Page 38 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

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The politician thus must realize that when he or she proposes something, the
idea will not be judged solely on its own merits. The public's attitude toward
the politician also will come into play. It's often not what was said but who
said it that accounts for the public response.
This also affects public attitudes toward the media. When the media expose
a politician, the public response often is to "kill the messenger"—that is, to
react negatively not to the exposed politician but to the media that exposed him
or her.

SOURCE: Charles E. Osgood, George J. Suci, and Percy H. Tannenbaum, The Mea-
surement of Meaning, 1957.
Guido H. Stempel III

CO-ORIENTATION is a term for the cognitive transaction between individ-
uals. This approach to communication research was first used by Theodore New-
comb in a 1943 study of political attitudes among college students using his
famous A-B-X paradigm. The measurement analyzes the views of two individ-
uals or groups in relation to each other, demonstrating how they view a situation
and also how each perceives the view of the other. In the model, X is an external
object to which two persons (A and B) co-orient. Newcomb found political
attitudes shifted as students became more involved in group memberships at
college and became socialized to the views of opinion leaders. Steven Chaffee
and Jack McLeod have used the model mostly for public opinion research. They
have shown the model to be useful for linking interpersonal and mass com-
munication through the influence of opinion leaders. In co-orientation, the
success of communication rests on such criteria as agreement, accuracy, con-
gruency, and understanding. Those people who perceive they agree with one
another are most likely to communicate their views to each other. The co-
orientation approach has been used to ascertain such things as exposure to po-
litical information, voting plans, perceptions of a campaign, and personal
orientation to an election. Chaffee and McLeod have suggested that mass media
seem to work best for accuracy and understanding in messages but that congru-
ency and agreement are most affected by social interaction. They point out that
co-orientation is an important communication system for a pluralistic society.
People can agree on content of a message and their understanding of it but still
maintain differing opinions. {See also Steven H. Chaffee; Jack M. McLeod.)
SOURCES: Steven H. Chaffee and Jack M. McLeod, "Sensitization in Panel Design:
A Coorientational Experiment," Journalism Quarterly, Winter 1968; Theodore M. New-
comb, "An Approach to the Study of Communicative Arts," Psychological Review, No.
6, 1953.
LeAnne Daniels

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