An Experimental Investigation of Source Confusion in Televised Messages: News Versus Advertisements

The study reported here employed a mixed factorial design to experimentally investigate the effects of message format on memory for the source of information. Political messages were presented in 3 types of formats: conventional political ads, news‐like political ads, and news stories. Memory for th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human communication research 2007-07, Vol.33 (3), p.379-395
Main Authors: Yegiyan, Narine S., Grabe, Maria Elizabeth
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Advertising
Communication Strategies
Experiments
Factorial experiments
Information
Information Sources
Memory
Misconceptions
News Reporting
Political advertising
Politics
Sociology
Sociology of communication and mass media. Sociolinguistics
Sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture
Studies
Television
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Summary:The study reported here employed a mixed factorial design to experimentally investigate the effects of message format on memory for the source of information. Political messages were presented in 3 types of formats: conventional political ads, news‐like political ads, and news stories. Memory for the source of information was measured directly after exposure and a week later. The results of the experiment suggest that format and time had a significant effect on memory for the source. Subjects identified the source of information with about the same level of accuracy across formats right after exposure. A week later, subjects were significantly more inept at attributing information contained in news‐like ads to its source than doing so for conventional ads and news stories. At that point, information presented in news‐like ads was incorrectly attributed to news about 70% of the time.
ISSN:0360-3989
1468-2958
DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00304.x