Does Listening to the News vs. Reading It Change What We Remember?
One of the major shifts in media consumption in recent years has been the rise in popularity of streaming audio platforms (e.g., podcasts) as a source for news and information. So while streaming channels have greatly changed how people consume news, could they also be altering how listeners interpret it? This Journal of Marketing Research study shows that when people listen to (vs. read) a news story, they are more likely to walk away with a more superficial understanding of it that privileges the more emotionally arousing parts of the story. For example, when people hear (vs. read) a story describing both the risks and benefits of a health product, those who listen to the story are more likely to recall its dangers, whereas those who read it tend to have a more balanced recall of its risks and benefits. Moreover, the authors find that this bias amplifies when listeners are distracted—as is often the case in natural settings where we listen to the news while driving or cooking. The findings suggest that audio technologies may be altering consumer knowledge about news and other information compared to print media.
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What You Need to Know
- Listening to (vs. reading) news can systematically alter what we learn from it and can lead to biases.
- Because the pace of incoming information is harder to regulate when listening to (vs. reading) a news story, listeners tend to process it more selectively by paying more attention to the sensationalist elements—which are often the more negative details.
- When producing longer-form news and communications for audial (vs. print) platforms, managers and media outlets should place greater emphasis on the less arousing elements in the story to provide balance.
Abstract
This research investigates how listening to versus reading news alters its interpretation. A proposed theory argues that because listeners (vs. readers) are less able to regulate the rate of incoming information, they selectively attend to the more emotionally arousing elements in a story, such as those that are more negative. This selective attention leads listeners to form different interpretations of news than readers, the nature of which depend on the valence of the story. Six main experiments and three supplemental ones (N = 14,744) support the predicted effects on impression formation as well as the proposed mechanism. For example, participants who listened to (vs. read) a mixed-valence news story on the risks and benefits of a product processed its negative details more selectively, and in turn formed more pessimistic impressions of its safety. Moderators are also explored, showing that negativity biases similar to those observed for listeners arose among readers when their control over information flow was restricted, and that a positivity bias arose among listeners when the positive (vs. negative) information in a story was more surprising. Theoretical contributions to previous research on reading versus listening comprehension are discussed, as are the substantive implications for media firms and consumers.
Shiri Melumad and Robert J. Meyer, “How Listening Versus Reading Alters Consumers’ Interpretations of News,” Journal of Marketing Research. doi:10.1177/00222437241280068.