes out in the morning to do a full time job outside the family home, only to return when the work is done in the evening, ‘home’ is likely to be perceived as a sphere of leisure. However, if one’s main occupation lies within the family home this is unlikely. Therefore housewives may be expected to experience their home as a sphere of labor, and consequently, they may be expected to prefer to watch the news while engaging in other activities simultaneously. For people with a fulltime job outside the family home, the opposite may be expected. This line of reasoning suggests that gender and occupation may be relevant variables to patterns of television news use. Therefore gender and occupation will be used in our empirical exploration of patterns of television news use.
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Subjective relevancy of watching the news As indicated, subjective definition of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure or a sphere of labor is not the only factor that may influence the interaction situation in which people watch television news. One may expect the subjective relevancy ascribed to watching television news programs to be another major influence. People who subjectively feel that the news might discuss relevant topics can be expected to be more likely to prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively, than people who do not expect the news to present relevant topics. If the latter watch the news they are more likely to simultaneously engage in other activities as well. Three reasons for this expected difference in subjective relevancy of watching the news will be explored: a) differences in education, b) differences in age, and c) differences in ‘informed citizen’s values’. Television news hardly ever brings items that bear immediate relevance for one’s everyday life (Lewis, 1985; Jensen, 1986). Therefore we expect that people who live their lives within the narrow bounds of their own social and cultural communities, without an interest for the broader society outside their immediate sphere of life, feel less subjective interest for the items that usually dominate the news, such as politics, economics, and foreign news. Since previous research shows that people with a lower education are, on average, less interested in the broader society outside their immediate sphere of life (e.g., Warshay, 1962; Kelman & Barclay, 1963; Gabennesh, 1972; Roof, 1974, 1978; Eisinga, Lammers & Peters, 1991; Konig, 1997), we expect that the lower educated are inclined to watch the news – if they watch the news at all – while engaging in simultaneous activities as well, whereas the higher educated will probably prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively. Therefore, we will explore whether people with different educational levels also display different patterns of television news use. Another reason to expect differences in education to lead to differences in subjective relevancy of watching the news, and thus to different patterns of television news use, lies in the cognitive capacities of people with different levels of education. The higher educated are usually better equipped to understand the news and therefore more likely to find watching the news gratifying and relevant. Furthermore, people’s level of education is negatively correlated to age, which leads us to expect that older people – who tend to have a lower formal education – may also be more inclined to watch the news while engaging in simultaneous activities as well, whereas younger, better educated people tend to watch the news selectively and attentively. A conflicting hypothesis, however, can be formulated as well, because previous research
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shows that older people are more inclined to watch informative programs than younger people (Van Snippenburg, 1996). So the relationship between patterns of television news use and age could be more than just a reflection of the relationship between patterns of television news use and education. Two theoretical reasons may be formulated; one explaining the relationship as an age effect and one explaining the relationship as a cohort effect. Van Snippenburg (1996) opts for an age effect and suggests that people acquire ‘cultural capital’ during their lifetime, which makes people better equipped to process and understand the news as they grow older, and therefore makes watching the news increasingly satisfying with an advancing age. Growing older, people may become more interested in the broader society outside their immediate sphere of life (cf. Warshay, 1962; Kelman & Barclay, 1963; Konig, 1997) and therefore come to feel more inclined to watch television news. That is, during their lives, people learn to appreciate the news. Therefore chances of people preferring to watch selectively and attentively should increase with one’s age. Should one focus on a cohort effect, expectations are the same, but for a radically different reason. Previous research suggests that for most people watching television news is a daily ritual in their everyday life (Van der Molen, 1989; Morley, 1992; Hagen, 1994a, 1994b), which suggests that watching the news has become a habit. Therefore we assume that the routines in watching television news that were identified by Konig, Renckstorf and Wester (2001) are relatively stable and may have formed decades earlier. The older cohorts, having developed their routines in watching the news in earlier decades than the younger cohorts, could well have developed a preference for a routine different from that developed by the younger cohorts. The older cohorts started watching the news in times in which they could only receive one or two television channels, that were on the air for only a few hours in the evening, and that featured the news very prominently as the only daily program on during prime time. Such a situation is bound to signify that watching the news is very important, which may have resulted in ascribing a relatively high subjective relevancy to watching the news by the older cohorts and consequently a preference to watch the news selectively and attentively. Therefore, we will not only explore educational differences, but also age differences as a possible reason for a difference in one’s preference for one of the two routines in watching television news. However, subjective relevancy of watching the news can also rise from the fact that watching the news is deemed socially desirable. Van der Molen (1989) and Hagen (1994a, 1994b) conclude that the subjectively felt need to be informed about current affairs is often engendered by social pressure. People sub-
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jectively feel that they need to know about the issues in the news because they expect that these issues may come up in their everyday contacts with other people. There appears to be a social norm that demands from everyone in Dutch (and Norwegian)5 society to be a ‘well-informed citizen’. Therefore, ‘well-informed citizen’s values’ should also be explored in relation to patterns of television news use. Furthermore, the social norm to be an ‘informed citizen’ is likely to influence respondents’ answers in any research project on television news. Considering Dahlgren’s (1988) distinction between official versus personal talk, and his finding that as a researcher he mostly elicits official talk about the news because people “… apparently feel that they are ‘on stage’ in terms of their citizens role” (Dahlgren, 1988: 293), the influence of this social norm on respondents’ answers becomes more than obvious. Therefore, in our empirical exploration, we will have to explicitly deal with the possibility that our data also contain answers that may reflect the pressure of the social desirability to be a well-informed citizen (see below). This line of reasoning suggests that education, cohort or age, and wellinformed citizen’s values may be relevant variables as to patterns of television news use. Therefore these variables too, will be used in our empirical exploration of patterns of television news use. Time budgets Next to the subjective definition of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure or labor and the subjective relevancy of watching the news, subjective time constraints may influence the pattern of television news use too. People who feel they have a lot of time on their hands may be more likely to allocate time for selectively and attentively watching the news, than people who feel they have limited time resources. The latter may or may not want to watch the news, but if they want to watch, they may feel that they cannot afford to watch the news without simultaneously doing other thing as well. People’s subjective time budget may be of influence on the interaction situation in which people watch television news (cf. Huysmans, 2001). Two reasons to expect different subjective time budgets for watching the news will be explored; a) whether people’s daily occupation is a full-time or a part-time occupation and b) whether people have children living in their household or not. Both a full-time occupation and having children do increase the amount of domestic and family tasks that need to be attended to in the evening hours, thus decreasing the amount of time one feels one can spare for the news. Therefore it can be expected that people with a part-time occupation and no children prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively as primary activity, whereas people with a full-time occu-
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pation and children are more likely to have developed a preference for watching the news while engaging in simultaneous activities. Thus these variables will also be included in our empirical exploration of patterns of television news use.
Data and measurement instruments The data used in this study come from a national survey on Media use in The Netherlands 1994, and since Hendriks Vettehen et al. (1995) extensively report on these data, a very short description of the data should suffice. The random sample consisted of 969 respondents between 18 and 70 years of age, of which 782 respondents (80.7 %) returned an additional self-administered questionnaire. Data came partly from this self-administered questionnaire. For more information regarding the data, see Hendriks Vettehen et al. (1995). Konig, Renckstorf, and Wester (2001) obtained their results from the analysis of the same data, using non-linear principal components analysis (Van de Geer, 1988; Gifi, 1991; De Leeuw, 1984; SPSS, 1990b), a powerful technique for exploratory analysis of nominal, ordinal, and interval data. As a consequence, however, their study did not result in ready-touse measurement instruments for the two routines in watching the news that they identified in their study. In the present study we tried to overcome this problem by using a reanalysis of the data. First, we redid the non-linear principal components analysis for the two routines of watching the news, excluding variables that did not explicitly refer to television news and only using those eight variables that loaded highest on the two components referring to the news (see Konig, Renckstorf & Wester 2001: 156). From this analysis we concluded that all relationships between these variables were linear, or at least monotonous. This means that all variables can be treated as ordinal variables and that more conventional procedures could be applied. Consequently, we performed an exploratory factor analysis (Kim & Mueller, 1978)6. Two variables did not fit in the factor structure and were subsequently excluded from the final analysis. Results of the final analysis are reported in Table 15.1. Factor 1 is interpreted as selectively and attentively watching television news, and factor 2 is interpreted as watching television news while simultaneously engaging in other activities7. Finally, we constructed measurement instruments for these two routines by computing the sums of the scores of the respondents on the items with high factor loadings on the respective factors8. Relationships of these constructs with media related variables and individual and social background characteristics are very similar to the relationships reported
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by Konig, Renckstorf & Wester (2001). Therefore we are confident that we did not diverge too much from the routines of watching the news that they reported. Table 15.1. Factor analysis of variables pertaining routines in watching television Table 15.1. news (n = 741; oblique rotation; explained variance = 42.7 %; Table 15.1. correlation between factors = –.31) Communality
Factor loadings Factor 1
Factor 2
V162 I keep track of time in order not to miss the news on television.
.55
.75
.03
V171 I plan my evening so as not to miss the news on television.
.35
.61
.06
V175 From begin to end I watch television news very attentively.
.47
.61
–.16
V166 While watching television news, I read, for example, a newspaper, a book or a magazine.
.49
.10
.73
V167 While watching television news, my thoughts go astray.
.41
–.01
.64
V172 While watching television news, I talk about other things.
.30
–.13
.49
V168 If I watch television and coincidentally come across television news, I will probably watch.
–
–
–
V184 Watching television news is a habit for me.
–
–
–
Using these measurement instruments for the two routines in watching television news, we created a typology for the patterns of television news use that may have evolved out of preference for one of these routines. As a consequence of the way we constructed our measurement instruments (sums of scores), the scores on these instruments range from 3 to 15. We interpreted scores lower or equal to 6 to indicate that respondents reported that a particular routine did not apply to their own news-watching behavior, and scores in the range of 7 to 9 to indicate that respondents reported that a particular routine applied partly to this behavior. Higher scores are interpreted as indicating that respondents positively evaluated a particular routine to apply to their own news-watching behavior. Based on
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this interpretation, the two measurement instruments were recoded into three categories. A cross-tabulation of these collapsed instruments, finally, formed the basis for the typology in Table 15.2. The respondents in the three shaded cells below the diagonal reported the routine of selectively and attentively watching the news to apply more strongly to their own news-watching behavior than the other routine (58.3 %)9, whereas the respondents in the three shaded cells above the diagonal reported the routine of watching the news while simultaneously engaging in other activities, as the dominant routine (10.8 %). The respondents in the cells on the diagonal did not report one of the two routines to apply more strongly to their own news-watching behavior than the other (30.9 %). This group encompasses respondents who indicated that both routines apply to their news watching behavior, as well as those respondents who indicated that neither of the routines applies to their news watching behavior. However, the largest segment of this group (80.1 %) claimed that both routines partly apply to its behavior. Because of the skewness of the distribution of a typology thus constructed and the unreliable results that would be obtained using such a skewed dependent variable in the analysis, the typology was reduced to only indicate a preference for watching the news selectively and attentively (the three shaded cells below the diagonal; 58.3 %) or no such preference (the other cells lumped together; 41.7 %). Table 15.2. Cross-tabulation of the routines in watching television news Watching news while engaging in other activities simultaneously
Selectively and attentively watching news
does not apply
partly applies
applies
row total
does not apply
29 (3.9 %)
35 (4.7 %)
14 (1.9 %)
78 (10.5 %)
partly applies
143 (19.3 %)
185 (25.0 %)
31 (4.2 %)
359 (48.4 %)
applies
185 (25.0 %)
104 (14.0 %)
15 (2.0 %)
304 (41.0 %)
column total
357 (48.2 %)
324 (43.7 %)
60 (8.1 %)
741 (100 %)
Gender was measured by the interviewers observing the sex of the respondents on face value (50.4 % male and 49.6 % female). As to occupation, we discerned people with a full-time job (40.9 %), people with a part-time job or no job (i.e., unemployed, pensioned off, retired, students, etc.; 40.1 %), and homemakers (19.0 %; among whom 3 were male). For-
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mal education was measured as the level of the highest completed education of the respondent, or the education that the respondent was still receiving as a pupil or student (41.9 % at most O-levels or lower vocational school, 58.1 % at least A levels or higher vocational school). Age or birth cohort was measured by asking the respondents’ year of birth. The answers were then divided into three categories for the following reasons. The Dutch broadcasting system started to change rapidly in 1989 after the introduction of private broadcasting channels (Bardoel, 1996). At that time people who were born before 1965 were at least 25 years old and are assumed to have developed their patterns in watching the news within the bounds of the ‘traditional’ public broadcasting system with its prominent place for the news as the only daily program at prime time. Additionally, people who were born in or after 1965, for the most part, had to develop their news watching patterns within the bounds of a continuously expanding and changing broadcasting system with a much less prominent place for the news. But, the people born before 1965 can also be divided into two groups. Before 1975, the evening news was broadcast on the two Dutch television channels simultaneously, a practice that was abandoned in 1975 (Bardoel, 1996). At that time people who were born before 1951 were at least 25 years old and may be assumed to have developed their news watching patterns by then. People, who were not yet 25 years old in 1975, may have developed their news watching patterns later, in a situation in which the news had become avoidable by switching channels. This may have suggested to them that watching the news was not that all-important after all. The resulting categories are: born in 1965 or later (22.6 %), born before 1965, but after 1950 (36.3 %), and born in or before 1950 (41.1 %). Whether or not respondents had children still living at home, was measured by asking them whether or not they had children, and how many of these children still lived at home. We found that 45.7 % of our respondents had one or more children living at home. The variable ‘wellinformed citizen’s values’ was measured using a dichotomous index that was based on the factor analysis of value systems reported by Konig, Renckstorf and Wester (2001: Appendix 5). Respondents who defined the two following statements as important to them, were categorized as having ‘well-informed citizen’s values’. The other respondents were categorized as not having ‘well-informed citizen’s values’. The statements were “to be able to discuss current affairs” and “to know what is happening in the world”.
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Analysis To explore whether or not differences in gender, occupation, education, age or cohort, well-informed citizen’s values, and having children result in different patterns of preference for one of the two routines in watching television news, we performed logit analyses (Cramer, 1991; Gilbert, 1993; Christensen, 1997), using the SPSS procedure LOGLINEAR (SPSS, 1990a). That is, we tried to explain the odds of preferring a routine of watching the news selectively and attentively, rather than not preferring this routine10. Using this technique we intended to overcome the problem of possible socially desirable answers, which we hinted at in the introduction. Logit analysis can be used for that purpose, because in essence one is interpreting odds ratios and these are independent of the marginal distributions of the contingency table on which they are based (Reynolds, 1977; Clogg & Shihadeh, 1994). Therefore, assuming that the tendency to give socially desirable answers is evenly distributed across the population, odds ratios are independent of influences of social desirability tendencies in the population as a whole. Below, separate analyses are conducted for the three kinds of differences between interaction situations that we theoretically elaborated on earlier in this contribution. Finally, the results of these explorations will be combined into an integrated empirical model for the explanation of the odds of preferring to watch the news selectively and attentively, rather than not preferring this routine in watching the news11. Different subjective definitions of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure or labor is the first kind of difference between interaction situations that may lead to different preferences for routines in watching the news, that was explored empirically. That means that we explored the relationship between a preference for watching television news selectively and attentively, and gender and occupation. To select a model that can parsimoniously predict the observed frequencies in the three-way contingency table of pattern by gender by occupation, we started by estimating the three main models with deviation contrasts12. These models are nested in the sense that every model contains the same effects of independent variables on the dependent variable that the previous model contains, with additional effects. The first main model assumes no effects of the independent variables on the dependent variable (independence model in Table 15.3). The second main model assumes mutually unrelated effects of the independent variables, gender and occupation, on the dependent variable (main-effects model in Table 15.3). The third main model additionally assumes combined effects of the independent variables (interaction model or saturated model in Table 15.3).
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The likelihood ratio chi squares (L2) of these models are reported in Table 15.3, together with the degrees of freedom (df) and the probability of finding a larger L2 value, that is, a worse fitting model (p). Table 15.3. Subjective definition of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure or labor: Table 15.3. Likelihood ratio chi squares (L2) of logit models (n = 726) In comparison with Main model empirical observations [restricted models at this level] df p L2 Interaction model (saturated)
In comparison with other main model L2
df
p
Compared with:
0
0
1.000
.02
1
.898
.02
1
.898
Interaction model
[gender effect]
.96
3
.812
.94
2
.621
Main-effects model
[occupation effect]
6.48
2
.039
6.46
1
.010
Main-effects model
Independence model 13.45
4
.009
13.44
3
.004
Main-effects model
Main-effects model
Table 3 shows that the independence model does not fit the data at a .05 significance level (p = .009), and that it fits significantly worse than the main-effects model (p = .004). The main-effects model (p = .898) and the interaction model (which is saturated) do fit the data, and when we compare those two main models among themselves, the figures in the right columns of Table 15.3 show that the main effects model does not fit significantly worse than the interaction model (p = .898). Therefore – since we strive for a model that both fits the data and is parsimonious and which does not fit worse than the other models – the independence model and the saturated model are discarded as respectively not fitting the data and not being parsimonious enough. The main-effects model, however, may not be the optimal model either. A more parsimonious model that does not include an effect of both independent variables may also fit no worse than the less parsimonious models. Therefore a backward procedure of systematically discarding independent variables was used to search for such a more parsimonious model. The results (indicated in Table 15.3 between square brackets) indicate that the model should only include the main effect of gender. This model does fit the data (p = .812), and it does not fit worse than the model including both main effects (p = .621). The
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model that only includes the main effect of occupation does not fit the data (p = .039) and fits significantly worse than the model including both main effects (p = .010). That means that occupation has no significant effect on the odds of having a preference for watching the news selectively and attentively. The second kind of difference between interaction situations which may lead to different patterns of television news use that was empirically explored was the difference of subjective relevancy of watching the news. We explored the relationship between a preference for watching television news selectively and attentively on one hand and education, age or birth cohort, and well-informed citizen’s values on the other. Table 15.4. Subjective relevancy of watching the news: Table 15.4. Likelihood ratio chi squares (L2) of logit models (n = 723) In comparison with Main model empirical observations [restricted models at this level] df p L2 Saturated model
In comparison with other main model L2
df
p
Compared with:
0
0
1.000
Interaction model
2.05
2
.358
2.05
2
.358
Saturated model
Main-effects model
5.84
7
.558
3.79
5
.579
Interaction model
6.24
7
.620
.40
1
.527
Main-effects model
[education & values 15.08 effects]
9
.089
9.24
2
.009
Main-effects model
[education & cohort 32.41 effects]
8
.000
26.58
1
.000
Main-effects model
[education effect] 42.18
10
.000
36.34
3
.000
Main-effects model
[cohort effect] 32.46
9
.000
26.62
2
.000
Main-effects model
[values effect] 17.63
10
.062
11.79
3
.008
Main-effects model
11
.000
37.74
4
.000
Main-effects model
[cohort & values effects]
Independence model
43.58
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To find the most parsimonious model for subjective relevance of watching the news, that fitted the observed frequencies in the four-way contingency table of pattern by education by cohort by well-informed citizen’s values, we started again by estimating the main models with deviation contrasts. The likelihood ratio chi-squares of these models are reported in Table 15.4. Again, the main effects model appears to be the optimal main model when it comes to fit and parsimony. It fits the data (p = .558) and it fits no worse than the interaction model (p = .579). Discarding the effect of education, however, results in a more parsimonious model that fits the data (p = .620) and does not fit worse than the model with all main effects (p = .527). That means that education does not have a significant effect on the odds of having a preference for watching the news selectively and attentively. Table 15.5. Time budgets: Likelihood ratio chi squares (L2) of logit models (n = 726)
Main model
In comparison with empirical observations df
p
0
0
1.000
Main-effects model
1.35
2
Independence model
8.52
5
L2 Interaction model (saturated)
In comparison with other main model Compared with:
L2
df
p
.509
1.35
2
.509
Interaction model
.130
7.17
3
.065
Main-effects model
As to time budgets – the third kind of difference between interaction situations – we explored the relationship between the preference for watching television news selectively and attentively, and occupation and having children living at home. One can see in Table 15.5 that the independence model is the most parsimonious model that fits the observed frequencies in the three-way contingency table of pattern by occupation by children (p = .130). This means that neither the presence of children in the household, nor a full-time or part-time occupation (either in or outside the family home) have a significant effect on the odds of preferring to watch the news selectively and attentively.
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Table 15.6. Integrated model: Likelihood ratio chi squares (L2) of logit models (n = 735)
Main model [restricted models at this level]
In comparison with empirical observations L2
df
p
0
0
1.000
Interaction model
3.46
2
Main-effects model
4.21
[gender & cohort effects]
In comparison with other main model Compared with:
L2
df
p
.177
3.46
2
.177
7
.755
.75
5
.998
29.11
8
.000
24.90
1
.000
[gender & values effects]
14.70
9
.099
10.49
2
.005
Main-effects model
[cohort & values effects]
16.04
8
.042
11.83
1
.001
Main-effects model
[cohort effect]
41.37
9
.000
37.16
2
.000
[values effect]
28.43
10
.002
24.22
3
.000
[gender effect]
38.95
10
.000
34.74
3
.000
53.03
11
.000
48.82
4
.000
Main-effects model Main-effects model Main-effects model Main-effects model
Saturated model
Independence model
Saturated model Interaction model Main-effects model
The results of the previous analyses indicate that education, occupation, and having children still living at home, are empirically unrelated to the odds of preferring to watch television news selectively and attentively; gender, age or birth cohort, and informed citizen’s values, however, are related. Subsequently, combining those results, an integrated model explaining differences in patterns of television news use was empirically explored. Again, the most parsimonious model that fitted the empirical observations was searched for, this time based on the four-way contingency table of pattern by gender by birth cohort by well-informed citizen’s values. Table 15.6 shows that the main effects model is the optimal model (p = .998) and that none of the three determinants can be discarded from this model13. Our final empirical model thus consists of three variables influencing patterns of television news use: gender, age or birth cohort, and well-informed citizen’s values.
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Table 15.7. Final model: Effects of gender, birth-cohort, and well-informed citizen’s Table 15.7. values on the odds of preference for selectively and attentively watching Table 15.7. television news (n = 735; L2 = 4.21, df = 7, p = .755; concentration = .065; Table 15.7. entropy = .049) Mean
2.89*
Gender
Male Female
1.30* .77*
Birth-cohort
1921–1950 1951–1964 1965–1976
1.37* 1.03* .71*
Informed citizen’s values
no yes
.68* 1.47*
Note: * parameter significant at .05 level.
The effect parameters for this final model are presented in Table 15.7. The parameters that are presented in this table are not the log-linear parameters explaining the logits (log-odds), but the multiplicative parameters explaining the odds of preferring the routine of watching television news selectively and attentively. The first parameter in Table 15.7 indicates that – independent of gender, birth-cohort, and well-informed citizen’s values – the number of people who showed a preference for selectively and attentively watching the news was 2.89 times as great as the number of people who did not show this preference. On top of this overall effect, the chances of men showing a pattern of watching selectively and attentively are even greater (1.30 times), whereas the chances of women showing such a pattern are somewhat less (.77). Also, the chances of people from the oldest birth-cohort preferring this routine of selectively and attentively watching the news are greater than average (1.37 times), whereas the chances of people from the youngest cohort showing this pattern are less (.71). People born between 1950 and 1965, the middle cohort, are not more or less inclined to prefer watching the news selectively and attentively than the average. Finally, people with well-informed citizen’s values prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively more than average (1.47 times), whereas the opposite holds true for the people without wellinformed citizen’s values (.68). The absence of parameters for occupation, education, and children in one’s household indicates that whether people’s main occupation lies inside or outside the family home, whether they work full-time or part-time, their educational level, and the presence of children do not matter in regard to the routine in television news use that they prefer.
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Conclusion and discussion The explorations in this study show that people are much more likely to prefer watching television news selectively and attentively than to prefer watching the news while engaging in other activities simultaneously, or to show no preference for one of these two routines in watching the news at all. Moreover, the chances of showing a preference for watching the news selectively and attentively are even greater for men, older people (born in or before 1950), and people endorsing well-informed citizen’s values. They are somewhat smaller for women, younger people (born in or after 1965), and people without well-informed citizen’s values. No evidence of interaction among these determinants was found. One explanation for these findings can be found in the possibility that traditional role-expectancies may still engender a subjective definition of ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure for men and a sphere of labor for women. In this view, the situation in which men watch the news differs significantly from the situation in which women do. At home, men may feel that they can dispose of their time at will, and may thus be prone to allow themselves to watch the news selectively and attentively. In contrast, women may feel that there is always some domestic task waiting to be taken care of, and they may therefore be inclined to choose not to watch the news selectively and attentively, but to attend to some other task simultaneously. This difference between men and women cannot be ascribed to differences in occupation between men and women. Neither the difference between full-time and part-time employed people, nor the difference between those who are employed outside the family home and those who perform their labor within the family home, can explain these different patterns of television news use of men and women. Another explanation for these findings may be that different people subjectively ascribe different levels of relevance to watching the news and are therefore differently inclined to watch the news selectively and attentively. Older people (born in or before 1950) and people with well-informed citizens values may find watching the news more relevant than younger people (born in or after 1965) and people without well-informed citizen’s values. However, they may do so for distinctively different reasons. Older people may prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively because they have learned to appreciate the news in the course of their lives (age effect), or because the period in which they developed their routines and preferences in watching the news was characterized by the news having a prominent place in the broadcasting system, which suggested that watching the news is important (cohort effect). Younger people may not yet have learned to appreciate the news as much as older people,
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and they developed their preference for a routine in watching the news within the bounds of a broadcasting system in which there is much less emphasis on the news, suggesting that the news is not as all important as some may say. Whether or not this difference between older and younger people is due to people’s age or their birth-cohort, however, cannot be decided on the basis of our data and analyses. As to the subjective relevance of watching the news for people with or without well-informed citizen’s values, the results are self-evident. It is very likely that endorsing these values makes it subjectively relevant to watch the news and to do so selectively and attentively. Another explanation for differences between patterns of television news use that was formulated prior to empirical exploration appeared empirically irrelevant. Time budgets – at least insofar as daily occupation and the presence of children in one’s household determine these budgets – seem to be unrelated to the chances of people having a preference for watching the news selectively and attentively rather than not having this preference. Two of our results deserve critical attention. First, we did not find an effect of one’s level of education. Second, we found that age, or birth cohort did have an effect on patterns of television news use, but we cannot determine whether this is an age effect or a cohort effect. Both results will be elaborated upon. As to the absence of an effect of level of education, that is highly unusual in empirical social research. Because education is associated with cognitive capacities and with breadth of perspective on social reality – that is, width of the mental horizon of people in dealing with the world – it hardly ever fails to have an effect. In fact, for both reasons we expected such an effect in our analyses. After all, if one is better equipped to understand the news – that is, more likely to be gratified by watching – and one is more interested in the wider world of society at large, watching the news selectively and attentively is likely to be subjectively perceived as highly relevant. Consequently, it is very likely that watching selectively and attentively will be the preferred routine in watching the news of the higher educated. However, no empirical effect of education was found14. Apparently, the mental capacities and breadth of perspective that we associated with a higher education do not influence the perceived relevance of watching the news in such a way that people are inclined to prefer watching the news selectively and attentively15. As to the effect of age, or birth-cohort we formulated two opposite expectations. We can now discard one. Apparently, older people are not less inclined to watch television news selectively and attentively because they are less interested in the broader society outside the immediate sphere of their daily lives or because on average, they have a lower formal education
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than the young have. Had we found this, we would very likely have concluded that we were dealing with a cohort effect that would result in a growing subjective relevancy of watching the news, within the population as a whole, in the future. The young, we would conclude, would be growing old, replacing the older cohorts without loosing their preference for watching the news selectively and attentively. And new ‘young’ cohorts would be raised and educated into preferring this routine too. However, we cannot conclude that. Our results are diametrically opposed to that hypothetical conclusion – given the absence of an effect of education, that is not surprising. Older people are inclined to show a preference for the routine of watching the news selectively and attentively more strongly, whereas younger people tend to be inclined not to prefer this routine. Now suppose that this age difference is due to the ageing process itself, that is, suppose that people learn to appreciate the news during the course of their lives. In that case, the age effect we found would have no great implications for the future. If, however, the cohort interpretation of the found age-effect is valid, the implications for the future may be severe. If young people are less likely to prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively because the media system they grew up with suggested that the news is not a very important program to watch, then in the future news will be watched less selectively and attentively16. Watching the news selectively and attentively might eventually disappear as the preferred mode of watching the news. Assuming that people learn less from the news if they do not watch attentively (cf. Johnson, Braima & Sothirajah, 2000), the importance of the traditional television news format as disseminator of politically relevant information would diminish. Future research might therefore aim to find out whether we found an age or a cohort effect. Should future research reveal that we are dealing with a cohort effect here, our present exploration of patterns of television news use boils down to people making fairly stable evaluations and choices in their lives, that influence their pattern of television news use. Men evaluate ‘home’ as a sphere of leisure and women evaluate ‘home’ as a sphere of labor; not because they work outside or inside the ‘home’ respectively, but because they are men and women sensing what traditionally their culture expects of them. Men are therefore more inclined to prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively. Different cohorts – if indeed we are dealing with a cohort effect here – grow up with different media systems, that help them to determine the relevance of watching the news. When people are young they evaluate the relevance of watching television news and they stick by that evaluation. At present this means that the younger cohorts are less inclined to prefer to watch the news selectively and attentively. People with
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well-informed citizen’s values value to know about the things they are traditionally expected to know as responsible citizens of their democratic society. These values too, are supposed to be relatively stable and thus, like gender and probably cohort, make for a relatively stable pattern of television news use.
Notes 1. Previous versions of this chapter were presented at the conference Communicatiewetenschap: De groeistuipen voorbij? [Communication science: Beyond the growing pains?] at the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, March 23–24, 2000, and at the 2nd International EJCR Colloquium Action Theoretical Approaches in European Communication Research: Theory, Methods & Findings at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, October 18–20, 2001. Many thanks to the participants of this conference and this colloquium, and to other colleagues, who contributed to this paper with their expert comments. While acknowledging their support we do, of course, remain responsible for all omissions and errors of fact and interpretation. 2. Thus, ‘to prefer’ is not used here to express various degrees of liking for the two routines in watching the news. It is solely used to express differences in self-reported behavior concerning the two routines. 3. In Konig, Renckstorf and Wester (1998), which is a previous version of Konig, Renckstorf and Wester (2001), the words ‘routines’ and ‘patterns’ are used in a rather confusing way. From the perspective of the present study, wherever in that article the word ‘patterns’ is used, one should read ‘routines’. In the 2001 version this confusion of patterns and routines is corrected. 4. This wish not to miss anything might be taken as an indication that watching television is not a leisure activity for men after all. The possible uses of television are manifold (McQuail, Blumler & Brown, 1972; Lull, 1980), and some of these uses may not be for leisure, but that does not cancel the difference between men and women, described here. 5. Hagen’s (1994a, 1994b) research pertains to Norwegian society. 6. To do justice to the ordinal measurement level, we also performed a factor analysis, using polychoric correlations (Olsson, 1979; Jöreskog, 1990, 1994). The results were very similar to the results presented in Table 15.1. 7. Data from the more recent national survey on Media Use in The Netherlands 2000 (n = 825) reveal the same factor structure, which indicates that we are dealing with a fairly stable factor structure. Unfortunately, these more recent data could not be used for our analyses, because they do not cover all concepts that we utilize in this article. 8. The variables were scored 1 = does not apply to me at all, 2 = does not apply to me, 3 = partly applies to me, 4 = applies to me, and 5 = applies to me entirely. 9. This strikingly high number of respondents with a preference for the routine of watching the news selectively and attentively may – or may not – be partly the
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10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
Ruben Konig, Karsten Renckstorf and Fred Wester result of respondents giving social desirable answers. However, assuming that all groups in our analyses have the same tendency to give socially desirable answers, this will not hamper our analyses because we will interpret odds ratios (see below). What we did not try to explain, are the odds of preferring a routine of watching the news while engaging in simultaneous activities, and the odds of having no preference for one of the two routines, because that would result in many empty cells in the contingency table, and consequently, in unreliable results. The choice to explore the three kinds of different interaction situations separately is based on technical grounds. Introducing all variables in one analysis, results in too many zero cells and thus renders unreliable results. Larger surveys could overcome this problem. To prevent a lot of empty cells in the contingency table, we excluded the three male homemakers from the analyses and declared all cells that combine the categories ‘male’ and ‘homemaker’ structural zeros. Additional analyses show that neither occupation, nor education, nor having children in one’s household can be added to this model without violating the principle of parsimony. Post-hoc analysis reveals that the correlation between education and the average amount of time people are watching the news on regular working days is slightly, but significantly negative (-.10). Controlling for the average time people are watching television on regular working days, however, diminishes this correlation to insignificance. Hence, education not only fails to have an effect on the patterns of television news use, but also on the time people spent on the news. That is, on average a higher education does not seem to influence people’s patterns of television news use. However, it is possible that for some people a higher education does induce a preference for watching the news selectively and attentively, whereas for others the opposite is true; for example when the need for news is so high that people spend a lot of time reading the papers (maybe even while watching the news), resulting in a lesser need to watch the news selectively and attentively. If watching the news selectively and attentively can be compared to newspaper reading, our results are in line with the results of Lauf (2001), who found that in Europe every generation reads less than its predecessor.
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16 Do well-balanced exemplars in news stories 16 provide food for thought? Paul Hendriks Vettehen and Leo van Snippenburg
Abstract Most studies on the use of exemplars in news stories have, to date, exclusively focused on potentially harmful effects of biased exemplification on news consumers. However, from a social action perspective it can be argued that much remains to be studied on this subject. To give an example, the present study investigated whether readers of a fairly balanced exemplified newspaper story used exemplars to reflect on an issue. Subjects (n=51) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups. Each group was exposed to different versions of the same newspaper story; a ‘base-rate’ version of the story and an ‘exemplified’ version, in which both viewpoints on the issue at stake were exemplified. After reading the story, the subjects were asked to give their views on the issue. Subsequently, their responses were coded according to the level of cognitive reasoning. Analyses revealed that the story containing exemplifications of the various viewpoints led to a more differentiated reasoning regarding the issue at stake than the story containing only base-rate information did. However, only the elder subjects appeared to use the exemplars as ‘food for thought’. Keywords: exemplification, news, cognitive complexity In this chapter, we focus on the journalistic practice of exemplifying news stories by means of case histories. Today, most news stories are made up of two types of information. The first type includes general descriptions on the issue at stake, for instance, general information on causes and consequences, and/or its importance and impact. This type of information is usually labeled ‘base-rate’ information. The following statement could be called an example of ‘base-rate’ information; ‘only a minority of the Arab population agrees with the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan’. The second type of information includes case histories, mostly concerning individuals who are to some extent involved with an issue and who often produce some kind of statement about this issue. These case histories serve as illustrations of the more general information and are labeled ‘exemplifying’ information, or simply ‘exemplars’. Exemplifying information, for instance,
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could be an interview on the streets of Damascus with a local shopkeeper, who emotionally condemns the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan (Zillmann & Brosius, 2000). Base-rate information and exemplifying information differ in some important respects. First, exemplars are generally regarded to be more concrete and emotionally interesting. They are, therefore, supposed to capture more attention as opposed to base-rate information. Stated in psychological terms, they may be regarded as both ‘vivid’ and ‘salient’ (cf. Taylor & Thompson, 1982). These characteristics cause journalists to use exemplars as a means of giving the public insight into an abstract problem, as well as keeping the public interested. Second, in contrast to base-rate information, exemplifying information could be called biased and of a narrower scope. In most news reports, for instance, various relevant aspects of an issue are not exemplified in a well-balanced way. Furthermore, not more than only a few exemplars of an aspect are given, which makes it difficult to provide a representative picture (cf. Zillmann & Brosius, 2000). The studies on exemplification conducted so far have focused almost exclusively on the potentially harmful effects that biased exemplification could exert on the perceptions of news consumers. These studies suggest that news consumers base their perceptions of a news report to a large extent on exemplifying information, regardless of the base-rate information supplied. Insofar as the exemplars are biased compared to the base-rate information, the perceptions based on these exemplars appear to be biased as well. This especially applies to judgments, for instance on the importance of an issue, or ideas regarding the public opinion. To a somewhat lesser extent, it also applies to people’s personal opinions (cf. Brosius, 1999; Brosius & Bathelt, 1994; Gibson & Zillmann, 1994; Zillmann & Brosius, 2000). Generally, these phenomena are explained in terms of cognitive mechanisms, for instance the so-called ‘availability heuristic’, which has been notably spelled out by Tversky and Kahneman (1974). The ‘availability heuristic’ states that people often have difficulty in processing general statements that include probabilities, percentages, and so on. Instead, they base their estimations of probabilities on the ease with which instances come to their minds. Compared to base-rate information, the highly vivid and salient exemplars in news stories are expected to be easily accessible instances that have a large influence on people’s estimations (Brosius & Bathelt, 1994; Gibson & Zillmann, 1994). For example, when people are shown three Arabs condemning the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and only one Arab supporting the attacks, they are likely to estimate that the majority of the Arab population disapproves of the attacks; even regardless of the general information they were given.
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Research, however, showed that the influences of biased exemplifications do not appear to be uniform. This, especially, applied to the influence on people’s personal opinions. Concepts and models emphasizing stimulus-observer interactions, for instance the already mentioned ‘salience’ concept (Brosius & Bathelt, 1994), Petty & Cacioppo’s ‘elaboration likelihood model’ of persuasion (Perry & Gonzenbach, 1997) and theoretical notions derived from Bandura’s ‘learning theory’ (Brosius, 1999) have been introduced to account for the variances in results. From a social action perspective (cf. Renckstorf, McQuail & Jankowski, 1996), the following comments could be made regarding the studies conducted so far. To date, studies have focused exclusively on biased exemplification. Moreover, they have exclusively focused on potentially harmful effects of biases on news consumers. In doing so, they have revealed important insights in the subject of news exemplification, but they have only painted half the picture. Seen from a social action approach, news texts should be considered objects to which people attach meaning and upon which they act. This process is likely to have many more significant outcomes than a score on a variable (e.g., ‘recall’, ‘comprehension’, etc.), that is only considered important by news producers or media researchers (cf., Renckstorf & Wester, 2001). In short, much remains to be studied on the subject of ‘exemplification’, apart from the question whether misuses of exemplars on the part of the journalists will result in misconceptions on the part of news consumers. For instance, many journalists use the exemplars in a reasonably well-balanced way. In these instances, the following question becomes relevant; how do people process well-balanced exemplars. In the present study, we focus on this question. More specifically, we investigate the level of complexity with which newspaper readers reflect on an issue raised in a story containing (rather well-balanced) exemplars, as compared to their reflections on a same story lacking exemplars. Stated in a more popular sense, the question is whether or not they use the exemplars provided to them as food for thought. Following Tetlock (1984), Milburn and McGrail (1992: 614–615) define cognitive complexity as “a combination of differentiation and integration of elements of a problem. Differentiation refers to the number of aspects of a problem attended to by a person; the organization of these elements is referred to as integration”. So, highly complex reasoning features not only efforts to distinguish several aspects of an issue, but also efforts to integrate these aspects into some kind of argumentation. Most pychologists applying the concept consider cognitive complexity a relatively stable personality characteristic, depending on factors such as intelligence and personal background (cf. Milburn & McGrail, 1992; Schroder, Driver &
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Streufert, 1967; Tetlock, 1984). However, especially Milburn and McGrail (1992: 619) emphasize that other factors may “influence the way in which people think, not the least of which is the manner in which information is presented”.
Hypotheses and research questions Milburn and McGrail (1992) argue that exposure to a highly dramatized news story may activate so-called ‘emotional schemata’ which may hardly be related to the issue at stake. As a consequence, more complex thoughts concerning the issue will be inhibited. Milburn and McGrail tried to find experimental support for this position. They exposed subjects to either a tape containing a news broadcast from which every section deemed dramatic was edited out, or a tape containing the complete broadcast. The results confirm their premise that dramatization accounts for the differences found in complexity of thoughts. In the Milburn and McGrail design, all sections from the experimental news broadcast including violence, potentially emotional visuals as well as exemplars were edited out in order to create the non-dramatic stimulus. Their results do, therefore, not allow for conclusions concerning the single role of exemplification or any other of the dramatic devices. However, the theoretical notions concerning the involvement of emotional schemata might elucidate the role of exemplification. Based on these notions, we expect that the dramatic quality of exemplars will activate emotional schemata, which will inhibit complex thought. For instance, people watching the news might become so much involved with one or some of the exemplifying visuals or sound-bites that they actually stop reflecting on the subject. Consequently, if asked for their thoughts on the subject, they will display less complex reasoning. This leads us to the following hypothesis: H1: A news story that includes exemplifications of the various viewpoints will lead to less complex reasoning regarding the issue at stake than a story that merely contains base-rate information. However, we could also base our discussion on some striking findings derived from Brosius and Bathelt (1994). These researchers found that newsreaders’ estimation of the public opinion about an issue almost exactly followed the distribution of the exemplars’ statements about the issue, implying that news consumers actually process all the exemplars. Similar findings were reported by Zillmann, Gibson, Sundar and Perkins (1996).
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Starting from the notion that every single exemplar plays a more or less prominent role in the processing of information, we expect that these (highly salient) exemplars are easily retrieved from memory, when people are reflecting on an issue. Moreover, we expect that the exemplars will activate relevant schemata, which, in turn, will enter people’s reflections on the issue. Provided that the issue is exemplified in a well-balanced way, the exemplars will, therefore, stimulate more complex thinking about (the various aspects of) an issue than mere base-rate information will. This leads us to a hypothesis exactly opposite to Hypothesis 1: H2: A news story that includes exemplifications of the various viewpoints will lead to more complex reasoning regarding the issue at stake than a story that merely contains base-rate information. Another issue concerns the uniformity of these hypothesized effects. The question is, then, to what extent exemplifying information will affect the complexity of reasoning amongst all consumers of all news stories in all media. Depending on the type of media, exemplifying information can be produced by different narrative means, for instance, a spoken or written statement from a victim of a disputable governmental decree. It can also be produced by a visual, for instance, a close-up of a weary victim. Although there are some indications of both the emotional significance of visual information (e.g., Detenber & Winch, 2000) and its influence on information processing (e.g., Brosius, 1993; Gibson & Zillmann, 2000), the influence of one individual exemplification on cognitive complexity has not yet been studied. In the present study, we confine ourselves to the exemplification of an issue in a newspaper story by means of written statements from people involved in the subject that is presented. The type of the news story, for instance its controversiality, might also affect the influence of exemplification on cognitive complexity. The same applies to the impact the distribution of examples among distinct viewpoints might have. However, little is known about these questions as yet. In the present study, we confine ourselves to one single story. The story describes the dilemma of hunting deer in a specific situation; an issue which is somewhat controversial in many countries, notably in The Netherlands, but which was not prominent on the media agenda at the time this study was conducted. Furthermore, in the exemplified condition, we tried to achieve a balanced exemplification by adding two statements in favor of hunting and two statements against hunting. Finally, the susceptibility of the different categories of news consumers to exemplifying information eventually could vary. For instance, Milburn
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and McGrail (1992) reported a substantial, though not significant, interaction effect between sex and dramatization, suggesting that women might be more susceptible to thought inhibiting effects of dramatization. Moreover, the history of communication research teaches us that uniform media effects are very seldom to be found. For this reason, exploring the differential ways in which different categories of newsreaders handle the exemplifying information seems justified. Consequently, we pose the following research question: RQ: Does the impact of exemplification vary between different categories of age, sex and educational level?
Method Procedure Subjects were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups which were exposed to different versions of a newspaper story. They were instructed to read the story as they would normally read it. Both stories described a dilemma the supervisors of a nature reserve were confronted with; to hunt or not to hunt the population of deer which was growing fast and which was causing troubles outside the reserve. Arguments in favor of hunting stressed the problems the deers caused for traffic and agriculture, arguments against hunting stressed natural values and the desirability of not killing animals. In the base-rate condition, no point of view concerning the issue was exemplified. In the exemplar condition, both points of view were exemplified, each by two statements1. After reading the story, the subjects were interviewed by undergraduate students about their view on the issue. The interviewer started by asking: “As you can read in the articles’ headline, the supervisors of the ‘Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen’ are facing a dilemma caused by the deer. Can you tell me your thoughts on this dilemma?” Subsequently, the interviewer tried to get as much out of the subject as possible without pressing the subject or posing suggestive questions. In some instances, the interviewer tape-recorded the interview and subsequently transcribed the conversation. In other instances, the interviewer used shorthand notation and worked the interview out immediately after finishing the interview. After a quality check, we decided to dispose of some 20 % of the interviews, mostly because the conversations included suggestive questioning.
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Subjects In order to answer our research question, we needed a heterogeneous sample with respect to the variables ‘age’, ‘sex’ and ‘educational level’. The interviewers were instructed to separately interview two persons, who were both at least 21 years old. Furthermore, these persons should not belong to the same family. Finally, we ended up with 51 interviews, collected by 41 interviewers2. The sample can be considered heterogeneous to at least the variables ‘age’ and ‘sex’, but not genuinely random, as some subjects were acquaintances of the same interviewer. Measurements The background variables ‘age’, ‘sex’, and ‘educational level’ could be measured by some simple questions, to be answered by either interviewer or subject. In order to measure the dependent variable ‘level of cognitive complexity’, we originally tried to develop a measuring instrument based on the instrument Milburn and McGrail (1992) used for measuring cognitive complexity. This instrument was composed of two subscales, one measuring the number of possible solutions to the problem the subject mentioned (e.g., hunting the animals, moving them, sterilizing them, placing fences, letting nature take its course, etc.) and one indicating whether an argument in favor or against a solution was provided (e.g., too expensive, in the interest of the farmers / motorists, value of animal life, etc.). However, during the coding process it became apparent that the role of the interviewer, particularly the extent to which the interviewer urged the subjects to continue talking about the subject, substantially seemed to influence the number of solutions mentioned, as well as the number of arguments mentioned. We, therefore, decided not to use the instrument. As an alternative we developed another measuring instrument of cognitive complexity which we considered more crude but also less sensitive to the tenacity of the interviewers. We coded whether a subject’s train of thought solely took one of the two viewpoints into account (the problems deers caused or the value of nature and animal life) or whether both viewpoints were considered simultaneously. The two independent coders agreed in 80 % of the interviews. The remaining 20 % (n=10) interviews were coded after brief discussions. We assumed that subjects who took both view-points into account displayed a more complex level of reasoning.
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Results First, we tested the two opposite hypotheses concerning the impact of exemplification on complexity of thought. The results proved to be quite clear. Table 16.1 reveals that the subjects who read the base-rate version displayed less complexity of thought than the subjects who read the exemplified version. The difference in means (.29 vs .63) even reaches statistical significance (t=2.51, p<.05, 2-tailed). In short, Hypothesis 1 has to be rejected, whereas Hypothesis 2 has to be accepted. So, exemplification of newspaper articles appears to stimulate complexity of thought. Table 16.1 Mean scores on cognitive complexity for different conditions Base-rate Condition
Exemplified Condition
Mean
std.dev
n
mean
std.dev
N
.29
.46
24
.63
.49
27
In order to answer our research question concerning the impact of the variables ‘age’, ‘sex’ and ‘educational level’ on the effect of exemplification, we performed three separate 2-way analyses of variance. Table 16.2. Mean scores on cognitive complexity for different conditions and Table 16.2. different categories of age, sex and educational level Base-rate Condition
Exemplified Condition
mean
std.dev
n
mean
std.dev
n
20–39 years 40–73 years
.56 .13
.53 .35
9 15
.54 .71
.52 .47
13 14
Male Female
.46 .09
.52 .30
13 11
.64 .63
.50 .50
11 16
Lower education Higher education
.00 .32
.00 .48
2 22
.57 .65
.53 .49
7 20
With respect to age differences, Table 16.2 shows that an effect of exemplification exclusively appears to occur among the elderly. This interaction effect is the only one reaching statistical significance: F(1,47)=5,13, p<.05. At first sight, Table 16.2 also seems to indicate that women are somewhat more susceptible to a thought stimulating effect of exemplifying in-
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formation. However, this interaction effect does not reach statistical significance: F(1,47) = 1,81, p=.19. Finally, at first sight Table 16.2 also seems to indicate that subjects with a relatively low education are more susceptible to a thought stimulating effect of exemplifying information. However, due to the very small number of cases in the low education categories, no conclusions can be drawn from this result, which does not reach significance.
Discussion Most existing research concerning exemplifying information in news stories has focused on the potentially harmful impact unbalanced distributions of (biased) exemplars have on the processing of information. In the present study, we investigated what influence reasonably well-balanced exemplars have on information processing by the newsreaders. Of course, for a number of obvious reasons the findings of this study cannot be considered to be more than preliminary. For instance, the findings apply to one single newspaper story, exemplified by written narrative means. Also, the interviews were conducted by relatively inexperienced interviewers. Finally, the number of interviews hardly permitted the three variable analyses. Despite these limitations, at least some tentative conclusions can be drawn. First, exemplification of newspaper stories, if balanced, seems to stimulate complexity of thought. This can be considered positive news for those journalists who would like their readers to pass a more qualified judgment on the subjects they report on. However, this is not to say that exemplification does not entail any thought inhibiting process. All we can say based on the results of this present design is that the thought stimulating effect expected in hypothesis 2 surpasses any possible thought inhibiting effect as expected in hypothesis 1. Second, the thought stimulating effect seems to be particularly prominent among the elderly, and, with a lot more reservation, among women. We can only speculate on the reasons for this result. For instance, we might suggest that the on average higher educational level of the younger subjects in our sample and/or the state of contemporary education has trained the younger respondents in passing qualified judgments. They may, therefore, not benefit from any further thought stimulating effect. However, at the moment this is no more than speculation. For this reason, additional research data are needed, using different stories and different samples. From an action theoretical perspective, the analysis indicates that news readers indeed use exemplars for more than just for making correct or in-
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correct judgments. Insofar, the application of the perspective has proved to be fruitful. On the other hand, this study has painted only part of the picture, partly caused by the somewhat prestructured interview method we applied. The application of a less prestructured method of observing interpretations, for instance ‘protocol analysis’ (Schaap, 2001), will provide a fuller account of what people do when reading or watching the news. When applying such methods, the action theoretical approach might yield surprising results.
Notes 1. The stimulus versions of the stories (in Dutch) are available on request. 2. In all, 56 interviewers (first grade communication science students) completed 95 valid interviews with subjects who had to read one out of four experimental versions. Only the 51 interviews concerning the base-rate version and the (balanced) exemplified version were used in this study.
References Brosius, H. B. (1993). The effects of emotional pictures in television news. Communication Research, 20, 105–124. Brosius, H. B. (1999). Research note: The influence of exemplars on recipients’ judgments. The part played by similarity between exemplar and recipient. European Journal of Communication, 14, 213–224. Brosius, H. B. & Bathelt, A. (1994). The utility of exemplars in persuasive communication. Communication Research, 21, 48–78. Detenber, B. J. & Winch, S. P. (2000). The emotional significance of color and content in newspaper photographs. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Communication Association, June 2000, Acapulco, Mexico. Gibson, R. & Zillmann, D. (1994). Exaggerated versus representative exemplification in news reports. Communication Research, 21, 603–624. Gibson, R. & Zillmann, D. (2000). Reading between the photographs: The influence of incidental pictorial information on issue perception. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 77, 355–366. Milburn, M. A. & McGrail, A. B. (1992). The dramatic presentation of news and its effects on cognitive complexity. Political Psychology, 13, 613–632. Perry, S. D. & Gonzenbach, W. J. (1997). Effects of news exemplification extended: Considerations of controversiality and perceived future opinion. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 41, 229–244. Renckstorf, K., McQuail, D. & Jankowski, N. (1996). Media use as social action. A European approach to audience studies. London: John Libbey.
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Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (2001). An action theoretical frame of reference for the study of TV news. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Television news research: Recent European approaches and findings (pp. 91–109). Berlin: Quintessence. Schaap, G. (2001). Using protocol analysis in television news research: Proposal and first tests. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 26, 443–464. Schroder, H. M., Driver, M. J. & Streufert, S. (1967). Human information processing. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Taylor, S. E. & Thompson, S. C. (1982). Stalking the elusive “vividness” effect. Psychological Review, 89, 155–181. Tversky, A. & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124–1131. Tetlock, Ph. P. (1984). Cognitive style and political belief systems in the British House of Commons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 365–375. Zillmann, D. & Brosius, H. B. (2000). Exemplification in communication. The influence of case reports on the perception of issues. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Zillmann, D., Gibson, R., Sundar, S. S. & Perkins, J. W. (1996). Effects of exemplification in news reports on the perception of social issues. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 73(2), 427–444.
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17 Between altruism and narcissism: 17 An action theoretical approach of personal 17 homepages devoted to existential meaning Ellen Hijmans and Martine van Selm
Abstract This article aims to examine existential meaning constructions from an action theoretical perspective in a specific Internet environment: the personal homepage. Personal homepages are on-line multi-media documents addressing the question ‘Who am I?’ Authors of personal homepages provide information on both their personal and public identity. These identity constructions sometimes include reflections on the meaning of life. Answers to questions on the meaning of life reflect the way in which individuals assign ultimate meanings to human life, and consist of three key components: orientation (goals and objectives), beliefs, and experience. Findings are reported of a qualitative content analysis of answers to the meaning of life provided in a sample of 42 personal homepages. We found that most answers to the meaning of life could be interpreted either as ‘divine/religious’, ‘experience centered’, ‘cosmic’, or ‘social utopian’. The answers provided on the homepages showed similarities with findings reported in other studies on existential meaning. In addition, we found that this Internet environment offers new venues for expressing orientation (goals and objectives), beliefs, and experience reflecting answers to the meaning of life. Keywords: action theoretical approach in communication research, personal homepages, identity construction, existential meaning
Existential meaning, Internet and personal homepages In this article a first exploration is presented which is aimed at characterizing existential meaning as presented on a selection of personal homepages. At first sight the domains of existential meaning and the Internet do not seem to have much in common. In fact, often the opposite, such as meaninglessness or alienation, is associated with the consequences of information and communication technology (Ruffin, 1984; Gergen, 1991). In this contribution we nevertheless want to consider the possibilities for
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existential meaning on the Internet, more specifically on personal homepages published on the World Wide Web. Besides being a platform for many different activities, we noticed that the web also offers a space for users to present questions and exchange ideas on the meaning of life. The existence of many virtual communities on the Internet encourages discussion and, sometimes intimate, relations between strangers, which means that Internet conversations are more than merely ‘cold’ and ‘impersonal’ (Walther, 1996; Parks & Floyd, 1996). Another, not unimportant aspect is the possibility of the Internet serving as a platform for processes and phenomena that are difficult to study under normal conditions. A few examples would be how markets adapt, how children learn outside classrooms or how organizations communicate (Kiesler, 1997). In certain respects this also holds true for the study of existential meaning. The process of meaning construction cannot directly be observed, the researcher thus will have to go to great difficulties to make it feasible for analysis. Meaning, and especially ‘ultimate’ or existential meaning, is often considered to refer to the most intimate and personal inner thoughts of an individual, whose ideas about the meaning of life are connected to a personal biography and (sometimes) disturbing and threatening experiences one is not willing to share with everyone. Moreover, meaning of life in modern secular times is thought to be of a subjective and privatized nature, disconnected of any interpersonal or societal debate (Luckmann, 1967, 1996; Berger, 1969). In this vein, the meaning of life and the Internet do not seem to be natural allies. For the Internet is, because of its accessibility, widely considered to be the most public (and democratic) medium of today, where exchange of information about almost every imaginable topic takes place. Because the Internet contains several environments where people spontaneously reflect on topics related to questions about the meaning of life, we suspect that the Internet could also be a platform for the exchange and ‘bricolage’ of meaning systems of individual Internet users. For this reason we regard the Internet as a ‘space’ for the expression of contemporary practices of the construction of existential meaning. Existential meaning Searching for and asking existential meaning questions embarks upon the ultimate realm of human understanding of life. Scholars of religious studies traditionally focus on questions and answers on the nature, goal and origin of life, the world and the place of humankind in it, as well as the meaning of illness, suffering, death and injustice. From our previous research on contemporary meaning systems (Hijmans, 1994) and personal
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meaning in the second half of life (Van Selm, 1998; Van Selm & DittmannKohli, 1998), we learned that meaning consists of three interrelated coreelements: orientation, belief and experience, sometimes also known as motivational, cognitive and affective components of meaning. ‘Orientation’ reflects the everyday aspect of meaning. Individuals have plans and goals, and guidelines or rules they live by. It includes the evaluation of one’s own capacities and the life one has lived so far, in the light of active realization of plans and goals in the future. The second element, ‘belief’, refers to opinions and ideas about the meaning of (one’s own) life. Previous research shows that people use religious as well as secular constructs in answering existential questions (Hijmans, 1994). Orientation and belief are both active forms of the construction of meaning. The third element is ‘experience’, which is known as the passive aspect of meaning. The experience of meaning can happen at moments when no meaningrelated questions were asked, for instance because there was no doubt, or at moments when one was ‘opened up’ and receptive. These moments of happiness or spiritual fulfillment ‘happen’ to people. In this case meaning is experienced as an affection, a being touched, which keeps life in motion (Peperzak, 1990; Van der Lans, 1992; Nies & Munnichs, 1989). The experiential element of meaning seems to be less reflexive in nature than the first two elements, which subsequently process and interpret experiences. In this way the three elements of meaning are intertwined in an ongoing process. The Internet As mentioned previously, the Internet can serve as a platform for the investigation of less visible processes, processes that are difficult to study. For instance, methodological references mention the employment of anonymous web-based electronic surveys in studies of deviant or covert behavior, or other sensitive research topics (Coomber, 1997). Our study on existential meaning on the Internet is focused on the recovery of another notoriously difficult topic, ‘ideas’ and constructs on the meaning of life, that normally cannot be observed. Besides the content of meaning, we are also interested in the display of imagery or form of meaning on the Internet, as one of the typical uses of the Internet as a cultural artifact (Hine, 2000: 70). The Internet is commonly used as library, magazine rack, yellow pages and a forum for publication (Wallace, 1999). Individuals, organizations and companies construct web sites containing information about themselves or other matters relevant to their audiences. Especially personal homepages often display features such as, ‘information about me’, ‘a poem’, ‘links to my favorite photography sites’
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and ‘links to homepages of my friends’ (Wallace, 1999: 33). Because of the textual character of most web sites, forcing the authors to construct a ‘cognitive product’ we expect to encounter an emphasis on the belief component of meaning. Personal homepages Personal homepages are online multi-media documents dealing with the question: ‘Who am I?’. Homepages are personal and public at the same time, for they provide an insight into the personal lives of the authors (Chandler, 1998). Wynn and Katz (1997) actually found that personal homepages combine aspects of public life (education, profession) with private life (faith, beliefs, family, hobby, biography). Because the audience is unknown in advance, people aim at an integrated and holistic self-presentation. The thought that one’s homepage could be visited by a worldwide audience is, according to Wallace, together with a somewhat narcissistic drive to self-expression, reason enough to spend a lot of time on the construction and maintenance of a homepage. The actual number of visitors seems to be of less importance, and is usually not kept up to date (Wallace, 1999). According to Chandler (1998) the creation of a homepage is a constituent part of the construction of identity, resulting in a self-presentation of the homepage’s author, that often will be ‘under construction’. As to the relation between the typical Internet phenomena of the personal homepage, as a consciously selected self-presentation and the cultural practice of meaning construction, a remark made by Wynn and Katz (1997) is important, and must be taken into consideration. They consider the making of a personal homepage as an expression of the integration of identity. The author reflects on his or her life as a whole and presents it as an ordered sequence of events. This description is closely related to the general function that Luckmann (1967) attributes to integrative meaning systems, which are supposedly present in all human beings. Individuals see and present their lives as a unity in which past, present and future are brought on one line. An all-encompassing meaning system provides the frame and the means with which to introduce this symbolic ordering, to see and present one’s life to others as a morally relevant biography (Luckmann, 1967: 48). This means that one feels and can be held accountable to others for one’s life. This is exactly what can be seen on personal homepages. And this is why personal homepages seem to be a promising place to conduct the present study into existential meaning on the Internet. As a typical Internet phenomenon, personal homepages offer the opportunity to explore individual meaning systems, and the specific nature of existential meaning in this medium.
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Meaning on personal homepages from an action theoretical perspective The construction of meaning is the focal point of any study that draws upon action theory. This perspective, notably the sociology of knowledge (Berger & Luckmann, 1967) and symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934), provides a natural basis for our exploration of existential meaning in personal homepages. Generally speaking, objectivated everyday knowledge has its roots both in personal biography and culturally shared, internalized meanings. This knowledge is displayed on personal homepages, and is a witness of processes of world construction and world maintenance. The construction and continuous restructuring of homepages can be thought of as externalizations of human action. More specifically, human interaction and communication as core-elements of symbolic interactionism are only indirectly visible on personal homepages. But homepages are designed as a medium to communicate to others whatever seems to be of interest to make public to an unknown audience, and as a medium they are part of a meaning-producing environment. It is not the interaction itself we will examine but the means by which a communicator, who has a history as a recipient of other media and other homepages in searching for answers to questions of the meaning of life, intends to convey his/her views to others. As said, personal homepages show accounts of one’s life to oneself and to others, and as such represent a form of active goal directed media-use. A as form of social action, we could expect that they take into account and are oriented by the behavior of others. In connection with the action theoretical frame of reference formulated by Renckstorf (1994) and Renckstorf, McQuail and Jankowski (1996) for media use and applied to, for instance, the use of television news (Renckstorf & Wester, 1999), we will discuss in more detail how the study of symbolic content of personal homepages can be understood in action theoretical terms. As we mentioned earlier, homepages are the result of external action. As a communicator, the author of the homepage produces and selects information. The content of homepages consists of carefully constructed subjective meaning and is the result of internal processes. The internal action of defining the situation is vital for the construction of homepages. From a theoretical point of view the homepages in our research sample contain the provisional solution of the problem of the meaning of life, therefore we consider them as one of the phases in the ongoing process of solving the ultimate problem of existential meaning. In short, media use in our contribution comes down to the active deployment of the Internet as a medium, and its multi-medial technical
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possibilities, as an extension of the person, both as an individual and a member of society. The construction of existential meaning can adequately be grasped in terms of action theory. Our study will focus on three questions: 1) Which elements of existential meaning arise in the practice of meaning construction on the Internet, and more specifically on personal homepages?; 2) In what way can this existential meaning be characterized?; 3) What is the meaning of the results in reference to the action theoretical perspective?
Methods Two popular search engines1 were used in order to identify web sites devoted to existential meaning. Two searches with the search term ‘meaning of life’ resulted in 63390 and 28622 979 ‘hits’ respectively. We derived our research material from this pool of web sites, following the principle of theoretical sampling, in the following way. The first 210 web sites of each search were printed on paper, resulting in a list containing 420 web sites. A number of these web sites were categorized as personal homepages. The personal home pages were stored, by means of a hyperlink, on the site of a groupware product, to which only the authors had access. In this way we could retrieve the sites easily during the phase of analysis. The employment of the English search term ‘meaning of life’ has far reaching consequences for which web sites are incorporated in our research material. Web sites published in another language are excluded, as well as sites which include a discussion on existential meaning, but not explicitly labeled as such; that is, in a way conceivable to search engines. Analysis The analysis was undertaken in two steps. The first step aimed at mapping the field of web sites indexed of the search term ‘meaning of life’. A global system of categories was developed, based on the types of web sites present in our material (N=420). Both authors worked independently at first and later collectively, in order to develop suitable descriptions for the categories of web sites. By comparing and discussing the categories we were able to create an intersubjective categorization, which is presented in Table 17.1. As this table shows, not all the websites found were personal homepages.
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Table 17.1 Categorization of web sites Category Personal homepages Advertisements (regarding books, CD’s, video tapes) Traditional religious organizations: churches, groups, cults New age organizations, meeting place for exchange of ideas, documents, quotations Contributions to discussion groups Related to Monty Python Jokes, humor, parody Academic centers, universities, course information Spontaneous collections of idea’s on existential meaning Instructional sites, search engines regarding specific topics Art (film, paintings, play) (Horror) stories Spiritual professionals and experts (no church)
23 21 19 14 13 13 13 12 5 4
Websites (other than homepages) not categorized Not related to search term Not available on server anymore Rest categories (including doubles)
31 31 23
Total
88 69 49
420
The personal homepages formed the largest category. In our study, personal homepages were conceived as those sites that typically resemble a homepage (web sites containing pages about ‘my CV’, a guest book, information on friends and family, hobbies). In addition, web sites that were labeled as such by the author and sites devoted to the author’s personal story or vision, were also categorized as personal homepages. Table 17.1 shows that, in addition to personal homepages, commercial web sites concerned with the selling of books, CDs and videotapes also devoted space to existential meaning. The same is true for web sites of religious organizations, New Age organizations, and of professionals working in the field of spirituality. In addition, we found web sites of universities, discussion groups and other virtual meeting places devoted to the topic of the meaning of life. Less serious web sites were also found, such as web sites devoted to Monty Python’s movie, or to jokes and fantasy stories about the meaning of life. Finally, we found a number of web sites on which existential meaning was interpreted in an artistic way.
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The second step of analysis aimed at describing and typifying the way in which existential meaning was seen or explained on personal homepages. This second step was conducted for only for those websites which could be considered personal homepages, as our research question focused on this type of web sites. In total we thus analyzed 88 websites. We tried to find answers to a number of questions, both descriptive and interpretive in nature, that were addressed at each personal homepage (unit of analysis). The observation scheme was developed in the course of re-reading the empirical material. Hence, the questions link up with the empirical material, and were intended to contribute to a typology that reaches beyond a mere description of existential meaning on personal homepages. Of those web sites that were considered personal homepages in the first ‘rough categorization’ (see Table 17.1), 42 web sites were found suitable for study. These homepages were still available on the server, they qualified for the criterion ‘personal’, and an indication of the search term ‘meaning of life’ could easily be identified. The ongoing reduction of research material described above is a way of theoretical sampling and implies that, finally, only a selective pool of homepages was examined. Our conclusion only bears on this selection of sites. Another limitation of this study is that it involves an analysis of already existing material, namely electronically published textual and visual materials sometimes furnished with audio- and video elements. The author’s expression of existential meaning is examined as a document, on which we did not exercise any influence. Hence, the examination is best described as a qualitative content analysis, and more specifically as interpretive analysis (Hijmans, 1996).
Description of personal homepages The personal homepages examined differed in size. Half of them consisted of 10 to 20 web pages, while 11 sites contained 20 to about 100 web pages (in one case even up to 400), and another 11 contained less than 10 web pages. Table 17.2. Number of web pages constituting personal homepages Size (in number of web pages) 20+ 10–20 Less than 10
11 20 11
Total
42
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The design of the personal homepages examined was quite divers. Even though the textual information on the web sites was the main focus of our examination, some attention was paid to design characteristics, such as background pattern, color, font, illustrations, pictures, audio and video. We expected these characteristics to disclose aspects of the experiential component of existential meaning, as this component might be expressed in an aesthetic, instead of a textual way. A general examination of design shows that three quarters of the web sites are designed using color, background patterns, pictures or other illustrations. In some cases this resulted in a stylistic composition, in other cases in an arbitrary collection of elements. Ten homepages were furnished with multi-media tools such as banners, moving objects or movie-clips, music or a voice. The musical elements used were in all cases instrumental, quiet or joyful, and meant to provide a background sound while reading texts reflecting ‘deep thoughts’ on existential meaning. On nine sites, very little use is made of the possibilities of Internet technology; these sites are mainly textual in nature. Later, we will describe a possible correlation between types of existential meaning and design aspects of the personal homepages. Table 17.3. Design of homepages examine Design Text only Composition2 Composition including video Composition including audio Composition including video and audio
9 23 4 5 1
Total
42
Table 17.4. Gender of authors of homepages Gender Male Female Co-production Unknown
33 7 1 1
Total
42
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Regarding the backgrounds of the authors of the personal homepages in our sample the following came to the fore. The authors were mainly men (Table 17.4), between the ages of 21 to 40 years old (Table 17.5), and residing in the US (Table 17.6), thus resembling the average Internet user (e.g., Van Dijk, 2000). Young (white, well-educated) men from the wealthiest part of the Western world are over-represented amongst the users of the Internet, and (hence) also in our sample of web sites. This implies another limitation of our study, as the existential meaning of only this specific group of authors is examined. Table 17.5. Age of authors of homepages Age 10–20 21–30 31–40 41–50 51+ Age unknown
4 11 10 6 4 7
Total
42
Table 17.6. Residence of authors of homepages Residence US Canada Norway Australia UK Unknown
33 2 2 1 1 3
Total
42
The prominence of existential meaning varied across the personal homepages examined (Table 17.7). Whereas on some sites existential meaning was the central theme (17 sites), on other sites the topic was treated as one of many subjects present (16 sites).
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Table 17.7. Prominence of existential meaning on the homepages examined Prominence Central theme One of many subjects Single question Joke Not recognizable
17 16 6 2 1
Total
42
The re-reading of our research material resulted in the identification of various guidelines on how to construct or discover life’s meaning, or, more generally, how to deal with life (on 29 of 42 homepages). In Table 17.8 these guidelines are summarized. Table 17.8. Inventory of practical guidelines for a meaningful life Practical guidelines Believe in God, live according to gospel, read bible, pray, be baptized Search for meaning within yourself: x through everyday activities (a.o. giving and seeking support, reading poems, enjoying nature x by your own philosophy of life, wisdom x by thinking rationally, scientifically x by techniques for mental improvement (intense observation, fast reading, better reasoning) x by studying Tao and using insights for a new way of living x by setting a goal x without further explanation Orientation on the future of world/humanity; transcendence of direct life world Study the origin of life (by scientific references) Carry out developmental tasks for life improvement No guidelines
9
2 1 1 13
Total
42
5 2 3 3 1 1 2
The internal search for meaning is the most important guideline (16 sites). Visitors are advised to grasp the meaning of life by ‘working on their inner selves’. By creating meaning in life, meaning of life can be experienced.
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This ‘working on the inner self’ can take several directions; e.g., to live life from a personal philosophy of life or to set goals in life. Others advise to raise one’s consciousness, for instance by reflecting on the value of everyday experiences, or the working of the human psyche to improve mental abilities. The idea is that by an intense way of thinking, the meaning of life eventually will become clear. The display of activities within the Christian tradition is a second category of guidelines. This category contains the advice to serve God, or to live in accord with the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also more practical advice such as to read the bible, or to get yourself baptized. The rest of the guidelines relate to ideas of putting your life in service of a collective goal, or trying to discover an encompassing plan of life. On one of the sites this was substantiated with understandings from the evolution theory; on another one with the idea of a ‘standard sequence of life’, distinguished by inevitable developmental tasks that have to be fulfilled. The three components of meaning, orientation, belief and experience, are combined. Experiential elements and daily actions are presented to others as conclusions based on beliefs and reflection. A more general finding concerns the use of quotes on homepages. The authors of personal homepages sometimes indicate that words and thoughts of others (ranging from long deceased classical philosophers to modern pop stars) were helpful in answering questions of existential meaning. “Someone close to me once said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Don’t read me a quote, I want to hear you talk.” That meant a lot to me and I’ll never forget it. However I can’t talk to everyone and maybe you don’t want to listen to me. Quotes are wonderful. The meaning can be changing and sometimes a timely quote can be wonderfully uplifting. I like to collect quotes cause they represent thoughts and emotions that my experiences have not yet provided to me. I have roughly organized them. For each sub page the newest are always at the top, so you can easily tell if the page has changed” (http://www.meaningoflife.com/ quotes.htm consulted 25–01–01). There are more ways of referring to existing ideas, literature and traditions. We came across more or less frequent use of hyperlinks, in more than three quarters of the homepages hyperlinks were found, as the next table shows.
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Table 17.9. Number of hyperlinks to external sites Number of hyperlinks 15 or more 5 to 14 1 to 4 None
11 18 4 9
Total
42
Hyperlinks establish a connection with sources elsewhere on the World Wide Web. We were interested in finding out the different types of sources the homepages in our sample related to. We made an inventory of the following sources of wisdom that were used in answers to questions of the meaning of life (Table 17.10). Table 17.10. Inventory of sources and traditions3 Sources and traditions Christianity, quotes from the bible, Jewish tradition (Anti-religious) humanism, spiritual ecology (e.g.,Greenpeace), social movements (feminism, civil rights) References to existentialism, (moral) philosophy (e.g., Epicurus, Plato) philosophy of science, reason. Other thinkers and writers: Freud, Russell, Cervantes, Epictetus, Ellis Evolution theory, Darwinism, evolution psychology, Dawkins, (social) scientific concepts Concepts and quotes from new spiritual awareness (Yin/Yang, tai chi, Tao, karma, pagan religion, hypnosis, holism, Paranormality, agnosticism) ‘new Jews’: combination of religions Literature (Herman Hesse, Huxley), music, lyrics, quotes
13
Total
42
5
7 8
9 4
The bible, symbols and concepts of Christian faith turned out to be an important source (13 sites). Other sources were humanism (5 sites), and concepts from new spiritual awareness groups (9 sites). Philosophy, for instance existentialism, was found on 7 sites. Several sites (8) used scientific concepts from social sciences or evolution theory. One last category referred to literature and lyrics (4 sites). A final question that puzzled us was the reason why the authors decided to publish their life stories, personal views and advice to others. Our
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observation scheme included a question about the typification of the site in general, including motives or goals. Some authors were clear about their motives, while others were quite inconclusive. Although this aspect obviously needs further elaboration, for instance by online interviewing, we found that clear goals were formulated by converted Christians, and other authors who sometimes eloquently drew from ideological traditions. Though not impersonal, the personal element remains in the background, and was sometimes difficult to recover. For instance the author of a ‘Christian resources page’4 is decisive on the uselessness of personal information. He considers his goal to be communication with the masses, and not just to save himself but also others. At the same time he makes several ironic remarks on his ambition to be seen on the web, as he welcomes any awards coming his way. Authors that are less convinced of their beliefs tend to be more personal. They give testimony of their soul searching and personal growth. The support they found in thoughts, books or music is made public, sometimes in the form of an online diary. Motives for the production of these kinds of ego documents are not always clear. Some authors state their intentions to make themselves known in all important facets in testimonials of mere personal biographies5. Additionally, we found that authors try to elicit and welcome reactions from others, which suggests that the possibility of one’s homepage being visited by unknown others is a reward in itself. This is even more clear when counters keep a check of the exact number of visitors, as we actually found in several cases. It seems that this form of self-expression discloses a somewhat self-centered, though very human motive of affirmation of one’s existence by others. Summarizing our results so far, we could say that in our sample the presentation of existential meaning forms a constituent part of self-presentation in personal homepages. Three quarters of the homepages can be called extensive and in many cases the authors have made creative and artistic efforts. The homepages seem to be constructed by individuals who wanted to use the potential of the medium for (self) expression, and in doing so in one way or the other turned to the theme of existential meaning. Our basic assumption that meaning is connected to everyday life seems to be justified, as can be seen in the number of guidelines we found (16). Meaning takes on an aspect of orientation and belief at the same time, while the guidelines partly concern experiences. Motives of authors are (a combination of) altruistic and narcissistic intentions.
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A typology of existential meaning on homepages The above description of sites depicts a global view of their owners and the ways in which existential meaning is represented on personal homepages. In this section we will characterize the symbolic content and the different directions existential meaning takes on in these homepages. Initially we created a broad dichotomy. On the one hand, questions of existential meaning were put in an encompassing perspective of a transcending nature and non-human origin. Examples are Christian faith or the cycle of nature and its cosmic powers. On the other hand, meaning of life was associated with human experience; meaning of life can be experienced by searching for meaning in life. The experiential component of meaning is stressed, as was already visible in Table 17.8. The tips and guidelines presented there show the different directions of this distinction. We compared the whole of every homepage in respect to the specific directions of the meaning of life, be it questions or answers, ideas, visions, stories, guidelines etc. In the following Table 17.11 the two directions were labeled as superhuman (17 sites) and human (18 sites). Table 17.11 is an ideal typical construction, not an empirical typology. Ideal types are specific cultural meaning systems, acquired by one-sided overstressing of one or more points of view (Lemmen, 1977: 57). Ideal types in the Weberian sense serve theoretical goals directed at understanding phenomena under study, by focusing attention on one or several characteristics. This means that theoretical types of a typology will be hard to find in their pure form in empirical data because this tends to be less clear. In our case, this means that most sites combine several elements. We assigned a type of orientation to each homepage, on the basis of the prevailing direction of existential meaning and of the internal coherence of elements. The homepages are qualified by the dimensions natural – supernatural and human – superhuman. Besides the already mentioned distinction human/superhuman, we also discovered a distinction we labeled; natural/ supernatural. Taken together, the supernatural and superhuman remind us of the ‘otherworldly’ orientation of religious meaning, whereas the natural/human combination reminds us of the ‘innerworldly’ orientation. We believe this well-known distinction can be further qualified by the addition of the supernatural/natural distinction, which opens up the possibility of a supernatural ultimate goal of life of human origin (Hijmans, 1994: 204). The supernatural is not known to the laws of nature, but in the context of existential meaning this does not necessarily imply a sacred or divine character (Berger, 1969: 27). Especially in modern times, human projections of social scientific and utopian ideals enable man to
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transcend his individual nature to encompass the whole of mankind. Individual existence is subordinated to these ideals, which grant it an ultimate ground. These ideals are, as the ways of God, unnatural and have to be ‘invented’. As such they are not fully known, and can only be approached by social and psychological theories that legitimate human existence. As in the religious interpretation of life there is an external interference in nature that lends meaning and orientation to human life. Opposite this orientation we find the natural approach in which human interference is unthinkable. Individual life in itself is quite a meaningless fraction of human existence in the universe. Life takes its natural (evolutionary) course and the forces man has to face are indifferent, ‘blind’ processes that unfold in spite of human presence. These blind natural laws (dis)organize human life and grant it its existential meaning. This is a superhuman, but natural form of existential meaning in which humans are part of a natural arrangement. Finally, there is the human variation of the natural orientation. We already mentioned the emphasis on human experience. There is mention of authenticity and quality of life experiences, that enable the experience and subsequent interpretation of existential meaning of life. We called this the ‘anthropocentric’ experience, in which individuals try to transcend their ego by opening up to essential life experiences that in themselves lack metaphysical legitimacy. Experience of the fullness of life grants meaning. This leads to the following results. Table 17.11. Typology of orientation of meaning in personal homepages Supernatural Creator/ goal Superhuman Human Total
Divine, religious Social utopian
Natural experience/ Blind process
14 5 19
Cosmic, natural powers Anthropocentric experience
3
17
15
20
18
37
The table shows that 37 sites could be classified, 5 sites could not be interpreted because meaning was too inclusive, diverse or without clear direction. A total of 14 homepages were classified as the superhuman-supernatural type labeled as divine/religious. Christianity dominates this type; twelve pages refer explicitly to the bible as main inspiration to find meaning. Existential meaning is already ‘out there’, and in need of discovery. The
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meaning of life is part of an encompassing plan of God or a nameless creator. Remarkable are the testimonials of the converted (‘I believe and I stand for it’)6, they carry the message with great personal fervor and conviction and intend to persuade the audience of their homepages to find salvation, ‘Be, pray, know’7. Many present Christian guidelines for life8 or examples of what healing faith has brought, for instance in dealing with personal catastrophes such as suicide9. The styling of almost all sites is quite skillful, with color, photos and, in some cases, music. In terms of the three core elements of existential meaning (orientation, belief and experience), the belief element is stressed mostly. In the anthropocentric type of meaning the most important elements are experience and orientation. This category is diametrically opposed to the former religious type, because it combines human and the natural dimensions. We placed 15 homepages in this ideal type, which advocates the idea that meaning of life can be found within; i.e., in inner experience. Existential meaning, therefore, has many different manifestations. Some pages stress the full employment of mental capacities and the full (scientific) understanding of human nature and experience, sometimes it is said that there is no real (cognitive) answer to questions of the meaning of life, but that the silence after posing the question contains the answer. Life itself is the meaning of life, including an open mind for the everyday beauty of life10, and the enjoyment of little things and encounters with others. The ‘here and now’ and ‘happiness’ are frequently used concepts that illustrate the immediate experience and the receptiveness to meaning in the context of everyday life. The human element can be seen in the responsibility for one’s own happiness, as said meaning lies within the life performance: “Meaning in life comes from what we do with it. Meaning of life comes from the act of living.” (http//www.users.uniserve-ca/%7erfrisen/ meanlife.html, consulted 25–1–01) The styling varies among the pages. Some are purely text based, but others display professional designs. The authors of three sites commemorate Internet technology as a means to publish and discuss ideas on the meaning of life11. The other two types are combinations of former ones. The social-utopian type is supernatural in orientation but human at the same time, while the cosmic type assumes natural ‘blind’ processes from a superhuman nature. In our research sample we found that 5 sites fitted within the social-utopian type. Goals are mentioned such as ‘doing something good in the world’, to ‘look beyond your own possessions and family12, or ‘think about the future on a world scale’,13 ‘take responsibility for society’14. As
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in the other human type, responsibility is stressed. Here is not the individual but an encompassing whole such as mankind or society at stake. Individuals have to overcome their natural drives for the benefit of the collective. The style of these sites is calm, somewhat dull and without fantasy. They contain mainly text and make hardly any use of multimedia technology. Of the core-elements of meaning mainly orientation, in combination with belief, is stressed; ideological goals are the guidelines for everyday action. Finally the cosmic type was encountered only three times. The main theme here is that life has no intrinsic meaning because it is part of a natural order. This stresses mainly the belief element of meaning, there is no connection to the orientation or experience element. One of the sites suggests that life is part of the evolution15. Another claims that life is in perpetual motion, that will always exist with the preservation of energy16. In this category, the (natural) sciences are a main source of inspiration. The style of the sites differs from exclusively textual to professionally styled with moving texts. In short, the characterization of the symbolic content of personal homepages with respect to existential meaning resulted in four ideal typical orientations. Two dimensions are typical: the human/superhuman and the natural/supernatural. By crossing the dimensions four ideal types emerge, that two by two share common characteristics. In the two human types, ideals and experiences are important, in the two superhuman types an encompassing transcendent order superimposes itself on man. The two supernatural types share a common belief in an external goal that directs life, and the two natural types share that goals have to be internal, and derived from individual experience, or from a very distant order in universe in which a single human life is practically insignificant. We see further similarities and differences in orientation between the superhuman and human orientations. The human orientations share in their ideals and experiences an orientation to the future, while the superhuman look back to the past and the cause and origin of man. We found that there are 19 cases in the supernatural column and 18 in the natural, while there are 17 cases in the superhuman row and 20 in the human row. No sub-dimension seems to dominate. But when we take a closer look, we see that two combinations of dimensions and opposite types certainly have dominant traits: the superhuman/supernatural or divine-religious case (14) and the human/natural or anthropocentric case (15), whereas the utopian and cosmic orientations lag behind with 5 and 3 cases. This does not mean that they are unimportant, they merely represent a corrective to the view of a simplistic distinction between religious and humanistic worldviews, the dichotomy we started with in our interpretation,
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which is also known as ‘otherworldly’ and ‘innerworldly’ orientations to the meaning of life. There are more possibilities for the supernatural than the divine and there is more to the natural than human life itself.
Conclusion In this paper we presented an exploratory study aimed at characterizing existential meaning on a sample of personal homepages. In regard to our research questions we examined structural characteristics, as well as an interpretation of content. The instrumental aspects of these homepages will follow in the concluding remarks. Although the domains of existential meaning and the Internet do not seem to have much in common, our examination showed that ‘the meaning of life’ featured either as a main, or a secondary topic on 42 personal homepages, which were derived from a initial sample of 420 web sites. We found that the most of the authors of the personal homepages examined were male, between 20 and 40 years old, and residing in the US. With regard to other structural characteristics we discussed styling, number of web pages belonging to each web site, and number of hyperlinks to external sites. The content concerned with existential meaning encountered on the personal homepages, could be interpreted as a typology of ideal types constituted by the dimensions human-superhuman, and natural-supernatural. We formulated the following four ideal types: a divine-religious, a cosmic, a social-utopian, and a anthropocentric orientation of existential meaning. Several conclusions could be drawn from this result. First, our examination showed that the belief component (emphasized in the divine-religious type) as well as the orientation and experiential components (emphasized in the anthropocentric type) of meaning come to the fore on personal homepages. Hence, in spite of the textual character of most web sites that forces the construction of a cognitive product reflecting authors’ thoughts, the medium also appeared to invite the expression of the orientation and experiential components of meaning. Second, the ideal types show that the personal homepages provide traditional answers in that a relationship is conceived between human existence and an encompassing supernatural, divine plan. Hence, the authors of the personal homepages examined are not, per definition, secularists, and technological innovations are not hostile to tradition. In addition to these traditional answers, we found answers that reflect existential meaning in which individuals also transcend themselves and the level of
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everyday experiences, but, instead, emphasize authentic life experiences that are used in order to become a better and wiser person. The types divine-religious and anthropocentric were most clearly represented in our research material, whereas the utopian and cosmic orientations represent a corrective to a dualistic view of meaning as either religious or secular. Third, in the light of an action theoretical approach, three results are important: the three components of meaning, the featuring of guidelines and hyperlinks on personal homepages, and the intentions of authors to publish their personal views. To begin with a small but insightful observation; the three components of meaning we distinguished in advance and found useful for our analysis relate to the classical action theoretical concept of structures of relevancy. Belief and experience coincide with the cognitive and affective aspects of knowledge Schutz distinguished in his conceptualization of structures of relevancy, while orientation stands for the definition of the situation. In our opinion, research on the question of meaning of life could gain by further elaboration of this relation. Hyperlinks offer authors of homepages an opportunity to link ideas and visions to those of others. Wynn and Katz (1997) emphasize this functionality of hyperlinks; “The links allow in-depth views of particular themes, thus providing for more dimensionality than anything that can be achieved on a page” (318). Hyperlinks are a means to express and mediate existential meaning to others, as they allow for the relationship between individuals’ ideas and those of others to become visible and retrievable. The network structure of personal homepages represents multiple sources of existential meaning. In our opinion, these sources have become endless, inasmuch as Internet technology facilitates access to an innumerous variety of sources. The World Wide Web offers space for all sorts of beliefs and orientations, and our research material somewhat unexpectedly showed that institutional answers to questions regarding existential meaning co-exist with more or less idiosyncratic visions. Not only via hyperlinks, but also by means of guest books or e-mail responses, relationships with others are initiated and maintained. From a general action theoretical perspective the use of hyperlinks and the presentation of guidelines indicate relations with the broad societal context and exposure to mediated messages of others on the web. On the one hand personal homepages represent the actors’ perspective on life as it crystallizes in styling and symbolic content. As a product of internal and external action, the unique content of every homepage refers to the personal stock of knowledge, and the subjective hierarchical system of relevancies that show a typical personal pattern of meaning. On the other hand, however, as said, interpretation is never entirely individual. As Blumer stated (1969: 5), meaning is a social product, it constitutes part of
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the identity of the individual as a participant in society. As such the social stock of knowledge provides help for the construction of personal homepages, as can be seen in numerous hyperlinks and traditions that the authors refer to. The presentation of guidelines reveals, as do the hyperlinks, a thoroughly social action, taking into account the response of invisible others. This mechanism of role taking refers to symbolic self-interaction, that anticipates an imagined reaction of invisible others, and reflects past experiences with others at the same time. The intermingling of personal and societal factors is also visible in another concept, related to the internal action of defining the situation, namely intentionality. On personal homepages intentionality of authors to publish their personal views is mostly implicit. But we found that intentions could be (partly) reconstructed, they could become apparent through the guidelines and rules, or through offering advice or inspirational thoughts presented for the benefit of others. More self-centered motives such as to attract as many visitors as possible, to gain an award, or at least responses from others could also be reconstructed from the content of a website. In fact, we found that authors displayed multiple signs of orientation to others, and that intentions to publish their views represented an extension of this orientation and a combination of selfless as well as self-centered motives. Hence the title of our contribution, for the intentionality of authors of homepages covers a broad range between altruism and narcissism. From an action theoretical standpoint we have thus achieved an insight on the widespread idea that existential meaning nowadays is individualistic, subjective, privatized and invisible. As mentioned earlier, the network structure makes visible both an ideological and social ‘anchoring’ of existential meaning into traditions and movements on the one hand, and a network of like-minded persons on the other hand. Although the medium, and more specifically the personal homepage, offers an outlet for the expression of rather individualistic forms of ultimate meaning, it is at the same time a space in which these forms are immediately linked up with vested traditions, collective ideologies, and social networks. We think that the practice examined here, including the employment of hyperlinks, can be labeled as an informal way of constructing answers to questions regarding existential meaning taking place in the virtual public arena of the Internet. Therefore, neither the construction of existential meaning nor the use of the Internet are to be considered as isolated or alienated. Furthermore, existential meaning in personal homepages is not found to be exclusively cognitive-reflexive in nature, life experience is an additional source of ultimate meaning, as are traditions of multiple origins. In sum, the specific
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nature of existential meaning on personal homepages on the Internet resides in: a) the network structure of the Internet enabling hyperlinks to multiple sources, thus adding depth or multiple dimensions to personal documents; b) the opportunity for ‘bricolage’ of existential meaning systems from sources widely differentiated with respect to content; c) the styling and design of symbolic content; and d) traditions and life experiences as elements of existential meaning Finally, we will end with a few closing remarks on some difficulties on Internet research. As stated, in this study the conclusions are based upon an examination of a selection of web documents reflecting authors’ thoughts on existential meaning. It took us a great deal of effort to separate ‘the wheat from the chaff’. Only half of the sample of homepages contained sufficient information to conduct our comparative analysis. The homepages we considered as insufficient for analysis hardly elaborated on the topic. We think that the chaotic, unordered and unannotated way information is present on the World Wide Web is an important ground for the necessity of ongoing reduction of research material. This means that the analysis of (parts of) the content is a job requiring much effort, even before the actual analysis can start. Interviewing the authors of homepages could overcome some of the difficulties we encountered. In this study, no attention was paid to the internal processes on behalf of the authors preceding the construction of personal homepages. In further study (e-mail) interviews will be conducted in order to examine motivations for the construction of personal homepages containing expressions of existential meaning. In this way, not only more of the actor perspective and the internal actions will be reconstructed, also more insight could be gained in the role of exposure to other homepages, and other media and the accounts of authors regarding style and design of their homepages.
Notes 1. We used the search engines Alta Vista and Infoseek. 2. ‘Composition’ is due in case a personal homepage is furnished with color, a background patterns, pictures and/or illustrations. 3. Because one site referred to more than one tradition, the total exceeds 42. 4. http://www.geocities.com/area51/5963/meaningoflife.html 5. http://www.stjarna.com/ 6. http://www.gurlpages.com/bisquick/christian.html 7. http://www.geocities.com.area51/5963/meaningoflife.html 8. http://www.thebigquestion.com/index.html 9. http://www.jaredstory.com/meaning_of_life.html 10. http://www.awaken.org/trans/970124.html
Between altruism and narcissism 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
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e.g., http://www.users.uniserve-ca/%7erfrisen/meanlife.html http://www.stud.ntnu.no/%esverreno http://www.progressivehumanism.com/meaning.html http://www.jimn.org/write.meaning.text http://www.iup.edu/%7ergendron/links.htmlx http://www.telusplanet.net/public/bwholmes/reapir.htm
References Berger, P. L. (1969). The sacred canopy: Elements of a sociological theory of religion. New York: Doubleday. Berger, P. & Luckmann, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Doubleday. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic interactionism. Perspectives and methods. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Chandler, D. (1998): ‘Personal home pages and the construction of identities on the web’ URL http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/webident.html Coomber, R. (1997). Using the Internet for survey research. Sociological Research Online, 2 (2). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/socresonline/2/2/2.html Dijk, J. A. G. M. van (2000). Widening information gaps and policies of prevention. In K. Hacker & J. van Dijk (Eds.), Digital democracy. Issues of theory and practice (pp. 166–183). London: Sage. Gergen, K. J. (1991). The saturated self. New York: Basic Books. Hijmans, E. J. S. (1994). Je moet er het beste van maken: Een empirisch onderzoek naar hedendaagse zingevingssystemen. Nijmegen: ITS. Hijmans, E. (1996). The logic of qualitative media content analysis: A typology. Communications, 21 (1), 93–108. Hine, C. (2000). Virtual ethnography. London: Sage. Kiesler, S. (Ed.) (1997). Culture of the Internet. Lawrence Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Lans, J. van der (1992). Zingeving en levensbeschouwing. Een psychologische begripsverkenning. In F. Eijkman (Ed.), Weer zin leren. Over levensbeschouwing en educatie (pp. 7–20). Best: Damon. Lemmen, M. (1977). De godsdienstsociologie van Max Weber. Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt. Luckmann, T. (1967) The invisible religion: The problem of religion in modern society. New York: Macmillan. Luckmann, T. (1996). The privatization of religion and morality. In P. Heelas, S. Lash & P. Morris (Eds.), Detraditionalization. Critical reflections on authority and identity. (pp. 72–86). Oxford: Blackwell. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Nies, H. L. G. R. & Munnichs, J. M. A. (1989). Het begrip zingeving. In J. M. A. Munnichs & G. Uildriks (Eds.), Psychogerontologie (pp. 53–57). Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus.
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Parks, M. R. & Floyd, K. (1996). Making friends in cyberspace. Journal of Communication, 46(1), 80–97. Peperzak, A. (1990). Zoeken naar zin. Proeven van wijsbegeerte. Kampen: Kok Agora. Renckstorf, K. (1994). Mediagebruik als sociaal handelen. Nijmegen: ITS. Renckstorf, K., McQuail, D. & Jankowski, N. (Eds.) (1996). Media use as social action. A European approach to audience studies. London: Libbey. Renckstorf, K. & Wester, F. (1999). An action theoretical frame of reference for the study of TV news. Communications, 24 (1), 39–60. Ruffin, J. (1984). The anxiety on meaninglessness. Journal of Counseling and Development, 63, 40–42. Selm, M. van (1998). Meaninglessness in the second half of life. Nijmegen: Nijmegen University Press. Selm, M. van & Dittmann-Kohli, F. (1998). Meaninglessness in the second half of life: The development of a construct. International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 47 (2), 81–104. Wallace, P. (1999). The psychology of the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walther, J. B. (1996). Computer-mediated communication: Impersonal, interpersonal and hyperpersonal interaction. Communication Research, 23 (1), 3–43. Wynn, E. & Katz, J. E. (1997). Hyperbole over cyberspace: Self-presentation & social boundaries in Internet home pages and discourse. The Information Society. 13 (4), 297–328. http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS/articles/hyperbole.html.
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18 Ownership and use of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media 18 among ethnic minority youth in The Netherlands. 18 The role of the ethno-cultural position Leen d’Haenens, Cindy van Summeren, Madelon Kokhuis and Johannes W. J. Beentjes
Abstract The starting point of the present study is to investigate which environmental factors play a role in the media behavior of ethnic minority youth. To what extent do socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, education, SES and country of origin) influence ownership and use of the media? We also address the role of religion, the cultural origin and the cultural distance between ethnic minority youth and indigenous Dutch youth. Three numerically important groups of ethnic minority youth are discussed: Turks, Moroccans (as examples of a group with greater cultural distance from indigenous Dutch youth) and Surinamese (with less cultural distance from indigenous Dutch youth). In a survey conducted among Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese youth aged between 12 and 19, residing in The Netherlands, we investigated which environmental factors play a role in the media behavior of ethnic minority youth. A control group of indigenous Dutch youth was established and likewise exposed to the variables under study. Keywords: ethnic minority youth, The Netherlands, new media, media ownership and use, ethno-cultural position, religion
Introduction The action theoretical reference model for communication research developed by Renckstorf (1994: 134) is a recipient-centered model. How people deal with media and media messages for specific purposes is central to recipient-centered approaches; media use is not self-evident and does not happen without reason but can be construed as well-considered, planned social action. On the basis of thematization and interpretation of experiences from everyday life and interactions with others, a situation is defined by the acting individual. Viewers, listeners and readers are acting,
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active persons who – against the background of their own objectives, perceived values and plans – interpret mass media messages and then carefully construct their action. This is not a purely individualistic matter; the individual comes to an interpretation by himself, but at the same time, however, generally takes account of the social context and personal and social characteristics (cf. Renckstorf, 1994). When ethnic groups are involved, the socio-cultural orientation forms an important part of these personal and social characteristics (KlatterFolmer, 1997). The first generations of ethnic minorities in The Netherlands are often confronted by many changes, for example in respect to their family, work, and education. In many cases this has led to feelings of social ambivalence, alienation or identity problems. A study by Van Heelsum (1997) describes the ethno-cultural position of the second-generation Surinamese. On the one hand, we find that existing Dutch studies on media ownership and use among ethnic minorities residing in the Netherlands focus almost exclusively on socio-demographic characteristics such as gender, age, education and income as possible determinants for media ownership and use. Ethno-cultural origin is not included in these studies as a possible influencer or predictor (cf., van Dijk & de Haan, 1998; van Dijk, de Haan, Rijken, Verweij & Ganzeboom, 2000). On the other hand, studies on media behavior of ethnic minorities devote very little attention to the ownership and use of ICTs. Brants, Crone and Leurdijk (1998) inventoried the relatively small amount of research with respect to media and immigrants in The Netherlands. Until recently, the only large-scale research in The Netherlands into access to and use of the media by ethnic minorities was performed by the market research agency Veldkamp Marktonderzoek (1999, 1998, 1996). In a very recent study (de Haan, Huysmans & Steyaert, 2002), 1213 pupils filled in a questionnaire about their computer skills and the role of ICTs at school. Non-native pupils were also part of the sample. Within the ethnic groups, pupils of Moroccan and Turkish background appeared to have the largest disadvantage compared to indigenous pupils; they most often use computers in public libraries in order to compensate the lack of Internet access at home, and belong to the lead group when it comes to searching for information on school computers. The study examined to what extent the observed differences could be attributed to the influence of education and the home environment. The social background (i.e., characteristics of the parents, presence of one or more PCs) offered the best explanation for the varying digital skills. Other research generally consists of limited ad hoc random samples, case studies and unpublished material, the scientific nature of which, in
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most cases, leaves something to be desired. Attention for new, interactive media among ethnic minority youth is – in the Veldkamp studies too – extremely limited; even when data are available on this subject, the results go no further than a numerical description of media ownership (number of sets) and media use (in minutes per day). In contrast to the studies which are limited to a discussion of the standard socio-demographic characteristics with regard to media ownership and use, in this study, in analogy to Klatter-Folmer (1997) and Van Heelsum (1997), we emphasize the importance of socio-cultural orientation as a research variable. We evaluate the newly developed variable ethno-cultural position, which we introduce in this study, in relation to the generally accepted socio-demographic characteristics with respect to their predictive character for media ownership and use. Apart from the socio-demographic characteristics of gender, age, education and SES, we also expect religion and the ethno-cultural position of the Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese youth in The Netherlands to have an influence, on the one hand, on media ownership and, on the other hand, on the use of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. Finally, in the present study we attempt to construct a bridge between the ownership and use of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, and the standard socio-demographic characteristics of gender, age, education and SES, as well as religion and the newly developed variable, introduced in this study, namely the ethno-cultural position of Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese youth in The Netherlands. Summing up then, in the present study we address the following research question: To what extent are culture-specific characteristics, alongside other sociodemographic characteristics, determinants for the ownership and use of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media among ethnic minority youth (in comparison with indigenous youth)?
Method Participants In the present study, we conducted a survey among both ethnic minority (Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese) and indigenous Dutch students receiving secondary education (preparation for technical and vocational education, senior general secondary education/pre-university education) and intermediate vocational education. In analogy to Harmsen and Van der Heijdt (1993), for the purposes of this study the term ‘ethnic minorities’ is defined as persons with at least one parent of Turkish, Moroccan
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or Surinamese origin, or who themselves were born in one of these three countries. In this study, students whose father and mother were both born and raised in The Netherlands are regarded as indigenous. To arrive at our operational population, we opted for random sampling from all the schools providing secondary and intermediate vocational education in the whole of The Netherlands. We approached the schools in question by means of letters and fax and e-mail messages in the spring of 2001 (between January and April). The final operational population consists of eight schools for secondary education and five for intermediate vocational studies. Socio-demographic characteristics In the selected schools, 368 ethnic minority students between the ages of 12 and 19 filled out a written questionnaire. When examining the distribution between boys and girls, we find that there is a fairly proportionate distribution between the two genders in the three ethnic minority groups. The group of Turkish students studied is by far the largest with a total of 207 students, consisting of 108 boys (52 %) and 99 girls (48 %). The group of Moroccan students consists of 115 respondents, of which 50 are boys (44 %) and 65 are girls (57 %). Lastly, the group of Surinamese students interviewed, a total of 44, comprised of 20 boys (46 %) and 24 girls (55 %), is the smallest. Since the Surinamese living in The Netherlands are concentrated in the western part of the country – and we were unable to find many schools there that were prepared to take part in our study – our group of Surinamese participants is small. The majority of the respondents (52 %) are currently receiving preparatory intermediate vocational education (preparation for technical and vocational education), 29 percent of the Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese participants are receiving education in intermediate vocational schools (intermediate vocational education) and one fifth of the ethnic minority respondents are taking a senior general secondary/pre-university course of study. Taking account of the gender, age and educational level of all the ethnic minority participants, described above, we selected 98 indigenous Dutch students to serve as a control group (comparable in terms of gender, age and educational level) and asked them to complete a similar questionnaire. By combining the highest education received by both parents with the profession of both parents, we arrive at a tri-partition in the socio-economic status of the group studied: low, medium and high SES. Table 18.1 gives an overview of the SES by ethnic origin.
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Table 18.1. Socio-economic status (SES) by ethnic origin – in rounded percentages
Low Middle High
Turks N=145
Moroccans N=83
Surinamese N=28
Dutch N=64
Total N=320
61 35 3
65 34 1
14 75 11
17 50 33
49 41 9
Owing to the low educational and occupational level of a majority of the Turkish and Moroccan parents (see Table 18.1), these groups present us with a very homogeneous research group in respect of the socio-demographic characteristic SES. Among the Surinamese and indigenous Dutch parents, we see a greater spread in both the educational and occupational level, as a result these groups are less homogeneous. The fact that only 320 of the total of 464 respondents answered at least one of the four questions concerning the socio-economic status indicates that a considerable number of the participants have difficulty in answering these questions. Religion Practically all the Turkish and Moroccan students interviewed indicate that they belong to the Islamic faith. Almost four out of ten Surinamese participants say they are Hindustan. More than one fifth of the latter group of respondents say they are non-religious. Of the participating indigenous Dutch students, more than two thirds say they profess no religion. Thus, religion plays a more important role among the Turkish and Moroccan respondents than is the case for the Surinamese and indigenous Dutch participants. The question whether the respondents find that they practice their religion actively and regularly was used by us as a measure for religion. We reduced the original four answer categories (not at all regularly, not so regularly, regularly and very regularly) to the following two options, viz.: (1) not very active religiously and (2) very active religiously. Of the respondents who practice religion, relatively more Moroccans (57 %) and Turks (51 %) than Surinamese (33 %) and indigenous Dutch respondents (17 %) indicate that they do this (very) regularly. Of the indigenous Dutch respondents who indicate that they are religious, the vast majority indicate that they are not very active religiously. Turks and Moroccans moreover indicate that they visit a mosque, church or another place of prayer more often than the other participants.
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Instrument In analogy to Van Heelsum (1997: 24), we regard ethno-cultural position as “the extent to which members of a particular group regard themselves primarily as members of a specific group and/or behaviors (position acquisition) and the extent to which they are regarded and/or treated primarily by the (majority of) society as representatives of a specific group (position allocation)”. According to Van Heelsum (1997), position acquisition and position allocation are the two theoretical dimensions of the ethno-cultural position. Position acquisition is subdivided into three components, the first of which is related to the question whether ethnic groups are differentiated (group differentiation). This subsection of position acquisition is subdivided into the following three observation terms: (1) the attitude towards Turks/Moroccans/Surinamese; (2) the attitude towards the (indigenous) Dutch; and (3) the extent to which the participants perceive differences between Turks/Moroccans/Surinamese and the indigenous Dutch population. It is the intention that these three categories together load on a dimension from ‘not very strongly oriented’ or ‘not at all oriented towards the Turkish, Moroccan or Surinamese group’ to ‘strong orientation towards the Turkish/Moroccan/Surinamese group’. The second component of the position acquisition dimension can be described as ethnic self-definition. In analogy to the study of Van Heelsum (1997: 58), we regard “the extent to which someone defines himself as a member of a specific ethnic group” as ethnic self-definition. To be able to determine this second component of position acquisition, we have included, like Van Heelsum, on the one hand, a number of statements related to the affective side of ethnic self-definition, such as ‘I feel strong ties to the Turkish/Moroccan/Surinamese community’. On the other hand, propositions are used that emphasize the cognitive side of ethnic self-definition, for example, ‘Do you usually think of yourself as a …?’. The third component comprises, among other things, questions designed to establish the orientation towards contacts with persons in Turkey/Morocco/Surinam. Van Heelsum (1997: 66) defines this as “the extent to which one prefers or enjoys associating with people who are particularly strongly oriented towards Turks/Moroccans/Surinamese”. The three above-mentioned components – group differentiation, ethnic self-definition and orientation towards contacts with persons in Turkey/ Morocco/Surinam – together form the dimension ethno-cultural position acquisition. If a respondent scores high on these three components, he/ she may be regarded as someone who sees himself/herself to a high de-
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gree as a Turkish/Moroccan/Surinamese. A low score, on the other hand, indicates respondents who are not in any way involved with their country of origin, or only to a slight extent, and perceive no differences or only minor differences between their own ethnic group and the indigenous Dutch population. Consequently, they do not regard themselves as a Turkish/Moroccan/Surinamese, or only to a slight extent, and will in all probability identify themselves more with the indigenous Dutch population. Position allocation is defined by Van Heelsum (1997: 66) as “the extent to which one is regarded by society as a member of a specific group (experience aspect) and the extent to which one is treated in a specific manner (behavior aspect)”. Van Heelsum (1997) moreover notes that there may be negative (discrimination) as well as positive treatment in the behavior aspect. To arrive at a final measure for ethno-cultural position, we have not included all the propositions of Van Heelsum (1997) in this project, but have limited ourselves to the propositions deemed most relevant for this study. Finally, we have tried to create a measure for the ethno-cultural position of the respondents by means of 28 propositions. All the propositions are (re-)coded in such a manner that a high score corresponds to a high degree of involvement with their country of origin and the perception of major differences between, on the one hand, the own ethnic group and, on the other hand, the indigenous Dutch population. Conversely, a low score indicates less strong ties to the country of origin. Thus, we assume that someone who completely agrees with the proposition ‘I feel strong ties to the Turkish/Moroccan/Surinamese community’ feels strongly involved on this item with the country of origin. To investigate whether all items actually measure the same dimension, we performed a homogeneity test. We removed the following three propositions because their correlation with the other propositions was conspicuously poor and it was therefore the question whether they really measured what had been envisaged: 1. I am very different from my parents because I was born in The Netherlands. 2. Turks/Moroccans/Surinamese are generally positive about the Dutch. 3. I find it important to be able to speak the Dutch language. The other 25 items count for scoring each respondent on his/her ethnocultural position in Dutch society with a Cronbachs alpha of .82. We have ranked the total score of each respondent on this variable in low, moderate or high degree of involvement towards one’s ‘own’ ethnic group. From this it emerged that within the Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese
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groups, all respondents feel moderately or strongly involved with their country of origin. Among the Moroccan respondents in our study, however, this involvement is most strongly present and least strongly among the Surinamese (see table 18.2). Table 18.2. Measure of involvement in ethnic group by ethnic origin – Table 18.2. in rounded percentages
Moderate High
Turks N=162
Moroccans N=101
Surinamese N=37
Total N=300
63 37
43 57
78 22
58 42
Questionnaire The questionnaire used in the study is a standardized questionnaire; i.e., both the formulation of the questions and their sequence are fixed. The questionnaire chiefly contains questions about access to (e.g., ‘is there a computer you can use at home?’), use of (e.g., ‘how many days a week do you use the home computer?’), time spent on (e.g., ‘on the days that you use the home computer, how long do you do that on average per day?’) and functions of (e.g., ‘If I’m bored, I …’) the ‘old’ and ‘new’ media studied. Questions were also asked about personal matters that could be related to media use. In addition, we submitted propositions to the respondents concerning their ethno-cultural position. Before compiling the definitive questionnaire, we first performed a pretest. We administered a questionnaire to five ethnic minority students from each of the three groups studied to see whether there were any problems with reading and understanding the questions. In addition, we asked these students for their opinion of the questionnaire contents. On the basis of this pre-test, several changes were made in the formulation of a number of questions.
Results1 Social context Before proceeding to the discussion of media ownership and use of the Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch youth participating in this study, we will first outline the social context in which these youths live, viz.: the orientation towards the country in which the majority
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of the respondents were born and bred (The Netherlands) and the orientation towards the country of origin (Turkey, Morocco or Surinam). To devote attention only to the position of the interviewed ethnic minority youth in Dutch society would be to ignore something they see as an essential part of their existence (cf. Strijp, 1997). Orientation towards The Netherlands. In regard to the extent to which the Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese participants are oriented towards the Netherlands, we may conclude that the stronger the ethnic minority respondents feel involved with their country of origin, the less proud they are of residing in The Netherlands (= –.299; p= .000). The majority of the ethnic minority respondents try to keep abreast of events in The Netherlands. To this end, practically all the ethnic minority respondents employ a Dutch medium. Moreover, we have established that significantly more Turkish boys than Turkish girls occasionally pay a visit to Dutch friends. The Moroccan youth whom less actively practice religion visit Dutch friends more frequently than the Moroccan participants who are very actively engaged in religion (= –.204; p= .029). The Moroccans in this study who have a moderate orientation towards their country of origin visit Dutch friends relatively more often (= –.244; p= .014) and are also visited by a Dutch friend more often than the participants who are strongly oriented towards Morocco (= –.224; p= .025). Orientation towards the country of origin. To investigate the extent to which the ethnic minority respondents are oriented towards their country of origin, they were asked a number of questions related to their plans for the future and keeping up with events in, and garnering information on, their country of origin. A clear majority of the respondents think that they will carry on working in The Netherlands in the future. This outcome is in line with expectations since the majority of the ethnic minority youth interviewed were born and raised in The Netherlands and have gained a place in Dutch society. We may also conclude that, in comparison with the Surinamese respondents, the Turkish and Moroccan participants attach significantly more importance to marrying or cohabiting with someone of the same ethnic origin (V= .162; p= .000). Within the Turkish group of respondents, girls find it more important than boys to marry someone from their country of origin. Surinamese respondents who regularly practice religion likewise find it more important to cohabit with or marry someone from their country of origin than Surinamese participants who are not very active religiously (V= .564; p= .017).
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We also established that a majority of the interviewed ethnic minority youth tries to keep up with what is happening in their country of origin. The variable ethno-cultural position among the Turkish (=.287; p= .000) and Moroccan (= .304; p= .002) participants is an important explanatory factor; i.e., those who are strongly oriented towards their country of origin indicate much more frequently that they want to be kept informed of events in Turkey or Morocco, as the case may be, than those who are less strongly oriented towards their country of origin. The participants who are strongly oriented towards Turkey and Morocco mainly keep in touch with events in Turkey and Morocco via television programs from their country of origin; the Surinamese respondents are more inclined to use a television program in the Dutch language for this purpose. Where the garnering of information on their country of origin is concerned, we may conclude that more than three quarters of the ethnic minority respondents like to have information on music from their country of origin. In regard to political affairs, the ethnic minority groups are more divided among themselves; slightly more than half of the Moroccans like to be informed about political issues; this likewise applies to four out of ten Surinamese and a quarter of the Turks. Gender plays an explanatory role in wanting to have information on music from their country of origin; girls like to have information on this more than boys do. Furthermore, Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese students in the older age categories, as opposed to the younger participating ethnic minorities, prefer to receive information on music (= .204; p= .029) and political affairs in their country of origin. In regard to the latter subject, the ethno-cultural position likewise plays an explanatory role; the respondents with stronger ties to their country of origin are more inclined to search for information on political issues in their country of origin than those who are less strongly oriented towards their country of origin (= .214; p= .002). In regard to the ties that the respondents from the three different ethnic minority groups have with their country of origin, contact with people from these countries is of great importance. Turkish and Moroccan participants with a high score on the newly developed variable ethno-cultural position have more frequent contact with family/friends in their country of origin than, on the one hand, the Turkish and Moroccan students who are less strongly oriented towards Turkey or Morocco and, on the other hand, the Surinamese respondents (= .184; p= .010). Media ownership Before addressing the use of various ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, we will first briefly outline both the personal media ownership (in their own bedroom)
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and the access to media elsewhere in the house of the Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch participants. In this article, our attention focuses primarily on the ownership of ‘new’ media. In contrast to media use, we will not discuss media ownership separately per medium. Media ownership serves to establish the context for addressing the most important part of the study; media use. Media ownership is merely a necessary but not sufficient condition for media use. The ownership of media can therefore be a predictive factor for media use but it does not constitute a guarantee for media use. Personal media ownership. The most common media in the bedroom of the Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch participants are books and audio equipment, such as a radio and/or a stereo system. A video recorder, a telephone and a (cable) modem, on the other hand, are the least frequently found media in their own bedroom. Of particular note is that within every group investigated in this study, the girls indicated significantly more often than boys that they had books in their own (bed)room. We may further conclude that all boys (both ethnic minorities and indigenous Dutch participants) have a game computer in their own bedroom significantly more often than girls. The boys’ bedrooms in all four research groups is furnished with more high-tech products than the girls’ bedrooms; boys more often have new media equipment. The ownership rate of a cell phone increases with age of the participating youth in all research groups. Respondents from the lowest socio-economic milieu more often have a game computer in their own room than students from the higher socio-economic groups. Within the groups studied, it is of particular note that Turkish boys generally have a television with or without teletext, a video recorder, game computer, PC and (cable) modem in their own bedroom significantly more frequently than Turkish girls do. Among the Turkish respondents, religion is of significant influence on individual media ownership; i.e., the Turks who are not very active religiously personally own a computer less often than the Turkish respondents who very actively practice a religion (= .142; p= .046). Of particular note among the participating Moroccan boys is that they own a video recorder, game computer and/or CD-ROM more frequently than Moroccan girls. The younger the Moroccan respondents, the more often they personally own a CD-ROM. The Moroccan respondents from a higher socio-economic milieu more often have a cable modem in their own room than the Moroccan respondents from the lower socio-economic milieus. Of particular note is that none of the Surinamese girls who participated
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in this study have the possibility of surfing the Internet from their own bedroom. Surinamese boys, however, significantly more often have a (cable) modem in their own bedroom. Furthermore, the youngest Surinamese respondents have a game computer in their room significantly more often than the older Surinamese youth. In comparison with the indigenous Dutch girls, the indigenous Dutch boys more often have a CD-ROM in their own bedroom. Furthermore, within the indigenous Dutch group, students at preparatory schools for technical and vocational education most frequently own a game computer in comparison with the other educational levels. Media access elsewhere in the house. In regard to media access elsewhere in the house, i.e., besides the participants’ own bedroom, we can conclude that the older media, such as a telephone, radio, stereo, television (with or without teletext) and video are present in virtually every household included in this study. The new media have become commonplace in more than half of the families. However, in this regard it should be noted that statistically significant differences exist between the various research groups; the participants from the indigenous Dutch families have, for example, a PC, CD-ROM and/or Internet connection considerably more often than the respondents from the ethnic minority families. No less than 71 % of the indigenous Dutch participants have an Internet connection at home. About half of the Turkish respondents can get on the digital highway from home; 44 % of the participating Moroccans and Surinamese have an Internet connection available to them at home. In comparison with the indigenous group, the ethnic minorities therefore score substantially lower where Internet access from the home is concerned. We have also established that families with a higher socio-economic background have these new media at their disposal more often than households from a lower class; this relates primarily to the indigenous Dutch participants since only a few ethnic minority participants belong to the highest SES group. The older media, stereo and video, are likewise found in our study to be present more often in an indigenous Dutch family than in an ethnic minority family, although these differences are less marked than with the new media mentioned above. Nearly all the Turkish and Moroccan families have a satellite dish at home, which allows them to receive satellite transmissions from their country of origin. In this study, more than nine out of ten Turkish and Moroccan families have a dish aerial, and about one in four of the Surinamese families. With a score of 17 %, the indigenous Dutch households are by far the lowest. According to Staring and Zorlu (1996), this high percentage of satellite dishes contributes to the orientation towards the country of origin; the fact is that ownership of a
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satellite receiver allows the Turkish and Moroccan community in The Netherlands to receive satellite transmissions from Turkey and Morocco. According to Staring and Zorlu, there is a need for this here (1) due to the fact that immigrants are hardly ever seen on Dutch television and even then only within the negative context of criminality or unemployment; (2) because of the language used and the cultural familiarity and recognizability of the topics, Turkish and Moroccan immigrants find it difficult to identify with Dutch TV; (3) the fact that satellite reception colors their lives and offers a remedy, as it were, against their relatively isolated existence; and (4) the need for certain information that the Turkish/Moroccan television does offer and Dutch television does not. The higher the participants’ socio-economic class, the fewer the number that own a satellite dish. The Turkish participants who actively practice their religion are significantly more likely to have access to a home computer than the less religious Turks in this study (= .217; p= .002). The educational level significantly determines PC ownership among the indigenous Dutch participants; senior general secondary education students, pre-university education students and intermediate vocational education students have a PC and a (cable) modem at their disposal more often than students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools. Media use and reasons for media use Both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media use by ethnic minority and indigenous Dutch youth of age 12 to 19, will be elaborated on in the following section. Attention will also be devoted to the motives for media use. We will first indicate, per medium, those aspects that apply to all respondents collectively. After that, we will examine to what extent the media use between the different research groups corresponds or differs, and lastly, we will devote attention to the similarities and differences within the four separate groups studied. Television is still the pre-eminent medium in the everyday life of Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch youth in The Netherlands. We conclude this from, among other things, the fact that television, regardless of the frame of mind (interest, feeling of loneliness, boredom, relaxation or excitement), is the most widely used medium during leisure time. Use of the electronic highway in various situations is likewise experienced as extremely enjoyable by the participating Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch youth. Listening to music is a leisuretime activity that the Surinamese use more often than the Turkish, Moroccan and indigenous Dutch participants to experience something exciting, to relax or to dispel boredom. Music plays an important role in the life of this research group. We will now address in more detail the use of each
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medium individually. To this end we will, on the one hand, consider the time budget pattern in minutes per day and, on the other hand, we will devote attention to the different reasons for media use. Table 18.3. Use of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media – (rounded) percentages of users / Table 18.3. mean of average number of minutes per day spent by users %
Turks Min.
Moroccans % Min.
Surinamese % Min.
%
Dutch Min.
Radio
N= 206 75 41
N= 115 73 41
N= 44 80 60
N= 98 93 79
Television
N= 206 98 156
N= 114 100 164
N= 44 100 149
N= 98 99 123
PC-in class
N= 206 79 61
N= 113 70 53
N= 44 71 54
71
N= 205
N= 114
N= 44
PC-outside the class
63
40
64
33
57
N= 98 56 N= 97
33
36
48
PC-at home
N= 207 80 51
N= 115 76 49
N= 44 75 58
N= 98 94 52
Internet
N= 205 77 44
N= 114 82 45
N= 44 84 52
N= 98 84 37
E-mail
N= 203 50 22
N= 115 50 16
N= 44 50 24
70
N= 154
N= 84
N= 34
T/M/S radio
53 T/M/S television
18
N= 203 88
87
38
7
N= 114 68
31
29
N= 98 13
7
N.A
N.A
20
N.A
N.A
N= 44 39
Note 1: PC-in class = PC use during class hours; PC-outside the class = PC use at school outside the class; T/M/S radio/television = radio/television stations broadcasting in Turkish/ Moroccan Arabic/Sranan Tongo.
Radio. Radio use is significantly influenced by the age variable; listening to the radio increases – regardless of the ethnic origin – with respondents’ increasing age. In regard to listening to the radio, we also see that the factor ‘type of education’ also has an explanatory influence; expressed in minutes per day, students at preparatory technical and vocational schools, when compared with senior general secondary education/pre-university
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329
education and intermediate vocational education students, listen to the radio the longest. Ethnic minorities listen substantially less regularly to the radio than their indigenous Dutch peers; Turkish and Moroccan participants spend more than 40 minutes per day listening to the radio, Surinamese one hour and the Dutch respondents more than 79 minutes per day. Of the participating ethnic minority youth, the Turkish respondents listen most frequently and, expressed in minutes per day, also spend the most time listening to radio programs especially made for them. In their inventory of research in The Netherlands regarding media and immigrants, Brants, Crone and Leurdijk (1998) postulate that the high listening frequency of Turks and Moroccans to programs which are specially made for and by them can be explained by arguments such as cultural identity, isolation and a need for specific information. According to Dragt (2000), the range of satellite radio programs that can be received via a satellite dish, primarily for Turks living in The Netherlands, is extremely wide. Religion and the extent of the ethno-cultural position, which determine the cultural identity of the respondents, have an influence on listening to radio programs in one’s ‘own’ language. The Moroccan participants who devote considerable time to religion listen to radio programs in Moroccan Arabic more often than the Moroccans who are less active religiously (= .280; p= .010). With respect to the Surinamese respondents, those that are strongly oriented towards their country of origin listen to Surinamese radio programs more regularly than the Surinamese who are substantially less oriented towards their country of origin (= .380; p= .037). Regarding to the reasons for listening to radio stations in Turkish, Moroccan or Sranan Tongo, it may be concluded that the presence of highquality programs for the older Turkish participants (between the ages of 15–19) is a more important reason than for the participating Turks from the youngest age group. The educational level of the Moroccan respondents is likewise found to have an influence; senior general secondary education students and pre-university education students listen to Moroccan radio stations on account of the Moroccan culture these stations disseminate, substantially more often than students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools and intermediate vocational education schools. The extent to which the Turkish participants practice religion is likewise a factor in explaining the reasons for listening to Turkish radio stations; the Turkish participants who actively practice religion listen to Turkish radio stations because the programs are transmitted in the Turkish language (V= .448; p= .001) and for the sake of the Turkish culture (V= .355; p= .018) more often than the Turkish respondents who say they are not very active religiously.
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In regard to the question whether the respondents listen more to Dutch radio programs or, quite the contrary, listen more to programs from their country of origin, a clearly significant difference is perceptible between the three different nationalities (V= .308; p= .000). Turkish participants in this study listen mostly to Turkish radio programs, while the Moroccan participants listen mostly to Dutch radio. Surinamese respondents divide their attention the most; they indicate that they listen mostly to both Surinamese and Dutch radio programs. Between the groups of ethnic minority respondents studied, we can subsequently discover a significant difference in regard to the favorite radio stations. Here too, the Turkish participants indicate that they have a greater preference for Turkish radio programs than the Moroccan and Surinamese respondents have in regard to Moroccan and Surinamese radio programs (V= .342; p= .000). Specifically, Turkish respondents regard Shik FM and Kral FM as their favorite radio stations from their country of origin. Television. Despite the advent of new media, television continues to dominate the leisure time of both ethnic minority and indigenous Dutch youth in The Netherlands. The ethnic minority participants, especially the Moroccans, display a more intensive viewing behavior than the indigenous Dutch respondents. Gender was found to be the only factor to have a significant influence among both the ethnic minority and the indigenous Dutch respondents on the average number of minutes per day that are spent watching television. Girls spend on average more time watching television than boys. The ethno-cultural position of the ethnic minority respondents is an explanatory factor in respect to watching television programs in one’s ‘own’ language; i.e., the participants who are strongly oriented towards their country of origin watch television programs in their ‘native tongue’ substantially more often than those who have less strong ties with their native country. In comparison with their Surinamese peers, Turkish and Moroccan youth indicate that they more often watch a television program in their ‘own’ language (V= .381; p= .000). On average, more than three quarters of an hour per day is spent on this. However, the Turkish participants spend about one and a half hours per day watching Turkish television stations. The average time spent by the Moroccan participants watching television programs in Moroccan Arabic is about half an hour per day; the Surinamese respondents watch Surinamese television on average 20 minutes per day. We particularly noticed that the higher the socio-economic milieu of the Turkish respondents, the more significant the decrease in watching televi-
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sion programs in Turkish. The Arabic television channels are, moreover, more popular among Moroccan girls than boys; a finding which corroborates an earlier finding in a Veldkamp study (1996). Dragt (2000) points out that Turks in The Netherlands can receive the most television stations from their native country. Moroccans can only receive one Moroccan station; the Surinamese can also receive only a small number of television programs from Surinam. Dragt (2000) postulates that this limited range of Surinamese television programs for Surinamese residing in The Netherlands results in them being more inclined to switch to the Dutch TV channels. In this regard, the better command of the Dutch language among the Surinamese, especially when compared to the Turks and Moroccans, also plays an important role. For that matter, frequently watching Dutch television does not mean to say that these groups per definition have no need of media from their native country. In fact, a study by d’Haenens, Beentjes and Bink (2000) shows that there is indeed a need among Surinamese for a television station from Surinam. Generally speaking, the Turkish, Moroccan and Surinamese participants watch television stations in the language of their country of origin on account of the programs, which are perceived as good, the Turkish/Moroccan/Surinamese culture, or because programs are centered around subjects that are important to them. The Turkish participants who are very actively engaged in religion are more inclined to watch a Turkish station on account of the programs, which are regarded as good (V= .279; p= .004), and because of the Turkish culture, than the Turks who say they are not very active religiously. The extent to which the Turkish participants are oriented towards Turkey also plays an important role in the choice to watch Turkish television stations; a strong orientation towards the country of origin leads to more frequent viewing of a Turkish station and programs in the Turkish language (V= .317; p= .003). The age of the Moroccan respondents also plays a significant role in the choice to watch television stations in Moroccan Arabic. Thus, the oldest Moroccans indicate that they watch such television stations significantly more often than the 12–16 year olds because they watch together with the family. By comparison with the older age group, the 12–14 year old Moroccan participants are the least interested in subjects which are important to Moroccans residing in The Netherlands. Furthermore, the educational level of the Moroccan participants plays a role in this; when compared to Moroccan students at senior general secondary education/pre-university education and intermediate vocational education level, students at preparatory technical and vocational schools indicate least frequently that they watch Moroccan television stations because they watch together with
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other members of the family and/or because programs are screened by these stations on subjects that are important for Moroccan people. Of the Moroccans who answered the question as to the reason why they watch Moroccan television stations, all those from the highest social group are found to do this on account of the programs that are broadcast in Moroccan Arabic. The education of the respondents likewise has a significant influence among the Surinamese participants; of the Surinamese who answered the relevant question, each intermediate vocational education student says that he/she watches Surinamese television stations on account of the good programs. Of the senior general secondary education and pre-university education students, two thirds give this answer, while the students at preparatory technical and vocational schools score the lowest with 44 %. In regard to the question whether more Dutch or ‘own’ television programs are watched, a significant difference is perceptible between the three groups of ethnic minority youth studied, as was also the case with the medium radio. Here too, a substantially higher percentage of the Turkish respondents indicate that they watch television programs from their country of origin than is the case among the Moroccan and Surinamese participant. Nevertheless, the majority in all groups indicate that Dutch television programs are appreciated most. It is only within the Turkish group that we see boys indicating more often than girls that they watch Dutch television stations; girls watch Turkish stations more often or divide their viewing time more between both types of programs. When we subsequently investigate which television stations are the most popular, we find that, generally speaking, the Dutch stations are most appreciated by all three groups studied. Nonetheless clear differences can be discovered. The music channels TMF, MTV and The Box, as well as the commercial (youth) broadcasting stations Yorin and SBS6, are watched the most. Of all the young people interviewed, the percentage that indicates the most appreciation for stations from their country of origin is highest within the Turkish group. Within the Surinamese and Moroccan group, these percentages are substantially lower. Turkish stations with high viewing levels are ATV, STAR TV, SHOW TV and KANAL D. Within the Turkish group, youths that regard Dutch stations as their favorite stations are chiefly those with a moderate affinity with their country of origin, (= .182; p= .035). Moroccan youths indicate that they chiefly watch MBC, while one or two Surinamese respondents say that they regard the Surinamese station ZeeTV as their favorite.
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Home computer use. Of particular note is that the time spent both by ethnic minority and indigenous boys on home computer use (73 minutes per day) is significantly longer than the time spent on this by girls (45 minutes). Youths who are involved with their religion to a high extent also spend more time on home computer use than those who are less active religiously (= .202; p= .003). The indigenous Dutch participants make the most use of computers at home, followed by the Surinamese respondents. Of the actual computer users in the home context, the Surinamese participants are the ones that – expressed in minutes per day – spend the most time on this (58), followed by the indigenous Dutch respondents (52) and the Turkish participants (51). The Moroccan participants spend the least time on home computer use (49). On average, the respondents interviewed spend about 53 minutes using the home computer. We further note that Dutch parents themselves make more use of the home computer than ethnic minority parents. Home computer applications. In the home situation, the respondents in this study use the computer mainly for doing homework or playing games (see table 18.4). The least used computer application in the home situation is drawing/designing. Boys make more use of the home computer to surf the Internet and to play games than girls. The older the respondents, the more they use the home computer for e-mailing. Playing games on the computer is an application that is particularly used by the younger respondents. Of all the groups studied, the indigenous Dutch respondents make the most use of e-mail at home, followed by the Surinamese participants. In respect to e-mail use at home, the Moroccan youth lag behind. Within the Turkish group, the boys also use the Internet substantially more than the girls and they also play games on the computer more often. The latter application is likewise more often used by boys than by girls within the Moroccan group and the Dutch group. Of all the types of education, Turkish students attending intermediate vocational education schools make the most use of the home computer to do homework, closely followed by senior general secondary education/pre-university education students. Students at preparatory technical and vocational schools make much less use of this. The ethno-cultural position of the ethnic minority respondents only has an influence on computer game playing within the Moroccan group of participants; those who are moderately oriented towards Morocco more often play games on the home computer than the Moroccan participants who feel strongly involved with their country of origin (= –.238; p= .036).
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The younger the respondents within the Surinamese and indigenous Dutch research groups, the more the home computer is used for creating texts. The extent to which the Surinamese respondents practice religion is of an explanatory nature for home computer use for creating texts (=.459; p=.022) and searching for information (= –.500; p=.012). Surinamese participants who are very active religiously use these applications more often than the participants who display little affinity with religion. Indigenous Dutch boys also use the home computer more for drawing or designing. Furthermore, we can conclude that the higher the socioeconomic background of the indigenous Dutch respondents, the more the home computer is used for e-mailing, surfing the Internet and searching for information. In addition, within the indigenous Dutch group the intermediate vocational education students make more use of the home computer for e-mailing than senior general secondary education students, preuniversity education students and students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools. Computer use during class. In this study, we have focused on computer use in the two most important use contexts for young people: at home and at school. The school context has specifically been included to see whether any differences in access to and use of computers at home can be compensated at school. The type of education is found to be the only factor to have a significant influence on the average computer use during class. The respondents who are receiving intermediate vocational education make – expressed in minutes per day – the most frequent use of the computer at school during class. The senior general secondary education/pre-university education students in this study make the least frequent use of the computer at school during class time. The average number of minutes per day that the computer is used during class is the same for all users at approximately 56 minutes. When we then compare the four research groups with one another, it is of particular note that the Turkish respondents, with more than 61 minutes per day, have an above-average score. With 56 minutes, the Dutch users have an average score. Lastly, we see that the Moroccans and Surinamese are situated under this mean by several minutes, at approximately 53 and 54 minutes, respectively. Computer use at school outside school hours. The ethnic minority participants make more use of the possibility to use the computer at school outside school hours than the indigenous Dutch youth. However, when the
The role of the ethno-cultural position
335
Dutch youth do make use of the computer at school outside school hours then, with 48 minutes per day, they spend the most time on this. The Turkish students who make use of the computer at school outside school hours do this on average 40 minutes per day. The Moroccan and Surinamese respondents indicate that they avail themselves of this possibility about 33 minutes per day. Computer use at school outside class increases among the Turkish and Moroccan students with age. The educational level of the Turkish and Moroccan participants also plays an important role in respect to the use or non-use of a computer in the school context outside school hours; Turkish and Moroccan students receiving intermediate vocational education make by far the most use of this possibility. Computer applications at school. The computer is mainly used at school for surfing the Internet, searching for information and doing homework (see Table 18.4). Just as at home, the computer at school is used least for drawing or designing. Girls use the computer at school more often for e-mailing and searching for information than boys. Boys, on the other hand, use the computer at school more often for playing games. The older the respondents, the more the computer at school is used for applications such as e-mailing, doing homework, surfing the Internet, creating texts and searching for information. Younger students, on the other hand, are more likely to play games on the school computer. Intermediate vocational education students use the computer at school for homework, creating texts and searching for information. In comparison with the other types of education, they moreover make the most use of e-mail at school. Dutch youth are found to have a greater preference for playing games on the school computer than the participants from the ethnic minority groups. Within the Turkish group, the age of the respondents has a significant influence on doing homework, surfing the Internet and playing games on the school computers. For the first two applications, the notion that the older the students are, the more they generally use these applications at school is also proven to be correct. In comparison with the 12–16 year olds, the oldest Turkish students (17–19) use the computer at school by far the least for games. Then again, the oldest Moroccan youth (17–19) more often use the computer at school for e-mailing, surfing the Internet and searching for information than the younger Moroccan participants (12–16). The older Dutch youth more often use the school computer for doing homework than the younger age group. Furthermore, the indigenous Dutch youth from a low or medium socio-economic milieu more often use the school computer for playing games than the youth from more affluent families.
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Lastly, religion and ethno-cultural position are found to have no significant influence on the use of computer applications at school. Table 18.4. PC-applications at home and at school – in rounded percentages Home
School
T 165
M 88
S 33
N 92
T 205
M 110
S 44
N 98
42 72 58 78 21 53 46
28 77 50 56 16 63 43
52 73 55 70 24 70 64
58 66 72 79 23 55 59
30 52 67 25 12 28 57
21 54 58 19 7 35 57
25 48 68 14 16 23 61
29 41 69 35 15 38 51
N: E-mail Homework Internet Games Drawing/designing Word processing Information searching In italics: p < .05; Bold: p < .001
Internet applications. The Internet is a much-used medium among all participants. The ethnic minority youth in this study have fewer possibilities for computer use at home, with or without an Internet connection, than the Dutch youth. Consequently, the latter have the highest level of Internet use at home. The ethnic minority youth, on the other hand, use the Internet more at school or in the library. The ethnic minorities that use the Internet generally spend more time per day on this than the Dutch Internet users (see Table 18.3). The older the Turkish and indigenous Dutch students, the more often they use the Internet. Chatting and e-mailing are the most widely used Internet applications among both ethnic minority and indigenous Dutch youth in The Netherlands (see Table 18.5). The older they are, the more they use the Internet for surfing and e-mailing. However, playing games via the Internet decreases with increasing age. This trend applies particularly to the Turkish and Moroccan groups. The type of education is also found to have an influence on the Internet behavior; i.e., surfing and e-mailing are primarily applications which are used by senior general secondary education students, pre-university education students and intermediate vocational education students. Playing games on the Internet occurs more often among students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools. Indigenous Dutch youth e-mail more and also download files more often than the ethnic minority youth. Turkish boys more often use the Internet to play games, to download files
The role of the ethno-cultural position
337
and to offer products than Turkish girls. Moroccan boys likewise use the Internet more often to play games and to download files than Moroccan girls. On the other hand, in regard to the Surinamese girls we may conclude that they chat more often than the Surinamese boys. Table 18.5. Internet applications – in rounded percentages
Surfing E-mail Games Chatting Newsgroup Downloading Music Ordering products Paying products Offering products
Turks N=156
Moroccans N=92
Surinamese N=36
Dutch N=82
Total N=366
49 68 53 84 12 61 74 12 7 8
60 65 57 88 16 55 61 10 4 8
67 67 44 78 6 66 66 9 – –
65 87 54 78 6 83 66 18 2 5
57 71 53 83 11 65 68 13 5 6
In italics: p < .05; Underlined: p
<
.005; Bold: p < .001
The most important purpose of Internet use by young people is searching for information in regard to their studies, followed by searching for information on hobbies. The older they are, the more the Internet is used for purposes such as searching for information with regard to their studies and for keeping abreast of news both in The Netherlands and the country of origin. The indigenous Dutch youth make by far the most use of the Internet to search for information on hobbies. The Moroccan respondents use the Internet mainly to search for information on religion, for garnering information on news in their country of origin and/or for keeping in touch with Moroccans in The Netherlands. Moreover, there is a manifest link between religion and the use of the Internet to search for information regarding this subject; i.e., the greater the affinity with religion, the more often information on this subject is searched for via the Internet. Within the Turkish group of participants, in particular, there is a clearly perceptible difference in this respect (= .204; p= .012). The ethno-cultural position also has an influence on the different purposes for which the Internet is used. The stronger the orientation towards
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their country of origin, the more often the ethnic minority participants use the Internet to (1) search for information on religion (= .278; p= .000); (2) to keep abreast of news in their country of origin (= .214; p= .001); and (3) to keep in touch with people in their country of origin (= .228; p= .001). Within the Turkish group, those who display a high affinity with Turkey also have more frequent contacts with Turkish people in The Netherlands than young people who feel less strongly involved with Turkey (= .182; p= .049). E-mail. E-mail use generally increases with increasing age. More than seven in ten – both ethnic minority and indigenous Dutch respondents – currently use e-mail now and again. Nevertheless there is a large difference between the two groups; in all three ethnic minority groups, half of the participants occasionally use e-mail, whereas this is already the case for about three quarters of the Dutch respondents. It should be noted, however, that the ethnic minority e-mail users do this longer – expressed in minutes per day – than the indigenous Dutch e-mail users (see Table 18.3). Of the ethnic minority e-mail users, approximately half occasionally send a message to family/friends in their country of origin. Contact with family and friends in those countries has in fact increased among more than seven in ten through the use of e-mail. The socio-economic background is the only factor that is found to have a significant influence on this; the higher the socio-economic background, the more contact one has with family/friends in the country of origin has increased through the use of e-mail. A majority of all e-mail users have contact via e-mail with family or friends in The Netherlands on one or two days per week. The Moroccan youth with a moderate orientation towards Morocco more often have contact via electronic mail with family and/or friends residing in The Netherlands than the youth who are strongly oriented towards Morocco. According to all respondents, contact with Dutch family/friends has also increased through e-mailing with one another. Media use within the social network As media use is not an entirely isolated phenomenon, it is important to know how the media use of Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch youth is influenced by family or friends. The role of the parents in media use. In regard to the role of the parents in respect of media use, we have established that the mothers of both the ethnic minority and indigenous Dutch youth of age 12 to 19, are the persons that predominantly exercise control on the use of television and the tele-
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phone. However, they regard time spent reading books and newspapers as time well spent. Dutch mothers, however, are more lenient in comparison with ethnic minority mothers with respect to watching television or videos and listening to the radio or music. With regard to computer use, however, the reverse is true and they are stricter towards their children. In all probability, this has to do with the fact that more Dutch families than ethnic minority households in this study have a computer in the home. When we examine the extent to which gender has an influence on the role of the mother with regard to the media use of their children, we may conclude that Turkish, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch mothers more often remonstrate with their sons rather than their daughters about excessive playing of computer games. Computer use is likewise a point of discussion between Turkish and Dutch mothers and their sons. Turkish and Surinamese girls are more often spoken to by their mother about their excessive telephone use rather than Turkish and Surinamese boys. In addition, the Turkish mothers are also stricter towards their daughters than towards their sons in regard to listening to music on the radio or the stereo. The younger children and students at preparatory schools for technical and vocational education are the groups which are occasionally lectured for spending too much leisure time on computer games. Turkish and Moroccan mothers, on the other hand, are stricter towards their older children rather than their younger children with respect to telephone use; and so it is the older youth that are found to telephone substantially more. The Turkish mothers who indicate that they are not very active religiously tell their children more frequently that they use the telephone too much by comparison with Turkish participants’ mothers who devote a lot of time to their religion (= –.203; p= .004). The ethno-cultural position of the Turks also has an influence on the control of the mother on Internet use; those who are strongly oriented towards Turkey are more frequently told by their mother that they use the Internet too much than those Turkish respondents who have less strong ties to their country of origin (= .180; p= .024). The fathers generally exercise less strict control on their children than the mothers. The ethnic minority fathers seem to interfere less with the upbringing of their children, which in all probability has to do, among other things, with the fact that the fathers have in many cases missed part of the upbringing of their children since, in the first instance, they moved to The Netherlands alone (without their family) as an immigrant worker. If they do say anything, just like the mothers, this will be related to excessive television viewing and use of the telephone. They almost never comment on excessive reading of books and newspapers, which is understandable
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since, generally speaking, little use is made of print media such as books and newspapers. In comparison with the ethnic minority fathers, the Dutch fathers are even less strict towards their children in respect to watching television or videos and listening to music. The younger sons rather than daughters are more inclined to be remonstrated with by their father on the excessive use of computer games and video games. The Turkish fathers display the same pattern for computer use and Surinamese fathers also tell their sons more often than their daughters that they use the video recorder too much. On the other hand, Moroccan and Dutch fathers are stricter towards their daughters in regard to listening to music. The control of the Turkish fathers with regard to the use of the telephone is strictest towards the eldest children. Age also has a significant influence among the Dutch participants in respect to the father’s control on watching videotapes; in comparison with the older youth, the youngest Dutch participants are subjected to stricter control by their fathers with respect to watching videotapes. Among the indigenous Dutch group, the educational level has a significant influence on the father’s control regarding listening to the radio, playing computer games and/or using the telephone. With regard to listening to the radio and playing computer games, indigenous Dutch students at intermediate vocational education level never hear anything from their father, unlike students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools, senior general secondary education students and pre-university education students. However, intermediate vocational education students are subjected to control by their fathers with respect to telephone use significantly more often than students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools, senior general secondary education students and pre-university education students. The Turkish intermediate vocational education students also indicate significantly more often than the Turkish students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools, senior general secondary education students and pre-university education students that their father occasionally remonstrates with them for listening to music too much. The higher the socio-economic milieu of the Surinamese respondents, the more the control of the Surinamese fathers increases with respect to the computer use of their children. Moreover, it was found that the ethno-cultural position of the Surinamese is an explanatory factor with regard to watching television and listening to the radio; those who have strong ties with Surinam are more inclined to be remonstrated with by their fathers on the excessive use thereof than those who display less affection for Surinam.
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Media use: Individualized versus collective. From the present study, it has emerged that both ethnic minority youth and the indigenous Dutch youth prefer to watch television in the company of someone else. Moreover, ethnic minority girls prefer to do this more than the boys. In comparison with the Turkish, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch participants, the Moroccan youth watch television least frequently together with their parents or friend and most frequently together with brothers and/or sisters. The Turkish, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch respondents, on the other hand, watch television in most cases together with their parents. Girls are significantly more inclined than boys to watch television with a sister; this is found to be the case among both the Turkish and the Moroccan research groups. More Moroccan boys than girls regularly watch television together with a brother. Among the indigenous Dutch respondents, gender also plays a significant role when they are asked with whom they usually watch television; Dutch girls watch television with their father more often than the Dutch boys. The type of education of the Dutch research group also has a significant influence on the choice concerning who usually serves as television partner. Thus, the Dutch intermediate vocational education students watch television together with a friend or with someone else significantly more often than students at preparatory technical and vocational education schools and senior general secondary education/pre-university education students.
Conclusion In response to the research question, ‘To what extent are culture-specific characteristics (religion and the extent of ethno-cultural position) determinants, besides other socio-demographic characteristics, for the ownership and use of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ media among ethnic minority youth?’, we can give the following answers; the religion of the respondents is indeed important in one or two cases when we examine the ownership of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media. Thus, the Turkish participants who are less active religiously own a personal computer less often than the Turkish respondents who practice a religion very actively. However, the newly developed variable ethno-cultural position has no influence whatsoever on media ownership. The ethno-cultural position of the ethnic minority participants does, however, influence the use of different media. The cultural identity of the ethnic minority respondents plays a significant role, for example, in respect to media use (radio and television) originating from their country of
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origin. In this study, the ethno-cultural position in itself does play a role in respect to media use, but in relation to the standard socio-demographic characteristics the latter variables are the most influential ones. Prior to the present study, we were under the impression that the ethnocultural position, besides the standard socio-demographic characteristics, would have an influence on the media ownership and use by Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese and indigenous Dutch youth in The Netherlands. However, the variable ethno-cultural position has a less influential role on the media ownership and use of ethnic minority youth in The Netherlands than we initially thought. Thus, the non-availability in previous studies of our newly developed variable, ethno-cultural position, is found to be less serious than we originally expected. This result, namely that the variable ethno-cultural position has a less influential role on the media ownership and use of ethnic minority youth in The Netherlands, could indicate that the range of media offered in The Netherlands is so large and diverse that everybody, both the ethnic minority population and the indigenous Dutch population, can find something to his/her liking. With regard to the new media, this study arrived at a similar result as the school survey administered in 2001 by de Haan et al. (2002); after controlling for the differences in the home and school situation, no significant differences remain between ethnic groups (Turkish/ Moroccan versus Surinamese/Antillean youth). The modest but significant shortfall in PC skills on the part of non-Western immigrants proves to be attributable to their relative disadvantage in terms of the presence of computer infrastructure at home. Another similar result shows significant differences between boys and girls, these can be attributed only partly to divergent home circumstances. In our survey as well as in the one administered by de Haan et al. (2002), assessment of computer skills by the youngsters themselves was questioned. It may very well be that boys are more likely than girls to say that they master a particular skill, whereas in reality there is hardly any difference. A lower affinity towards ICTs among girls could affect their appreciation and use of ICTs. We recommend qualitative research into the motives for the use of new media in the leisure-time context of ethnic minority groups in The Netherlands, whereby different Internet applications, such as e-mail and chatting, are addressed and attention is also devoted to topics that concern ethnic minorities residing in The Netherlands.
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Notes 1. All reported differences in, for example, media ownership and use proved to be statistically significant. Nevertheless, in order not to overload the reader with too many correlation measures and significance levels, we only indicated those correlations and significances referring to the newly created variable ethno-cultural position, and its related component religion.
References Brants, K., Crone, L. & Leurdijk, A. (1998). Media en migranten. Inventarisatie van onderzoek in Nederland [Media and Immigrants. Inventory of Research in the Netherlands]. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Dijk, L. van & Haan, J. de (1998). Moderne informatie- en communicatietechnologie en sociale ongelijkheid; tussenrapportage [Modern Information and Communication Technology and Social Inequality; intermediate report]. SCP working document nr. 51. Dijk, L. van, Haan, J. de, Rijken, S., Verweij, A. & Ganzeboom, H. (2000). Moderne informatie- en communicatietechnologie en sociale ongelijkheid; eindrapportage [Modern Information and Communication Technology and Social Inequality; final report]. The Hague: SCP. Dragt, E. (2000). Etnische minderheden en media. Een onderzoek naar het mediaaanbod voor en mediagebruik door etnische minderheden [Ethnic Minorities and the Media. Research on Media Supply for and Media Use by Ethnic Minorities]. Unpublished Master’s Thesis, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. Harmsen, C. N. & Heijdt, J. van der (1993). In Nederland woonachtige Surinaamse, Antilliaanse en Arubaanse personen en gezinnen, 1 januari 1992 [Surinamese, Antillean and Aruban persons and families residing in The Netherlands]. Maandstatistiek van de Bevolking CBS, 9, 15–20. d’Haenens, L., Beentjes, J.W.J. & Bink, S. (2000). The media experience of ethnic minorities in The Netherlands: A qualitative study. Communications, 25 (3), 325–41. de Haan, J., Huysmans, F. & Steyaert, J. (2002). Van huis uit digitaal. Verwerving van digitale vaardigheden tussen thuismilieu en school [Digital Presence in the Home. Acquisition of digital skills at home and at school]. The Hague: SCP. Heelsum, A. J. van (1997). De etnisch-culturele positie van de tweede generatie Surinamers [The ethno-cultural position of the second generation Surinamese]. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. Klatter-Folmer, J. (1997). Schoolsucces van Turkse kinderen in relatie tot hun sociaal-culturele oriëntatie [School success of Turkish children in relationship with their socio-cultural orientation]. Migrantenstudies, 13 (1), 25–41. Renckstorf, K. (1994). Mediagebruik als sociaal handelen: Een handelingstheoretische benadering voor communicatiewetenschappelijk onderzoek [Media Use as
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Social Action: An Action Theoretical Approach for Communication Research]. Nijmegen: Instituut voor Toegepaste Sociale Wetenschappen. Staring, R. & Zorlu, S. (1996). Thuis voor de buis. Turkse migranten en satellietteevee [At home in front of the tube. Turkish immigrants and satellite TV]. Migrantenstudies, 12 (4), 211–21. Strijp, R. (1997). De mensen hier maken je gek. Marokkaanse migranten en hun bindingen met Marokko [The people here make you crazy. Moroccan immigrants and their bonds with Morocco]. Migrantenstudies, 13 (3), 148–66. Veldkamp Marktonderzoek bv. (1996). Media-onderzoek etnische groepen – 1995 [Media-research among ethnic groups – 1995]. Amsterdam: Author. Veldkamp Marktonderzoek bv. (1998). Tijdsbesteding en mediagebruik allochtone jeugd – 1997 [Time-spending and media use among ethnic minority youth]. Amsterdam: Author. Veldkamp Marktonderzoek bv. (1999). Mediagebruik etnische publieksgroepen – 1998. Een onderzoek onder Turkse, Marokkaanse, Surinaamse, Antilliaanse, Chinese en Molukse publieksgroepen van 18 jaar en ouder [Media use among minority audiences – 1998. A research among Turkish, Moroccan, Surinamese, Antillean, Chinese and Moluccan audience groups of 18 years and older]. Amsterdam: Author.
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19 The stereotypical portrayal of Germans and its 18 effects on a Dutch audience Henk Westerik
Abstract The media are often blamed for being a source of stereotypes by portraying foreigners in a stereotypical manner. This study focuses on the effect of such stereotypical portrayal of foreign people on the attitudes towards them. More specifically, I investigated whether pictures of foreigners that were behaving stereotypically were enough to trigger prejudice and whether verbal labeling of foreigners as foreigners was critical in this process. It was hypothesized that if asked about their opinions about Germans, subjects would indicate that Germans are perceived less favorably than Dutch people. On the basis of past research on categorization, it was further hypothesized that stereotypes about Germans become activated if subjects are confronted with photographs of German nationals that were behaving in a way the Dutch perceive as ‘typically German’. Hypotheses were tested by means of a questionnaire and an experiment administered to a probability sample of Dutch adults (N=492). Results indicate that although the response to the verbal label ‘Germans’ is less favorable than to the verbal label ‘Dutch’, there is no difference in response to pictures of subjects labeled either German or Dutch. Hence, findings clearly suggest that stereotypes did not influence the perception of the photographed persons. Keywords: portrayal of minorities, media effects, stereotypes, prejudice, Germany, Germans
Introduction Since the second half of the 1980s, there has been an increased awareness of globalization among social scientists (Westerik, 2000). Globalization can be described as a process of intensification of international economic, social and cultural ties (Kearney, 1995). According to some theorists, a consequence of this development is that subglobal identities have become less important. Other theorists, however, assume that the intensification of international contacts has led to an increased awareness of economic, so-
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cial and cultural differences and has therefore strengthened subglobal identities (Giddens, 1990; Hannerz, 1990; 1992; Tomlinson, 1994; Van Elteren, 1995). Over the past fifty years Europe has, apart from the worldwide trends towards more international contacts, witnessed a trend towards more political and economic cooperation through the development of European Union. As is the case with globalization, it is unclear what the consequences of this development will be. It could lead to increased understanding between inhabitants of different European countries, but it might also generate new frictions. At the individual level, this means that European unity may lead to either a softening or a hardening of nationalistic stereotypes. It is very likely that if these developments occur, they will particularly affect populations of smaller countries in Europe. Because of their size, these countries are more susceptible to foreign influence than the larger ones. This asymmetric relationship between smaller and bigger countries can be exemplified using statistical data regarding a large European country, Germany, and a small one, The Netherlands. In 2001, Germany had 5,2 times as many inhabitants as The Netherlands (83,000,000 vs. 16,000,000; see CIA, 2001). This difference accounts for many asymmetric relations, e.g., in the domains of tourism and trade. In 1999, 22.7 % of the Dutch foreign trade involved Germany, whereas the trade with The Netherlands only made up 7.3.% of Germany’s foreign trade. So, the German economy was much more important for the Dutch economy than the Dutch economy was for the German. A similar asymmetry was visible in the tourism sector. Of all the nights spent in Dutch hotels, boarding houses, and youth accommodations during 1999, 9.9 % were spent by people residing in Germany. In the same year, of all the nights spent in a German ‘Beherbergungstätten’ (the German equivalent), 1.7 % were spent by people residing in The Netherlands. This means that for the average German hotelier it is not of particular importance to take the wishes of Dutch guests into account, whereas for the average Dutch hotelier it is vital to reckon with the wishes of his German guests. So, the Dutch are more dependent on the Germans than the other way around. Furthermore, this dependency will continue to grow due to Europe’s increasing unification. Among the Dutch, this may lead to feelings of being outnumbered, of belonging to a culture that is threatened, of having an identity that is under siege. And because stereotypes appear to bolster self-esteem of subjects who feel threatened (Hogg & Abrams, 1988; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001), it is likely that stereotypes of Germans will become more widespread in Dutch society. Because the media tend to reflect broader societal trends, it is further likely that stereotypical portrayals of Germans will become more prevalent in the Dutch media.
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This may activate prejudice towards them (cf. Kilbourne, 1990), though this idea can be perceived as controversial (Renckstorf, 1989). This controversy is at the heart of this current study. I will try to determine the extent to which an increasingly stereotypical portrayal of Germans will trigger prejudice towards them. The reason for this does not only concern the Dutch-German relationship, but also implies a much wider range of consequences. Today, using content analyses to study the subject of the stereotypical portrayal of out-groups or minorities is common practice. If stereotypical portrayal of out-groups or minorities tends to enhance prejudice, content analyses documenting such portrayal may be highly relevant for media professionals and policy makers. But if stereotypical portrayals of out-groups or minorities do not produce or enhance prejudice in the population, these studies are mere portrayals of just some aspect of the media, not a valid instrument in the hands of those who call for more regulations, censorship or self-censorship.
Theory Basic concepts In this study I use a social action perspective to analyze the stereotyping of Germans by the Dutch. According to this perspective, human action is guided by knowledge. This knowledge is obtained in the solution of problems of everyday life and as a result of socialization (cf. Bosman et al., 1989). An important aspect of this knowledge is made up by what sociologists have called ‘typifications’, i.e. “schemes in terms of which others are apprehended and ‘dealt with’” (Berger & Luckmann, 1991: 45). In social psychology, typifications are often studied under the heading of ‘categorization’. When applied to people, it is called ‘social categorization’ (Tajfel, 1981). Result of this process are stereotypes, to be defined as beliefs “that all members of a social category have one or more specific characteristics” (Konig, 2001: 248; cf. Allport, 1979; Tajfel, 1981; Fiske & Taylor, 1984). Stereotypes do not necessarily have an affective meaning. But often they do, and then they can be referred to as ‘prejudice’. Social categorizations (and thus stereotypes) are to be seen as an inevitable part of everyday life. Individual human minds have a limited capacity for processing information, and therefore often rely on simplified schemes. Categorical thinking is cognitively economical (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001). But it comes at a price, some theorists say. “In everyday situations, in which people do not consciously monitor their own thoughts and actions critically, they therefore cannot prevent their stereotypes from
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influencing these thoughts and actions” (Konig, 2001: 252). However, social action theory also postulates that individual behavior is not always governed by routinely applying knowledge that is already there as a result of socialization or previous experience. “Naturally, in defining the situation and in interpreting action and objects (…) a certain degree of help is provided by the social stock of knowledge (…) that is created in each culture and is transferred through learning processes. But given that these patterns are applicably only within a particular cultural range and are relatively situation specific, they are, taken on their own, necessarily too general to really guide actions in the sense of making action problem free for the actor” (Renckstorf, 1996: 27). Automatic activation of stereotypes Among social psychologists it is nowadays commonplace to assume that the activation of stereotypes is a routine process, one that does not demand much attention or an act of will. “Just as night follows day, categorization (hence stereotyping) is believed to follow the registration of a triggering stimulus, be it a verbal label or the member of a potentially stereotyped group” (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001: 243). The assumption that stereotypes are triggered in a more or less automatic manner has become more credible through several experimental studies (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001). For instance, if one subliminally presents a priming stimulus, this stimulus appears to trigger the stereotype as well. Even people who oppose stereotypic knowledge use stereotypes. “Indeed fairly automatic stereotypic reactions to race categories are equally characteristic or high and low prejudiced people (perhaps by virtue of both living with the culture’s stereotypes); what differs is that, under normal circumstances that allow controlled processing, low-prejudiced people may actively reject the automatic stereotypic responses and replace them with equality-oriented thoughts” (Devine, 1989: 122). Prototypes and category activation Little is known about what exactly triggers the activation of a stereotype (Bargh, 1999; Fiske, 1989; Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001). In their search for an explanation, researchers appear to have focused on characteristics of individuals (Fiske & Taylor, 1984), not on characteristics of the triggering stimuli. In experimental settings, stereotypes are usually triggered by semantic priming and rarely by visual cues (Macrae & Bodenhausen, 2001). Some evidence about which stimuli are effective in activating stereotypes can be found in categorization research. This research pro-
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vides evidence that people distinguish between categories of objects on the basis of the ‘family resemblance’ criterion. This means that individual phenomena that are perceived to belong to a single category, share some characteristics, but not on a single dimension. However, some of these individual phenomena are more prototypic than others. To give an example, a robin and a penguin can both be categorized as birds. But because a robin is able to fly (a characteristic that most birds share), a robin is seen as a better example of the category bird than a penguin, and is, therefore, considered to be more prototypical. Therefore, if a subject is confronted with the word ‘robin’ this more effectively triggers the category label ‘bird’ than the word ‘penguin’ does. Consequently, one might expect that stereotypical portrayals of out-group members are more effective in triggering stereotypes and prejudice than non-stereotypical portrayals. Hypotheses On the basis of past research (Dekker, Aspeslagh & Winkel, 1997; Dekker & Olde Dubbelink, 1995; Du Bois-Reymond, 1997; Jansen, 1993) it is clear that many Dutch have stereotypical ideas of Germans. According to the Dutch, typical German behaviors are drinking beer from glasses that are too large, eating sausages, driving an oversized Mercedes-Benz, and digging holes on the beach. Based on past research it is, however, unclear what the consequences are of the portrayal of Germans as people who display such behaviors. The aims of this study are two-fold. First, I will try to replicate previous research that showed that the Dutch have more positive attitudes towards their compatriots than towards the Germans (H1). And second, I will try to establish whether stereotypical portrayal has a bearing on the perception of Germans (H2). Following insights derived from categorization research I more specifically hypothesized that pictures of persons performing ‘German behaviors’ were perceived less favorable than pictures of persons performing ‘Dutch behaviors’ (H2.1); that pictures of people of whom was suggested they were German, were perceived as less favorable than pictures of persons of whom was suggested they were Dutch (H2.2). Finally, to test the idea that stereotypical portrayal produces prejudice, I tested for the presence of a interaction between suggested nationality and the presented behavioral style (H2.3).
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Methods Sample. 825 Dutch adults were interviewed during the first three months of the year 2000 as part of a national representative sample. Analysis. To test hypotheses 1, all subjects were asked to what extent they agreed with statements about eight personality traits of the Dutch and the Germans (being sociable, easy-going, friendly, noisy, arrogant, dominant, aggressive and having a sense of humor). Only data of 704 adults with no missing scores were analyzed. Of these 704, 298 were first confronted with questions about Germans, and 406 with questions about Dutch people. Weights were applied so that both groups consisted of 298 subjects. In order to test hypothesis 2, 596 subjects were shown one of twelve photographs. These photographs varied on three dimensions: a) behavioral style (stereotypic German or stereotypic Dutch); b) suggested nationality (German or Dutch); c) behavioral setting (in the bar, on the beach, driving a car). Of these 596 subjects 59 were excluded from analysis because of missing scores. Weights were applied so that all twelve photo-groups consisted of 41 subjects (weights varied form .73 to 1.02), so the total N was 492. Both hypotheses were tested using multivariate analysis of variance (Manova). To test hypothesis 1, there was only one between subject factor and eight dependent variables. The eight dependent variables were the scores of respondents on eight personality traits of either the Dutch or the Germans. Items referring to Germans were only used if subjects were first asked about German personality traits. Afterwards, these subjects were also interviewed about Dutch personality traits, but these data were not used in testing hypothesis 1, because it can be argued that these scores are biased (Bosman, 2000). For the same reason, items referring to the Dutch were only used if subjects were first asked about Dutch personality traits. To test hypothesis 2, there were two between subject factors (behavioral style and suggested nationality) and their interaction.
Results The hypothesis that Dutch respondents have a more positive attitude towards their compatriots than towards the Germans receives considerable support. First, the multivariate test on the equality of means of the character-items is highly significant (Hotellings T2 = .17919; F=13.14793; df = 8;587; p<,001). As a consequence, it seems wise to inspect differences at the item-level (Table 19.1).
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Table 19.1. Attitudes towards the Dutch and the Germans (1=totally disagree; 5=totally agree) Dutch
German
p
Sociable Easy-going Friendly Sense of humor Noisy Arrogant Dominating Aggressive
3,47 3,36 3,49 3,42 3,35 2,78 2,99 2,70
3,31 3,13 3,45 2,93 3,40 3,00 3,26 2,50
0,0034 0,0002 0,5461 0,0000 0,4845 0,0015 0,0002 0,0008
N
298
298
So, Germans were perceived as less sociable, less easy-going, more arrogant, more dominating and lacking a sense of humor. However, the Dutch were more often perceived as being aggressive. So the overall picture is that hypothesis 1 receives support. According to hypothesis 2.1, it was expected that pictures of people who behaved in a way that in The Netherlands is perceived as German (e.g., drinking beer in a pub, driving in a Mercedes-Benz) would be perceived as less favorable. The data tend toward the expected direction, but fail to reach significance (see Table 19.2; p = ,0540). Based on hypothesis 2.2, it was expected that if pictures or captions implied that those portrayed were German, they would be perceived as less favorable. The data, however, do not support this hypothesis (p = ,7877). For instance, pictures of people driving in a car with Dutch license plates triggered similar responses towards these people as pictures of people driving in a car with German license plates. Referring to a photographed person as Jan (a Dutch name) instead of Karl (a German name) did not alter responses either. So hypothesis 2.2. can clearly be rejected. According to hypothesis 2.3, it was expected that pictures of people whose suggested nationality was German and who were performing a stereotypical behavior would meet a particularly hostile response. However, the effect of interaction term style x nationality was not significant (p = 0,6149). So, the data do not support this hypothesis.
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Table 19.2. Multivariate test of significance of the effects of behavioral style, suggested nationality and style × nationality on perceived personality traits of photographed individuals Pillais Main effect behavioral style Main effect suggested nationality Style × Nationality
F
df
0,03107 0,00969
1,92791 0,58836
(8; 481) (8; 481)
0,0540 0,7877
0,01291
0,78637
(8; 481)
0,6149 N=492
So, there is no evidence supporting hypothesis 2. Neither behavioral style, nor suggested nationality, nor style x nationality interaction appears to have an effect on the perception of the photographed individuals. The Dutch, when confronted with an image of a German or of German behavior did not respond in the discriminating manner that their verbal responses would suggest. Apparently, the stereotypical portrayal of Germans is not sufficient to elicit a hostile and prejudiced response.
Discussion The main finding of this study is that a discrepancy exists between what the Dutch say about Germans in general and how they perceive (pictures of) particular German individuals. ‘Germans’ are perceived less favorable than the Dutch, but pictures of individuals labeled German were perceived just as favorably as photographed individuals labeled Dutch. The visual presentation of German individuals did not trigger the already existing prejudice, even if they were portrayed in a very stereotypical manner. How can this be explained? Perhaps this is due to methodological reasons. All individuals that were photographed were Dutch, even if they were driving a Mercedes-Benz with a German number plate, drinking lots of beer, digging holes on the beach, and even if they were referred to using German names. Perhaps this was not enough to trigger the stereotype of Germans. An alternative explanation might be that stereotypes of Germans were triggered, but then handled in a meaningful way. The pictures that subjects were confronted with did not show people engaging in some socially unacceptable activity. No apparent justification for attributing negative characteristics to any subjects existed, and therefore even German subjects were rated positively. Perhaps the explicit attribution of negative charac-
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teristics to specific people only occurs if people are perceived as performing behaviors that provide some justification for negative attributions. In terms of communication research, the most surprising conclusion is that a stereotypical presentation of Germans failed to trigger prejudice. This casts some doubt on the social relevance of studies documenting stereotypical portrayal of minorities and out-groups in the media. It could well be that this stereotypical portrayal of minorities has no or no substantial effect on societal prejudice towards these groups. In addition, this study questions the idea that journalists can contribute to the containment of prejudice by carefully avoiding stereotypes.
References Berger, P. L. & Luckmann, Th. (1967). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. London: Penguin. Bosman, J. (2000). Stereotyping in self image brand image research. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 25, 269–289. CBS (2001). Statistical yearbook of The Netherlands. Voorburg: CBS/Statistics Netherlands. CIA (2001). The world factbook 2001. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency. Available at: www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook Dekker, H., Aspeslagh, R. & Du Bois-Reymond, M. (1997). Duitsland in beeld. Gemengde gevoelens blootgelegd [Germany in the picture. Mixed feelings identified]. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger BV. Dekker, H. & Olde Dubbelink, T. (1995). Duitslandbeeld 1995. Onderzoek naar beelden en houdingen ten aanzien van EU-landen en -volkeren en Duitsland in het bijzonder van Nederlandse scholieren in 1995. [Duitslandbeeld 1995. Survey among Dutch high school students of images of and attitudes towards countries and peoples of the EU, with special attention to Germany]. Rijksuniversiteit Leiden: Vakgroep Politieke Wetenschappen. Dekker, H., Aspeslagh, R. & Winkel, B. (1997). Burenverdriet: Attituden ten aanzien van de lidstaten van de Europese Unie [Troubles with neighbors: Attitudes towards member states of the EU]. ’s-Gravenhage: Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen ‘Clingendael’. Devine, P. G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56, 5–18. Du Bois-Reymond, M. (1997). Beelden van Nederlandse kinderen over Duitsland en de Duitsers. Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift, 24(l), 101–124. Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hannerz, U. (1990). Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture. Theory, culture and society, 237–251. Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural complexity: Studies in the social organization of meaning. New York: Columbia University Press.
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Hogg, M. A. & Abrams, D. (1988). Social identifications: A social psychology of intergroup relations and group processes. London: Routledge. Jansen, L. B. (1993). Bekend en onbemind. Het beeld van Duitsland en Duitsers onder jongeren van vijftien tot negentien jaar. Doctoraalscriptie. [Well known but unloved. The image of Germany and the Germans among youth aged 15–19]. ’s-Gravenhage: Nederlands Instituut voor Internationale Betrekkingen ‘Clingendael’. Kearney, M. (1995). The Local and the global: The anthropology of globalization and transnationalism. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 547–565. Kilbourne, W. E. (1990). Female stereotyping in advertising: An experiment on male-female perceptions of leadership. Journalism Quarterly, 67, 25–31. Konig, R. (2001). On the influence of prejudice on the production and reception of television news. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail & N. Jankowski (Eds.), Television news research: Recent European approaches and findings (pp. 247–268). Berlin: Quintessence. Macrae, C. N. & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2001). Social cognition: Categorical person perception. British Journal of Psychology, 92, 239–255. NIPO (1947). Berichten van het NIPO, het Nederlands Instituut voor de Publieke Opinie en het Marktonderzoek, 81. Amersterdam: NIPO. NIPO (1965). Berichten van het NIPO, het Nederlands Instituut voor de Publieke Opinie en het Marktonderzoek, 1063. Amersterdam: NIPO. NIPO (1971). Berichten van het NIPO, het Nederlands Instituut voor de Publieke Opinie en het Marktonderzoek, 1406. Amersterdam: NIPO. Renckstorf, K. (1996). Media use as social action: A theoretical perspective. In K. Renckstorf, D. McQuail and N. Jankowski (Eds.), Media use as social action: A European approach to audience studies (pp. 18–31). London: John Libbey. Renckstorf, K. (1989). Vormen of spiegelen de media beelden: Bijvoorbeeld het beeld van Duitsland en de Duitsers? [The media as mirrors or molders of images. The case of Germany and Germans in the Dutch media]. In K. Renckstorf & J. Janssen (Eds.), Erger dan Duitsers … Het beeld van Duitsers en Duitsland in de Nederlandse media. [Worse than Germans: The image of Germany and Germans in the Dutch media]. Nijmegen: ITS / Stichting Centrum voor Duitsland-Studies. Rumelhart, D. E. (1980). Schemata: The building blocks of cognition. In R. J. Spiro, B. C. Bruce & W. F. Brewer (Eds.), Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension (pp. 33–58). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Statistiches Bundesamt (2000). Statistical Yearbook 2000 for the Federal Republic of Germany. Stuttgart: Metzler-Poeschel. Tajfel, H. (1981). Human groups and social categories: Studies in social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomlinson, J. (1994). A phenomenology of globalization? Giddens on global modernity. European Journal of Communication, 9, 149–172. Van Elteren, M. (1995). Kosmopolitisme en plaatsbesef in een globaliserende cultuur [Cosmopolitanism and sense of place in a globalizing culture]. In H. van Eerenbeemt & J. Goedgebuure (Eds.), Cultuur en identiteit (pp. 51–67). Tilburg: Tilburg University Press. Westerik, H. (2001). De verklaring van het gebruik van lokale media. [The explanation of the use of local media]. Nijmegen: ITS.
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20 Occupational practices of Dutch journalists 20 in a television newsroom Liesbeth Hermans
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the process that takes place when individuals act in their occupational role as journalist. Aspects which play a role in a journalist’s professional practices are studied in the context of the daily practice of the production of news. This process involves valuejudgments made by journalists, through which events are given a specific meaning. However, news making is not an individual affair. Journalists work for an audience, they are members of an occupational group with professional values, and they work within the constraints of a news organization. In this study, an action theoretical framework was used to study the journalist. According to the action theory journalists perceive and interpret information within a professional stock of knowledge and relevance structure. The global research question was, which shared meaning schemes and reality constructs underlie the occupational practices of television news journalists? Data were gathered by observations made in the newsroom of the Dutch public channels’ news program, the NOS-journaal, and through interviews conducted with people working in this newsroom. Results show that journalists work in a news organization that has a strong hierarchical structure. Depending on the difference in responsibility and in the specific position journalists occupy in the news organization, journalists interpret en define situations differently. This process of construction of meaning seems to be rooted in different, but shared perspectives that journalists use to make their daily decisions. Keywords: journalist, audience, observation, news organization, role, occupational practices
Introduction Television news is considered to be important to almost everyone. In large sections of the population it is the only source of information about current affairs. By watching the news, people see the latest developments in the world on the television screen, experiencing these events as real and
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nearby. Because real-world events are transformed into publicly discussible issues, news imparts public character to occurrences. Therefore, television news should be regarded as a social institution with diverse social and political functions for people in their roles as citizens and consumers of news. Consequently, as producers of news messages, journalists have a social responsibility in the way they inform the public. Studies of news organizations and reporters provide a necessary source of insights into the dynamics of the production of news and the practices of journalists. The production process of news involves value-judgments made by journalists, through which events are given a specific meaning. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the process that takes place when individuals act in their occupational role as journalists. To investigate the occupational practices of television news journalists, an action theoretical framework (Renckstorf, 1994) is used as a premise. According to the action theory, journalists perceive and interpret information using a specific stock of knowledge and within a certain relevance structure. Against this background they define and redefine situations and through their occupational practices journalists give meaning to the events considered newsworthy.
Journalists as newsmakers As noticed by many researchers of the production process of news, the main paradigm of communicator research can no longer be defined in terms of gatekeeping and selection of news, but should be conceptualized in terms of reality construction and production of news (Ericson, Baranek & Chan, 1987; Hermans, Renckstorf & van Snippenburg, 1994; Tuchman, 1978; Weischenberg, 1992). Thus, journalists are no longer seen as gatekeepers, or transmitters of information, whose main occupational activity is to make a selection in the continuous flow of information. Researchers in the latter paradigm focus their attention on the complexly structured production process of news. As a consequence of this assumption, news is not seen as a representation of an objective reality, but as a presentation of a constructed reality (cf. Gans, 1980; Tuchman, 1978). In their daily occupational practices journalists are constantly making decisions, which define the news. This news making process is complex and specified by many aspects and circumstances in and outside the newsroom (Breed, 1955; Fishman, 1980; Gieber, 1964).
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An action theoretical approach to study journalists practices In order to develop a better understanding of journalists practices I have conceptualized the occupational practices in an action theoretical frame of reference (Hermans, 2000; Renckstorf, 1994). According to this research perspective journalists perceive and interpret information about occurrences within their stock of knowledge and relevance structure (see Figure 20.1). How journalists act, depends largely upon the way they interpret and give meaning to specific situations (Berger & Luckmann, 1991; Bosman et al., 1989).
Figure 20.1. Adapted version of the reference model used for studying the occupational Figure 20.1. practice of journalists in the daily practice (Hermans, 2000)
Through the processes of socialization, such as education and work experiences, journalists develop a specific occupational knowledge. This occupational knowledge provides the individual journalist with all kinds of clues about how to understand work situations and what the boundaries are for his or her action in new situations. To understand the actions of individuals in different situations, it is often necessary to identify the audience for which they are performing. In the sense making process, journalists have to find people who are representative for their audience, whom they can use to assess their ideas about an item or event. Even if journalists do not actually keep an audience in mind, all news is ultimately addressed to some audience, for it can also be the reporter’s own conscience, or image of what the audience ought to be. The meaning journalists attribute and the values they ascribe to a given situation cannot be entirely understood in terms of individual characteristics. In the ‘meaning making’ processes, meanings are also a socially shared product. The occupational group of journalists is defined as a com-
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munity with shared interest. Thus journalists have to take the fact that they work within the constrains of an (news) organization, are a member of an occupational group with professional norms and values, and work for an audience into consideration when interpreting an event. Because the individuals investigated in this study are all members of the same occupational group I assumed that they use shared meaning schemes and reality constructs in their practices as journalists. Meaning schemes are abstract and ordered typifications of separate experiences. Reality constructs can be conceptualized as shared frameworks for interpretation. The central research question for this study is; which shared meaning schemes and reality structures underlie the occupational practices of television news journalists? Because former research on news production indicate that the daily setting is an important situational context which shapes the practices of journalists, the daily practice is explicitly included in the research frame work. Therefore another research question is added; how is the daily production process of television news organized in which the journalists act? Because the latter question is important in order to understand the results of the first question I will start with the description of the results engendered by the second question.
Research method In order to understand the occupational practices of journalists in the newsroom, an interpretative research strategy was used. Because of the lack of previous research in this specific area in The Netherlands, and because of its complicated nature, it was difficult to determine beforehand precisely which aspects would be important. Therefore, further adjustments and specifications of relevant concepts were made during the analyses1. In previous paragraphs I described why it is important to include the situational context in the study of journalists’ practices. Therefore the study is concentrated on one organizational setting. Data were gathered in the newsroom of the news program produced by the Dutch public stations, the NOS-journaal. This news organization is responsible for the daily news reporting on public television. At the time of the study (1994) they broadcast about ten bulletins every day. During a period of twelve weeks (Spring 1994), I was granted access was to the newsroom at any time and without restrictions. News workers were superficially informed about the reason of my presence.
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The data gathering began with an observation period. In order to develop some sense of what is seminal or salient in the news production process, the early stages of the observation were not structured. Because of the complexity of the organization an insider’s view was very important in order to understand the field. Additionally, in the first period of the observation it was important that the people working in the newsroom and the researcher get used to each other, in order to create an easy ambience. The observation notes were mainly concerned with descriptions of the environment and the organizational structure of the newsroom. The background knowledge about the context of news production acquired through this observation period allowed for a better understanding of data collected later on, such as formal interviews. After two weeks of observation I, in combination with further observation, began to interview journalists. As the study progressed, the observation notes were more focused on specific situations and practices of journalists. This information was then used in the interviews and informal conversations to ask journalists about concrete situations. Through literature study, discussions with experts, and the observations, a topic list was developed containing subjects considered relevant. These topics were then discussed during the interviews, which consisted of open questions and lasted between 40 and 90 minutes. The interviews can be considered a conversation with a purpose, namely to put the interpersonal and organizational aspects of news production into a larger context. Observations and interviews built an understanding of the social context in an interactive way. Therefore in the analysis these sources of data can not be treated as independent, but must be used to support each other. By using multiple research methods and divergent data sources, the reliability and validity of the empirical material were confirmed. Respondents For the interviews, respondents were at first chosen in terms of their ability to supply new constructions to understand the news production process. Later in the process, respondents were also chosen for their perceived ability to explicate constructions that had already been discovered. Characteristics which were taken into consideration were: position in the newsroom (high, middle and low), gender, and age. As the study progressed, it appeared that news workers at the top of the hierarchy in the newsroom had a large influence on the decisions made in the newsroom, therefore journalists working in the high and middle level were over-represented in the interviews. Furthermore different functions, such as news gatherers, news editors, reporters, and newsreaders, were represented.
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Analysis procedure The interviews were recorded and subsequently transcribed. These transcriptions and the observation notes served as source material for the interpretative analysis. It contained more than 1000 pages of text. As a tool to structure the material and to render the transcripts accessible for analysis the computer program Kwalitan was used. This program helped to organize the laborious analysis process. Interpreting and comparing interview fragments and observation notes were used to construct answers to the research questions. The results are processed through a reflection process. This means that on the one hand the conceptual framework can be filled in based on the findings, while on the other hand reflection on the material and the results of the interpretation can lead to new questions for further research (Peters, 1994).
Results The newsroom of the NOS Journaal has a well-organized hierarchical structure. The organization works with a top-down approach. Based on the findings it was possible to make a distinction between three different levels in this hierarchical pyramid. The ‘high level’ the ‘middle level’ and the ‘low level’. The distinction between these levels is based on several aspects (see Table 20.1). Table 20.1. Hierarchical structure of the newsroom Level High Middle Low
Number
Nature occupational practices
Responsibilities
4% 16 % 80 %
Managing Consulting Production
Define news Input/output News item
First, there is a difference in the number of journalists working in the three levels. Most, about 80 % (reporters, bureau editors, copy-editors), journalists have a position that can be categorized into the low level. About 16 % of the journalist belong to the middle level (editor-in-chief, co-ordinators, newsreaders) and finally only 4 % of the journalists belong to the high level (chief-newsroom, chief-news organization). Secondly, and more interesting is the distinction between the nature of the occupational practices journalists engage in, in the different levels. The occupational practices of journalists in the two upper levels (high and
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middle) concern decisions about the selection of events which are newsworthy enough to become part of the news-agenda on a specific day. This newsworthiness of events is not defined only by content. When journalists decide to take an event into the daily production process, they take several aspects, besides content, into consideration. In my study (Hermans, 2000) I have called this the ‘news threshold’. It concerns aspects such as the daily information supply, news factors, footage, diversity of the items (so-called ‘sandwich formula’), image of the public, and facilities (Hermans, 2000). The concept news threshold depends on daily circumstances and is continuously changing. For example, after the plane crashes in the US on the September 11 2001, the news broadcast, for more than two weeks, spent most of their time on this item. This means that news that would have been broadcast under normal circumstances ‘disappeared’. As opposed to daily newspapers which can vary in the amount of space allotted to a specific item, because they can vary the number of pages every day, the television news program is only allowed to deviate from the normal length of a broadcast (20 minutes) in extreme circumstances. For journalists working in the low level, their daily occupational practices concerns how an event is presented on the news. Their occupational practices are practical in the sense of making the concrete news items. They receive an assignment from the journalists in the upper level and their task is to put the item together in a responsible journalistic way, within the space and time they have. When constructing an item, they consider factors such as accessibility for a broad public, aesthetic formats in footage, and journalistic rules like balance, neutrality and factuality. The third aspect that journalists in the three levels differ on is the responsibility they have in their job. Journalists operating at the high level are responsible for guarding the interest of the organization. They are responsible for policy to be made and implemented in the newsroom. The ‘chiefnewsroom’ is, besides the implementation of the policy, also responsible for the continuity of the course of the daily production process. He makes the final decision about what events are going to be worked out in the news production process and he divides the work assignments for information gathering and producing to the journalists in the low level. In the middle level I have distinguished two different functions with specific responsibilities. First, the coordinators are in charge of the different editorials: economy, politic, newsgathering (domestic news) and news producing (foreign news). They act as an intermediate between the chiefnewsroom and the producing journalists in the low level. Coordinators are responsible for the practices that are related to the ‘input’. This is the process of gathering all kind of information on the events that are admitted to the day-agenda. The day-agenda contains all events which are added to the
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news production process of that specific day. Thus coordinators make important decisions in the regulation of the large news supply. Secondly, every important news broadcast (the news broadcast in the morning, at 6pm, 8pm and at 10pm) has its own editor-in-chief. They are responsible for the ‘output’, namely the realization of the specific program. They determine, consulting the chief-newsroom, which subjects are broadcast and how much time is spent on an item. Editors-in-chief need to take care of the quality of the newscast concerning content, form and style. Finally, in the low-level, journalists have different functions all of which are concerned with making practical decisions concerning the content of a news item. Bureau-editors gather background information to put an item together. Copy-editors create items inside the newsroom, using the information received mostly from international news agencies. Reporters construct news items outside the newsroom with information they receive from the bureau-editors. In short, in the low level the journalists produce the news items and are responsible for the content of the specific items. It can thus be concluded that the journalists working in the low level have a great amount of autonomy in their daily practices. There seems to be no supervision by the journalists in the high or middle level on the quality of the content of news items produced by the journalists in the lower level, before the news is broadcast. The only aspect of an item that is carefully controlled is its length, because the editor-in-chief (middle level) has to take care that all the items fit into the 20 minutes of the broadcast. The day after the broadcast the previous day’s broadcasts are evaluated, but because the program has already been broadcast, only very large mistakes will be discussed in such a meeting. In terms of the construction of reality theory it seems that depending on the positions journalists fulfill, they contribute in different ways to the process of making the news. Journalists working in positions in the high and middle level define the news in terms of which subjects are important, which subjects are included in the production process, which subjects are finally broadcast and how important a subject is; that is, the time and place an item gets in the news program. Journalists who work in the low level define the news in terms of placing the event in a context and constructing meaning by presenting the event in a specific way. Self image and professionalism Journalists see themselves as different from other people because as journalists they belong to a special occupational group who act as professionals. Despite the shared concept about the professionalism of the occupation, journalists can not define measurable standards, which could be
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used to control the quality of the output. The journalists even seem to think it is not necessary to have followed a specific journalistic training in order to become a ‘good’ journalist. Journalists believe that work experience (even for television news journalists the press is considered the important place to learn the job) is very important in order to learn how to become a journalist. Of course they admit it is easy to have journalistic skills before one enters the newsroom. However, according to the journalists, in order to become a good journalist, one also requires personal characteristics such as involvement, commitment, curiosity, personality and so forth. Occupational role perceptions This study shows that journalists think that they are responsible to society to make information accessible to people. A carefully constructed information system is seen as necessary for citizens to operate in a democratic society. This central social duty can be specified by different tasks, which can be categorized in three occupational role perceptions. In the first place there is an informer role. This implies that it is not only a matter of making news public but it is the journalists’ professional responsibility to do this in an understandable and comprehensible way. This implicates journalists that take their audience seriously, because they take them into consideration when deciding how information should be converted into understandable news messages. However, the journalists think the public itself is responsible for whether or not it uses the news messages. Journalists do not feel they are responsible for the way viewers use television news. Secondly, journalists distinguish a controller role. It is their duty to actively check the information offered, and to look at any government decision in a critical manner. Important in this role is that journalists place the events presented in the news in a context, whereby it is easier to understand for the audience. In this role perception, journalists need a critical attitude because they have the duty critically asses the official institutions and protect citizens. Finally, there is a third role, which I decided to call the hunter role. Journalists also consider it their duty to actively search for new items and new information. Journalists must search for all kinds of important information in order to turn an ignorant audience into active citizens. Another important task is to spot wrongdoing by all kinds of organizations, in other words, to be a watchdog. This hunting task implies an active attitude towards the search for information; that is, it requires that the journalist takes the initiative in this search. Although journalists mention this task as
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important, only a few consider it a problem that there is no time to fulfill this task within their present job. The three roles I have distinguished are not new but can be related to occupational role definitions in former research (Donsbach, 1981, 1982; Köcher, 1986; Weaver & Wilhoit, 1996; Weischenberg, 1995). However, next to my theoretical considerations the role perceptions should not be analyzed as specific occupational role definitions that journalists act on. These role perceptions do not define the assumptions that journalists use in their daily work situation. They merely describe the ideological assumptions journalists want to take into consideration when making decisions in their work. Of course there is a relationship between what journalists want and what they do. Therefore an observation of the work situation in combination with the role definitions can provide a better understanding of the action relevance of journalists. Perception of the audience Within these occupational roles all journalists referred to the fact that they work to inform an audience. I will look further into the meaning this concept of ‘the audience’ has for the journalists (cf. Donsbach, 1983; McQuail, 1997; Kaiser & Wermuth, 1989). Journalists’ perception of the audience is specified by the thoughts, conceptions and interpretations journalists have of the people for whom they produce their news messages. In this study it appears that journalists give various meanings to the concept ‘audience’. On the one hand, journalists refer to the actual viewers of their television news program. On the other hand, they look at the potential target group; that is, people for whom the television news program is produced. The results show three different circumstances which shape the knowledge journalists have of the actual viewers. First, there are the monthly viewing ratings, which give journalists some information about social background and other characteristics of their audience. Because television news is watched by many different people this information is very generic. Secondly, journalists receive information about their viewers from viewers themselves who occasionally give feedback by calling the news organization concerning particular items. However, journalists do not take this kind of response too seriously because they think it mostly concerns individual interests. Furthermore the results show that some journalists use their own domestic situation in which they act as television news viewer to shape their perception of other news viewers. Besides the actual viewers, journalists’ perception of their audience also consists of their perception of the potential target group, which I will call the public. For the NOS news organization this formally consist of the en-
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tire Dutch population. Knowledge about the public is based on an imaginary concept, and when thinking about the public, journalists refer to a common view about society as a communication partner, and have a positive image about this public. Journalists feel they have to take the public seriously because otherwise journalists cannot take their own work seriously. The journalists believe their first assignment as journalists is to make information accessible to the public. Because of the diversity of the audience, journalists have only a vague perception of their audience. They do not consider this lack of information as problematic for the quality of their occupational work. For them it is an insuperable consequence of their work as journalists. It is no problem, because journalists are trained to make well-thought out choices in the complex news production process. This ability distinguishes journalists from common people. How journalists use the audience perception in their occupational will be described in the next section. Occupational practices in the daily work situation I will relate the two aspects described above; the perceptions of the occupational role and the audience, to the journalistic practices in the daily practice. Journalists recognize that their audience is large and divers. Despite this common image, they use their own individual perception of the audience in their daily work situation. As described earlier, the practices of the various journalists differ among the discriminated levels in the newsroom. This entails that there is a difference between journalists of different levels in how they use their perception of the audience in their daily work situation. Journalists in the middle and high level use their idea about the audience to make decisions about what events are broadcast in the news. The assumption that people cannot concentrate on serious information for more than 20 minutes have led them to decide to alternate serious information items (such as politics and economics) with soft information items (like human interest). This so called ‘sandwich formula’ was strictly introduced with the audience in mind, for there is no journalistic reason to use the ‘sandwich formula’. The news organization simply wanted to retain high viewing rates and wanted to keep the viewers with the program. Furthermore, journalists in the upper levels (high and middle) use information obtained from viewing rates about social characteristics in order to get an indication about how the viewers from the three main news bulletins (broadcast at 6pm, 8pm, 10pm) differentiate. They use this knowledge to make decisions about how to construct the program. For example, the items in the 6pm news are more geared to the specific
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viewers group of women and youngsters, who make up the majority of the viewers of this broadcast. Journalists in the low level use the audience perception as background information when they produce news stories using the incoming information material. Because an important task is to make news comprehensive and accessible, they keep an average news viewer in mind and transform the information into an understandable level. Despite the fact that journalists sometimes use their audience perception in their occupational practices, this does not mean that they think the audience should be involved in and influence the journalistic work. According to the journalists it is impossible to let people interfere with decisions concerning which events are important enough to be defined as news. The journalists interviewed in this study think there is an important difference between the subjects the audience are interested in and would select to be a part of the news process and the subjects journalists select as a result of their occupational experience. Journalists do not think the audience can make decisions about what is important to present in the news. They assume that most people are mainly interested in their daily environment. Because of their professionalism, journalists feel that they are capable of making decisions in the public interest. As I described above, journalists distinguish three occupational roles which describe what journalists think is important in their work. Whether or not it is possible for the journalists to act according to these roles in their daily work situation is described in the following paragraphs. The news production process is strictly scheduled in time and space. A timetable structures the daily meetings and decision moments (Hermans, 2000). Although the daily journalistic practice seems to be embedded in all kinds of organizational and practical constraints journalists almost never mention these constraints when asked about their daily practices. Results show that the daily production process is highly routinely structured. A problem with studying routines is that they are often taken for granted. The rules used in routines seem to be hidden and not formally described in the news organizations. In practice journalists take the occupational routines so much for granted, that it is difficult for them to express these routines explicitly. When asked what they take into consideration during their daily practices, journalists refer to commonly shared journalistic and organizational rules. The routinely unofficial occupational rules seem difficult to define. Journalist share habits that are so much taken for granted that journalists know what is expected of them. Therefore, in the news organization the daily practices usually proceed smoothly and in an unproblematic way. There is not much open discussion in the newsroom about decisions that
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are made. This does not mean that everybody agrees with what is decided, but because of the well organized top-down structure journalists (have to) accept the decisions made in various situations. This study had an exploratory character, in which one news organization has been studied. In essence, findings can only refer to this specific television news organization and the journalists working there. Further research could consolidate and elaborate the results of this study.
Conclusions and discussion Studying journalists as professionals generates an ambitious orientation towards the production of journalistic work. Despite the fact that journalists do share occupational role perceptions, much of the work of journalists is embedded in practical circumstances. Practical aspects such organizational constraints are rarely mentioned by the journalists, because they do not fit into a professional attitude. This discrepancy between what journalists want and what they do is an important restriction to take into account when trying to understand journalistic practices. A new framework is thus needed to explain journalism by focusing on how journalists shape meaning about themselves, their work, and their audience. As Zelizer (1993) has argued, journalists should be studied as an interpretative community, united through its shared discourse and collective interpretations of key public events. Journalists in this view, come together by creating stories about their past that they routinely and informally circulate to each other stories that contain certain constructions of reality, certain kinds of narratives, and certain definitions of appropriate practice (Zelizer, 1993: 223). By examining journalists as an interpretative community united by its shared interpretation of reality, journalists’ practices can be studied in all their complexity. The action theoretical framework mentioned in the beginning provides a good reference point to study practices of individuals in their occupational role. Findings show that the situational context is very important in understanding the definition and interpretation processes that lead to concrete journalistic action. The situational context is defined by the course of the production process. Decisions in the news production process are made and structured by the production scheme and decision stages. Journalists, as individuals of an occupational group, do not act on standard professional codes (learned by and function as rigid indicators of training or education (Zelizer, 1993)), but act on shared meaning schemes
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and reality constructs. This reveals itself in journalistic and organizational rules, the use of information sources, and social responsibility, occupational role perceptions and audience perception (see Figure 20.2).
Figure 20.2. Adapted research model for studying the occupational practices of Figure 20.2. journalists adjusted with research findings
Understanding the practices of journalist means one has to take the different aspects of the practices into consideration. When journalists deliberate about action alternatives (internal action) before they decide what to do in specific situation (external action) they use all kinds off reflections. I typified those reflections in four perspectives journalists use to define a situation. A perspective can be defined as an organized view of one’s world, which is taken for granted (Shibutani, 1962).
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Journalists use one or more perspectives as frames to give meaning to specific situations and circumstances. Despite the fact there are some commonly shared meaning schemes and reality constructs, journalists always have to make decisions based upon individual choices. As already mentioned there is, for example, no such thing as one occupational action. In the newsroom journalists do different things and have different responsibilities. Depending on these differences, specific situations can have different meaning for the individual journalist. I distinguished four perspectives, which are important in defining and interpreting a situation and lead to journalists’ practices. First, an ideological perspective, this is based on the ideological ideas about one’s occupation. It implies the assumptions journalists have about what they think is important in their work and what they want to take into consideration. Secondly, an organizational perspective, this is based on the organizational interest of the news organization and the fact that journalists are employees. In the newsroom journalists work in positions which have specific assignments. In the decisions they make they have to take their duties into consideration. Third, a practical perspective based on the idea that every action is embedded in and restricted by time, space, facilities etc. These practical circumstances are important in structuring action. Fourth, an individual perspective, based on the diverse personal circumstances the journalists take into consideration when fulfilling their occupation. Because these perspectives were not originally included in the research questions, but elaborated from the data, they need to be further specified with new research. They give some further insight why journalists should be studied as a community with shared interpretation frameworks and meaning systems.
Notes 1. The interpretative research strategy can be typified as a cyclic process. This means that steps in the research process are constantly repeated. Research findings alternate with theoretical considerations and the other way around in a cyclical process. However in order to render this paper more comprehensive, a description of the repetition of the various cycles has been excluded.
References Berger, P. L. & Luckmann, T. (1966/1991). The social construction of reality. New York: Doubleday.
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Contributors
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Contributors
Johannes W. J. Beentjes is Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail: H.
[email protected] Michael Charlton is Professor at the Department of Clinical and Developmental Psychology, University of Freiburg, Belfortstrasse 18, 79085 Freiburg, Germany, E-mail:
[email protected] Leen d’Haenens is Senior Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Paul Hendriks Vettehen is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Liesbeth Hermans is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Ellen Hijmans is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Frank Huysmans is Researcher at the Department Time, Media and Culture, Social and Cultural Planning Office, P.O. Box 16164, 2500 BD The Hague, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Angela Keppler is Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Mannheim, 68131 Mannheim, Germany, E-mail:
[email protected] Madelon Kokhuis is advisor at the Center for Work and Income, P.O. Box 3433, 7500 DK Enschede, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Ruben Konig is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected]
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Contributors
Denis McQuail is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Amsterdam, Oude Hoogstraat 24, 1012 CE Amsterdam, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Paul Nelissen is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Karsten Renckstorf is Professor and Chair at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Keith Roe is Professor and Chair at the Department of Communication Science, University of Leuven, Van Evenstraat 2A, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, E-mail:
[email protected] Judith E. Rosenbaum is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Gabi Schaap is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Erwin K. Scheuch (†) was Emeritus Professor, University of Cologne and President of the German Association of Communication Research, c/o Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialsforschung, P.O. Box 4109960, D-50869 Köln, Germany Martine van Selm is Senior Associate Professor at the Department of Social Science Research Methodology, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Leo van Snippenburg is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands Cindy van Summeren is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected]
Contributors
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Heidi Vandebosch is Postdoctoral Fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research – Flanders at the Department of Communication Science, University of Leuven, Van Evenstraat 2A, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, E-mail:
[email protected] Jan van den Bulck is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication Science, University of Leuven, Van Evenstraat 2A, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, E-mail:
[email protected] Margot van der Goot is Doctoral Candidate at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Veerle van Rompaey is Researcher at the Department of Communication Science, University of Leuven, Van Evenstraat 2A, 3000 Leuven, Belgium, E-mail:
[email protected] Fred Wester is Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected] Henk Westerik is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Communication, University of Nijmegen, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands, E-mail:
[email protected]
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Index Action theory, 13–33, 85–99, – action theory and communication research, 1–10, 51–83, 291–314 Audience, 35–50, 355–370, – research, 1–10 – studies, 51–83 Age and media use, 163–176, 253–277 Behavior, 35–50 Cognition, – cognitive complexity, 279–289 Communication, 85–99, – individual, 177–186 – interpersonal, 177–186 – organizational, 187–195 – research, 1–10, 51–83, – technologies, 231–251 Consciousness, 85–99 Effects, 345–355, – media effects, 345–355 – strong effects, 13–33 – weak effects, 13–33 Ethnicity and media use, 315–344 Exemplification, 279–289 Experience, 217–230 Gender role and media use, 253–277 (Non)Gratifications, 199–216 Homepages, 291–313 Identity constructions, 291–313 Information participation, 187–195 Journalist role, 355–370 Knowledge sharing, 187–195 Meaning, 103–114, – existential meaning, 291–313 – personal meaning, 163–176 Media, – appliances, 231–251 – communication, 103–114 – distribution, 177–186 – in the family, 231–251 – effects, 344–355 – literacy, 141–161 – production, 103–114
– reception, 103–114, 177–186 – ‘old’ and ‘new’ media, 315–344 Media use, 35–50, 51–83, 163–176, 199–216, – Media Use as Social Action, 51–83 – in prison, 199–216 – research, 35–50 Methodology, – case study, 51–83 – interpretive methodology, 51–83 – method development, 115–140 – observation, 51–83, 355–370 – protocol analysis, 115–140 – Sense-Making methodology, 187–195 – Thinking Aloud method, 115–140 – Thought-Listing technique, 115–140 Minorities and media use, 315–344 New media, 231–251, 291–314, 315–344 News, 115–140, 279–289, – news organization, 355–370 – television news use, 51–83, 253–277 Ownership and media use, 315–344 Para-social interaction, 177–186 Prejudice, 345–354 Reception, – mass media reception, 103–114, 177–186 – Reception Research, 115–140 Relevance, – subjective relevance, 253–277 – structure of relevances, 51–83 Religion and media use, 315–344 Sense-Making, – Sense-Making methodology, 187–195 Social action, 1–10, 85–99, 163–176, – theory, 51–83, 141–161 Social constructivism, 141–161
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Index
Social interaction, 103–114, 177–186 Sociology, – interpretive sociology and media, 13–33 – macro vs. micro sociology, 13–33 Stereotypes, 345–354 Symbolic Interactionism, 51–83 Systems Theory, 85–99
Television, – news, 115–140 – news research, 253–277 – news room, 355–370 – news use, 253–277 – effects, 217–230 Uses and Gratifications, 35–50
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