Data in Table 6 indicated that interaction effect on viewers’ recall of news crawl content was also not significant (F (1, 141) = 1.39, p = 0.24).
Table 6
ANOVA: Predicting interaction effect of number of news crawls and content relevancy on viewers’
recall of news crawl content.
RQ2 questioned whether number of news crawls and the relevance between the
news crawls and main news would affect viewers’ information seeking need? Data in Table 7 showed that main effect of number of news crawls had no significant impact on viewers’ information seeking need (F (1, 141) = 2.74, p = 0.10). The results indicate that overall, when the relevance between news crawl content and main news content is controlled, more or fewer news crawls in the news clips was not likely to influence viewers’ information seeking need or the urge to further discuss relative information with other people after they watch the news clip.
There was also no significant main effect of relevance between content of new crawls and main news, on viewers’ information seeking need (F (1, 141) = 0.49, p = 0.49). The results indicate that overall, when the number of news crawls is controlled,
Variance Source df Mean Square F p
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content relevancy between news crawls and main news was not likely to influence viewers’ information seeking need. The information seeking need in the relevant (M = 5.03) and non-relevant (M = 5.22) condition was quite similar.
Table 7
Two-Way ANOVA : Predicting viewers’ information seeking need.
Information seeking need
Mean Number of news crawls fewer more F p
5.36 4.89 2.74 0.10 Relevant Non F p
Relevant Content relevancy
Between news crawl 5.03 5.22 0.49 0.49 and main news
Note. *p < .05.
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Discussion
This thesis was concerned with the effects of number of news crawls and content relevancy between news crawls and the main news, on viewers’ attention and recall of news information. As outlined earlier, this area of research has little empirical and theoretical support for predictions about the directions of the effects, yet debates surrounding the issue of usage of news crawls on viewers’ information processing is nevertheless controversial. As previously discussed, the major tendency of previous literature reviews suggested that too many news crawls in news reports creates
complexity which is very likely to lead to dysfunctional information processing (Lang, 2000; Berlyne, 1971). However, if all elements in the news report are relevant with each other, viewers are likely able to recall news information under a news crawl crowded circumstance (Lang, Zhou, Schwartz, Bolls, & Potter, 2000). Overall, results of this thesis suggest that content relevancy caused significant impact on viewers’
attention and recall of news information. Contradictory to previous findings of literature review and predictions of this thesis, main effect of number of news crawls did not seem to cause significant effect on viewers’ attention and recall. In addition, absolute relevance between news crawl content and main news content did not induce better attention and recall of news information as proposed.
It had been suggested by literature review, that an appropriate amount (the
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optimal level of arousal acceptance vary among individuals) of incoming stimuli (Rimmer, 1984) from television news is likely to attract viewers’ attention and had been proven to improve memory for television news messages (Bradley, 1994).
Conversely, the amount of stimuli that exceeds one’s optimal level of arousal would likely cause lost of interest and attention shift (Berlyne, 1960). Crawls (in this thesis which include numbers and content relevancy of crawls) in news reports of course, are one of many stimuli to viewers’ eyes whenever they turn on television news (Lang, 2000). Lang’s (2000) limited capacity model also proposed that one’s ability to digest information is limited. More news crawls is equivalent to more news information, when exceeding an individual’s limited information processing capacity, is likely to lead to poor memory. In addition, incongruent and multiple elements like the weather conditions, stock ticker, sports scores and headlines unrelated to the main news topic, can result in information overload (Potter, 2002). In other words, inserting unrelated information that adds more new details to the news story is likely to cause the task of processing messages to be more difficult for viewers (Lang, Zhou, Schwartz, Bolls, &
Potter, 2000; Lang, 2000; Bradley, 2007).That non-relevance between news crawl content and main news content induced a stronger arousal to television news viewers than relevant news contents, as well as the non-significant impact of number of news crawls to viewers’ attention and recall, contradicts with the literature review and
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expectation of this thesis. Failure of prediction may be the result of negligence of viewers’ television news viewing habits in Taiwan. It is likely that viewers have gotten used to the crowded television news screen and frequent use of fancy news crawls in light of the prevalence of internet and thriving high technology applied in television news over the years. Viewers may have developed the habit of looking for quick and condensed news information when they turn on the television news, just like what news producers had predicted (McClellan & Kerschbaumer, 2001). In sum, when news crawl contents are not related to the main news content, which present information other than the main news topic, viewers’ are prone to be attracted to news crawls in the sense that news crawls provide additional information.
That viewers’ recall of main news content was significantly affected by content relevancy, in particular, non-relevance between news crawl content and main news content, extends the implications discussed above. As outlined in literature review, incoming stimuli that is able to induce better attention, is likely to lead to better memory during information processing (Lang, 2000). That viewers’ attention to main news content was not significantly affected by content relevancy yet recall was, seem to indicate that attention to main news content was distracted in the beginning but was regained during later television news viewing process. This speculation cannot be confirmed however, due to the lack of examination of viewers’ attention shift during
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television news viewing. Future studies are suggested to further examine this part of research. In addition, that non-relevance leads to better recall seem to indicate that once viewers find that news crawl content does not provide additional information, they switch attention to main news content. However, that news crawls are condensed and easy to absorb versions of information could also be the result of viewers’
distribution of attention for news crawl contents. This part is unknown however, due to the lack of empirical evidence and examination of this thesis. In addition, whether viewers are more likely to mainly focus on the main news rather than news crawls is also not clear. Future research is also suggested to further investigate viewers’
potential habit of watching television news.
This thesis also found that, more number of news crawls does not necessarily lead to poor recall of news information. In fact, main effect of number of news crawls does not interfere viewers in television news viewing at all. This result contradicts with literature findings which proposed that too many news crawls adds message complexity and will lead to inadequate recall of information.
In an attempt to manipulate the experimental condition and obtain results closely linked to the main focus of this thesis, this research reported herein is limited in scope.
It only deals with the effects of number of news crawls and content relevancy between news crawls and the main news on attention and recall of news information. It is
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worth putting into consideration that other elements in the experimental news clips might have also affected viewers’ recall and attention yet was not discussed in this thesis. In particular, structural features such as edits and cuts of the news story footage, as well as the color and font styles of news crawls, are likely to affect viewers’
attention to the news story. In addition, the topic of Tembin typhoon chosen for the sample news clip of this thesis may be somewhat distant to some participants, due to the time being of the experiment which was taken four months after the disaster.
Whether participants personally experienced the trauma caused by typhoon Tembin was another concern which may result in exceptionally high attention and recall of news information. Whether this type of natural disaster topic was prone to attract participants’ attention should also be taken into consideration. Should the news topic be entertainment or other popular topics, would participants show more attention and respond in better recall of news information? Furthermore, demographics of
participants such as age, gender, family and educational background were excluded from research scope. Also, number of participants recruited was prone to generate findings which may not be representative of the overall television news viewers in Taiwan.
To fill the gap, there are a number of ways in which future studies might help to resolve these issues. A more refined measurement of internal and external factors,
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such as age (Collins, 1970; Drew & Reeves, 1980); gender; education level (Katz, Adoni & Parness, 1977); social and environmental factors (Rouner, 1987) influencing television news viewing process and the level of distraction, would certainly be necessary. Future studies are suggested to explore these factors to determine their effects on information processing as a whole, especially when these factors are prone to generate different reactions and behaviors among individuals. Because there is little empirical and theoretical literature specifically regarding the effects of news crawls on viewers’ attention and recall of television news information, another suggestion for future research would be to look into the effect of news crawl designs (such as colors, fonts, sizes, presentation format, and screen display) on viewers’ attention and recall of television news. In addition, whether interaction effect of number of news crawls and content relevancy would be more significant, if external and internal factors were taken into account, is worth looked into.
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Conclusion
In summary, relevance between news crawl content and main news content caused greater significance on viewers’ attention and recall than effect of number of news crawls. In particular, non-related news crawl content and main news content led to better attention and recall. More news crawls in news reports does not necessarily lead to poorer recall of news information, nor do they increase recall. Recall of a general idea of news contents (such as typhoon Tembin took place in southern Taiwan and that it caused severe disasters) is more likely to occur than detailed information (such as types of damage and its aftermath) of the news report, under the
circumstance where viewers have to deal with four news crawls.
Judging by how television news is presented in Taiwan, it is very likely that viewers have adapted and developed certain habits to process information in a busy television news setting. This could result in some viewers’ intention to absorb only the shortened type of quick news updates, such as news crawls, when watching television news. Or, switch attention back and forth from news crawl content to main news content. Changing the channel is another possible option for some other viewers.
This thesis contributes to the lack of literature review on main effects of number of news crawls and relevance between news crawl content and main news content, on viewers’ attention and recall of news information. This thesis also has important
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implications for television news productions. Many news producers believe that providing lots of information in the form of news crawls is the solution to attracting viewers’ attention (Potter, 2000). When emergency news occurs, especially natural disasters such as typhoons, television news networks in Taiwan are very much
addicted to adding news crawls providing related typhoon updates. During non-urgent times, news crawl contents are mostly unrelated to the main news content, according to observation. It is suggested by the results of thesis that usage of news crawls should come with discretion. As much as some producers believe that viewers, especially the young aged groups, eventually get used to the web-like television screen, results have shown that adding more news crawls does not attract more of viewers’ attention and affect recall of news information. Thus, the manner of news networks in Taiwan presenting large numbers of news crawls running at all sides of the screen in typhoon news reports, is not necessarily useful in attracting viewers to stay tune. Based on this finding, this thesis suggests that news productions provide news crawls with quality rather than quantity. Such as, news crawls with news updates that are urgent and the latest rather than around the clock news crawls with less crucial information.
Secondly, based on the results found on content relevancy to viewers’ attention and recall, this thesis reckons that during breaking news times, such as occurrences of typhoon, news crawls at the same time providing related typhoon updates does not
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seem necessary. By observations of television news in Taiwan, news reports update frequently with typhoon developments, thus use of news crawls be omitted or be provided with other topics of news information different from the main news content, seems more beneficial for viewers.
In conclusion, use of news crawls is recommended for it is useful and necessary to a certain crowd of viewers. News crawls can be beneficial when viewers have no time to watch television news reports or newspapers. Just as some people read only the headline in newspapers when they have no time to read the whole story, television news crawls in this case, are similar to newspaper headlines which provide viewers information in a more efficient and convenient way. Despite the many reasons
influencing viewers to stay tune, use of large numbers of news crawls alone, does not guarantee to fulfill this goal. Content relevancy, specifically the function of news crawls to provide additional unrelated news information with the main news content, proved to be more essential to television news viewers.
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References
Arceneaux, K. (2010). The Benefits of Experimental Methods for the Study of Campaign Effects (Vol. 27, pp. 199-215): Routledge.
Ashley, S., Poepsel, M., & Willis, E. (2010). Media Literacy and News Credibility:
Does knowledge of media ownership increase skepticism in news consumers?