Dumb TV Shows Make You Dumber?

Without a reporter looking to interview someone about this research I would have missed it.  The study's main point? Watching dumb TV, wait for it, makes you dumber.  Shocked?

A story about the study is here.  And the journalism guy in me admires this lede:

Take note, fans of mindless reality shows like "Jersey Shore": New research suggests watching something dumb might make you dumber. In other words, you are what you watch.

That last line, for a lot of folks ... ouch.  This is basically a priming experiment, at least as described in the news story.  I'm having a hard time finding the actual study in Media Psychology, but as it's described subjects were randomly assigned to a control group or two conditions and read a script (important methodological note -- read, not watched) and then answered some political knowledge questions.  Those who read the "dumb" script, and you can read the story yourself for details, did less well on the political knowledge test. 

Priming is the theoretical underpinning here, and I can buy that.  It's not that people were made dumb by the script so much as they were primed to approach a test in a dumb frame of mind, to slip into a mode in which serious thought is set aside.  Reading a dumb script, and we can assume watching a dumb show, somehow slips our mind into neutral and deeper thought gets shoved aside.  This is not unlike watching a smart program or listening to classical music and then perhaps doing better on a test not associated with either.

Keep in mind, though, that priming effects are short-lived, or as we say in social science, the effect quickly erodes over time.  So you'd need a constant Jersey Shore fix to keep that dumb frame of mind going strong.  Then again, anyone who watches that program in the first place probably already qualifies as not exactly a rocket scientist.

A reporter from Atlanta may call me to discuss this, which will be kinda fun if it happens.  How often do you get the chance to make fun of Jersey Shore?  Not enough, that's my position.

Priming and Levels of Political KnowledgeBeware the Moderates

We often study -- or expect to find -- nice and neat linear relationships among our variables, but it's often more complex than that.  A recent Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly article proves this point by noting theoretical explanations that argue those moderate in political knowledge act very differently than those with high or low political knowledge.

In this study they were looking at priming.  What's that?  It's how some message or factor influences how we process or remember subsequent messages.  Think of the times you've gone to a movie theatre and watched a scary film.  Come out more cautious?  Looking deeply at shadows you normally ignored?  That's priming.  It fades after a time.

According to theory, moderate levels of political knowledge should result in greater priming effects by political messages.  What theory?  Let's not get into that today, because I feel lousy and don't want to spend all this time typing, so take my word for it.

The JMCQ piece found exactly this, that "individuals with minimal knowledge are more likely to reject media primes, as are those extremely knowledgeable -- albeit for entirely different reasons."

That's damned important, that caveat.  Yeah, low and high knowledge folks act the same way in response, but for very different reasons.  High knowledge folks tend to be more experienced with politics, with news, to be more critical because they've been the subject of stories or coverage or know people who have.  Low knowledge people are more critical because of a lack of trust in institutions but mostly because they have little direct experience with media.  Thus the moderates, they're the ones most open to media primes.

There's an ultimate message here, but I'm struggling to decide exactly what it may be -- other than moderates (I consider myself politically a radical moderate who hates everyone equally) are not to be trusted.

Owning a TV Station

It's kinda cool, and a bit retro, that my college bought a TV station.  Given our Internet age, it's as if we're living That 70's Show. 

But there are some interesting research possibilities in having your own station, concepts you can study by having control over content and programming.  A lot of these possibilities are beyond the scope of what people know and get into other research areas, such as management and audience studies, but I think if the folks who work with the station and video can figure out ways to manipulate programming we can better understand how people learn about certain issues -- our main topics usually being poverty and health.

How do you do that?

Not the old fashioned way, like in print, where you might randomly assign readers to different versions of stories or even editions of the newspaper.  That's hard to do with a television signal.  But the folks who do this stuff can devise a series of programs on an issue and explore how much this raises audience awareness or likelihood to seek out some health care.  Even better, from a research standpoint, they could craft webcasts where you do get real manipulation of content to explore what works and what doesn't work, hopefully something beyond the tired old studies of college sophomores sitting in a laboratory, watching TV and filling out a questionnaire.

Political learning is a bit more difficult, but I think it might be interesting to do one week of newscasts in one style, measure responses, and then do the next week in a somewhat different style, and measure responses (learning, interest, etc.).  Maybe one week could focus more on straight news, the next week on more narrative styles of storytelling, and see then which seems to work.  The stories themselves would not be equivalent -- so it's hardly a perfect experiment -- but you gain a lot in generalizability.

But the area most ripe for this kind of research is priming.  TV news, in particular, has a powerful priming effect, as was detailed at length in the excellent book, News That Matters.  I'd love to see a research program using WNEG that attacks some area -- health or public affairs or whatever -- along these conceptual lines, given the access and control one can have over content in a station owned by a mass comm program like Grady.