Informing Citizens: How People with Different Levels of Education Process Television, Newspaper, and Web News

Abstract

This experiment tested the interaction of media channels (television, newspaper, and the Web), time delay, and the education level of audience members, using three memory measures. The lower education group encoded, stored, and retrieved television news information best while they showed less memory capacity for newspaper and Web news. For the higher education group, the opposite pattern emerged. They had better memory for newspaper and Web versions of news, compared to television. With time delay, these patterns persisted. They were also robust when controlling for participant evaluations of the news stories in terms of interest, informativeness, and understandability.

Notes

This article was submitted and accepted under the editorship of Donald G. Godfrey.

Note. *F tests nominator df = 2, denominator df = 76.

†F tests nominator df = 1, denominator df = 38.

¹There were 21 men and 20 women, and 20 low and 21 high education participants. There were an equal number (10 each) of men and women in the low education group, and 11 men and 10 women in the high education group.

²About 14% were below 30 and 2% were above 49.

³Around 56% were online once a week, 17% were online between 2 to 3 times a week and 27% were online more than 4 times a week. Close to 29% read a newspaper once a week, 29% did so 2 to 3 times a week, and 42% reported that they read a newspaper more than 4 times a week. Exposure to some form of television news occurred once a week for 60.3% of participants, 2 to 3 times a week for 24.3% of participants, and more than 4 times a week for 15.4% of participants.

⁴ t (18) = 4.69, p < .001 and t (18) = 7.51, p < .001.

⁵ t (18) = 4.17, p < .001 and t (18) = 3.7, p = .002.

⁶ t (18) = 5.27, p < .001 and t (18) = 6.1, p < .001.

⁷ t (20) = −4.65, p < .001 and t (20) = −3.18, p = .005.

⁸ t (20) = −3.2, p = .004 and t (20) = −2.14, p = .05.

⁹This gene alone was not responsible for the evolution of speech. Yet, scientists view it as a major refinement towards that ability. Speech, in less sophisticated form, might be much older.