Out of sight out of mind : factors in low levels of international news knowledge

Abstract

This study considers the impact of pre-existing knowledge and attitudes on the cognitive processing of international television news messages. This research is valuable because the world is becoming increasingly interconnected through globalization. It is imperative for the continued growth of the United States of America to have a strong knowledge base regarding international news. The study begins by examining the impoverished state of Americans international news knowledge. It integrates different theoretical models for why international news knowledge is so low including integrated network models of human memory and Lang's Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Message Processing. An experiment then tested the impact of attitude accessibility and an impoverished knowledge network on recognition and storage of information in long-term memory. The results are significant for pre-existing knowledge and attitude accessibility on long-term storage, as well as for pre-existing knowledge predicting attitude accessibility. However, attitude accessibility acted oppositely to what was hypothesized. This study recommends that journalists seize on Americans pre-existing knowledge to increase the probability viewers will store their international news stories in long-term memory. It is a strong case for using analogies.