Page 119 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

108 D. ROSKOS-EWOLDSEN, B. ROSKOS-EWOLDSEN, F. DILLMAN CARPENTIER

model of political priming. Applicability refers to deliberate judgments of
the relevance of information to the current situation. They maintain that
information (e.g., constructs that are activated by the media) that is
judged as applicable is actively thought about in working memory. To
digress for a moment, short-term memory refers to that information that
is currently activated within the memory system. Working memory is a
subset of short-term memory and involves that information that is con-
sciously available. Within Price and Tewksbury’s model, constructs that
are activated by the media and judged as applicable to the current situa-
tion are brought into working memory and subsequently influence how
the message is framed or interpreted. On the other hand, those constructs
that are activated by the media and judged as not applicable to the current
situation are not brought into working memory, but the activation of these
constructs by the media means that they may act as a prime.
Price and Tewksbury’s model treats message framing (e.g., how the
message is thought about) as resulting from more conscious judgments of
information relevance and political priming as operating in a more auto-
matic fashion as a consequence of temporary increases in the activation of
various constructs by the media. Unfortunately, the priming component
of that model has not been subjected to empirical test. In many of the
media priming studies, the prime is presented at least 24 hours prior to
the measure of the prime’s effect (Iyengar et al., 1982; Iyengar & Kinder,
1987; Krosnick & Kinder, 1990), and in some instances, the media cover-
age that acts as a prime may have occurred weeks earlier (Iyengar &
Simon, 1993; Krosnick & Brannon, 1993; Pan & Kosicki, 1997). Conse-
quently, the time span involved in political priming makes it unlikely that
priming, in the sense used by cognitive and social psychologists, is influ-
encing the evaluations of the president. In the original sense, priming
results in a temporary increase in the accessibility of a node (i.e., concept)
that dissipates relatively quickly. It is perhaps unfortunate that the cogni-
tive/social priming research is cited as support in the political realm,
because the phenomenon does not fit the characteristics of priming. It is
more likely that the frequent and repeated stories on a particular issue
(e.g., the Gulf War) increases the chronic accessibility of the information
(see Lau, 1989; Roskos-Ewoldsen, 1997; Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., in press;
Shrum, 1999; Shrum & O’Guinn, 1993). Rather than calling this phenome-
non political priming, perhaps it would be better if we referred to it as
political cultivation.

Models of Media Priming in Other Media Domains

The only model in this area focuses on health appeals. Recently, Pech-
mann (2001) proposed her stereotype priming model in which the media
act as a prime in public health campaigns. Past research on media health