Page 142 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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SELECTIVITY
America and England, seditious libel law was frequently used to punish virtually
any expression that challenged or criticized government or the crown. Such a
view of seditious libel survives in many twentieth-century nations, even though
it is unconstitutional in the United States.
A mere seven years after the First Amendment was ratified in 1791, Congress
passed the Alien and Sedition Laws. Those measures, which expired in 1800,
punished by fine, imprisonment, or deportation persons who defamed the federal
government or brought it into disrepute. While contemporary laws such as the
Smith Act (U.S.C.A. #2385A) may punish advocacy of the overthrow of the
government by force or violence, they are stopped short of punishing persons
for abstract discussion of overthrow of the government.
In 1964, in the landmark free expression case of New York Times v. Sullivan,
the U.S. Supreme Court said, "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in
this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of his-
tory." Further, Justice William Brennan's opinion said citizens not only had the
right to criticize government but had the duty to criticize.
SOURCE: Donald M. Gillmor and Jerome A. Barron, Mass Communication Law, third
edition, 1979.
Herb Strentz

SELECTIVITY. Among the earliest findings of communication research was
that many people remained unmoved by persuasive and propagandistic efforts,
with some people going to great length to protect their belief systems from
information that might threaten them. One researcher even referred to media
audiences as "obstinate." Selective exposure, selective perception, selective at-
tention, and selective retention were identified as processes through which peo-
ple may maintain currently held beliefs and attitudes in the face of potentially
contradictory evidence.
Conclusions about the audience and the persuasive process have been con-
siderably modified given more recent research and changes in the media envi-
ronment. Yet, the idea that people approach media messages with motivations
to accept, avoid, or modify the messages based on the content of their currently
held belief systems remains important.
Briefly, selective exposure is a process by which individuals will avoid ex-
posure to media messages they expect will disagree with their currently held
beliefs. An example would be newspaper readers who avoid the newspaper's
editorial page because they expect it to be offensive to their political view.
Selective attention and perception occur once exposure has taken place and
may be more important than selective exposure because the content of media
may be difficult to predict. Selective perception occurs when a receiver perceives
a message in a way that supports a previously held position. For example, view-
ers of presidential debates with different political leanings may perceive the
same candidate's performance in very different ways. Selective attention means