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Viewing Conventional and Comedy Television News Viewing Conventional and Comedy Television News: A Comparison of Antecedents and Media Effects A dissertation submitted to the College of Communication and Information of Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Christopher Hariasz December, 2012 Dissertation written by Christopher Hariasz M.S., Drexel University, 1987 Ph.D., Kent State University, 2012 Approved by Paul Haridakis, Ph.D., Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Stanley T. Wearden, Ph.D., Co-Chair, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Shawn Fitzgerald, Ph.D., Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Jennifer McCullough, Ph.D., Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Accepted by Paul Haridakis, Ph.D., Director, School of Communication Studies Stanley T. Wearden, Ph.D., Dean, College of Communication and Information Table of Contents Page TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF FIGURES vi LIST OF TABLES vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS viii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM STATEMENT 1 Background and Statement of Problem 2 Rationale for the Study 8 Theoretical Framework – Uses and Gratifications 14 Comedy News Programing 17 Predictors of Television News Exposure 20 Age 21 Gender 23 Need for Cognition 24 Political Orientation 26 Viewer Motives 29 Co-Viewing 32 Viewer Involvement 34 Effects of Television News Exposure 37 Political Self-Efficacy 37 Political Knowledge 39 The News Viewing Process Model 42 Hypotheses and Research Questions 42 II. METHODOLOGY 51 Sampling Procedure 52 Measures 54 Exposure to Conventional and Parody News 54 Political Ideology 56 Need for Cognition 56 Viewer Motives 58 Co-Viewing 65 Cognitive Involvement 65 Affective Involvement 67 Political Knowledge 69 Political Self-Efficacy 72 iii Statistical Analysis 73 Computation of Viewer Motivation Variables 73 Relationships Between Variables in the Viewing Process 73 Differences Between the Processes of Viewing Conventional and Comedy News 74 III. RESULTS 75 Hypotheses 75 Research Questions 76 Predicting Political Knowledge and Political Self-Efficacy 80 Predicting Political Knowledge for Conventional News Viewing 81 Predicting Political Self-Efficacy for Conventional News Viewing 84 Predicting Political Knowledge for Comedy News Viewing 87 Predicting Political Self-Efficacy for Comedy News Viewing 89 Post-Hoc Analyses – Impact of Programing Genre 92 IV. DISCUSSION 94 Observations on Selected Individual Variables 95 Age 95 Gender 96 Viewer Motives 96 Exposure 97 Cognitive Involvement 98 Affective Involvement 98 Political Knowledge 99 Political Self-Efficacy 99 Relationships Among Predictor Variables 100 The Model of News Viewing 107 Predicting Political Knowledge 107 Predicting Political Self-Efficacy 110 Genre-Related Differences in Media Effects 111 Limitations and Future Directions 113 Limitations of the Sample 113 Limitations of the Study Design 114 Limitations of Instrument Sensitivity 115 Conclusion 118 APPENDICES A. Kent State University Consent Form 120 B. Demographics Questionnaire 122 C. Ideology Index 123 iv D. Need for Cognition Scale 124 E. Television Viewing Motives Scale 125 F. Exposure to Television News Programs 127 G. Co-Viewing Index 128 H. Cognitive Involvement Scale 129 I. Affective Involvement Scale 130 J. News IQ Quiz 131 K. Political Self-Efficacy Scale 133 L. Television News Survey 134 REFERENCES 151 v List of Figures Figure Page 1. Television Viewing Process Model 42 vi List of Tables Table Page 1. Exposure to Conventional and Comedy News Programs: Number Watched, Means and Standard Deviations 55 2. Need for Cognition Scale: Item Means and Standard Deviations 57 3. Conventional News-Viewing Motives: Item Means and Standard Deviations 59 4. Comedy News-Viewing Motives: Item Means and Standard Deviations 61 5. Factor Loadings for Conventional News Viewing Motives 62 6. Factor Loadings for Comedy News Viewing Motives 64 7. Cognitive Involvement – Conventional News Scale: Item Means and Standard Deviations 66 8. Cognitive Involvement – Comedy News Scale: Item Means and Standard Deviations 66 9. Affective Involvement – Conventional News Scale: Item Means and Standard Deviations 68 10. Affective Involvement – Comedy News Scale: Item Means and Standard Deviations 68 11. Political Knowledge Scale – Item Means, Standard Deviations and Number of Correct Answers 71 12. Political Self-Efficacy: Item Means and Standard Deviations 73 13. Summary of Regression Analysis for Predicting Political Knowledge in the Conventional News Viewing Context 82 14. Summary of Regression Analysis for Predicting Political Self-Efficacy in the Conventional News Viewing Context 85 15. Summary of Regression Analysis for Predicting Political Knowledge in the Comedy News Viewing Context 88 16. Summary of Regression Analysis for Predicting Political Self-Efficacy in the Comedy News Viewing Context 90 17. Comparison of Viewer Motivation Sets for Conventional and Comedy News 96 vii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my co-advisors for their extraordinary patience, guidance and support. I am equally grateful to my committee members for their comments and suggestions. I greatly appreciate my family’s continuous encouragement and understanding. I dedicate this work to Faustyna and Maria. viii 1 Chapter I INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM STATEMENT It is practically a truism that broadcast television is in serious decline as a dominant source of entertainment and information (Harris, 2008; MacDonald, 1990). Competition from the Internet and other forms of computer-mediated communication has gradually eroded television’s impact. And yet, television seems far from heading the way of dinosaurs. There are several factors contributing to this resilience. Technological features such as the relatively large screen, high definition picture, as well as experiments with 3D technology, certainly help. Television’s virtual ubiquity, its focal role in the social life of many families, and its ease of use are also important assets. Programmers’ creativity and their ability to reinvent the medium enable television to continue to be a force to reckon with. One instance of such a creative reinvention was the introduction of news delivered in a non-traditional, entertaining format (e.g., the Weekend Update segment on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, HBO’s Not Necessarily the News). First conceived as pure entertainment, this genre is now considered an important alternative source of news and political knowledge for growing numbers of viewers (Pew, 2004). Scholars have certainly noticed this new phenomenon, and research has been underway to explain the circumstances and consequences of it. Most of this research has been conducted by political scientists, and it concerns issues relating to political knowledge and content analyses. Some researchers devoted their efforts to comparisons between the effects of traditional “serious” news and the newer, more entertaining forms, especially with regard to viewers’ political knowledge. What appear to be missing from this research are analyses comparing the entire multifaceted process of viewing of these diverse news formats, beginning with the act of choosing and ending with media effects. 2 According to the Uses and Gratifications (U&G) media effects perspective, social and psychological circumstances influence people’s preferences for media and media content, as well as their behavior (audience activity) during the act of consuming their chosen media. U&G scholars have conducted an impressive amount of research on audience activity, especially viewer involvement, during the consumption of conventional (“serious”) television news (Rubin, 1993). However, there exists very little, if any, U&G research on audience activity during consumption of comedy news. I intend to fill this gap by comparing differences in the selection of the genres (conventional vs. comedy), the act of viewing itself (especially involvement), and some of its consequences for audiences (media effects). Specifically, I will attempt to demonstrate that 1) certain social and psychological characteristics guide viewers’ selection of either conventional or comedy news programs, 2) the nature and level of viewer involvement with these two genres depends on the genre selected and the viewing context, and 3) all these differences affect the magnitude of certain media effects. Television continues to be the predominant source of news in the United States. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, as much as 71% of Americans get their national and international news from television, as opposed to 42% from the Internet and 33% from newspapers (Pew, 2009). A large and growing segment of that 71% consists of fans of comedy news. Therefore, research into the process of watching this genre of news is justified and likely to yield findings important for various constituencies, including broadcasters, political scientists, and mass communication scholars. Background and Statement of Problem Ever since the mid-1970s, the landscape for sources of news information has experienced constant fluctuation, a situation precipitated by the introduction of videocassette recorders and 3 the growth of cable television, and especially the establishment of 24-hour cable news channels, like CNN in 1980 (Anderson, 2004; Harris, 2008). Heretofore relatively stable in its reach and the amount of support it was receiving from the viewers, broadcast television entered a period of slow decline caused by a host of challenges, most notably by competition from new outlets (MacDonald, 1990). The most important of these
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