The Reflective Cue: Prompting Citizens for Greater Consideration of Reasons
Address correspondence to Edith Manosevitch, PhD, The Department of Communication, The Max Stern Academic College of Emek Yezreel, Emek Yezreel 19300, Israel. E-mail: manosevitch{at}gmail.com.
This research explores means by which news media may help promote public awareness and consideration of reasons for supporting differing perspectives on public issues. The study draws on the concept argument repertoire (Cappella et al., 2002) and recent work on citizens’ exposure to diverse issue positions and rationales (Mutz, 2006). Merging scholarship in political psychology and information processing, the study introduces the reflective cue—a contextual cue designed to fit news media formats and induce more systematic processing of news. A controlled experiment (n = 265) documents support for the study's predictions that the exposure to the reflective cue in news would have positive effects on information-processing behavior and cognitive orientations related to the role of informed citizenry and media in democracy. Interestingly, exposure to the cue did not enhance subjects’ expression of issue-position reasons. I discuss possible explanations and implications of the findings, and offer directions for future.
An earlier version of the paper was presented at the International Communication Association's annual conference, May 24–28, 2007, San Francisco, USA.
This research is part of the author's doctoral dissertation (Manosevitch, 2007), which was directed by David Domke at the University of Washington in Seattle. This research was supported in part by the Dan David Prize Scholarship for Young Researchers, Tel-Aviv University, Israel, and the Mortor Board/Tolo Foundation Scholarship. An earlier version of the paper received the Mass Communication Theory and Research Division's "Top Paper Award" at the Doctoral Honors Seminar of the National Communication Association, University of Oklahoma, July 2005.
Received for publication May 7, 2008. Accepted for publication March 26, 2009.