The Cognitive Impact Of Television News

Research shows that, while people around the world consistently nominate television as their most important news source, much of the content of news bulletins is lost to viewers within moments. In response, Barrie Gunter argues that this can be explained by the way in which televised news is written, packaged and presented.

First Published in 1990. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume presents original, ‘big picture’ perspectives on news framing. Each chapter in this volume will feature an individual or team of framing analysts who take a reflective look at their own empirical work. The editors' goals are to identify the influences that determine the use of different theoretical and methodological approaches, and to provide interpretive guides to news framing scholars regarding what news frames are, how they can be observed in news texts, and how framing effects are uncovered and substantiated in cultural, group, and individual sites. Doing News Framing Analysis II will continue the work of its predecessor by giving talented framing scholars the space to write about their work and bring readers closer to the framing research project. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com.

Television news range among the most extensively investigated topics in communication studies. The book contributes to television news research by focusing on whether and how news viewers who watch the same news program form similar or different interpretations. The author develops a novel concept of interpretation based on cognitive complexity research. He strongly argues that qualitative and quantitative research methods work best if they complement one another.

Assessing the relative strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative methods, this book examines the methodological perspectives adopted by media researchers in their attempts to understand the nature of media in society.

A New Semiotics is an introductory guide to the field of semiotics. Assuming no prior knowledge of semiotics, this accessible text takes a fresh look at semiotics and suggests that many of the forebears and many contemporary contributors to semiotics have misconstrued the nature of their work. The authors start off by asking ‘What is semiotics?’ and go on to outline a journey towards a new semiotics. It offers a clearer way forward out of the prison of complexity invented by the fathers of contemporary semiotics—Peirce and Saussure. Each chapter ends with a summary, exercises and discussion points for students, and further reading. This is the ideal text for introductory courses in semiotics within linguistics, communication studies, visual arts and related areas.

Much of framing scholarship focuses either exclusively on the analysis of words or of visuals. This book aims to address this gap by proposing a six-step approach to the analysis of verbal frames, visual frames and the interplay between them—an integrative framing analysis. This approach is then demonstrated through a study investigating the way words and visuals are used to frame people living with HIV/AIDS in various communication contexts: the news, public service announcements and special interest publications. This application of integrative framing analysis reveals differences between verbal frames and visual frames in the same messages, underscoring the importance of looking at these frames together.

The author examines how our experiences with media affect the way we acquire knowledge and how this knowledge creates consequences for attitudes and behaviour.