Blackwell Reference Online

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Of the numerous functions the news media perform in contemporary society, perhaps none is so basic as their role in distributing information. In many democratic theories, broad and equitable distribution of timely →  news is viewed as necessary for sound →  public opinion and popular decision-making (→  Political Discourse ). Students of journalism, mass communication, and politics have consequently invested considerable effort in studying the ways people process news stories and how much information – and what types of information – they retain as a result. While democratic concerns animate much of the research in the area, however, its significance extends well beyond this particular normative framework. Because news processing and retention are centrally implicated in mass learning and →  Persuasion , they are critical in any social system, no matter the governing ideology of the state. Learning from the media is often conceptualized as an essential first step in many models of media effects.   In seeking to understand the ways people learn from the news, most studies adopt an information-processing perspective (→  Information Processing ). By the “processing” of news, researchers generally refer to an interrelated series of cognitive and behavioral phenomena, including exposure to news stories, paying attention, encoding information, comprehending and interpreting its →  meaning ... log in or subscribe to read full text