Who Gets the News? Alternative Measures of News Reception and Their Implications for Research

TLDR

The study examines how audiences receive 16 high‑profile news stories from 1989. Using a national sample of U.S. adults, the authors compare education, media use, interpersonal communication, and prior political knowledge to predict recall of those news events.

Abstract

This article investigates patterns in audience reception of 16 news stories that received prominent media coverage in the summer and fall of 1989. Using a national sample of American adults, it compares education, self-reported rates of media use, interpersonal communication, and prior levels of general political knowledge as predictors of individual differences in recall of current news events. Results indicate that respondents' background level of political knowledge is the strongest and most consistent predictor of current news story recall across a wide range of topics, suggesting that there is indeed a general audience for news and that this audience is quite sharply stratified by preexisting levels of background knowledge. Thus, in survey research applications that require estimates of individual differences in the reception of potentially influential political communications, a measure of general prior knowledge—not a measure of news media use—is likely to be the most effective indicator. The article further concludes that the tendency of individuals to acquire news and information on a domain- or topic-specific basis fails to undermine the value of political knowledge as a general measure of propensity for news recall.