How news consumers make political decisions

Photo by Frerieke

I previously wrote about whether the press can persuade people politically, but just as important is understanding how people make political decisions when they consume news reports. Specifically, how does their long-term memory influence their decision-making.

Well, one argument suggests people use one of two different thinking — or cognitive — processes (Price & Feldman, 2009).

First, there is the memory-based process.

In the memory-based process, news consumers search their memories for relevant information to help them make a decision on the information before them. They will most likely look for the most accessible and recently used memories. This form of recollection is  known academically as the cognitive accessibility theory, which argues that the most recently activated memory nodes will be given more weight in the decision-making process than older memories (Valentino, 1999). Once the information from a person’s memories are added to the information being consumed at that moment, the person can make a decision about the news piece and the arguments therein.

The second process for decision-making is slightly different. Instead of making a decision after careful consideration, the second process is instantaneous.

The online process (Lodge, McGraw, & Stroh, 1989, in Price & Feldman, 2009) argues that people make political evaluations and decisions at the moment of news exposure and store these evaluations as an ongoing tally. Then, when a decision on a piece of news is required, the consumer takes a look at the scoreboard to decide what conclusion to make. Rather than relying on memory and the content of the current message, consumers employing the online process rely on the scoreboard for making a decision.

I don’t know which one is better, if it’s possible to say one is better than another, but like I said before, it gives you something to think about the next time you take in some sort of political news coverage.