The Media Psychology Blog

A friend in the news industry sent me this blog posting by Robert Niles (USC Journalism School) that I just got around to reading, “When journalists hate journalism”

Niles’ reports that unlike other industries, such as music, where professionals in the industry are the biggest fans of the industry, that:

Many journalists despise TV news. They hate watching it, they hate producing it, and, given the opportunity, they turn it off and ignore it.

My journalism students this semester went off on this topic in class one day, raging about the rigid format, the simplistic reporting and cynicism that they found in TV news reports.

I had assigned my students to produce a multisource, multimedia feature story on a topic of their choice. Several incorporated video segments, and the influence on these students’ video storytelling was clear…

It turned out to be the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and The Onion..

When asked why not local or cable news, the students complained about industry wide phenomenon of “titilation, fear mongering, salacious coverage, and anchors and reporters glammed up to look like models.” But Niles notes that in response to the assignment, most students transferred from one existing convention to another in producing their spots. He says:

But, even as they reject those conventions, they still need some formula within which to express themselves. They either unable or unwilling yet to devote the effort to create a new convention for news communication. So they’re willing to follow others that get them closer to what they want to say.

It’s interesting to think about the extraordinary success of Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report (although both very funny and talented guys) is being as much about what it isn’t as what it is. Political humor isn’t new, although perhaps enjoying unprecedented popularity. (Do you subscribe to The Borowitz Report)? Humor provides an effective way of challenging the status quo without the negative fallout (for the most part) of direct confrontation. Humor, because it engages both our affect and cognition, is a powerful way to spread messages; particularly in a world where horizontal communication is so readily available. While powerful, it is also not dogmatic; it still allows for individual interpretation. Unlike engaging affect through fear-mongering, with humor the results are pleasurable and at the same time reinforce a sense of self-efficacy. We know that affect enhances learning; humorous affect enhances retention. Fearful affect tends to enhance retention, however it also distorts the retained content. Kandel showed that frequent exposure to fear and pain rewires the brain in ways the don’t completely go away even when the stimulus stops.

All this leaves me wondering: How much rejecting of the old conventions happens before the new emerges, not on the periphery but as the dominant formula? Is it gradual or sort of a tipping point explosion?

Keep me posted if you get an inkling of the transformation–it’s only a matter of time!

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Kandel, E. (2007) In Search of Memory. New York: WW.Norton.

Kaplan, R. M., Pascoe, G. C. (1977) Humorous lectures and humorous examples: Some effects upon comprehension and retention. Journal of Educational Psychology. Feb Vol 69(1) 61-65

Lim, S-L., Pessoa, L. (2008) Affective learning increases sensitivity to graded emotional faces. Emotion. Feb Vol 8(1) 96-103.

Mobbs , D., Greicius M. , Abdel-Azim, E. , Menon, V., Reiss, A. (2003) Humor Modulates the Mesolimbic Reward Center. Neuron, Volume 40 , Issue 5 , Pages 1041 – 1048.

Zillman, D.. et al (1980) Acquisition of information from educational television programs as a function of differently paced humorous inserts. Journal of Educational Psychology. Apr Vol 72(2) 170-180.