“What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion

Bibliographic Details
Main Author:	Landreville, Kristen D.
Language:	English
Published:	The Ohio State University / OhioLINK 2010
Subjects:	Communication uncertainty political discussion satire news mass media interpersonal communication ambiguity
Online Access:	http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1276198165

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spelling	ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-osu12761981652021-08-03T05:59:47Z “What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion Landreville, Kristen D. Communication uncertainty political discussion satire news mass media interpersonal communication ambiguity Constructive interpersonal political discussion among citizens is traditionally regarded as an indicator of a healthy democracy (e.g., Fishkin, 1991, 1995; Habermas, 1962/1989; Tarde, 1901/1989). At the same time, politics bears an inherent complexity, ambiguity, and intricacy (Delli Carpini & Williams, 1996) that makes it a topic ripe for uncertainty arousal. Considering that uncertainty arousal is more likely when situations are ambiguous, complex, and unpredictable (Babrow, Hines, & Kasch, 2000; Babrow, Kasch, & Ford, 1998), Uncertainty Reduction Theory (Berger, 1979; Berger & Bradac, 1982; Berger & Calabrese, 1975) is applied in this dissertation to study the crossroads of interpersonal discussion and the consumption of a variety of mass-mediated messages about politics. This dissertation will examine the processes by which political mass media messages that vary in their level of ambiguity arouse receiver-based uncertainty and influence subsequent interpersonal discussion. Four types of messages are investigated: two types of satire (horatian and juvenalian) and two types of news (traditional news and editorials). These four messages are differentiated by two dimensions of ambiguity—ambiguity of message goals and ambiguity of message meaning. Satire and news are argued to be different in ambiguity of message goals, whereas satire is high on goal ambiguity (Bogel, 2001; Knight, 2004; Simpson, 2003) and news is low on this type of ambiguity (McQuail, 1992). For ambiguity of message meaning, horatian satire and traditional news are argued to be high and juvenalian satire and editorials are argued to be low. A computer-mediated discussion experiment was conducted to address 23 hypotheses that serve as the foundation for the dissertation. Results show that satirical messages (high on ambiguity of message goals) generally incite more receiver-based uncertainty and generate more uncertainty expressions during discussion. 2010-09-09 English text The Ohio State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1276198165 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1276198165 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
collection	NDLTD
language	English
sources	NDLTD
topic	Communication uncertainty political discussion satire news mass media interpersonal communication ambiguity
spellingShingle	Communication uncertainty political discussion satire news mass media interpersonal communication ambiguity Landreville, Kristen D. “What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion
author	Landreville, Kristen D.
author_facet	Landreville, Kristen D.
author_sort	Landreville, Kristen D.
title	“What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion
title_short	“What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion
title_full	“What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion
title_fullStr	“What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion
title_full_unstemmed	“What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion
title_sort	“what was that supposed to mean?”: mass-mediated ambiguous political messages, uncertainty arousal, and political discussion
publisher	The Ohio State University / OhioLINK
publishDate	2010
url	http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1276198165
work_keys_str_mv	AT landrevillekristend whatwasthatsupposedtomeanmassmediatedambiguouspoliticalmessagesuncertaintyarousalandpoliticaldiscussion
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“What Was That Supposed To Mean?”: Mass-Mediated Ambiguous Political Messages, Uncertainty Arousal, and Political Discussion

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