Images that go with news articles evoke emotions and frame citizens’ perceptions of politics. In recent times, thanks to the mobile technology, videos have been added to the texts to provide more meaningful contexts to the readers. But there comes a question: Do news videos exert a more powerful impact on readers than articles?
Thomas Powell, Knut De Swert, and Claes de Vreese at the University of Amsterdam and Hajo Boomgaarden at the University of Vienna conducted a study to understand the impact of videos attached to news articles on readers’ perception in the context of European refugee crisis.
The authors recruited 923 Dutch adults aged 18 to 75 in the experiment.
Results showed that those who read an article had stronger intentions to help refugees than those who watched a video. To help refugees, they shared the stories, signed a petition and donated money. Irrespective of which fames have been used (for example, victim, intruder or threat), articles had more powerful impacts.
The findings suggest that news videos do not deliver more powerful effects than news articles despite their increasing prominence and intuitively impactful qualities.
To read the full text of the study:
Powell, T. E., Boomgaarden, H. G., De Swert, K., & de Vreese, C. H. (2018). Video killed the news article? Comparing multimodal framing effects in news videos and articles. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 62(4), 578-596.
