Revisiting the Effects of Case Reports in the News

Ostfeld, Mara Cecilia; Mutz, Diana C.

doi:10.1080/10584609.2013.799106

Cited by 34 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…For example, white American study subjects supported a more generous immigration policy when the photograph accompanying a news story depicted light-skinned immigrants. Where the exemplars were darkskinned, subjects favored steeper restrictions on immigration (Ostfeld & Mutz, 2014; see also Andersen, Skovsgaard, Albaek, & de Vreese, 2017).…”

Section: Stories' Audiences: Who Is "Like" the Protagonist?mentioning

confidence: 99%

When do stories change our minds? Narrative persuasion about social problems

Polletta¹,

Redman²

2020

Sociology Compass

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Scholars in a number of disciplines have sought to assess the power of reading or viewing a personal story to modify people's beliefs. However, the research, which has been pursued under diverse programs, has produced conflicting findings. We focus on the persuasiveness of personal stories about problems that are structural (rather than individual) and whose solution requires government action. Overall, the research suggests that although personal stories can overcome people's tendency to resist new information, they often do not do so. People's preexisting beliefs, assumptions, and stereotypes affect their willingness to be absorbed by a story, to empathize with the stories' protagonists, and to endorse the message communicated by the story. We argue also for a sociological perspective on narrative persuasion, one which, unlike the mostly experimental research conducted so far, pays attention to the context in which people encounter stories and to the norms shaping people's assessment of a story as credible, relevant, and important.

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Section: Stories' Audiences: Who Is "Like" the Protagonist?mentioning

confidence: 99%

When do stories change our minds? Narrative persuasion about social problems

Polletta¹,

Redman²

2020

Sociology Compass

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“…When manipulating the similarity of the ordinary people shown in the stimulus material, the authors did not only vary the visual appearance (skin colour) of the depicted immigrants, but they also varied the degree of active assimilation efforts. Ostfeld and Mutz (2014) themselves noted that 'Americans cite immigrants' lack of willingness to assimilate to American ways of life as among their greatest objections to immigration' (p. 9). Their results too may be driven by the deservingness of cases that likely was evaluated higher when they made an effort to assimilate and give something in return, corresponding to the criteria for deservingness spelled out above.…”

Section: The Deservingness Of Casesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What have I done to deserve this? The role of deservingness in effects of ordinary citizens as cases in the news

Hopmann¹,

Skovsgaard²,

Elmelund‐Præstekær³

2017

European Journal of Communication

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Previous studies have shown that cases in news reporting have substantial attitudinal effects on the audience. The direction of results has been mixed, however. Some studies reported that news audience change opinion in favour of the position of the case, while other studies reported the opposite. In this article, we emphasize the deservingness of cases as a potential factor explaining the differences in previous results. In two population-based survey experiments, we empirically investigate how exposure to cases in the news affects the audience's opinion about the political issue covered. Drawing on insights from welfare state studies, we argue that the deservingness of cases drives the effect of cases on public opinion. Our results confirm this assumption. In a concluding section, we discuss the implications of our results.

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“…While opinion, attitude formation, and behavioral intent enjoy attention among scholars of emotion, behavior itself (e.g., participation, action) remains largely understudied. According to Zillmann (2006), empathy is likely in response to emotional exemplars in media content that might result in "emotive action" (Zillmann, 2006, p. S221) on behalf of those featured in the mediated content (Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, 2002;Cao, 2013;Ostfeld & Mutz, 2014). It is time to test longitudinal trends in participatory behavior.…”

Section: Rational and Emotional Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In summary, this argument goes that subjective human interest angles personalize and emotionalize factual information in ways that render it useless for informed citizenship (Gilens, ; Habermas, ; Miller & Leshner, ), leading to apathy in participation (Delli Carpini & Keeter, ; Popkin & Dimock, ). Yet human interest news formats, marked by emotional reportage on people who are impacted by social problems, are popular among news users, have been shown to promote political knowledge gain among citizens least interested in politics (Jebril, Vreese, Dalen, & Albæk, ), and shape engagement (Bas & Grabe, ) and policy support (Ostfeld & Mutz, ). Ironically, journalism has a proud tradition of wielding emotional content in service of policy change.…”

Section: What Is Citizen Participation?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Informed Citizenship in a Media-Centric Way of Life

Grabe

Myrick

2016

J Commun

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Two trends are prominent and universal to contemporary democracies: Voting rates are in steady decline while media use is growing. A transdisciplinary vantage point might help to redirect research trajectories that lead to alarming conclusions of democratic crisis. To that end, dominant ontological positions will need revision or perhaps replacement. This essay calls for (a) knowledge to be explicated beyond the written word, with serious consideration of the information value of images in the conceptualization of informed citizenship; (b) the deliberate entanglement of emotion with knowledge acquisition and political participation in explication and operationalization of active citizenship; and (c) reconsideration of electoral activities as the index of active citizenship, especially in the context of interactive media.

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Revisiting the Effects of Case Reports in the News

Cited by 34 publications

References 39 publications

When do stories change our minds? Narrative persuasion about social problems

When do stories change our minds? Narrative persuasion about social problems

What have I done to deserve this? The role of deservingness in effects of ordinary citizens as cases in the news

Informed Citizenship in a Media-Centric Way of Life

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