ERIC Number: ED205967
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 1981-Aug
Pages: 26
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Television News as a Source of Information: What Gets Across and What Doesn't. A Case Study.
Sahin, Haluk; And Others
Seeking to uncover some of the factors involved in the comprehension of televised news, a study examined the responses of 425 television news viewers to questions about a news story appearing on a national network's evening newscast. The subjects were asked to name the stories they recalled from the newscast. Then the respondents' recall of the stories was prompted by descriptive labels, which referred to stories in the broadcast without suggesting the content of the individual news stories. All the respondents' comments about all the news stories were recorded and analyzed. The central point of each news story as defined by news editors was used to assess viewer's comprehension. Examination of the target story (a meeting between President Carter and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt) with an information transmission approach confirmed that what viewers understand and recall from television news cannot be easily predicted from knowledge of story news content. Only one third of the viewers knew the central point of the target story, while almost half of the respondents remembered nothing at all from the story. The types of information recalled by the viewers were also remarkably diverse, often distorted or factually erroneous. Viewer comprehension of the story appeared to be related to various features of its presentation. (RL)
Publication Type: Reports - Research; Speeches/Meeting Papers
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A