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Communication channels and agenda diversity:
The impact of "display" and "research" sources on the public agenda
Ester de Waal & Klaus Schoenbach
The Amsterdam School of Communications Research,
University of Amsterdam
Kloveniersburgwal 48
1012 CX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
+31 20 5252820
Email: [log in to unmask]
Paper submitted to the Mass Communication and Society Division for
presentation at the AEJMC convention, August 10-13, 2005, San Antonio, Texas.
Communication channels and agenda diversity:
The impact of "display" and "research" sources on the public agenda
Abstract / As "display" channels, television, print newspapers, radio
and magazines offer pre-selected and pre-ordered information about
topics of the public sphere. "Research" channels, such as online news
sites, online newspapers and videotex, allow, but also require more
autonomy from their users. Consequently, overlooking topics one is
not interested in should be easier. So, display channels should
contribute to more diversity of the perceived public agenda. But
analyses based on a large survey show that more important is what
those channels are used for.
Communication channels and agenda diversity:
The impact of "display" and "research" sources on the public agenda
Introduction
Communication channels differ in their agenda-setting power. As early
as in 1977, Shaw and McCombs made us aware of the differential impact
of newspapers and television. Newspapers can influence the public
agenda very early, as soon as a new topic has come up in politics,
arts or science (see also Trumbo, 1995). Later in the process, Shaw
and McCombs (1977) state, television acts like a "spotlight," quickly
spreading to a majority of society some of the topics that newspapers
introduced earlier (see also McCombs, 1978; Eyal, 1981; Patterson,
1980; Weaver, 1981; Weaver et al., 1981; and, more recently, Rössler, 1997).
Newspapers also seem to create a greater diversity of the public
agenda than television (Allen & Izcaray, 1988; Culbertson, Evarts,
Richard, Sandell & Stempel III, 1994, and, more recently, e.g., Guo &
Moy, 1998; McLeod, Scheufele and Moy, 1999; Schulz, 2003). The reason
often mentioned is that traditional daily newspapers contain much
more simultaneous information than television does and thus have the
space to cover all kinds of topics, without being that selective
(Schoenbach, 1983, 2004; see also Crosbie, 2004).
Some of this research may be called dated by now. And it does not
tell us about newer media. For instance, do online newspapers users
learn about a variety of topics as wide as newspaper readers do?
Should the clicking and scrolling that the multi-layered presentation
of newspapers online requires not further a more selective behavior
instead, based on one's interests immediately? If so, online users,
as opposed to print paper readers, should be able to ignore more
efficiently topics of public life they are either not interested in
beforehand (Tewksbury & Althaus, 2000; see also Boczkowski, 2002;
Sunstein, 2002) or that are not immediately of great news value
because they are shocking, for instance.
Instead, online papers, but also Internet news sites, may lend
themselves more to be used as a 'research' or 'pull medium' (see
Schönbach & Lauf, 2004). Research media typically provide
information, actually often a huge amount of it, less pre-structured
and pre-ordered than display media. This leads to more autonomy of
their audience, but also requires more effort: autonomy because
recipients do not depend on the selection and structure that a
display channel offers, but also effort and motivation because,
consequently, more selection decisions have to be taken by the users
themselves.
In contrast, the display character of print newspapers, their wide
array of topics and pre-ordered content, may be better at surprising
the audience with topics beyond their particular interests. The
typical way of rank ordering articles (large vs. small, with or
without illustrations, front page vs. back of the paper, etc.) is
actually supposed to "trap" readers into reading stories they may not
have been interested in beforehand. The concept of a "trap effect" of
communication addresses the chance to influence the uninterested
segment of an audience inadvertently, if it is only exposed enough to
that communication (see Schoenbach & Lauf, 2002, 2004).
The characteristics of a typical display medium mentioned above are
in principle also applicable to television, radio and magazines.
Those media may differ from each other in the abundance of
information they offer. But the pre-ordered, pre-structured nature of
their content, supposed to be processed in a pre-defined way, is also
characteristic for them.
In this study we analyze the impact of various communication
channels, display and research ones, on the diversity of topics that
their users perceive as the public agenda. "Perceived issue salience"
is one of the three levels of agenda setting in the typology of
McLeod, Becker and Byrnes (1974). It taps the impression that people
have of the topics discussed in the public sphere around them.
Virtually everything that we know about the differential influence of
communication channels on perceived issue salience is about
newspapers and television only, both display channels (see above).
Other media have been examined only very rarely, e.g. magazines
(Funkhouser, 1973; Eaton, 1989), radio (Williams & Larsen, 1977), and
electronic text (Heeter, et al., 1989).
So far there has been no systematic evidence about if the impact of
those channels on agenda diversity is different from the influence of
other channels. We assume, however, that information sources with a
more prominent display character, i.e., a pre-structured content,
should be better at surprising their audience with topics beyond
their particular interests. In other words, printed newspapers,
television, radio and magazines should in principle be widening the
horizon of the public more than research-oriented media, such as
online newspapers, other news sites and videotex.
Our analysis will also include personal conversations as a display
source, i.e. providing information that (a) cannot be avoided once we
are involved in a conversation and (b) may be even surprising.
Personal conversations have been demonstrated before to have an
important role in shaping the public agenda, (see Rössler, 1997; Kim,
Wyatt, & Katz, 1999; Yang & Stone, 2003).
In sum, our first hypothesis is:
H1: Exposure to display communication channels widens the perceived
agenda of their users more than exposure to research channels does.
Although display channels typically restrict the freedom of their
recipients to avoid information more than research channels do, they
do not necessarily overwhelm a completely passive audience. The use
of display channels is subject of selection processes as well, albeit
more constrained ones. Quite some time ago, the
uses-and-gratifications tradition in communication research has
shifted the focus from all-powerful media to recipients that, in
order to allow media to have effects, must be at least a little
interested in the media content they are confronted with), even if
that content is presented enticingly (Blumler & Katz, 1974; Rubin, 1993).
So we will not only analyze the direct impact of being exposed to
different display and research channels. Our study will also take
into account that people differ in their individual preference of
channels, depending on the topic they want to be informed about. So,
specific communication channels, display and research, may be used to
learn about politics more often than, say, about sports. Channels
preferred for information about politics may thus be better at
extending the perceived political agenda than widening the one within
the area of sports.
Our second hypothesis reads:
H2: The more one is interested in learning about specific themes from
a specific channel of information (be it a display or a research
one), the wider the range of the perceived agenda within those themes.
Our third hypothesis refines H1 by combining it with H2:
H3: Exposure to whatever channel widens the perceived agenda more if
those exposed are also the ones that are interested in learning about
specific themes from a specific channel.
Method and measurement
Our analysis is based on a survey of almost 1,000 respondents
representative for the Dutch adult population, conducted in December
2002 by the market research institute NIPO, Amsterdam.
To measure perceived issue salience, we used the question: "What
topics are presently the order of the day in the Netherlands and in
the world?" Plausibly, this question opened the
interview. Subsequently respondents were asked: "Can you name more
topics? It does not matter in which area." and "Does anything else
come to mind?" until they stopped mentioning anything. Thus,
respondents could name a (potentially) infinite number of subjects.
The answers were coded into separate units. Even slight differences
between the topics mentioned within a response led to a different
code; virtually only synonyms were not counted as an extra answer. An
example: "soccer" was categorized different from "Ajax"- the
Amsterdam soccer club and from the "UEFA Champions League"- the
European soccer competition. Respondents named up to 17 of those
different categories. The average number of responses was 4.1, its
standard deviation 2.2. We use the answers (up to 17) per person to
determine the span of one's perceived agenda in general: how many
different topics was one able to reproduce in total?
In order to investigate the diversity within specific thematic areas
of the public agenda, the answers were grouped into five categories,
inspired by classifications offered by McCombs and Zhu (1995) and
Bara (2001: "politics in general and domestic politics", e.g.
elections in the Netherlands, and issues dealing with government and
political decision making, "Economy and finance", such as inflation,
the impact of the Euro, budget deficits, interest rates etc.,
"International politics", e.g. foreign elections, Iraq-U.S. issues,
Israel-Palestine issues, EU issues etc., "Sports" and "Crimes and
accidents". For the exact categorization of answers used for this
analysis see appendix A. The different answers within each of those
categories are gauged to measure the span of the perceived agenda
specifically within the field of sports, international politics etc.
For our analysis, we use multiple regressions, with the
above-mentioned ranges of perceived issue salience as dependent
variables and three groups of independent ones:
a) The amount of exposure to print and online newspapers, online news
sites, television, videotex, radio, magazines and conversations. For
all media channels we gauged duration of use, for conversations
frequency, and for print and online newspapers as well as online news
sites, we measured both, the frequency and duration of every time of
their use (see appendix B). For the latter, the amount of exposure
will be included into our analysis as an index, the result of
multiplying frequency of use and duration per use.
For the purpose of our analysis we divided the communication channels
in display and research ones. Of course this split is not a rigid
one, the channels are rather located on a continuum, but it is
certainly safe to say that some are more display (print newspapers,
television, radio, magazines and conversations) and others more
research (online newspapers, news sites and videotex).
b) Our second category of independent variables goes beyond exposure.
Instead it indicates the relevance of every specific communication
channel as a source of specific information. For this purpose, we
combined two variables:
(1) the respondent's interest in each of seven topical areas of all
kinds ("politics," "economy and finance," "sports," "crimes and
accidents," "theater, films and literature," "celebrities" and "local
news"), expressed in a scale from 0 (= not interested) to 2 (= very
much interested)(appendix B: interest); and
(3) how important the various communication channels are judged
individually for information on these specific themes, again on a
three-point scale (0 = not important) and (2 = very important) (see
appendix B: channel importance).
By multiplying the two variables we get an index of channel relevance
that tells us about the importance of a channel for a topic, weighted
by the interest in that topic for oneself.
We will begin our analysis with the number of all perceived topics as
the dependent variable. For this purpose, all channel-relevance
indices were added up per communication channel. For the analysis of
the diversity of topics within a specific thematic area, we only used
the indices relevant for the thematic field under scrutiny.
c) The third group of independent variables consists of interaction
terms, constructed as a multiplicative combination of the first two
categories of possible causes of agenda diversity. The interaction
terms are supposed to measure the impact of being exposed to display
and research channels on agenda diversity, but under the condition
that one considers the channel under scrutiny relevant for learning
about the respective thematic area (channel relevance, see above).
Moreover, we take into account the traditional control variables age,
gender and education for their possible influence on the number and
structure of one's perceived agenda.
Results
If we look at all the topics that our respondents named as presently
important in the Netherlands, regardless of their thematic areas,
exposure to two display channels, magazines and personal
conversations, significantly increases their numbers. Another display
medium plays a surprising role, albeit only in an interaction with
being used for learning about many public issues: radio. The more
time people spend on that medium who are interested in many issues
and wanting to learn about them from radio, the smaller their
perceived agenda diversity. For those who visit online news sites
frequently and extensively, plus consider them relevant for many
issues, this research channel is capable of widening the range of
topics as well. Finally, age and education also increase the number
of topics in general.
--Table 1--
Specifically for the perceived diversity within our thematic areas,
we find five effects of mere exposure to a communication source.
Three of them are more display than research channels: Spending more
time on television, but also on magazines, expands perceptions of
crimes and accidents as topics of the public sphere. Moreover
personal conversations increase the number of political topics, both
domestic and international. But also exposure to two research
channels, videotex and online newspapers, makes their users aware of
more topics within international politics and sports, respectively.
More often than mere exposure to them, channels have an effect if
they are regarded as useful to learn about a specific thematic area
one is at least somewhat interested in. With only one exception, i.e.
using online news sites for information about crime and accidents,
all the channels involved are display channels:
• Print newspapers widen the horizon of international politics the
more important they are for political information; and if they seem
to be useful for information on economy and finances, they do the
same for that theme.
• Television as a relevant channel for learning about politics widens
the perceived agenda of general/domestic politics.
• Magazines, on the one hand, expand the agenda within economical and
financial issues the more they are regarded as a good source for
information on that thematic area. The same applies to sports topics.
On the other hand, magazines as an important source for crimes and
accidents seem to narrow the spectrum of what people know about this field.
Several effects of channel exposure on agenda diversity come about
only conditionally, as the result of interactions the relevance of
that channel for a specific purpose. Again, display channels show
more effects than research channels. Interestingly, all but one of
the effects are negative, meaning that extensive exposure, combined
with usefulness of that channel for a specific theme, narrows down
the range of topics within a specific thematic field, instead of
widening it. More specifically, using the respective channel for
information about the topic at hand in combination with
• watching television decreases the range of crimes and accident
related issues;
• listening to the radio reduces the number of topics within
international politics;
• reading magazines actually leads to fewer topics within the fields
of economy and finance;
• conversations have the same effect;
• reading online newspapers narrows the range of sports events and topics;
• and only using online news sites widens the horizon within the area
of sports.
As to the role of demographic variables, we already saw that the
perceived agenda in general expands as age increases. But now it
becomes clear that this is mostly due to the fact that age is
positively related to the range of international issues. In addition,
women name more general and domestic political topics than men do.
And finally, a higher education helps to know more about general,
domestic and international politics.
--Table 2--
Conclusion
Display channels indeed seem to be better at widening the perceived
agenda than research channels. Even mere exposure to them works.
Their relevance for information about topics of the public sphere, is
even more important for the range of the perceived agenda –
regardless of the frequency and duration of using such a channel. So,
hypotheses 1 and 2 are supported by our data. Sunstein's (2002)
concerns seem to be substantiated: Research channels such as the
internet indeed do not help their users to be aware of public issues
the way display media do.
But our first hypothesis is confirmed only partly: Among those in the
audience both particularly interested in learning about a topic from
a specific source and using that source extensively, we find
agenda-shrinking effects: In that audience group, exposure to a
display channel actually narrows down the range of topics. This also
refutes our hypothesis 3, which predicted that a combination of great
interest and extensive exposure should actually be useful for
learning about a greater range of topics. In other words, specific
interest in a thematic area seems to lead to a concentration on the
"really important" topics within that area.
Such concentration mechanisms seem to be true for television, radio,
magazines, conversations and online newspapers. Whenever frequent and
enduring exposure to those channels is accompanied by a great
interest in the thematic area at hand, the number of topics their
audience names becomes smaller than average.
So, display channels actually function as research ones, if their
users are not only extensively exposed to them, but particularly
interested in information about a specific topic. Such an audience
does not let itself get trapped by all those topics offered left and
right but focuses on a smaller number of them and maybe get more
in-depth information about those topics instead.
Therefore, our second conclusion is to modify the notion of display
vs. research channels in favor of a display vs. research use of a
channel. That still does not preclude that channels such as printed
newspapers lend themselves to a preferred use as display platforms.
But the definition of display or research is ultimately a
transactional one where characteristics of a channel, such as the way
its content is structured and offered, combine with purposes that the
audience pursues (see Bauer, 1964, and the recent overview by Frueh &
Schoenbach, 2005), such as expecting either an overview of current
events or searching for in-depth information. The latter can also be
provided by display media if one searches for that information in
them extensively enough.
A third conclusion concerns the striking relevance of personal
conversations: Mere exposure to personal conversations seems to be
particularly good for diversity in the area of politics, both
domestic and international. Obviously, conversations are an important
display channel, making those talking with each other aware of a
wider range of topics, probably beyond the realm of those themes one
was interested in beforehand.
The classic study "The people's choice" by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and
Gaudet (1944) still seems to be right: Conversations are able to
"trap" people and make even the less interested aware of what is
going on in politics. Recently Schoenbach and Lauf (2002) found that
conversations were even more important in that respect than both
television and printed newspapers.
In sum, then, we can conclude: Yes, display channels widen the
horizon of their audience in terms of the public agenda, but they do
so only if they are used either extensively, but not necessarily for
information about a specific thematic area. Or if they are used with
great interest in their content about that topic, but not
extensively. The combination of extensive use and great channel
relevance for a thematic area makes display channels research ones:
they do not widen the perceived agenda anymore, but focus the
attention of their users. So we may not have to fear research media
only as dangerous for public discourse, as Sunstein (2002) does, but
also the research attitude of the audience.
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Table 1
Impact on the Number of All Perceived Topics
Exposure to communication channels
Display
Magazines
Conversations
.07
.15
*
***
Interactions exposure - channel relevance
Display
Radio x Importance radio for various themes
Research
Online news sites x Importance online news
sites for various themes
-
.08
.08
*
*
Demographics
Age
Education
.12
.18
***
***
Adj. R²
.10
***
N (at least) 958
*p < .05, **p < .01, *** < .001.
Note. Only significant effects are shown. Cell entries are beta's
from linear multiple regressions, controlled for (1) "other"
communication channels: print newspapers, online newspapers, other
online news sites, television, videotex, radio, magazines, and
conversations (with family, friends, colleagues, and people one meets
incidentally); (2) importance of the various channels (additional
index of interest in a specific theme by personal importance of a
specific communication channel for information on the specific
theme); (3) demographics: education, and, and gender, and (4)
interactions between media use and importance.
Running head: Communication channels and the public agenda
Running head: Communication channels and the public agenda
7
Table 2
Impact on the Number of Perceived Topics by Theme
Politics in general and domestic politics
International politics
Economy and Finance
Sports
Crimes and accidents
Exposure to communication channels
Display
Television
Magazines
Conversations
Research
Online newspapers
Videotex
.09*
.07*
.08*
.10**
.10**
.07*
Channel relevance
Display
Print newspapers for politics
Print newspapers for economy
Television for politics
Magazines for economy
Magazines for sports
Magazines for crime
Research
Online news sites for crime
.13*
.13*
.15**
.11*
.09*
-.10*
.10*
Interactions exposure – channel relevance
Display
• Television x Importance television for crime
• Radio x Importance radio for politics
• Magazines x Importance magazines for economy
• Conversations x Importance conversations for economy
Research
• Online news sites x Importance online news sites for sports
• Online newspapers x Importance online newspapers for sports
-.08**
-.10**
-.07*
.08*
-.10**
-.09*
Demographics
Gender
Age
Education
.11**
.14***
.15***
.15***
Adj. R²
.06***
.07***
.07***
.09***
.02**
N (at least) 958
Note. Only significant effects are shown. Cell entries are beta's
from linear multiple regressions, controlled for (1) "other"
communication channels: print newspapers, online newspapers, other
online news sites, television, videotex, radio, magazines, and
conversations with family, friends, colleagues, and people one meets
incidentally; 2) importance of the various channels (index of
interest in a specific theme by personal importance of a specific
communication channel for information on the specific theme); (3)
demographics: education, and, and gender; (4) interactions between
media use and importance.
*p < .05, **p < .01, *** < .001.
Running head: Communication channels and the public agenda
Running head: Communication channels and the public agenda
7
Appendix A - Category System Perceived Societal Topics
Themes of responses
Consolidation for this study
Politics in general
Government/political decision making
Domestic politics
Government/political decision making
Elections
Domestic issues
Health & care issues
Social policy
Social security/welfare issues
Education issues
Social relations
Environment(al issues)/pollution
General economic
Economy and financial issues
Inflation
Budget deficit and budget cuts
Euro
Stock market
Savings and loans
Housing cost
Gasoline price
Interest rates
Jobs and unemployment
International politics in general
International issues and policy
Foreign elections
War and peace
Iraq-US issues
Israel-Palestine issues
European Union issues
Third world issues
Other international issues
Sport events and other sport issues
Sports
Crime issues
Crimes and accidents
Accidents
Appendix B – Question wording
Exposure to communication channels
Frequency
"On average, how many days a week, do you read Dutch national or
local printed newspapers?"
This question was also asked for "visiting websites of Dutch national
or local daily newspapers on the Internet" and for "other news sites
on the Internet."
For websites of newspapers and other news sites, questions about the
frequency of their use were even more extensive:
"On average, how many times a day do you read websites of Dutch
national or local newspapers on the Internet?" Again the same
question was asked for "other news sites on the Internet."
For personal conversations the following questions measured not only
the frequency, but also the kind of people the respondent talks to:
"How often do you speak about topics that are the order of the day in
the Netherlands and the world with your family: often, sometimes or never?"
The same question was asked for "friends," "people at your job or
your school," "people that you happen to meet, for instance in a
tramway or at the barber's."
Duration
"On average, how long do you read Dutch national or local printed
newspapers a time?"
The same question was asked for "reading websites of Dutch national
or local newspapers on the Internet" and for "other news sites."
"On average, how long do you watch television a day?"
The same question was asked for "reading teletext on television or
the Internet" and "listening to the radio."
"On average, how long do you read magazines a week?"
Interest
"In general, how much are you interested in politics: very much,
somewhat or not interested?"
The same question was asked for interest in "sports," "theater, films
and literature," "economy and finance," "reports on celebrities,"
"reports on accidents and crime," and "local news."
Channel importance
"How important are printed newspapers for you personally if you
would like to get informed on politics: very important, somewhat or
not important?"
The same question was asked for the other topical areas "sports,"
"theater, films and literature," "economy and finance," "reports on
celebrities," "reports on accidents and crime," and "local news."
This whole battery was also asked for all other communications
channels: "online newspapers," "other news sites on the Internet",
"television," "teletext," "radio," "magazines" and "conversations".
Channel relevance
For this index, we multiplied interest and channel importance (see
the section "methods and measurement").
Our interest and importance measures, and thus the channel relevance
index, correspond exactly with the thematic categories "economy and
finance," "sports" and "crimes and accidents". For the category
"politics in general and domestic politics", and "international
politics" we used interest in/importance for "politics".
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