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Perceptions of News Stories and News Photos of Hillary Rodham
Clinton
Esther Thorson and Andrew Mendelson
School of Journalism
University of Missouri-Columbia
Graduate Studies Center
116 Walter Williams Hall
Columbia, MO 65211
573-882-4852
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Paper submitted to the Visual Communication Division of AEJMC,
April 1, 1996
Abstract for
Perceptions of News Stories and News Photos of Hillary Rodham
Clinton
Esther Thorson and Andrew Mendelson
School of Journalism
University of Missouri-Columbia
The focus of this paper is to look at how people store visual and
verbal images of a well-known political female, Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC),
and then relate that memory to what has been shown to be the content of stories
and news photos of HRC. This paper summarizes the results of a telephone survey
of a small midwestern city.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Introduction
The focus of this paper is to look at how people store visual and
verbal images of a well-known political female, Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC),
and then relate that memory to what has been shown to be the content of stories
and news photos of HRC. The theory that guides the research is a variant of
cultivation theory (e.g., Gerbner, Gross, Morgan & Signorielli, 1994). Figure 1
shows the flow of processing that we expect determines people's "image of
Hillary," a concept that we define as having both visual and verbal components,
and which involves a variety of additional concepts such as "woman," "First
Lady," "mother," "wife," "daughter," and "lawyer." Because most people never
meet or even see HRC, they must form their concept of her from the news and
entertainment media, primarily the former. Because this study is part of larger
one in which the first two and a half years of the Clinton administration were
examined in terms of print stories and news photos of HRC (e.g., Winfield, 1995;
Colbert, 1995; Thorson, 1995), this study focuses on content analysis findings
for the New York Times, Washington Post, and the three news magazines, Time,
Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. As can be seen in Figure 1, these
media inputs form the stimulus end of the process. The stories and photos are
presumed to be input to people of varying demographic and attitudinal
orientations.
At this point in the model we hypothesize a complex interaction of
the individual with the information available both from news stories and news
photos of the First Lady. The result is varying levels of attention to input
about HRC, varying levels and varying content of memory about that input, and
varying likes and dislikes concerning HRC. When we ask people questions
concerning their "image of HRC," then, what we expect is a description that can
be predicted by: (1) media consumption patterns; (2) demographic
characteristics of the person him- or herself; and (3) prior attitudes and
beliefs about relevant concepts named above (woman, First Lady, politician, and
so on).
From the start, we should describe important caveats in this
approach. First, we know that people also receive important television inputs,
and we attempt to look at some effects of television, even though no prior
content analysis information is available to provide us with a picture of what
television content about HRC has involved. Second, we know that people also
receive important entertainment inputs concerning the First Lady, but again,
there is no organized examination of how HRC has been treated by entertainment
magazines and television.
Third, the present study was limited to a survey of people in a
small college town in the midwest. If we had a national survey or if the survey
had been conducted in other parts of the country, we would certainly expect the
descriptive statistics to have been different. That is, overall liking for HRC
and Bill Clinton would certainly have been different from what we found, as
would have media consumption patterns. We do not believe, however, that the
relationships between people's demographic, patterns of media consumption and
attitudinal characteristics, and their "images of HRC" would have been
particularly different. That is, we expect the process to be the same
regardless of whom we test. One difference that we do expect, although neither
we nor any other researchers that we know of can provide exact specification of
this, is it appears that "local" newspapers have not carried as many stories or
photographs of HRC as have the two national newspapers that we used to tell us
what images were available from the media. For example, coverage of the First
Lady's trip to Bosnia and Turkey in March, 1996, was extensively covered in the
newsmagazines and in the Post and Times. Newspapers in the area of the present
study, however, tended to show only two AP photos (one of Hillary with Chelsea
and one of Hillary surrounded by troops), and small articles, or sometimes only
a news photo and a caption. Thus it seems likely to us that the First Lady is
much more salient in some areas of the country than in towns and cities where
local newspaper coverage of her is very limited. Of course, it is clear that
everyone has access to news magazines and to television images.
To motivate the study presented here, a diversity of literature
must be examined, but because of space constraints, we will look at that
literature in broad strokes. We look first at the rather minimal literature on
how people process news photos. We then turn to the more general literature on
how people process pictures in text, that is, how people take the information
from both sources and try to put them together. We mention some of the
highlights of findings about what kinds of news photos of HRC have typified the
first two and a half years of the Clinton administration. We then look briefly
at how public opinion polls have treated the issue of "image of HRC." Finally,
we posit some research hypotheses and then attempt to test them with data from a
phone survey that essentially asked people to talk about what they "see" when
they think of the First Lady, and then asked people about themselves so that we
could try to relate "image" to personal attributes of the viewers. Although
this methodology is in its development, we nevertheless believe that there are
some important basic attributes of the processing of news images that can be
observed.
What we know about the impact of news photos in newspapers
In spite of wide acceptance of the belief that news photos have a
dominant impact on the processing of newspaper stories (e.g., Colbert, 1995;
Garcia & Stark, 1991), empirical evidence of just what that impact is, is almost
nonexistent. Wanta (1988) provided only weak evidence that the size of a news
photo could influence how important the topics of news stories were to people,
observing effects of photo size for only one story out of the three he tested.
Stone (1987, p. 72) is often referred to as providing evidence that "pictures
have increased readers' enjoyment and interest in newspapers," and "people's
attention is arrested more by pictures than by stories," but no data is
referenced to back up these claims. Garcia and Stark (1991) presented results
of eye-tracking data that suggest that photos are most likely the "point of
entry" into newspaper pages (sometimes sharing that role with headlines) and
that overall, 75% of all photos are "looked at." This is in contrast to text,
only 25% of which is said to receive an eye fixation. Unfortunately, it is not
clear what, if anything, momentary fixations tell us about the impact photos
have on attention, attitudes, memory or comprehension of the news (Wanta &
Roark, 1993).
Only two previous studies are even somewhat comparable to the
present one. A study by Wanta and Roark (1993) suffered from significant design
flaws--as well as failing to show anything but the most minor impact of photos.
Wanta and Roark's study involved having people read and answer questions about a
single front-page story as it had appeared in one of 20 different newspapers.
The photos that accompanied these stories fell into nine different categories,
and Wanta's objective was to determine whether these categories would have an
effect on responses to the story. The main dependent variable was how much
information was learned from reading the stories. Unfortunately, variations in
the stories, differing in authorship, were confounded with the variations in the
photos, so it is impossible to determine whether readers were learning more
because of the photo or the story they received. Interestingly, however,
whether the result of the stories or the photos, there were virtually no
differences in memory as a function of which story people received. Although
drawing conclusions from the study is inappropriate, it is at least clear that
the photos had little or no impact.
In contrast, an older study by Wolf and Grotta (1985) varied the
content of a photo that always accompanied exactly the same news story. The
story appeared on the front page of a campus newspaper, with either an active
photo of a dancer, a portrait of her, or a totally unrelated photo.
Surprisingly, the "less interesting" portrait produced the highest readership.
On only one fact question out of three was there any effect of the photo
manipulation, and, again, the portrait produced the highest percent correct.
Thus there was evidence that the photos differentially affected the likelihood
that the article was read, but little evidence that they affected learning from
the articles.
We turn now from the literature on newspaper photos to a more
general consideration of the psychological impact of pictures in text.
The role of pictures in text
This area of research is concerned both with how children learn to
read, but more relevant to present purposes, with how people read to learn
(Levin, 1989). Willows and Houghton (1987) concluded that pictures accompanying
text facilitate the processing of that text, and that the degree of facilitation
varies depending on what measures of performance are used. As Levin (1989)
points out, however, it is not clear how or why facilitation occurs. In an
effort to delve into the theoretical underpinnings of the impact of pictures,
Levin first points out that pictures play different functions in text, and that
their facilitative impact varies directly with these functions. For example,
pictures may not be related at all to text, and serve only a "decorative"
function. Generally, decorative pictures do not facilitate learning from text.
Pictures may also represent the text, making aspects more concrete. Or,
pictures may help to organize the text. They may make difficult text more
interpretable or comprehensible. And finally, they may transform the content of
the text into something more memorable. Levin, Anglin, & Carney (1987), in a
meta-analysis of the literature, showed that the functions of representing,
organizing, and making text interpretable produced moderate facilitation of text
learning, and that transformational pictures produced the highest levels of
facilitation.
Another important aspect of the question of how pictures affect the
learning of text hinges on the fact that different measures of learning or
responding to text effectively show differential patterns of effects. For
example, if the reader's task is to remember text, the role of pictures may
differ from the case when the reader's task is to comprehend the text, or to use
its content to apply in a novel situation.
A third important aspect of the question of how pictures affect the
learning of text relates to learner characteristics. In education, "learner
characteristics" often refers to the presence of such skills as word-decoding or
word-recognition skills, or to adeptness at generating visual imagery (e.g.,
Evans & Kerst, 1983). In the realm of adults reading newspapers, an important
learner characteristic may be the individual's relative preference for visual as
opposed to verbal information. Or, it may refer to whether the individual is
more accustomed to using one medium rather than another to obtain news. Or, it
may refer to the intelligence of the reader. Perhaps most importantly for the
processing of news stories, the reader's political preferences and orientations
may be strongly operant. Whatever the measure taken on the learner, however, it
seems likely that these types of characteristics interact with the way in which
pictures affect responses to text (e.g., Cronbach & Snow, 1977).
These specifications of what variables must be examined to
determine the impact of pictures on processing text are clearly important for
determination of how photos operate in newspapers. In addition, however, we
must also consider a broader view of how photos may affect the reader. To learn
from the news, one must first pay attention to it, that is, encode its content
(e.g., Lang, 1995). Second, one must store the content. And third, one must be
able to retrieve that content. Lang (1995) has pointed out that different
measures index these three processes. For example, encoding can be measured by
recognition, storage by cued recall, and retrieval by free recall.
To move this model closer to the real world of newspapers, it can
be said that news photos may influence processing by performing any or all of at
least eight tasks. (1) Photos might simply attract attention to themselves.
If so, their content would be highly likely remembered by readers, regardless of
what measure of memory is used. (2) Photos might direct attention to the story
they accompany. If so, news stories with photos would be more likely remembered
that those without photos. (3) Photos might themselves provide information.
If so, that information should be remembered by readers, again, regardless of
what measure of memory is used. (5) Photos might enhance memory for the story.
If so, stories with congruent photos would be remembered better than news
stories with incongruent photos. (6) Photos might enhance comprehension of
stories. If so, readers should score higher on tests of their comprehension of
story content if the story has an accompanying photo. (7) Photos might make
accompanying stories more interesting. If so, stories with photos should be
rated as more interesting than those without photos. As a corollary, stories
with photos rated as more interesting might be rated as more interesting than
stories with boring photos. (8) Photos might create emotion in readers. If
so, stories with photos should be rated differently in terms of emotional impact
or how well they are liked.
Attributes of news photos of HRC during the first part of the
Clinton administration
Colbert's (1995) content analysis of The New York Times, the
Washington Post, and three news magazines clearly showed that most news photos
of HRC showed her in one of two roles: lawyer/professional (57% of all photos)
or mother/wife/ hostess (37%). Interestingly, there were nearly twice as many
professional representations as there were non-professional. Not only was the
role HRC was imaged as playing highly conventionalized, other features of
content were stereotyped. For example, HRC was shown at a professional distance
(46%), a social distance (29%), or a personal distance (21%), and almost never
at an intimate distance. She was shown mostly not communicating at all (27%),
or responding nonverbally to someone else (42%).
Public opinion polls treatment of HRC
Burrell and Penaloza (1995) provide a good overview of public
opinion poll treatment of HRC during the first two years of the Clinton
administration. They point out that HRC has received much more polling
attention than any other First Lady, which is probably consistent with the fact
that there are many more polls concerning all topics than there used to be.
Burrell and Penaloza say that records of polls on First Ladies only go back to
Pat Nixon in the late 60's and early 70's. Of course, the way the questions
were asked had a clear impact on just what "public opinion" concerning the First
Ladies was inferred to be. But in general, Betty Ford scored well (71%
"approval rate"), Rosalynn Carter less well (around a 50% approval rating),
Nancy Reagan showed variation from a low of 28% approval to a high of 70%
approval rate, and Barbara Bush, by the time of the 1992 race, was scoring an
85% approval rating.
Burrell and Penaloza point out that between February, 1992, and
June, 1994, four major polling companies surveyed the public concerning HRC's
favorability rating a total of 64 times. In addition, there was apparently a
variety of other polls concerning other aspects of HRC (whether she would make a
good president, how she should be involved in policy making, and so on). In
general, at the beginning of the Clinton administration (January, 1993), HRC
experienced her highest ratings (67% approval), although during the health care
research period, the approval ratings remained fairly high. During the second
year of the administration, however, the failure of the health care plan,
together with the onset of Whitewater, brought her favorability ratings down
into the 40's. Interestingly, in January, 1996 a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll
showed about the same level of approval (43%). This poll was conducted just
before the First Lady was questioned by a grand jury concerning her Whitewater
dealings.
More important than the overall averages, however, is the pattern
of relationships between favorability toward HRC and demographics (Burrell and
Penaloza, 1995). Throughout the administration, women have approved of HRC more
than men. In fact, this difference has become greater over time (Burrell and
Penaloza, 1995). Although the pattern has not been as consistent as the gender
difference, there has been a tendency for higher educated people to approve HRC
at higher levels than lesser educated people. There is, of course, a huge party
affiliation effect, with Democrats approving her at a 70% or above level, and
Republicans approving at only around 30% or lower. Non-whites are more
approving than whites. And finally, younger people show higher approval ratings
than older people. (See the results of a 1996 national sample in Table 1.)
The present research
The question we wished to ask here concerned public opinion about
HRC, but what we really wanted to know was whether opinion could be related to
actual news stories and news photos of HRC that people remembered. We also
wanted to see whether there were clear relationships between what media people
had used to glean information about the First Lady, and what their perceptions
were. Given Winfield's (1995) findings that much of the news coverage of HRC,
at least in print, has been predominantly negative in tone, we expected that
those who rely heavily on print would tend, after the effects of demographic
variables were removed, to have more negative images. Given Colbert's (1995)
findings about how stereotyped or conventionalized news photos of the First Lady
have been, we also expected that when people were asked to recall a news photo,
there would be a marked homogeneity in what "pictures" were described, and that
most of what would be remembered were the predominant photos of HRC in her
professional role. Finally, we expected that both what stories people
remembered about HRC and what photos they remembered would be highly predictable
from their own prior attitudes toward both HRC and President Clinton. In other
words, as people try to sort out the news information they receive about the
First Lady, they are guided by their own predispositions. The image of HRC is
in the eye of the beholder.
Method
Data were collected in a telephone survey of 302 adults in Boone
County, Missouri, where Columbia, population 70,000, is located. The survey was
conducted by a professional survey research company during December, 1995.
Households were selected by random-digit dialing procedures to insure that
unlisted numbers would be represented. Interviews were completed with
approximately 50% of the eligible persons contacted. The final sample closely
matched characteristics of the county. According to 1990 census data, men make
up 48% of the population and women 52% (Sourcebook of Zipcode Demographics).
Our sample had 44% male and 56% female respondents. Racially, Boone County is
89% white, 7.5% black and 3.5% other. Our sample was 92.4% white, 4% black and
2.1% other. Our sample was skewed toward the high end of the income scale
(those making more than $50,000 accounted for 31.8%), while Boone County
officially has only 16% at this range.
Measures
Media use variables included how often people watch the evening
network news, how often they read a newspaper(s) and which newspapers they read;
how often they read news magazines and which ones they read.
Measures relating to HRC included what three major stories
respondents remembered reading about her ("Trying to remember back all the way
to the time when Bill Clinton became President. What have been the major
stories about Mrs. Clinton?") We then asked what images they recalled
("Sometimes certain images, either from television or from newspapers or from
news magazines, really stick in our memories. Can you name three images of
Hillary Clinton that you remember best?" We then asked in an open-ended format
how the respondent would rate the kind of person Mrs. Clinton appeared to be in
the stories. Finally, we asked, whether for television, newspaper and news
magazine stories, they had been mostly negative, neutral, or positive about Mrs.
Clinton.
Next were a series of questions about how important the position of
First Lady was, and then how important the position was as Hillary Clinton had
shown it to be (exact questions are shown in Table 2). Respondents were asked
to rate Bill Clinton on seven characteristics (warm, dishonest, good leader,
knowledgeable, strong, is solving our economic problems, is my candidate in
1996). The Cronbach's alpha for this scale was .90, and the scale was
considered a measure of "attitude toward Bill Clinton." HRC was then rated on
nine characteristics (good at relating to others, warm, dishonest, good leader,
knowledgeable, strong, good mother, good wife, and dependent). The Cronbach's
alpha for this scale was .86, and the scale was considered a measure of
"attitude toward HRC." The correlation of these two scales was r=.80 (p=.0001).
Finally, people were asked basic demographic questions concerning
their age, whether they voted in the last election, their employment status,
income, race, and party affiliation.
Results
Both the pictures and stories that people recalled in the
open-ended questioning were coded in terms of HRC's role. The roles coded
included First Lady, wife, mother, professional in her own right, and fashion
leader. The last category was used when people referred to her appearance only
(e.g., her hairstyles or her clothing or hats). The stories and pictures were
also coded in terms of the event they portrayed. The main events mentioned were
Whitewater, the healthcare effort, and HRC's trips to India and China.
A new variable called "tone," was developed based on the adjectives
that were used when people described how HRC was represented in news stories or
in the pictures they remembered. Many people were classified as neutral in
their comments about the pictures because they simply stated what they
remembered without any evaluative adjectives. In fact, 76% of the respondents
were classified as neutral for the picture they recalled. In evaluations of
what kind of person HRC appeared to be in the news stories, 7.5% of the
respondents used no evaluative adjectives.
We also asked a series of questions to assess people's attitudes
toward HRC, President Clinton and the role of First Lady in general. Most of
the respondents to this survey were favorable toward both HRC and the President
(Table 3). In looking at those people who either agreed or strongly agreed with
statements about HRC, the lowest was 53% for her being honest and the highest
was 83% for her being strong. The unweighted average for her was 68% either
agreeing or strongly agreeing in the positive direction.
The respondents were less positive toward President Clinton (Table
3), but they still mostly liked him. The lowest score was 42% of the
respondents saying he was a good leader. The high score was 73% indicating he
was knowledgeable. His unweighted average approval rating was 56%.
In looking at both HRC as a First Lady and the role of the First
Lady in general, 65% of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that she was a
good role model as First Lady and 65% felt she was powerful as First Lady.
These respondents also felt that First Ladies, in general, are an important role
model (76%) and were more equally divided as to whether First Ladies, in
general, are powerful (48%).
Given Colbert's (1995) findings about how stereotyped or
conventionalized news photos of the First Lady have been, we expected that when
people were asked to recall a news photo or image, there would be a marked
homogeneity in what "pictures" were described, and that most of what would be
remembered were the predominant photos of HRC in her professional role. In
looking at the results of what was recalled about stories, 87% of the
respondents could name a story about HRC. Further, 76% of the people who
recalled a story cited either her role in the healthcare arena (46%) or
Whitewater (30%), both categories of which involve HRC's professional roles.
The next leading role after these two was fashion (9%). Only 6% of the
respondents cited a story that referred to HRC as either a wife or a First Lady.
As we expected, then, people were definitely biased toward the two big stories
in which HRC's role was a professional one, rather than as a First Lady or in
her more personal roles. This is similar to findings that most of the coverage
of HRC has been focused on these issues/events (e.g., Winfield, 1995).
In startling contrast to the percentages for story recall, 78% of
the respondents recalled pictures of HRC in a fashion, wife, mother, First Lady
or daughter role. Only 22% of the respondents recalled an image of HRC in a
professional role. As Colbert's examination of the NYT and the Washington Post
showed, photos of HRC were dominated by professional images, such as the health
care hearings. But these were not the images that people remembered, and thus
this finding is inconsistent with the fact that two-thirds of all news photos of
HRC show her in a professional role (Colbert, 1995).
There were some additional interesting aspects of recall of
pictures of HRC. About three-quarters (76%) of these people could recall one
image, 42% could recall two images and only 12% could come up with three
separate images. For the first image recalled, 77% of what people recalled were
"specific visuals," while 14% stated simply a verbal description of HRC that did
not appear to refer to a picture. (For example, a respondent might say, "HRC is
selfish and aggressive.") A "specific visual" was often clear enough that we
could find the referent image. There were a number of frequently mentioned
specific visuals. An example was "after the Oklahoma bombing with all the kids
sitting in front of her and Bill talking." Or, "She is standing by a Christmas
tree wearing a red dress and looking nice." Some of the sample quotes are shown
in Appendices 1-3, along with the news photos we suspect were stimulating the
visual memories. In fact, it was interesting to see how many of the quotes we
could actually connect with a specific news photo. Of the 756 references to
images of HRC, 31% seemed to be to specific pictures of her. These results
probably reflect the stereotyping and conventionalizing (Colbert, 1995) of news
images of HRC.
One of our research questions concerned whether there were
relationships between what media people used for news and whether they recalled
positive, negative or neutral stories and pictures. Neither regressions
examining evaluative tone of recalled pictures or stories, nor regressions
examining people's assessments of whether newspaper, news magazine or television
coverage of HRC was positive, negative or neutral, showed significant effects of
how much television, news magazine, or newspaper use people reported. Thus,
media dependency patterns were not, as had been expected, related to evaluative
images of HRC coverage.
In looking at what predicted memory for pictures, the number of
pictures recalled was predicted by a younger age (sR^2 = .045; p=.0001), higher
income (sR^2=.031; p=.005), and being Republican (sR^2=.051; p=.0007). The
number of pictures remembered was not predicted by any of the media use
variables nor attitudes toward HRC or Clinton. Greater readership of news
magazines did, however, predict whether at least one picture was recalled
(sR^2=.018; p=.046).
In a series of regressions, we examined what variables would
predict a positive tone associated with an assessment of the type of person HRC
was perceived to be in all news stories in general. After partialling out the
effects of the basic demographic variables (i.e., gender, age, education, income
and party affiliation), we found that having a positive attitude toward HRC was
correlated with a positive tone for story recalled (sR^2=.1296; p=.0001). Also
associated with a positive tone for all stories in general was a positive
assessment of HRC coverage in newspapers (sR^2=.019; p=.046), a positive
assessment of HRC in news magazines (sR^2=.044; p=.12), and greater belief in
the importance of First Ladies in general (sR^2=.02; p=.02).
In looking at what variables predicted a positive tone for pictures
recalled (after the effects of gender, age, income and party affiliation were
partialled out), we found that a positive attitude toward HRC (sR^2=.03;p=.04),
and more frequent television news use (sR^2=.015;p=.045) were the only two
significant predictor variables.
We also asked the respondents to characterize the tone (positive,
negative, and neutral) of stories in newspapers, in news magazines, and on
television. After removing effects of demographics and media use (all of these
were non-significant predictors), a negative tone of television news coverage
was predicted by a person's positive attitude toward HRC (sR^2=.028; p=.04) and
positive attitude toward Clinton (sR^2=.055; p=.0021). For the perceived tone
of newspaper stories, again attitude toward HRC (sR^2=.04; p=.025) and attitude
toward Clinton (sR^2=.034; p=.004) were both inversely related to tone. Last,
perceived negative tone of news magazine stories was predicted only by one's
positive attitude toward Clinton (sR^2=.352; p=.03). These results are
particularly striking. The more people approved of the Clinton's, the more
negative they perceived newspaper, television and news magazine coverage to be.
Discussion
The results of the survey show quite strongly that people recall
news stories that concern HRC's role as a professional, mainly in terms of her
roles in health care and Whitewater. But in direct contrast, and in spite of
the preponderance of news photos that show her in a professional role (Colbert,
1995), people mostly recall pictures of HRC in the more personal roles of
fashion leader, wife, mother, First Lady or daughter. These images, presumably
ones that get us closer to the "real Hillary," are those that have the greatest
memory impact on people.
To our surprise, we did not find that people who more heavily
relied on newspapers for their information about HRC remembered more
professional pictures of HRC. In fact, regardless of media used, people
remembered personal role pictures, although they remembered professional role
stories. It seems likely that people use news stories to get "news" about the
First Lady in terms of her role as a political player, i.e., as a newsmaker.
But they use photographs of HRC to get an image of who she is as a person--a
wife, a mother, a woman, or as someone whose manner of dress or hairstyle
reflects that kind of person she is trying to communicate herself to be.
Also to our surprise, more frequent use of newspapers, news
magazines and television news did not predict either evaluative perceptions of
HRC stories or pictures. Media use also failed to be related to how positively
or negatively people thought the coverage of HRC was in newspapers, news
magazines or television news.
Of course, there are major caveats to consider when making
inferences from this data set. We have already discussed the problem of the
limited geographic nature of the survey. Second, we relied on people's ability
to recall, rather than presenting them with images to "recognize." There may be
very high levels of recognition of professional photos of HRC, but the recall
process itself somehow favors accessing of personal-role photos. In addition,
we asked people to describe the photos verbally. This is likely a difficult
task requiring that people translate a "picture in the head" to a phrase or
sentence. Given this constraint, it was impressive that we could "identify" as
many specific photos as we were able to.
Finally, we make some comments about why we chose specifically the
First Lady to be the focus of these studies. The first reason is that Hillary
Clinton is a newsmaker, probably as no other recent first ladies have been, with
the possible exceptions of Jackie Kennedy, who was more a glamorous than a
political player, and Eleanor Roosevelt, who was much more a political player
than glamorous. Second, Hillary Clinton, as any First Lady does, serves as a
role model for many people in a variety of ways. She is a model as a hostess, a
wife, a daughter, a mother, and as a First Lady of the nation. This
multiplicity of roles makes looking at HRC particularly important and
fascinating. Hillary Clinton is also a celebrity, that is, someone that just
about every American knows quite a bit about, and therefore we can ask people to
recall stories about her and pictures of her, and get some reasonably informed
responses. The bottom line is that looking at HRC is important because she
provides so many prisms through which we can examine the "news image."
Finally, we hope that this paper, in spite of its limitations,
provides an initial step toward connecting research about media content with
research about how people somehow intake and process all that content. As we
have seen, the "active processor" is a critical reality here. Media content
does not predict people's perceptions. Instead, people apparently pick and
choose what stories and what photos will remain with them, and which ones are
consistent with their own point of view. This means two things. First, it is
not appropriate to assume what the impact of media content will be on people.
And second, it is not appropriate to assume content from what people say they
were exposed to. Instead, it is critical to look both at content and at news
consumer response to that content. Only then will we have a truly accurate
representation of how news stories and photographs create their impact.
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