Stay Tuned: Effects of Tabloid TV News Content and Structural Features on
Viewer Processing, Memory, and Channel Changing Behavior in Young Adults
In an attempt to increase viewership among young adults, many television news
programs emphasize sensational news content and sometimes add tabloid-style structural
features to news reports. But viewer evaluations from previous research suggest news
viewers do not prefer tabloid style TV news, based on responses to questions such as how
enjoyable, believable, and informative the stories were (Grabe, Lang, & Zhou, 2003;
Grabe, Zhou, Lang, & Bolls, 2000). However, the data were self-reported and thus there
may have been a normative bias in the responses. Further, those studies were conducted
with older viewers, so the results may not generalize to the younger viewers so highly
sought after by news executives, as studies have found some differences in the way older
and younger viewers process and remember television news messages (Fox et al., 2003).
This study investigates the effects of sensational television news story content and
tabloid style presentation features on attention, arousal, recognition memory, self-report
evaluations and channel changing behavior for young adult viewers. The study also
examines processing, memory, and behavioral differences based on the sensation seeking
personality variable, differences in motivational types, and gender.
Design: The study design is a 2 (content) x 2 (structure) x 6 (stories) x 2 (gender)
x 2 (high/low sensation seeking) x 4 (motivational type) design.
Stimuli: The stimuli are six sensational content stories (drive-by shooting,
tornado, fire, KKK rally, flag burning, abortion protest) and six public affairs stories
(plant layoffs, patent lawsuit, sewer repairs, municipal employee healthcare, standardized
high school exams, steel production). Two versions of each story were constructed – one
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Convention