MULTIMEDIA EFFECTSON NEWS STORY CREDIBILITY, NEWSWORTHINESS, AND RECALL

Derrick Ho, Youn-Joo Park, Alice Roach, Yue Sun

University of Missouri, Columbia, MO

INTRODUCTION

Multimedia

Internet-based

Convergence Journalism

LITERATURE REVIEW

Multimedia Effects

Multiple modality story

Variables

Credibility

Newsworthiness

Recall

RESEARCH QUESTION

RQ： Do multiple multimedia elements influence an online news story’s credibility, newsworthiness, and recall?

Hypothesis:

Multimedia elements will enhance a news

story’s:

(1) Credibility

(2) Newsworthiness

(3) Recall

METHOD

Experiment

One-Factor Within-Subjects Design

Post-Test Only

Variables

IV: Modality

1) text-only

2) text with multiple multimedia elements

(text plus photos, audio, and video)

DV: Credibility, newsworthiness, and recall.

Sample

(1) Sixty students from Midwest University.

(2) Random sample & snowball sampling.

Procedure

(1) News stories and questionnaires posted on SurveyGizmo.

(2) Emails to subjects.

Stimuli

(1) Text-only stories: a) carbon footprint of orange juice, b) baseball bat production, and c)

rope climbing to maintain wind turbines.

(2) Multimedia stories: a) immigration and assimilation in U.S. high schools, b) sea

turtle extinction, and c) safety of tap water.

(3) 500 words text & video without stamp.

(4) Random orders according to last name.

METHOD CONTINUED

METHOD CONTINUED -- MEASURES

Credibility Believability, objectivity, trustworthiness, fairness,

accuracy, and thoroughness of the news’ story. 9-item Likert-type scales.

Newsworthiness Significance or effect, interest or relevance. 9-item Likert-type scales.

Recall Comprehensibility Fill-in-the-blank & multiple choice questions.

RESULTS Use repeated-measures ANOVA to analyze each hypothesis. Credibility

Supported (F(1, 47) = 8.394, p = .006 < .01 → Text-only < Multimedia). Newsworthiness

Supported (F(1, 47) = 36.726, p = .000 < .001 → Text-only < Multimedia).

Recall

Supported (F(1, 36) = 8.969, p = .005 < .01 → Text-only < Multimedia).

Credibility Newsworthiness Recall0.00

1.00

2.00

3.00

4.00

5.00

6.00

7.00 6.67

6.00

0.82

6.20

4.65

0.74

Multimedia Stories

Text-only Stories

Mean Score

DISCUSSION

Implications

Multimedia stories are perceived as more credible and

newsworthy than text-only stories, and participants could

remember more details from stories with multiple

multimedia elements than from stories that were text-only.

Limitations

Time control

Future Research Number of multimedia elements

Type of multimedia elements

More dependent variables

CONTACT INFORMATION

Yue Sun

Master’s student, Strategic Communication,

School of Journalism, University of Missouri,

Columbia, MO.

Email: ysdy4@mail.missouri.edu