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Memory for images intense enough to draw an administration's attention: Television and the “war on terror”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

David Hutchinson  and
Samuel D. Bradley
David Hutchinson
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, 301 Meserve Hall, Boston, Massachusetts 02115 [email protected]
Samuel D. Bradley
Affiliation:
Department of Advertising, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas
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Abstract

In the recent United States–led “war on terror,” including ongoing engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, news organizations have been accused of showing a negative view of developments on the ground. In particular, news depictions of casualties have brought accusations of anti-Americanism and aiding and abetting the terrorists' cause. In this study, video footage of war from television news stories was manipulated to investigate the effects of negative compelling images on cognitive resource allocation, physiological arousal, and recognition memory. Results of a within-subjects experiment indicate that negatively valenced depictions of casualties and destruction elicit greater attention and physiological arousal than positive and low-intensity images. Recognition memory for visual information in the graphic negative news condition was highest, whereas audio recognition for this condition was lowest. The results suggest that negative, high-intensity video imagery diverts cognitive resources away from the encoding of verbal information in the newscast, positioning visual images and not the spoken narrative as a primary channel of viewer learning.

Keywords

war on terrortelevisionmemorycognitive capacitypsychophysiology
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 31 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

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