Seriously, I almost forgot about this post

George Carlin has a great bit about things that bring us together, such as when you look at your watch, look up and don’t know what time it is. Yeah, that kind of stuff. (And before you start asking, “hey, where’s Carlin in this blog post?” well, don’t worry — the video is at the end.) Well, here’s one more thing that brings us together: We don’t remember the news really well.

I learned that tidbit of information not by forgetting what I’ve read or seen or heard in the news, but from a research study that helped inform my thesis. (And yes, I’m kind of glad that I didn’t forget about this particular bit of research data.) Here’s what I wrote in a paper about how the mind processes information contained in a news story:

Critical scholarship has shown that few people can recall many of the news items they have watched minutes before and that “many confuse, or misunderstand key aspects of the message content (Couldry, Livingstone, & Markham, 2007, p.32).” As Wyatt, Mazza, and Snyder (1993) argue, there is no evidence supporting the belief that consumers have a perfect memory of the news coverage they consume.

So when I wrote about a public opinion survey the Department of National Defence conducted about Canadian’s opinion’s on the military, I wasn’t surprised by this finding from telephone surveys and focus group interviews:

Canadians are less likely to recall recent media coverage of the Canadian Forces than they have been since tracking began in 2008.

Then there was this:

A repeated theme in the focus groups was the desire to see more positive stories in the media about the Canadian Forces, rather than what they perceive as a focus on the negative.

If they can recall fewer stories about the military, how can they remember the overall impressions of what that coverage entailed? The fact that news consumers have a hard time remember news they have just consumed leads one to wonder what they have retained in their memories.

It’s possible that their beliefs were formed based on accessing the most recent memories in their mind, a cognitive — or memory recall — process known as the cognitive accessibility theory. In this process, the most recently activated memory nodes are given more weight in the decision-making process than older schemas and memories (Valentino, 1999, p.294). The study mentioned that data collection took place during the launch of the mission to Libya — I wonder then how the coverage of Canada’s participation in that mission affected the beliefs of the average news consumer.

Cognitive dissonance, or dissonance theory (O’Keefe, 2009; Stroud, 2008; Claussen, 2004), predicts that news consumers will makes decisions about media exposure based on their personal and political beliefs. Cognitive dissonance theory argues that news consumers will only consume information that fits their pre-existing schemas. Information that contradicts or questions pre-existing values and beliefs can make a person uncomfortable. Cognitive dissonance theory expects that people will try to avoid this uncomfortable cognitive experience at all costs.

It’s also entirely possible that what they are remembering is what they have chosen to remember, those stories that stick out to them because they disagreed with the content. This idea of audience bias could explain why they felt there wasn’t enough “good news” about the military: They only remember the bad news. (Tangent: There may have also been “good news” stories about the military, but when decisions are made about what stories are to receive more play than others, the “bad news” received more attention than the “good news.” Just a thought.)

Now, before you think I’m just here to bash this study, let me tell you I’m not. Every research project has its strengths and weaknesses. This kind of qualitative study has a number of benefits: It provides a rich view of the subject under consideration and allows the voices of the participants to really shine through. This public opinion poll also added a quantitative analysis to add weight to the findings and help make them generalizable. It’s helpful if you’re making policy, but like any study, there are inevitable questions in the findings that should give pause to anyone using the data for strategic decision making.

And as thanks for reading this post, here’s some George Carlin.