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HOW VIEWERS VIEW THE NEWS
A NewsLab Summary
Research on television news suggests strategies for making
stories more memorable. But most of it is written in dense academic language
and published in journals that aren't read by working journalists. This
summary--in simple language--is based on a review of 15 years worth of
academic research into the effects on viewers of various types of content
and production of television news. The research itself is cited and summarized
in an annotated bibliography.
Images and visual content—Consider the impact
- Compelling negative images affect what viewers remember. Studies
have found that viewers remember best what they see during and after
negative images, but not what they see before the negative images. And
they don’t remember what they hear before and during the negative images.
- Stories with pictures are remembered better than those without. But
negative, emotional visuals can make stories harder to remember.
Audio-video redundancy—Connect the elements
- Research does not support the common newsroom rule that any video
is better than none. If visuals are not linked to content they can become
a distraction. Routine video (file tape, meetings, arrivals and the
like) that doesn’t match the content may make it harder for people to
remember the content of a story.
- When video and audio don’t match, people can remember what they saw
just about as well as they can when the two are redundant, but they
remember much less of what they heard.
- When video and audio match, viewers understand stories better and
remember the details of those stories better than stories where the
video doesn’t match the audio.
Editing pace and style—How fast is too fast?
- Quick edits increase attention but only to a point. If you’re cutting
between different scenes, rather than editing within a visual sequence,
there is a falloff in detail memory as edit speed increases. If you
stay within a sequence, it doesn’t seem to matter how quick your edits
are—memory for detail just keeps getting better.
- A combination of fast-paced editing (changing from scene to scene)
and emotional content can overload viewers. They pay attention and remember
they saw something, but they can’t recall the details. If you have one
or the other (fast edits or emotional content) people pay attention
and are better able to recall details.
- Edits within a scene increase both attention and memory. But edits
between scenes decrease memory for information following the edit, for
about 2 or 3 seconds.
Production techniques—Grabbing attention can affect credibility, memory
- Production features like music, sound effects, slow motion, the use
of flash frames as transitions between shots, and the obtrusiveness
of the reporter’s voice can increase attention, but they appear to have
no effect on memory.
- Viewers say they find stories produced using these techniques (music,
sound effects, slow motion, flash frames, and obtrusive voice) less
enjoyable, less believable, and less informative than stories with identical
content produced without them.
- Graphics in stories can decrease memory for audio information at the
time of the graphic, particularly if the content is difficult or unfamiliar.
This was true even when the audio matched the graphic.
- Animated graphics hold attention better than full-screen graphics
or B-roll, and they improve viewers' understanding and memory, especially
for stories rated difficult to understand.
Story structure--How to tell memorable, accurate stories
- A study that compared a typical inverted pyramid-style news story
to a story containing the same information arranged chronologically
found that people remembered the chronological story 15 percent better.
- Using words high in imagery improves both attention and memory for
stories without pictures.
- Using personal examples to illustrate a trend can give viewers the
wrong impression if the examples are not consistent with the trend.
Seeing more examples of a problem leads people to think the problem
is more serious than the underlying statistics reflect.
- People believed a problem was more serious when they saw stories featuring
an emotional victim as opposed to an unemotional victim or no victim
at all.
Newscast structure--Watch what goes where
- Stacking a newscast by putting similar stories together may impede
recall of stories. This "clustering effect" can apply to stories
with similar topic and context, and to stories with the same visual
format. For viewers, the result is "meltdown," where elements
of stories merge or become confused with elements of another.
- Variety improves viewers' memory. While viewers tend to remember stories
with video better than those without, putting an anchor read story between
two video stories improves memory for the anchor story.
- When programming that leads into a newscast is arousing, viewers tend
to not remember much that happens during the first two minutes of the
newscast.
- In general, viewers tend to remember best the last stories they see
in a newscast, the first stories less well, and the middle stories the
least. Emotional stories and stories with good video can overcome this
effect.
- People pay more attention to stories that are teased. They remember
stories better that are teased, and they understand them better. Recaps
can improve understanding for stories, and can decrease memory for stories
that are not recapped.
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