Primacy of Broadcast News: A Mediation Analysis of Recall, Attitudes, and Voting Intentions

This study examines how the order and proportion of scene valence within a television news story influence viewers' processing of political information. The results of the study, based on structural equation modeling and Sobel's mediation analysis, suggest that, in a news story about a political candidate, positive information on the candidate is recalled better if he or she is praised at the beginning of the story and then criticized at the end than if he or she is criticized first and praised later. In addition, there was a strong proportion effect. Stories with a high proportion of positive scenes were more likely to increase the participant's recall of positive information and induce his or her favorable attitudes and voting intentions than those with a low proportion of positive scenes.