New York University Health Communication Channels Discussion

9The Roles of Interpersonal
Communication in Mass
Media Campaigns
Brian G. Southwell and Marco C. Yzer
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Contents
The Roles of Interpersonal Communication in Mass Media Campaigns
Conceptualizing Interpersonal Communication and Mass Media
Campaigns
Interpersonal Communication
Interpersonal Communication as Consequential Behavior
An Array of Contexts for Interpersonal Communication
Mass Media
Mass Media Campaigns
Campaigns as Strategic Enterprises
The Varied Foci of Media Campaigns
Interpersonal Communication and Information Flows
The Two-Step Flow and Diffusion Research
Beyond Information Flow: Other Roles for Interpersonal
Communication
Interpersonal Communication as an Outcome of Campaign Exposure
Interpersonal Communication as a Planned Outcome
Reasons Why People Talk About Campaigns
Unintended Talk About Campaign Content
Interpersonal Communication as Mediator of Campaign Effects
Interpersonal Communication as Moderator of Campaign Effects
Interpersonal Communication, Media, and Memory
Interpersonal Communication, Media, and Behavior
Caveats and Future Directions
Characterizing Conversations
Measuring Conversation
Conclusions
Notes
References
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FROM
Communication Yearbook 31 (2007)
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Brian G. Southwell and Marco C. Yzer
Communication scholarship has witnessed an explosion of disciplinary
divisions and specific topic interest groups in the past 50 years that represents either noteworthy maturation or a troubling splintering, depending
on your vantage point. As a result, important intersections remain for us to
explore. In this review, we seek to highlight connections between interpersonal communication and mass media campaigns by identifying related
streams of research that help us to explain how and why interpersonal talk
and mass media efforts routinely affect each other. In doing so, we identify
three general categories of roles of interpersonal communication: (planned
or unintended) media campaign outcome, mediator of media campaign
effects, and moderator of campaign effects.
The Roles of Interpersonal Communication in Mass
Media Campaigns
Half a century ago, Katz and Lazarsfeld’s (1955) Personal Influence
presaged the trajectory of late twentieth-century mass communication research and its move away from an assumption that mass media
messages dictate people’s behavior directly. In that frequently cited volume, they noted that information often does not flow from media outlets directly to audience members, but instead travels via intermediary
opinion leaders. In doing so, they highlighted the importance of understanding interpersonal communication in order to grasp media effects.
In recent decades, a diverse array of scholars has continued to
acknowledge that engagement with mass media does not occur in a vacuum free of interpersonal networks. Researchers voicing such a stance
range from Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) and other sociologists such as
Wright (1986) to political scientists, such as Druckman and Nelson
(2003), to critical theorists, such as Hagen and Wasko (2000), to health
communication campaign evaluators (e.g., Hornik, 1989; Hornik et al.,
2000; T. Korhonen, Uutela, H. Korhonen, & Puska, 1998). Despite this
widespread acknowledgment, however, our discipline lacks a systematic review of the specific potential roles that interpersonal interaction
can play with regard to mass media campaign effects.
We can attribute this gap in knowledge partially to a divide that has
existed for decades between interpersonal communication researchers and those focused on mass media effects. In this chapter, we begin
to bridge these areas of research by discussing the (potential and
documented) roles of interpersonal communication in media effects
that relate to strategic campaigns. While our ultimate attention concerns the impact of conversation for campaign efforts, we draw, by
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necessity, from a range of scholarship on human engagement with
media content and the potential influence of talking with other people before, after, or during that process.
In order to accomplish these tasks, we begin by addressing fundamental questions about the nature of interpersonal communication,
and we locate it in the past century’s work on information flow among
mass audiences. That discussion provides a foundation upon which
we can explore three specific roles for interpersonal interaction: as an
outcome of campaign effects, as a mediator of campaign effects, and
as a moderator of campaign effects. We then highlight what we know
about each of the roles that talk might play and about key limitations.
We focus largely on issues related to media-based political advocacy, health promotion, and science communication because several
keenly relevant and illustrative examples lay in those domains. At the
same time, we also intend our discussion to be applicable to scholars
studying mass communication, interpersonal communication, language and social interaction, organizational communication, public
relations and advertising, and social networks.
Conceptualizing Interpersonal Communication
and Mass Media Campaigns
Ultimately, we seek to bolster our understanding of why media campaigns experience varying degrees of success and the role of interpersonal communication in those efforts. To establish necessary
foundation for that exploration, we start by clarifying key terms.
Interpersonal Communication
In their review of interpersonal communication research, Roloff and
Anastasiou (2001) speculated that “interpersonal communication
researchers will increasingly tie their scholarship to the significant
issues facing society” (p. 65). By moving beyond assessment of isolated dyadic experience to place interpersonal communication in a
larger context, researchers can acknowledge both the ways in which
the environment affects such interaction and the ways in which
understanding interpersonal communication can help illuminate
macrolevel patterns of information flow.
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Approximately two decades ago, however, Cappella (1987) noted the
importance, and difficulty, of defining interpersonal interaction. Given
the range of scholarly approaches to interpersonal communication,
Roloff and Anastasiou (2001) acknowledged that “we are doubtful
that there will ever be consensus about a definition of the field or a
central theory” (p. 65). Indeed, in his more recent review of theorizing on interpersonal communication, Berger (2005) noted that “[i]t
is possible to organize theoretical activity within the interpersonal
communication domain into at least six distinct areas” (p. 417).
Because a complete exploration of the many orientations to interpersonal communication extends beyond the scope of this review, we
focus here on two key characteristics of interpersonal communication
that are most central to this chapter.1 In particular, we suggest that interpersonal communication is consequential behavior and that it occurs
in diverse contexts. (Admittedly, we also largely focus here on conversation between two people rather than the full array of phenomena
that might fall under the heading of interpersonal communication.)
Interpersonal Communication as Consequential Behavior According
to Cappella (1987), interaction occurs when person A’s trajectory of
behavior is influenced by person B over and above the behavior that we
would expect based on baseline data from person A. Although interpersonal communication can yield both intended and unintended
outcomes, it necessarily involves mutually co-oriented participants
and affects those participants’ choices for subsequent actions (see
foundational work by Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 1967, as well as
an excellent survey of this body of research in Knapp & Daly, 2002).
As such, conversation not only constitutes a mechanism for information repetition and exposure among participants, but it also
comprises a relatively complex dyadic or group variable likely to
be influenced by an array of factors that relate to human needs and
desires and environmental constraints (e.g., Berger, 2002; Daly, 2002;
Dillard, Anderson, & Knobloch, 2002; Poole, McPhee, Canary, &
Morr, 2002; Walther & Parks, 2002, as well as related review by Roloff & Anastasiou, 2001). Most importantly, we regard conversation
not just as simple information delivery between people but rather
as relationally and socially consequential behavior, albeit sometimes
in response to evolving circumstances as conversations unfold (see
related arguments by Berger, 2005). Moreover, those exchanges can
happen in a variety of contexts.
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An Array of Contexts for Interpersonal Communication Although
early research on interpersonal communication focused on face-toface interaction (see Knapp, Daly, Albada, & Miller, 2002), many
agree that interpersonal communication can occur in a variety of
settings. In light of this idea, scholars have begun to explore similarities and differences among and between those communication
contexts, as discussed later. Whether those differences matter for
campaigns, however, is of central concern here.
With the dawn of the Internet, a number of scholars have investigated online communication (e.g., Baym, Zhang, & Lin, 2004; ­Herring,
1999; Price & Cappella, 2002; Price, Nir, & Cappella, 2006; Walther
& Parks, 2002; Weger & Aakhus, 2003; see also discussion in review
by Berger, 2005). For example, Duffy, Smith, Terhanian, and Bremer
(2005) sought to elucidate differences between online and face-to-face
survey data, and Matsuba (2006) distinguished between face-to-face
and online relationships. That range of work suggests online communication itself is not monolithic and comprises several categories of
interaction. Herring, for example, delineated between chat and more
gradual sequences of bulletin board postings or e-mail exchanges.
Following her assessment of numerous chat streams, Herring
(1999) also concluded that online chat, one example of online communication, is often incoherent and disjointed. Yet, Baym and
colleagues (2004) reported that college students perceived Internetbased conversation as only slightly lower in quality than face-to-face
interaction. Moreover, Papacharissi (2005) made a similar point
in her review of online interaction scholarship, claiming that both
online and face-to-face interactions reflect human needs and desires
and thus are not necessarily distinct.
In light of these ideas, the question of whether the range of available interpersonal communication contexts matters merits empirical exploration, especially in terms of mass media effects. Available
evidence suggests that both online and face-to-face interaction can
affect outcomes that matter to mass communication scholars. For
example, Price, Cappella, and Nir (2002) discovered that online dialogue conducted through a WebTV project appeared to facilitate
opinion change, just as face-to-face discussion sometimes can. Hardy
and Scheufele (2005) directly compared the effects of reported faceto-face discussion about politics and relevant computer-­mediated
interactions such as chat and found similar effects in both cases.
As a result, it appears that we can now find conversation occurring
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between people in a variety of contexts and that many of these contexts might yield effects worthy for our consideration of how talk
relates to media campaigns.
Mass Media Defining mass media can involve a relatively simple
exercise in listing types of information technologies (e.g., newspapers, radio, or television). Even in recent years, many introductory textbooks (e.g., Turow, 2003; Vivian, 2006) have continued to
organize chapters in this way. Such categorization, however, has lost
some of its utility in the face of contemporary blurring of boundaries
between media types in terms of modes of information presentation
and organizational ownership (see related arguments by Rayner,
2006). Bryant and Miron (2004) have observed:
For example, (a) all of the media of mass communication are undergoing dramatic changes in form, content, and substance … (b) newer forms
of interactive media … are altering the traditional mass communication
model from that of communication of one-to-many to communication of
many-to-many … (c) media ownership patterns are shifting dramatically
… (d) the viewing patterns and habits of audiences worldwide are changing so rapidly to be almost mercurial. (p. 662)
Chaffee and Metzger (2001) openly asked recently whether we
were witnessing the “end of mass communication” (p. 365). The
answer to that question is not a definite yes. Instead, perhaps we are
experiencing an explosion of alternatives and possibilities for mass
media (see Rayner, 2006, and review by Rubin & Haridakis, 2001).
Even the authors of Web logs, or blogs, typically seek to maintain a
mass audience of sorts, though, of course, they do not often attain it
(Lawson-Borders & Kirk, 2005). According to Rubin and Haridakis,
“[N]ewer media have mass, interpersonal, organizational, political,
economic, and cultural dimensions” (p. 73).
Whether we are witnessing the end of mass media organizations
in general, then, is an open question. Economic considerations alone
suggest that audiences will continue to be massive for the foreseeable
future, even if they have decreased in size somewhat (Webster, Phalen,
& Lichty, 2000). Moreover, if we consider mass communication from
a functional perspective, as advocated by Wright (1986), mass media
institutions will not likely fade for reasons of obsolescence (see review
by Roessler, this volume). Mass media serve and address mass audiences, and that relationship will likely continue in some form, especially as available technology continues to evolve.
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Mass Media Campaigns
Use of mass media for strategic campaigns boasts a history almost as
long as the history of mass media technologies. This section situates campaigns as strategic enterprises that can address specific social issues.
Campaigns as Strategic Enterprises As Paisley (1989) observed, the
story of campaigns in the United States can be traced back to numerous examples in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In fact, individuals were attempting to influence others’ behavior through media
messages even before 1776. In the 1720s, Cotton Mather attempted
to promote inoculation during Boston’s smallpox epidemic, in part
through the distribution of pamphlets that highlighted the effectiveness of immunization. Later, in the nineteenth century, Paisley noted
that a variety of social change organizations attempted to reach mass
audiences through print media. The abolitionist movement, which
sought to eliminate slavery, actively printed material intended to
change beliefs and attitudes toward the practice and succeeded in that
approach, incurring the wrath of protesters who destroyed printing
facilities. Undoubtedly, such strategic use of media played an important role in shifting public opinion at the time.
Rogers and Storey (1987) noted that planners intend campaigns
to generate specific outcomes or effects among a relatively large
group of people through an organized set of communication activities, usually within a specific period of time. Such efforts are not the
sole domain of advertisers. Public relations specialists, for example,
conventionally conceptualize mass media campaigns as part of their
work, for they perceive campaigns as time-limited efforts to present a limited set of messages intended to affect audience beliefs (see
Coombs, 2001; Heath, 2001; Vasquez & Taylor, 2001). Whether promoting a corporate image (Pinkleton & Austin, 2006) or a nonprofit
agenda, such as that of Planned Parenthood (Bostdorff, 1992), public
relations professionals have routinely conducted organized efforts in
this vein.
Contemporary media campaigns have featured advertisements,
public service announcements, and, more recently, Internet-based
tools and other interactive digital applications. Trammell, Williams,
Postelnicu, and Landreville (2006), for example, noted the rise of
candidate Web sites and Web logs in political campaigns (see also
Taylor, Kent, & White, 2001). In the health domain, interactive video
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comprises an increasingly popular campaign tool. Interactive video,
in a sense, can take the form of an educational movie that allows an
audience partially to control its part in that movie. Read and his colleagues (2006), for example, recently demonstrated that men potentially at risk for HIV infection reduced risky sexual behaviors after
they participated in an interactive video intervention more than men
who were not assigned to watch the treatment.
The Varied Foci of Media Campaigns Media campaigns have
been conducted around the globe in the past century for a variety
of persuasive purposes. Examples include electoral campaigns in the
world’s democracies (Bolivar, 2001; Trent & Friedenberg, 2000) and
efforts to organize populations for political action other than going
to the polls, such as public opinion in the context of national referendums in the European Union (de Vreese & Semetko, 2004) or
mobilization in the People’s Republic of China in the second half of
the twentieth century (Latham, 2000).
Yet another critical focus of campaigns concerns health outcomes,
particularly those that result from risk behaviors associated with
public health threats. Rogers and colleagues, for example, described
at least two radio campaigns in Tanzania: the Mtu ni Afya (“Man Is
Health”) health literacy project in the early 1970s (Rogers & Storey,
1987) and the Twende na Wakati (“Let’s Go With the Times”) family
planning project in the 1990s (Vaughan & Rogers, 2000). Hornik and
colleagues (2000) reported on the National Youth Anti-Drug Media
Campaign in the United States; Mudde and de Vries (1999) addressed
a multimedia smoking cessation campaign in the Netherlands, and
Wellings (2002) discussed mass media safer sex campaigns in Europe
and noted six different countries where mass media campaigns contributed to increased condom use.
Wellings’ (2002) analysis, in fact, reflects a critical explanation
for the popularity of mass media campaigns. Organizations pay for
campaigns based on their potential to foster obvious and consequential behavior change. At the same time, this contention has not been
accepted universally, given a long-standing debate on the actual
potential for campaigns to affect audiences in this way. In fact, during the last five decades, the prevailing view of the impact of campaigns has evolved from a so-called limited effects view to a period
of renewed confidence in campaigns and, more recently, to a view of
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likely effects as moderate and nuanced (Maibach, 1993; Roberts &
Maccoby, 1985; Wallack, 1990).
H. Mendelsohn (1973), for example, refuted skepticism about
campaigns by observing that earlier studies did not find mass media
campaign effects because, among other reasons, campaigns often did
not target relevant factors, and evaluation research unrealistically
attempted to demonstrate immediate, large, and direct campaign
effects on behavior. Fifteen years later, Rogers and Storey (1987) finetuned Mendelsohn’s contention by observing that many successful
campaigns share an ability to induce interpersonal communication
about the campaign topic, an intermediate outcome that, in turn,
might affect behavioral outcomes. Here we see one of the many
important connections between the interpersonal and campaign literatures relevant to our discussion.
Indeed, a number of scholars writing about strategic communication in recent years have drawn a connection to interpersonal
scholarship. Based on their state of the discipline review of public relations scholarship, for example, Botan and Taylor (2004) argued that
“[t]he most striking trend in public relations over the past 20 years
… is its transition from a functional perspective to a ­ cocreational
one” that emphasizes the role of publics in creating shared meaning (p. 651). They also argued that “public relations scholars have
revisited interpersonal communication to understand relationship
building better” (p. 652; see also Taylor et al., 2001; Vasquez & Taylor, 2001).
Moreover, such a general emphasis on the necessity of treating individuals as part of social groups and networks in order to understand
media effects actually fits with a wide array of scholarship beyond
campaign evaluation, including research on interpretive communities (e.g., Aden, Rahoi, & Beck, 1995; Fish, 1980; Lindlof, 1988).
Lindlof, for example, argued that interpretation of media content is
at least partly a function of community membership. Accordingly,
campaign material interpretation might be a partial function of community interaction. How community members collectively engage a
campaign might tell us much about the ultimate success of that effort.
A better understanding of mass media campaign effects requires consideration of the relationship between interpersonal communication
and the sharing (and co-construction) of information from media
campaigns.
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Interpersonal Communication and Information Flows
In this section, we discuss the roots of intersections between interpersonal communication and media effects. In that vein, we begin with
a brief overview of the long history of investigation of talk as a vital
part of the information flow process. We will not focus exclusively on
campaign research in this section. Instead, we set the stage for our
later discussion by exploring how sociologists, epidemiologists, and
mass communication scholars have traced information spread.
The Two-Step Flow and Diffusion Research
Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955), unsurprisingly, offer an appropriate
starting point in terms of scholarship, if not purely in terms of chronology. Drawing upon earlier speculation by Lazarsfeld, Berelson,
and Gaudet (1944), Katz and Lazarsfeld asserted that interpersonal
conversation mediates between the general broadcast of information
and individual engagement of and action upon that information. Specifically, these researchers observed the pivotal role played by opinion leaders as individuals who both engage news and elite media
sources and, in turn, dispense information from those sources to
their networks of followers. Scholars subsequently extended the
original notion of a two-step flow by pointing to the possibility of
a multistep flow; however, the basic idea remains as a prominent
account of media effects (see Brosius and Weimann, 1996, or Katz,
1987, for further discussion).
Following in the wake of this initial observation, one important
strain of related scholarship has been work to model the spread of
ideas among populations. A variety of scholars have applied the idea
that information could be traced from media through various interpersonal pathways to a host of studies that might be characterized
as diffusion research. One actually can trace the intellectual roots of
most diffusion studies back much further than the Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955) book. For example, early observations by Tarde (1903)
at the end of the nineteenth century on imitation and the spread of
ideas shed light on the notion that the social nature of humans and
their tendency to converse offer a key route for information diffusion. In the early twentieth century, numerous examples emerged of
information quickly spreading via interpersonal channels, ­including
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telephone conversations. For example, Scanlon (1998) noted how
quickly news of the 1917 Halifax explosion spread across Canada, at
least in part as telephone switchboards lit up.
Thinking about which channels promote information spread also
predates Personal Influence. As DeFleur (1987) noted, several studies
in the American Sociological Review in the 1940s and 1950s provided
a complicated array of evidence on this issue. D. C. Miller (1945), for
example, claimed that more than 90% of a college student population heard about the death of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
within a half hour of official news reports, a phenomenon that he
attributed to the quick spread of news through interpersonal channels. Somewhat contrasting evidence about channel roles, however,
can be found in Larsen and Hill’s (1954) study of how people in the
U.S. state of Washington found out about the death of Ohio Senator
Robert Taft. In the Taft case, individuals cited radio, rather than
word of mouth, as their source of information.
As DeFleur (1987) observed, even this simple contrast suggested
that the spread of ideas and information cannot be treated as a uniform phenomenon. Different contexts and circumstances likely
contribute to diverse patterns of information spread, and individual-level variables also potentially play a role. Recognition of such
complexity, in turn, inspired a generation of diffusion studies (e.g.,
DeFleur & Larsen, 1958; Rogers, 1962; Rosengren, 1973) that sought
to go beyond simple documentation of information spread to understandings about who adopts innovative beliefs and how exactly certain innovations gain prominence after their initial introduction.
Rogers’s (1962) famous volume, called simply Diffusion of Innovations, focused squarely on the question of whether individuals vary
in their openness to new information. In that initial volume, Rogers
answered that question affirmatively. He demonstrated individuallevel variance in the time required for agricultural innovation adoption among individuals. In turn, he characterized people as being
more or less likely to adopt particular innovations.
Later work on diffusion and, in some ways, even Rogers’s later
editions (1995 or 2003) have tended to focus less on characterizing
individual receptivity, instead explicitly tracking information flow
through social networks. Recently, Fan and Yu (2005) even questioned whether we need—and attempted to refute empirically—an
assumption of individual difference in openness to new ideas in
order to explain patterns of information spread. Milgram’s (1967)
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study on the small-world phenomenon indicated that impressive
information flows often involve only a limited number of communication agents. On a similar plane, Granovetter (1974) determined
that important outcomes—for example, getting a job—more often
occur through communication with other network members than
through direct exposure to formal information sources. Such studies have fueled other research that has approached information flow
from a perspective more akin to epidemiological studies of infection.
For example, Valente (1995) emphasized the utility of understanding social networks for studying diffusion, a point emphasized in
his recent collaborations (e.g., Schuster et al., 2006). We can expect
information to spread most quickly when established social connections exist among members of a population.
Under some circumstances, social networks can even offer a powerful rival to media outlets. Rawan (2001) highlighted the example
of Iran in the 1970s, where information crucial to the Iranian Revolution of 1979 spread largely through social networks connected to
mosques rather than through electronic media channels controlled
by the Shah regime. In fact, Rawan suggested that the Shah government may not have fully grasped the importance of such traditional
and oral means of communication. More recently, in a piece on
political information flow, de Vreese and Boomgaarden (2006) contended that interpersonal channels might matter more than media
exposure for questions of opinion change among “politically sophisticated” individuals (p. 19).
Such ideas have penetrated the thinking of marketing research as
well. Reingen and Kernan (1986) explored the importance of referral
networks for marketing outcomes. Recent popular writing on the
notions of viral marketing (Rosen, 2002) or “word-of-mouth epidemics” (Gladwell, 2000, p. 32) also clearly takes a cue from earlier
scholarly thinking about the relevance of infection models for communication campaigns. The core message of such marketing tomes
and popular commentary is that information spread might mimic
other natural patterns, such as the spread of disease.
Clearly, then, thinking on diffusion has evolved to produce a
range of studies. This research includes both studies of technological or behavioral innovation diffusion and of news diffusion, which
DeFleur (1987) argued represent two distinct bodies of work. After
all, the spread of a piece of information likely entails a simpler process
than the widespread adoption of a behavior, a process undoubtedly
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underpinned by changes in knowledge and beliefs but nonetheless at
least a step removed from simply hearing about a particular idea or
news item.
Beyond Information Flow: Other Roles
for Interpersonal Communication
Whether people largely learn new information about specialized topics from talking with other people in their social networks or they primarily seek information about topics so that they might talk with other
people, of course, also remains an open question. Interpersonal communication is not always particularly informative per se. Sometimes
it constitutes a ritualistic activity for which people undoubtedly draw
upon information from media but through which people do not necessarily transmit and learn large volumes of completely new information. As such, pure diffusion notions do not sufficiently account for
all conversations relevant to mediated information.
Eveland (2004) cautioned against assuming that interpersonal
interaction always acts as a diffusion mechanism, suggesting that
interpersonal communication can be related to key variables such
as knowledge without necessarily serving as a link through which
new information flows. In reviewing relevant political communication research (e.g., Lenart, 1994; Scheufele, 2002), Eveland noted at
least three plausible explanations for the documented relationship
between knowledge about politics and talk about politics: simple
exposure (consistent with the aforementioned notion of a two-step
flow), anticipatory elaboration, and discussion-generated elaboration.
According to Eveland, a simple exposure explanation suggests that
talking with a person exposes others to information to which that
person has been exposed; one person passes information to the
next. Elaboration explanations offer a somewhat different account
of the process. In a situation of anticipatory elaboration, people are
motivated to process political information from news content more
deeply when they anticipate impending conversations with others.
In slight contrast to anticipatory elaboration, Eveland argued that
discussion-generated elaboration focuses on information processing
at the actual time of the conversation in question.
Using data from U.S. election surveys, Eveland (2004) found
the most support for the elaboration explanations, suggesting that
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­ eople prepare for talk by elaborating on information and also that
p
discussion itself encourages information elaboration. Anticipation of
future conversations, as well as actual discussion with others, apparently can affect engagement with mass media. The simple exposure
account, however, was largely not supported. While Eveland discovered a positive relationship between political discussion and political
knowledge, he did not identify any additional boost in knowledge
from speaking with a relatively knowledgeable partner.
Eveland’s (2004) work does not suggest that the two-step flow
account of the relationship of mass communication and interpersonal communication is not plausible under some circumstances, of
course. Instead, it suggests that we need to take the nature of the
discourse in question into account before estimating the potential
for relevant interpersonal communication to act as a conduit for
information and knowledge gain. Sometimes, anticipated interaction prompts media use and information seeking—as in the case in
which individuals want to be prepared to talk with a relative with
whom they always disagree politically—rather than acting as a
source of new information.
With these distinctions in mind, we now turn our attention to
the various roles that interpersonal communication might play with
specific regard to media campaigns. In looking at organized efforts
to use media to affect behavior, we argue that information diffusion
comprises but one part of the picture. We need to understand how
talk between individuals affects, and is affected by, campaign efforts
to change or reinforce behavior.
Interpersonal Communication as an Outcome
of Campaign Exposure
Is there a connection between media campaign exposure and people’s tendency to talk to each other? When would we expect people
to talk with others about what they have encountered while engaging
media content? Why would people bother discussing media content
in the first place?
These specific questions are not new. Roughly two decades ago,
G. R. Miller (1986) noted “a neglected connection” (p. 132) between
mass media exposure and interpersonal communication. Simply
seeing a television advertisement will not always lead a person to
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talk with his or her friends about it, and yet we also know that people
sometimes discuss such ads (e.g., Hornik & Yanovitzky, 2003), just
as they interact with other media programming (e.g., Rogers et al.,
1999). Sometimes, these instances are the intentional consequence of
planned campaign efforts; in other cases, people share information
that they have gleaned from media sources in ways that campaign
staff might view as undesirable. Here we can ask what types of content generate talk and under what circumstances this happens.
Interpersonal Communication as a Planned Outcome
Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs (DTCA) provides a good example of campaigns that aim to induce conversation.
Health insurance regulations in the United States have reduced patient
voice in prescription decision making. As a result, DTCA campaigns
in recent years have taken advantage of loosened requirements to
directly urge patients to talk with their doctor in order to obtain
the prescription for the advertised drug (Lyles, 2002). (Whether that
effort is ethical or helpful for broader society, of course, remains an
open question.)
In recent decades, a number of health promotion efforts also
have attempted to engage social networks as a part of their strategies. Kelly et al. (1992) adapted the notion of opinion leaders to the
realm of HIV prevention. For example, Kelly and colleagues found
evidence that so-called popular people often served as vital network
hubs in urban homosexual communities and thus assisted with the
endorsement and spread of prevention skills information and risk
information. By identifying and working directly with those opinion
leaders rather than solely broadcasting messages, Kelly and others
concluded that interpersonal communication can be an important
tool. Moreover, their work suggests that some individuals might be
more well connected to others and also more likely to talk actively
with them about media content than their peers.
In many ways, such efforts extend aforementioned thinking about
the diffusion of innovations. Singhal and colleagues (e.g., Singhal &
Rogers, 2003; Svenkerud, Singhal, & Papa, 1998) have demonstrated
the extent to which early enthusiasm for the diffusion of innovation approach has been translated in recent decades into health
campaign efforts around the globe. Svenkerud et al., for example,
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offered a ­ relevant review of efforts in Thailand to curb the spread
of HIV/AIDS. They claimed that targeted social networks made a
vital difference between relatively successful intervention efforts and
less successful activities in Bangkok. Efforts to work with respected
and influential housewives in Bangkok’s Klong Toey neighborhoods
appeared more effective than attempts to collaborate with motorcycle taxi drivers. Both housewives and taxi drivers often spoke with
other people, but housewives could be perceived as hubs in more
well-established social networks. Moreover, Svenkerud et al. determined that housewives enjoyed greater reputations of credibility
among their conversation partners than taxi drivers. As such, efforts
to employ social networks for diffusion efforts cannot be treated as
equal. We need to consider the context and nature of those networks
in understanding the role of interpersonal communication in health
promotion.
In addition to our earlier examples, a number of media-based strategic communication efforts have attempted to stimulate conversation
as an outcome (e.g., Afifi et al., 2006; Hafstad & Aaro, 1997; Hornik
et al., 2000; Piotrow, Kincaid, Rimon, & Rinehart, 1997; Rogers et al.,
1999). The development of conversational skills has been an explicit
goal of numerous media campaigns. According to Hornik et al., a
major strategy of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy’s
national media campaign against marijuana use in the late 1990s
and early 2000s involved facilitating interactions between parents and
their teenage children about drugs. In that case, campaign planners
hoped to encourage parents who found themselves unmotivated to
talk with their children about drugs or unsure of their ability to do
so. Teaching people how to discuss sensitive topics has also been an
explicit goal of many organ donation efforts. For example, Afifi and
colleagues claimed that organized campaign efforts to prompt family
discussion about organ donation could be improved by paying closer
attention to the ways in which families seek and share information.
Reasons Why People Talk About Campaigns
Some of the extant research on mass media prompting of interaction
suggests specific ways that such content can facilitate talk. Hafstad
and Aaro (1997) documented an antismoking campaign in Norway
that employed provocative, emotional appeals in order to stimulate
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435
conversation among adolescent viewers and their peers. According
to Hafstad and Aaro, such efforts assume that people (and perhaps
specifically adolescents) tend to tell their friends, family, and neighbors about particularly startling media content that they encounter
to establish community boundaries and interpersonal bonding. Further, G. R. Miller (1986) proposed that media exposure might serve
either to dampen or spur conversation by affecting conversational
competency and providing fodder for dialogue.
Previous research suggests that motivations for conversation vary.
To harness motivations for campaign purposes, we need frameworks
with which to predict conversational occurrence. A functional view
of interpersonal conversation as exchange between two or more people can guide our search for a general theory of circumstances in
which talk should stem from media exposure. People talk with each
other for a variety of specific reasons, ranging from strategic identity
management to persuasion of others to simple task accomplishment
(Berger, 1995; Seibold, Cantrill, & Meyers, 1985).
Strack and Deutsch (2004) noted in their exhaustive review that
social behavior results from both reflective consideration (of beliefs
about the behavior in question) and impulsive processes (that involve
immediate spreading activation of readily available schemata in the
brain in response to stimuli). Initiation of interpersonal communication, as a social behavior, sometimes will reflect reasoning about its
utility (e.g., consideration of whether to ask someone to go to dinner)
and other times simply constitute a reaction stemming from biological need (e.g., asking for food when desperately hungry).
With regard to reflective consideration, frameworks for understanding and predicting behavior such as Fishbein’s (2000; see also
Fishbein & Yzer, 2003) integrated model of behavior prediction,
which builds upon the earlier theory of reasoned action (Fishbein &
Ajzen, 1975; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) and theory of planned behavior
(Ajzen, 1991) are useful. From this perspective, social behavior (such
as interpersonal communication) ultimately extends from attitudinal, normative, and efficacy beliefs that people hold about performing that behavior. Campaign content might variously affect those
beliefs and thus spur conversation.
Whether media campaign messages can sometimes act in such
a manner, then, is a suitable topic for exploration here. Yzer, Siero,
and Buunk’s (2001) work on discussing condom use with a new
partner offers relevant evidence in this regard. Importantly, Yzer
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and ­ associates carefully distinguished the act of bringing up condom use with a partner from other behaviors, such as actual condom use. Moreover, after modeling such conversation as a function
of intention and past behavior, they specifically highlighted the indirect role that conversational norms—or perceptions that important
others value and condone talking about a particular topic—play in
encouraging talk. Insofar as conversational norms are vulnerable to
campaign efforts, such work allows us to assess the types of messages
that might be most useful in facilitating conversation on this topic.
Perceived efficacy to engage in conversation comprises another
factor relevant under this general framework. Experiencing some
types of educational media content might boost one’s own sense of
topical understanding and conversational competency. By extension, if exposure raises a person’s confidence (accurately or not) in
their ability to understand and talk about a particular topic, then, all
else being equal, we can expect that talk about that topic will be more
likely to ensue, a claim for which Southwell and Torres (2006) found
some recent support.
Southwell and Torres (2006) evaluated a media-based project
specifically focused on bolstering conversational competence about
science, engineering, technology, and mathematics. Experimental
data from that study demonstrated that science news exposure can
indirectly affect conversation about science by bolstering perceived
understanding of science. Southwell and Torres recruited regular television news viewers from a midsize designated market area
(a television viewing area) in the United States using random digit
dialing and randomly assigned them to one of three science news
exposure conditions. As hypothesized, science television news exposure appeared to boost perceived ability to understand science. In
addition, perceived ability to understand science predicted conversations about science, suggesting that perceived understanding of science
acts as a partial mediator of the relationship between media exposure
and subsequent conversation about science and technology.
In short, then, we would expect interpersonal communication to
stem from media exposure when that content affects perceptions of
the personal utility and value of interacting with others on a topic or
changes perceptions of one’s conversational abilities. Media content
might spur persons to learn more, empower them with information
they feel compelled to share with others, loosen normative constraints
on talking about taboo subjects, or even affect their ­perception that
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they can engage in conversation. At the same time, campaigns also
might affect such perceptions in unintended fashion.
Unintended Talk About Campaign Content
People can talk about media campaign content in a way not intended
by campaign planners. For example, Visser and Mirabile’s (2004)
work underscores the idea that diffusion-through-social-network
approaches harbor important limitations and weaknesses. They
demonstrated that communication between network members about
attitude objects actually negatively impacted persuasion efforts.
In attitudinally congruent networks (i.e., networks in which most
members hold similar preexisting views), resistance to persuasion
attempts was stronger than in attitudinally incongruent networks,
suggesting that the strength of ties among network members may
actually pose a barrier to campaign attempts in some cases.
Conversation in networks might help a person to assess his or
her original opinion rather than simply to provide new information
from a campaign (Festinger, 1950). To inform diffusion-throughsocial-network approaches more effectively, we need to better understand the circumstances under which individuals resist and respond
adversely to the network majority (Visser & Mirabile, 2004), an
opinion leader (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), or referents who are not
very influential network members (Granovetter, 1973).
David, Cappella, and Fishbein (2006) highlighted another prime
example of how interpersonal communication can undermine campaign persuasion goals. David and colleagues studied interaction
about campaign messages with an experimental design in which
they assigned some participants to chat with other participants in an
online chat forum following exposure to antidrug campaign advertisements. In this case, again, group discussion apparently functioned in a way not anticipated by campaign planners.
Participants assigned to talk with others actually reported attitudes and normative beliefs more strongly in favor of marijuana use
than their counterparts who simply watched the ads. According to
David et al. (2006), individuals most likely to process antidrug ads in
a biased fashion also tended to speak up in group discussions. As a
result, many of the comments in the group discussions favored drug
use. Consequently, participants exposed to such discussions heard
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numerous prodrug viewpoints, a pattern that affected both attitudinal and normative perceptions. For example, individuals experimentally assigned to discuss the ads subsequently reported more
normative pressure to use marijuana.
As David et al. (2006) discovered, discussion can, at times, be an
uncooperative partner for campaign planners. Even if a campaign
manages to generate conversation, campaign staff cannot guarantee
that resulting talk will coincide with campaign goals, especially when
recipients engage in biased processing of campaign materials. Regardless, we should consider alternative reactions to all campaigns, particularly those that intentionally strive to generate conversation.
In addition, a tangential but undoubtedly relevant area of research
involves work on rumor or gossip. Research on rumors extends back
at least to Allport and Postman’s (1947) classic book, The Psychology of Rumor, in which they point to the perceived relevance and
importance of a topic and the ambiguity of available information
as predictors of the likelihood of a rumor spreading. Rosnow (1991,
2001) took this view further to suggest that people generate or spread
rumors as a means of coping with anxiety or uncertainty. Rumors
essentially constitute stories or embellishments that help to explain
uncertain situations and provide a rationale for behavior. As Allport
and Postman (1946/1947) observed in an early article in Public Opinion Quarterly, rumors can function to relieve urges, justify feelings,
and explain circumstances. Walker and Gibbons (2006) recently
reached a similar conclusion. As a result, we can predict that rumor
creation and spread constitutes a relatively frequent phenomenon in
human experience (see also Grey, this volume, for discussion of societal trauma).
Interpersonal communication about rumors can occur in faceto-face contexts, but, building on our earlier discussion, little reason exists to restrict our attention there. In fact, investigation of
the spread of rumors on the Internet (e.g., Bordia & DiFonzo,
2004) represents an important new area of inquiry. One might even
argue that the availability of the Internet has quickened the pace of
rumor-­mongering and extended the geographic reach of rumors
to an extent that the spread of rumors now rivals resource-limited
campaign efforts as an information source in some circumstances.
Richardson (2005), writing about the global information environment in the wake of discovering severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS) in Asia a few years ago, noted that the architecture of the
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Internet facilitated publication of a wild array of conspiracy theories
and general hyperbole through newsgroups and blogs. According to
Richardson, for a short period of time, official Web sites, such as that
of the World Health Organization, were isolated hubs of balanced
information amid a wider information environment awash in inaccurate information.
How might rumors be related to organized campaign efforts?
In short, we might expect rumors to arise, and potentially to act as
impediments, under certain conditions. The importance of ambiguity and uncertainty in the emergence and spread of rumors suggests
that certain types of campaign efforts are particularly likely to be
plagued. Specifically, instances in which campaign officials are
unable or unwilling to provide key pieces of information seem ripe
for rumor mongering. In the aforementioned SARS case documented by Richardson (2005), Chinese government officials could
have moved more quickly to stem the rising tide of rumors. Scanlon
(1977) also documented this phenomenon in his description of postdisaster rumor chains.
Disaster communication, then, in which officials use mass media
to organize populations for evacuation or to communicate other
public health and safety messages, is likely to be especially vulnerable (see Gale, 1987; Sood, Stockdale, & Rogers, 1987). The 2005
experience in the United States with Hurricane Katrina or the 2004
­earthquake recovery efforts in south and southeastern Asia highlight
the vital role that short-term communication campaigns could play if
successfully implemented to move people and keep them away from
certain harms. Such efforts nonetheless must contend with public
discussion and interpretation as people hear official announcements
and then seek to fill in the information gaps left open by the incomplete nature of those announcements.
Interpersonal Communication as Mediator of Campaign Effects
If campaigns can generate talk, for better or worse, then it also makes
sense for us to consider the possibility that such conversations, in
turn, can spur desired behaviors among audiences. If that is the case,
we can consider conversations also to serve sometimes as a mediating link between campaign exposure and particular campaign goals.
In light of that possibility, even if campaign planners do not ­explicitly
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attempt to generate talk, campaign evaluators should consider the
potential role of interpersonal communication in explaining campaign effects, an argument largely consistent with recent prominent
calls to reassess evaluation design (e.g., Hornik & Yanovitzky, 2003;
Valente & Saba, 2001).
In simplest terms, interpersonal conversation can potentially
extend necessary message reach and frequency—particularly important when advertising budgets are not spectacularly high. On a different plane, campaign-induced conversation might also lead to
social norm discovery that indirectly leads to behavior change. We
discuss support for both possibilities later, especially in the specific
realm of health and science communication.
Parrott (2004) has gone so far as to suggest that the recent lack
of focus on interpersonal communication as a potential explanation
for outcomes represents an important oversight by health campaign
scholars. Talk with others, after all, appears to be an important part
of the array of channels claimed by individuals as influential with
regard to science and health decision-making (Morton & Duck,
2001; O’Keefe, Ward, & Shepard, 2002; Trumbo, 1998; Wilkin &
Ball-Rokeach, 2006). O’Keefe and colleagues, for example, found that
landowners in Wisconsin tended to rely on a diverse set of information sources, sometimes including only conversation with other people who kept track of the news, in monitoring developments related
to the local watershed. Wilkin and Ball-Rokeach found that Latinos
in Los Angeles reported interpersonal networks of friends and family to be important sources of health information, along with health
professionals and media content specifically designed for them. The
question, however, is whether such dependence on interpersonal
channels might be tapped to facilitate indirect campaign effects.
In proposing their model of health campaign effects in the context
of illicit drug use, Hornik and Yanovitzky (2003) discussed at least
two plausible ways in which conversation could serve as a mediator. Each of these paths pertains to the specific case of the antidrug
campaign that they highlight and also more broadly to our general
discussion. At the community level, Hornik and Yanovitzky pointed
to the possibility of “social diffusion” of campaign messages (p. 215),
paralleling the core ideas suggested by our earlier discussion of the
two-step flow and diffusion traditions: Information plausibly flows
from mass media through individuals and on to other individuals
who interact with the initially exposed. In this way, interpersonal
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441
communication serves as an exposure bridge that facilitates exposure of a large part of community to key campaign messages.
At the same time, Hornik and Yanovitzky (2003) stressed another
mediation possibility at the individual level by noting the possibility that campaign exposure might lead a person to talk with others about campaign messages and to discover normative support (or
lack thereof, in an alternate case) for campaign-relevant behaviors.
By acting as a conversational prompt, campaigns might lead individuals to find out that others support particular health behaviors
more than they originally supposed and thus indirectly encourage
behavior change.
Some recent empirical evidence from the health campaign literature coincides with this possibility. Valente and Saba (1998, 2001)
assessed a mid-1990s contraceptive promotion campaign in Bolivia.
They argued strongly in favor of acknowledging the role that social
networks play in information diffusion. They also presented evidence
from the Bolivian case that illustrates a positive link between media
campaign exposure and change over time in perceptions that other
people in particular social networks actually use contraceptives.
This potential norm discovery or norm sensitization effect echoes
Hornik and Yanovitzky’s (2003) contentions. (Whether media exposure alone might be sufficient to boost perceptions of social norms or
whether such exposure prompts actual conversations that, in turn,
boost perceptions of relevant norms, of course, remain open questions, though the two possibilities also are not mutually exclusive.)
The possibility of a mediating role for interpersonal communication in explaining campaign effects holds important implications
for the practice of campaign evaluation. Envisioning interpersonal
communication as at least a partial mediator suggests that we need
to track whether a campaign stimulates some of those exposed to
converse with others about the campaign. In all likelihood, not all
conversation partners receive direct messages from campaigns.
Some learn about it through conversation.
Typical campaign evaluations, however, find a measure of exposure to the campaign and simply correlate it with outcome variables, such as knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes. Do and Kincaid
(2006), for example, looked at the relationship between viewing of
an ­ entertainment-education program, relevant knowledge, and
health clinic visits in Bangladesh without explicit consideration of
conversation. Researchers in such situations tend to classify those
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who were not exposed directly to the campaign (but who may have
talked about it with others) as generally nonexposed to campaign
messages; as a result, they likely underestimate the true effect of the
campaign.
This trend might stem in part from the tendency of mass media
campaign developers to concentrate on individual-level, psychological
models of behavior change that tend to treat conversation only as a distal variable (DiClemente, Crosby, Sionean, & Holtgrave, 2004). Under
such an approach, the role of interpersonal communication resembles demographic background variables or prior experience variables
whose only impact is a function of individual belief change. Although
useful for many campaign planning efforts, these approaches do not
explicitly focus on the specific roles that it can play.
In the health communication domain, we have witnessed a promising trend toward theory-driven formative research to inform
message design and campaign development (J. D. Fisher & W. A.
Fisher, 2000; Parrott, Wilson, Buttram, Jones, & Steiner, 1999; Silk
& Parrott, 2003). Based on social-psychological theories of behavior
change, such research can identify the critical determinants of the
recommended behavior in the particular target audience. According to behavior change theories, a campaign message more successfully improves behavior when it changes those critical determinants
(Aggleton, 1997; Fishbein & Yzer, 2003; J. D. Fisher & W. A. Fisher,
1992; Flay & Burton, 1990). Although encouraging, the trend toward
focusing on behavioral theory for campaign development nonetheless comes at a cost. Theories of health behavior change can usefully
be applied to informing message content, but they were not designed
to specify the exact communication vehicles that bring about change.
As a result, mass media campaigns and evaluation research of these
campaigns typically do not consider unofficial communication channels, such as conversation, as relevant to track in order to explain
how information spreads as a function of a planned mass media
campaign (see Yzer & van den Putte, 2006, for relevant discussion).
In other words, thinking of interpersonal communication as a
mediator implies that campaign effects can be indirect, and failure
to model conversation in evaluation analyses restricts one’s ability to
demonstrate those indirect effects adequately. Conversely, accepting
a possible mediating role for conversation might better reveal actual
campaign effects. It also should move planners beyond thinking
solely in terms of maximizing direct exposure to a campaign.
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Interpersonal Communication as Moderator of Campaign Effects
Not all mass communication researchers conceptualize interpersonal conversation solely as a simple outcome or as a conduit of
information from media to individuals. Following Chaffee (1986),
for example, some researchers (e.g., Eveland, 2004, or Tsfati, 2003)
have explored whether interpersonal communication might offer
a competing channel of information, as we noted above, or even
might act in an amplifying (rather than directly mediating) fashion
in political or civic contexts. In a political communication example,
M. Mendelsohn (1996) found that Canadian voters were primed
by election campaign materials to evaluate candidates in terms of
overall leadership perceptions, whereas interpersonal conversation
tended to activate thinking about salient issues. Voter engagement
with mass media not only led to simple information exposure differences, but it also apparently posed consequences for subsequent
information processing different from those of interpersonal conversations. In other words, interpersonal channels performed differently than mass media channels and demonstrated the potential
to interact with other types of information seeking and exposure to
jointly affect issue evaluation.
In some of these studies, in contrast to most diffusion approaches,
scholars argue that conversation can facilitate, amplify, or dampen
campaign effects. For example, Druckman (2004) questioned whether
political campaigns and interpersonal discussions might sometimes
prime alternative or orthogonal criteria for candidate judgment. In
this way, the absence of competing talk might be viewed as a facilitating condition for media effects while the presence of consonant
talk might also boost effects.
In recent years, a number of scholars have built on these studies
to explore the possibility that interpersonal communication actually
moderates media effects (e.g., Druckman, 2004; Hardy & Scheufele,
2005; Southwell, 2005; van den Putte, Southwell, & Yzer, 2006). Based
on this research, talk could facilitate or hamper media effect outcomes
in at least two key ways: memory and behavior change. When might
such moderation matter? This possibility seems particularly acute
with regard to any topic likely to enjoy relatively uneven levels of discussion across general populations. Some people likely talk about politics more than others, for example. Insofar as some groups talk about
a topic a lot and others do not, any conception of related mass media
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effects as uniform phenomena should be tempered by the potential
moderating influence of widely varying conversational networks.
Interpersonal Communication, Media, and Memory
A growing literature on the relationships between conversation and
memory (e.g., Dickinson & Givón, 1997; Edwards & Middleton, 1987;
Southwell, 2005) suggests that people do not accept and store information directly from media outlets and then simply retrieve that
information later in unmitigated fashion. The presence or absence
of conversation about a topic around the water cooler or the dinner
table or the chat room might augment or affect the degree to which
people report remembering any information about the topic initially
encoded from mass media exposure.
Why should conversation matter with regard to memory? Theoretically, memory comprises a complex of subsystems vulnerable to a
variety of influences (Bower, 2000). We can, and should, view memory as encompassing at least the act of encoding and the dynamics
of information retrieval. Retrieval, in turn, offers a prime site for the
influence of conversation.
Fuster (1999) offered a useful overview of the retrieval process.
While we know that the general concept of memory might better be
categorized in terms of different variant tasks such as recognition or
recall, some basic ideas about retrieval appear to be valid for memory as a whole. Primarily, retrieval almost never results in a perfectly
efficient procurement of a single representation. Instead, a retrievalprompting stimulus, such as an element of a conversation with another
person, invites remembering an array of related thoughts. As Fuster
succinctly noted, “[t]hat stimulus, in a broad sense, is like the hand
in the basket that picks out one cherry and makes others follow”
(p. 199).
This metaphorical perspective parallels network models of memory (see Anderson, 1983, 1990, for discussion), which posit that
people share and access information in the brain through activation
of interconnected neural nodes. That architecture of nodes, in turn,
allows for spillover activation. As Anderson’s work highlights, activation of one specific node also will enhance the salience of related
information in adjacent nodes.
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With these perspectives in mind, we logically can expect that
interpersonal communication should arouse related representations
of media content that have been previously encoded and formed in
the brain. Extending from research on the brain, this notion poses
direct implications for our view of campaign audiences. Rather than
seeing them as stand-alone addresses for information delivery and
encoding, we should view people who engage media content as being
interconnected pieces of a larger community that, in turn, might
need to be addressed as a whole because of the potential for interpersonal exchange to impact campaign message reception.
For example, general conversation about the specific public health
dangers of hurricanes, flooding, or earthquakes could reinforce or
amplify memory for connected material gleaned from mass media
reports on those topics. Interpersonal communication about the
actual media content in question could also reinforce memory for
that content. Robinson and Davis (1990), for example, surmised that
conversation about news stories may facilitate the long-term storage
and retrieval of information from those stories.
Southwell (2005) recently revealed an impact of conversation on
memory for advertisements from a health communication campaign
by demonstrating a cross-level interaction between the amount of
relevant conversation in a respondent’s environment and the sheer
prevalence of an advertisement in explaining recognition memory
for that advertisement. In general, Southwell found a positive relationship between the frequency of an antidrug advertisement on
television and the degree that people later remembered viewing that
advertisement. The extent to which advertisement prevalence translated into memory, however, depended on the existence of social networks rich in conversation about drugs. People who often engaged in
relevant conversation about drugs also tended to be those who later
remembered prevalent campaign advertisements.
On a different plane, Druckman (2004) discovered that campaign
priming effects in a U.S. Senate election relied upon reinforcement
from interpersonal communication. Media campaign emphasis on
Social Security and integrity apparently had the strongest priming
effect on those who also experienced reinforcement from discussions about the campaign. Such a finding underscores the need for
political campaigns to be evaluated with this contextual interaction
in mind. We may need to curb our expectations of impact for those
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campaigns that do not enjoy the presence of supportive social networks to reinforce effects.
The Southwell (2005) and Druckman (2004) studies also point out
the difficulty of teasing out such moderating effects empirically. Both
studies are noteworthy for their potential external generalizability,
as neither relies solely on laboratory results. Each study reports data
from actual campaign experiences, lessening their vulnerability to
criticism about the contrived nature of effects often lodged at experimental work. Because of the uncontrolled setting of each, however,
more work remains to be done to identify the exact mechanisms at
play in producing these interactions. Future work could combine
experimental design with realistic contexts to further investigate
how talk moderates memory effects.
Interpersonal Communication, Media, and Behavior
What about behavior change? Is it conceivable that interpersonal
talk could affect the relationship between media exposure and
behavior? Recent work by Scheufele and colleagues begins to address
this ­question, at least with regard to political participation. Scheufele
(2001, 2002; see also Hardy & Scheufele, 2005) argued that citizens
experience differential gains from media content related to politics
and civic engagement as a function of their interpersonal interaction
patterns. In other words, he asserted—and found some evidence to
suggest—that interpersonal communication moderates the relationship between mass media exposure and political behavior. Such discussion ostensibly provides motive, incentive, and skills to discern
the information from media reports necessary to mobilize and to act
upon media messages.
These claims, while consistent with evidence gathered to date,
also call for further clarification. Perhaps the moderation occurs at
the point of information processing and retention rather than somewhere more proximal to intention formation and behavioral performance. In that way, such results might be more consonant with the
memory-related interaction noted earlier than with true moderation
of direct campaign effects on behavior per se. As Hardy and Scheufele
(2005) contended, people might process media-based information
more carefully because of anticipated conversation or be better able
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to engage and encode information because of knowledge structures
developed through past conversation.
Caveats and Future Directions
To this point in our discussion, we have largely dealt with interpersonal communication as a monolithic entity, as though it was a
uniform resource that might affect media campaign results in a dose–
effect manner. Such an assumption, while convenient for summary
discussion, surely is limited; interpersonal communication researchers will readily observe that much more nuance exists to discuss.
As Cappella (1985) noted, conversations are exceptionally complex
phenomena, consisting of behaviors, stimuli, and perceptions. We
also know that interpersonal interactions vary in quality and type,
just as social networks vary in size and other characteristics.
Characterizing Conversations
How might interpersonal communications differ in theoretically
important ways beyond their simple existence or absence? If conversation acts as a mediator, functioning as a link between campaign
exposure in a community and behavior change, then the degree
of direct replication of media content in conversation could be an
important factor in judging the likely impact of a conversation. If
conversation serves as a moderator, affecting the nature of relationships between exposure and belief and behavior outcomes, then general topic consonance between conversation and media messages
(regardless of whether people employ specific information from the
campaign in discussions) might be sufficient under some circumstances to produce, for example, memory amplification effects. What
other conversation variables might matter?
To date, of the various researchers working at the intersection
of interpersonal communication, mass media, and campaign outcomes, political communication scholars have been perhaps the most
active in attempting to assess relevant quality or content differences
in conversation. Some scholars have attempted to code conversations
for logical coherence (Herring, 1999) or deliberativeness (Dahlberg,
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2001; Graham & Witschge, 2003; Stromer-Galley & ­ LeBret, 2005).
Graham and Witschge, for example, used textual analysis to assess
whether Internet forums meet the criteria of critical debate, reciprocity, and reflexivity. That tendency to assess conversation’s quality is
understandable, given the centrality of concepts such as deliberation
and opinion heterogeneity for theorists who care about democratic
systems.
We also might assess interpersonal communication in terms of
agreement or disagreement between participants (Visser & Mirabile, 2004). Disagreement (either on the part of an audience member
in response to something he or she encountered via mass media or
between two or more viewers subsequent to watching, reading, or
listening) might well influence how individuals interpret messages
relevant to a media campaign. Price et al. (2002) highlighted the
potential role of disagreement for actually improving the deliberative
nature of opinion among group members. On a different plane, exposure to conversational disagreement or to a partner who expresses
views that conflict with his or her own also might provide the sort
of inoculation against later media campaign persuasion attempts
discussed by Pfau and colleagues (e.g., Godbold & Pfau, 2000; Pfau
et al., 2003), although Visser and Mirabile (2004) also demonstrated
that social network agreement can increase resistance to persuasion.
Overall, the content of talk between conversational partners may
affect the impact that interpersonal communication can have relative to media exposure. We need more work in this vein.
Measuring Conversation
The preceding comments on the character of interpersonal communication directly relate to thinking about measurement issues. A
review of mass communication research that addresses interpersonal
communication illustrates that researchers often conceptualize
it in terms of simple self-report (e.g., de Vreese & Boomgaarden,
2006; O’Keefe et al., 2002; Southwell, 2005; van den Putte, Yzer, &
Brunsting, 2005). Such self-reported interpersonal communication
typically refers solely to whether or not interaction occurred. For
example, van den Putte and colleagues asked participants in their
panel study about the extent to which they spoke with others about
smoking cessation education campaigns. In that study, participants
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Roles of Interpersonal Communication in Mass Media Campaigns 449
wanted to quit more if they engaged in such conversations. Insofar
as we are concerned with simple mediating effects in which interpersonal communication extends campaign reach or simple moderating effects in which any relevant conversation amplifies individual
retrieval ability for campaign messages, such measures are likely
adequate, if imperfect.
We should note limitations of such measures, however. When used
in simple cross-sectional settings, they technically risk confounding
memory (and all of its complications) and actual past behavior. Even
when researchers use questions that include time-frame references
or conduct time-order analyses, self-report measures have limits.
For example, consistent with our earlier discussion, self-report measures alone typically do not sufficiently assess the character or nature
of the conversation. Because the content of the conversation can
vary in its consistency with campaign goals, we need to go further to
develop conversation content measures in some circumstances.
Self-report measures of interpersonal communication can assess
the (remembered) overall valence of past relevant interaction, though
often campaign researchers who do measure interpersonal communication focus on talk that is supportive of the campaign or assume
that any talk about the campaign would be supportive. The effects
that van den Putte and colleagues (2005) found, for example, likely
reflect the prevalence of conversations that, for the most part, supported smoking cessation; if the content of such conversations had
been mixed or largely counter to campaign goals, they likely would
not have demonstrated such a relationship, as the David et al. (2006)
study suggests.
A different approach is to focus on measuring the quality of conversations, which can manifest itself as, for example, disruption
(Leathers, 1969) and other normative pressure by conversational
partners (David et al., 2006), conversational competence (Ellis,
Duran & Kelly, 1994), or compliance with majority positions (Price
et al., 2006; Visser & Mirabile, 2004). Researchers tapping conversational content and quality often have employed direct observation
more than self-report measures. Typically, researchers log conversational entries, describe observed processes, and submit those data to
a content analysis (e.g., Price et al., 2006).
Some might argue that such extensive measurement may not
be practical for many formal mass media campaign evaluations in
which conversations often cannot be readily observed among mass
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Brian G. Southwell and Marco C. Yzer
a­ udiences. As we discussed earlier, however, technological advancements have changed conversation from strictly face-to-face oral
exchanges to possibilities for interpersonal engagement across a
range of modalities, including digital conversation (e.g., Price et al.,
2006). It seems then that new media technologies actually are a boon
in this regard, as they offer at least some possibilities for large-scale
direct observational measurement (see Donath, Karahalios, & ­Viégas,
1999). For investigation of the full range of effects that we have proposed in this overview, then, we need to continue to explore these
possibilities.
Conclusions
Interpersonal communication likely plays a series of insufficiently
appreciated and important roles in media campaign effects. Based
on theory and evidence, it could be a noteworthy outcome, act as a
mediator of campaign effects, or either reinforce or dampen campaign effects. While we can expect interpersonal communication to
be a regular part of the campaign audience landscape, we probably
cannot expect it always to be an ally for campaign efforts.
We have much to learn about these roles, however. Future work
should investigate the circumstances in which interpersonal communication is most powerful and determine appropriate variables
regarding interpersonal communication and media campaigns,
such as the extent of disagreement or topical consonance with campaign content, that matter in this arena. Moreover, we might be able
to improve our understanding of these dynamics with improved
­measurement possibilities that move beyond self-report items. In
addition, confirmation of these dynamics in contexts around the
globe will be worthwhile.
Nonetheless, by explicating an array of roles for interpersonal
communication in the context of campaigns, we hope to have outlined some new avenues for campaign evaluation. At a minimum,
we should be able to assess effects more exhaustively with this
framework by emphasizing important interaction possibilities and
potential indirect effects. At the same time, this review also should
serve as a call for greater collaboration between researchers (such
as interpersonal and mass communication scholars) who typically
do not view themselves as inhabiting the same terrain. Moreover,
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Roles of Interpersonal Communication in Mass Media Campaigns
451
­ umerous groups of relevant researchers (in areas such as social psyn
chology, organizational behavior, and public relations) should join
this scholarly discussion. Collectively invoking conversation as a
variable will not offer any of those researchers a universal panacea
in the search for campaign effects, but including the concept in campaign research undoubtedly will enrich our theoretical understanding of when and how campaigns work.
Notes
1. We acknowledge the many diverse traditions in interpersonal communication research. The space and scope of this chapter restricted
our ability to offer an overview of the many references relevant to
those traditions. For more complete reviews, please see Berger (2005),
Knapp and Daly (2002), or Roloff and Anastasiou (2001).
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