This document discusses various theories of how people process information from media and communications. It covers information processing theory, which views people as complex information processors. Schema theory explains how people organize information into mental frameworks. The elaboration likelihood model describes central and peripheral routes to persuasion. Transportation theory discusses how narratives can engage audiences. Neuroscience perspectives view information processing as biological and social.

1. Chapter 8:
Theories of Media Cognition
and
Information Processing
Toby Zhu
10/10/2017

2.  Mass Communication
 message
 medium
 producer
 receivers
 social, economic,cultural
milieu
 Pedagogy
 teaching and learning content
 curriculum
 teacher
 students
 social,economic,cultural
milieu
third parties: parents, government, churches, etc
gatekeepers:
It's more or less if not all about
getting information acrossed or processed.

3. Information Processing Theory
 A theory for understanding how
people deal with sensory
information, and make sense of it.
 It assumes that individuals operate
like complex bio-computers, with
certain built-in information-handling
capacities and strategies.
more information avoiders than information handlers
screening out irrelevant information (environmental stimuli)
cognitive processing mechanisms as intuitive survival tools
from hostile environment with predators (Wood & McBride,
1997.

4. Information Processing Theory
Research example:
Total Cell phone Use and Academic Performance
Multitasking-distraction plus run out of “RAM”-
cognitive resources
Limited cognitive resource: If
more resources
are directed toward one task,
another task will be
performed badly.

5.  Entertainment V.S. News
 People have developed
information processing skills
and strategies to make
sense of the entertainment
content but that interfere
with effective interpretation
and recall of news.
 Question:
 How do you understand the
above statement?
 Too many stories
 Too much information
 Too little time
 Poorly structured and less
appealing stories (narratives)
 Irrelevant information

6. Schema Theory

7. Schema Theory
Schema Theory: Information processing theory arguing
that memories are new construction constructed from
bits and pieces of connected experiences and applied to
meaning-making as situations demand
Schemas: Cognitive structures (patterns) built up as
people interact with the environment in order to organize
their experience.

8. Schema Theory
 Doris Graber
 Schemas' Four functions for news consumers
1. They determine what information will be noticed,
processed, and stored so that it becomes available
for later retrieval from memory.
2. They help people organize and evaluate new
information, fitting it into their already-established
perceptions. People do not have to construct new
concepts when familiar information is presented in
the news.

9. Schema Theory
 Doris Graber
 Schemas' Four functions for news consumers
3. They make it possible for people to go beyond the
immediate information presented in news report,
helping them fill in missing information.
4. They help people solve problems because they
contain information about likely scenarios and ways
to cope with them; that is, they serve as scripts. This
makes them important tools in helping people decide
how to act.
 Scripts: Forms of schema, a standardized generalized
episode.

10. Schema Theory
 Example 1:
 Voters/news consumers making sense of news
 Paid selective attention to extract political knowledge
 Searched related information
 Brought well-formed schemas to the interpretation of
political news
1. Simple situation Sequences
2. Cause-and-Effect Sequences
3. Personal Judgement
4. Institution Judgement
5. Cultrual Norms and American Interests

11. Schema Theory
 Example 2:
 Schema-inconsistent advertising
 Surprise the audience with unexpected patterns
Questions:
1: Any examples from TV advertisement??
2: What techniques did those advertisements employ
to get the message into the viewers' cognition?
link

12. Schema Theory
Hostile Media Effect
 Idea that partisans see media as less
sympathetic to their side, more sympathetic to
the opposing side, and generally hostile to their
point of view.

14. Persuasive
Communication
Motivated to process?
personal relevance;
need for cognition; personal
responsibility; etc
Ability to process?
distraction; repetition;
prior knowledge; message
comprehensibility; etc.
Nature of cognitive process:
(initial attitue, argument quality, etc.)
Favorable
thoughts
predominate
Unfavorable
thoughts
predominate
Neither or
neural
predominate
Cognitive structure change:
Are new cognitions adopted adn stored in memory?; are
different responses made salient than previously?
Central positive attitude change
Attitude is relatively endruing,
resistant, and predictive of behavior.
Central negative attitude change
Yes, (Favorable) Yes, (Unfavorable)
Yes
Yes
Peripheral attitude shift
Attitude is relatively temporary,
susceptible, and unpredictive
of behavior.
Peripheral cue present?
positive/negative affect;
attractive/expert sources;
number of arguments; etc.
Retain or
regain
intital
attitude
Yes
No
No
No
No
The Elaboration Likelihood Model

15.  Terms
 Elaboration likelihood model (ELM)
• Model of information processing that seeks to explain the
level of elaboration, or effort, brought to evaluating
messages
 Peripheral route
• Information processing that relies on cues unrelated to the
issues at hand
 Central route
• Information processing characterized by heightened
scrutiny of information related to the issue at hand.

16.  Terms
 Heuristics
• Simple decision rules that substitute for more careful
analysis of persuasive messages.
 Heuristic-systematic model
• Dual-process model of information processing that argues
for the parallel operation of systematic and heuristic
processing

17.  Applications
1. Research trails in scores of settings
2. Information campaigns

18.  The theory that argues that being “absorbed” into
a media narrative “is a key mechanism whereby
the story can influence one's real-world beliefs
and behaviors.... Once individuals become
immersed in the story, perceive it as a realistic,
and identify with story characters, there is a
greater probability that narrative-based belief
change will occur” (Kim et al., 2012, p. 473)

19.  Transportation (Green & Brock, 2000)
 “a convergent process, where all the person's mental systems
and capacities become focused on the events in the narrative”
 Identification (Cohen, 2001)
 “An imaginative process through which an audience member
assumes the identity, goals, and perspectives of a character”
 Involves a cognitive response (perceived similarity) and an
emotional response (empathy).

20.  Sheila Murphy
1. The audience member loses awareness of his or
her surroundings and all cognitive facilities are
focused entirely on the mediated world.
2. Transported viewers feel heightened 'emotions and
motivations'...A transported viewer is so completely
immersed in the media world that his or her
responses to narrative events are strong, as though
they were actually experiencing those events.
3. When viewers emerge from the transported state,
they are often changed as a result of being so
deeply engrossed in the narrative.

21. Example 1:
 Smoking quitting (Hyun Suk Kim and his colleagues, 2012)
 “Smokers who read a news article in which an examplar
served as a delivery vehicle for health information about
successful smoking cessation experienced a greater degree
of engagement with the story and its characters, which in turn
was associated with elevated quit intentions, compared to
those exposed to an article with no exemplar”.

22. Example 2:
 Cervical cancer and the need for Pap tests (Murphy et al.,
2013)
 Comparing the effectiveness of a specifically prepared
dramatic narrative video (The Tamale Lesson) and a
nonfiction narrative featuring doctors, health experts, and
charts (It's Time) in imparting information
 Thes result indicates “both were successful in raising
awareness of cervical cancer and creating positive attitudes
toward testing”. However, “the fictional narrative was more
effective, especially as viewers' level of transportation
increased”.

23. Example 3:
 The effect of entertainment television on intention to become
an organ donor (Susan Morgan & colleagues, 2009)
 Employing actual episodes of prime-time network programs
CSI:NY, Numb3rs, House, and Grey's Anatomy, each of
which had organ donation as a plot line, they argued that “the
influence of the media on modeling behaviors is likely to be
depended on how emotionally involving and absorbing people
find a particular episode”.
 “emotional involvement in these programs (transportation and
identification) significantly affected intention to talk to
someone about organ donation, urging others to become
organ donors, and deciding to become an organ donor”.

24. Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model (E-ELM)
 Absorption in a narrative and response to its characters in a
narrative enhance persuasive effects and suppress
counterarguing if the story's implicitly persuasive content is
conterattitudinal.
Entertainment-education (EE)
 Occurs when prosocial messages are embedded in popular
media content.
Entertainment Overcoming Resistance Model
 Entertainment media features can facilitate involvement
with characters and/ or narrative involvement leading to
story-consistent attitudes and behaviors by overcoming
various forms of resistance.

25. *Predicted by the extended elaboration
likelihood model
**Predicted by social cognitive theory
*Transportation;
*Identificationz;
Parasocial interaction
Enjoyment;
Identification
Narrative structure;
Parasocial interaction;
liking
Perceived similarity;
Identification
**Perceived similarity
**Identification
**Perceived similarity
with an efficacious
character
Parasocial interaction
Reduces
Reduces
Reduces
Increases
Changes
Increases
Changes
Reactance
Counterarguing
Reactance
Selective
avoidance
Perceived
norms
Perceived
vulnerability
Reactance
Story-consistent
attitudes and
behaviors
Entertainment feature Resistance Entertainment Overcoming
Resistance Model

26. Delay Hypothesis
 Idea that media effects can occur over time as
people engage in information processing and recall,
often leading to incorrect cognitions.
Sleeper Effect
 Idea that attitude change not immediately
measurable after reception of a persuasive
message might occur over time as recipients forget
factors typically influencing persuasion.

27. Affective intelligence
 Idea that affect (emotion) and reason beneficially work in
concert in information processing.
Motivated reasoning
 Idea that affect (emotion) and reason work in concert in
information processing, but not necessarily beneficially as
individuals are psychologically motivated to maintain and
find support for existing evaluations.
Backfire effect
 People who receive unwelcome, correcting
information not only resist that change to their
views, they come to hold their views original,
erroneous position even more strongly.

28. Neuroscience Perspective
 Views information processing as a complex
system of interlinked and interdependent
relationships of people's biological and social
environment.
Nature/Nurture Divide
 Question of the source of human attitudes and
behavior, genetics and brain physiology vs.
learning and culture

29. Neuromarketing Research
 Marketers' use of biometric measures to
find the “magic keys” to consumers
behavior.
Top-down/Bottom-up theory of political attitude
formation
 Ideological preferences are products of
environmental conditions (top-down) and
internal predispositions (bottom-up) that
motivate people to hold liberal or conservative
policy preferences.

30. It's more or less if not all about
getting information acrossed or processed.
1. We are humans who must interact with and
make sense of a complex world.
2. Messages from the mass media constitute
a very large part of that interaction and complexity.
3. We are actually pretty good at processing
the content we consume.