The Locus of Message Meaning: Differences between Trained Coders and Untrained Message Recipients in the Analysis of Alcoholic Beverage Advertising

Abstract

Media scholars often warn against inferring effects when examining media content because message meaning depends on the interpretations of message receivers. Unfortunately, typical message receivers and trained coders conducting content analyses are likely to perceive messages differently because of varying perspectives and processing strategies. Accordingly, this study examined the extent to which trained coders and untrained message receivers converged in their coding of print-based alcohol advertisements. Results from a traditional content analysis of 40 randomly selected print alcohol ads using two sets of trained coders were compared with results from a receiver-oriented message analysis, which used typical message-receivers (n = 520) as coders. Significance tests indicated that message receivers and trained coders disagreed frequently-often dramatically-on virtually all types of content. Of particular interest, message receivers tended to perceive more frequent portrayals of underage individuals, more appeal to underage drinkers, more frequent sexual connotations, more frequent messages that encouraged drinking a lot of alcohol, and fewer moderation messages. The results demonstrate that potential differences in processing strategy and perspective between trained coders and message receivers can lead to very different conclusions that have implications for the understanding of message effects.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was funded in part by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grant number R01-AA12136. The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Bruce Austin with the complex statistical analysis, and thank Amber Coral-Reaume Miller, Yuki Fujioka and Petra Guerra for supervising parts of the data collection.