Tone
This study posits that, compared to television stories without embedded reporters, those with embedded reporters tend to have more positive coverage of the military as a whole and more positive coverage of individual service members. This is because, unlike coverage of previous wars or conflicts, media professionals are able to develop relationships with the units they are embedded with. Through the process of organizational socialization the media gets a first-hand view and understanding of the military “way of life” which is why they tend to cover the military, as a whole, in a more positive light. They also become more intimate with the service members they are embedded with through application of the social penetration theory. Therefore the media gives more positive coverage of individual service members. This study reviews some of the literature pertaining to organizational socialization and social penetration theory in order to show how they each contributed to the tone of coverage.

Military culture is unlike media culture. The adaptation to this new culture by the embedded media is not only necessary for safety reasons, but also for improved relations. Because embedded reporters are entering this new culture, there is a process they must go through to adapt, called organizational socialization. Van Maanen (1976, p. 67) defines this as “the processes by which members learn the cultural values, norms, beliefs, assumptions, and required behaviors that permit them to participate as effective members of an organization.” Learning a new culture can be accomplished either by self-socialization or by anticipatory socialization (Schein, 1992). Although a certain amount of self-socialization must take place, usually an active teaching environment helps new group members adjust. For instance, the majority of media personnel embedded with the military during Operation Iraqi Freedom had no military experience and were required to conduct the organizational socialization process during severe inhospitable conditions. However, to facilitate the process, approximately 283 media members (out of approximately 650) attended a stateside “media boot camp” to familiarize themselves with military culture (Katovsky & Carlson, 2003).

Once the media were embedded with their units, they continued the organizational socialization process. Based on Ott’s (1989) posit, as new members learn what is happening around them, they become enculturated into the organization. This process is accelerated based on recent research conducted by Soeters (2000) which stated that the socialization process in the military takes less time than normal if operating in a “hot” zone or a combat zone. In times of crises, organizational members form a strong, cohesive group with a collective mind. This sense of unity caused the reporters to present positive coverage of the military as a whole.

This study also posits that embedded media tended to be more positive toward the individual service members, which can be correlated to the social penetration theory. The theory of social penetration is a relational development theory developed by social psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor in 1973. Altman and Taylor describe social penetration as “the process whereby people come to know one another in varying degrees of detail and intimacy” (Heath & Bryant, 2000). Simply stated, people gradually reveal more information about themselves and the intimacy level of that information gradually increases (VanLear, 1991).

Social penetration establishes four sequential stages of relational development: orientation, exploratory affective exchange, affective exchange, and stable exchange (Miller, K., 2002). Individuals are most cautious during the orientation stage. The tone of the conversations is likely to be cautious and exploratory (Heath & Bryant, 2000). In the exploratory affective exchange stage, individuals are more relaxed and conversation extends to more than just small talk. According to Heath and Bryant (2000), there are preliminary attempts during this stage to reveal aspects of personality and more private thoughts. As stated by Knapp & Daly (2002), Altman and Taylor believe a sense of mutual trustworthiness is a necessity during this stage if the relationship is going to progress into more intimate stages. In the affective exchange stage, barriers have been broken down and information is exchanged more openly. Open and rich interactions characterize the final stage, stable exchange. Interactants understand each other well enough that communication can often occur on a nonverbal level (Miller, K., 2002), which means the relationship has reached an intimate level.

As with the organizational socialization concept, embedded media members will tend to build the relationship faster, due to the nature of the “hot” zone. Media members become part of the group, or team, through this bonding. Soeters (2000) posits that team members tend to bond faster and develop a “swift trust” with one another. Swift trust is more likely to occur when uncertainty is high and the situation is unfamiliar and dangerous (Meyerson, Weick, & Kramer, 1995). Because of this increased level of trust and bonding through the social penetration theory, embedded reports will have a tendency to shine a positive light on their coverage of their assigned units.
This review has shown that media members will tend to join the military culture they are embedded into through the process of organizational socialization and social penetration theory. Through this bonding, we predict the following hypothesis:

H1: Compared to non-embedded coverage, embedded journalists produce television reports that are more positive about a) the military as a whole and b) its personnel.

Framing
Framing is a “process through which the media emphasize some aspects of reality and downplay other aspects” (Miller, 2002). Media members, as communicators, make conscious or unconscious decisions in deciding what to say, using frames to arrange their belief systems (Entman, 1993). This means that the public gets their information after raw content has passed through the lens of the media. Iyengar (1991) believed that, based on the format of presentation, all television news stories can be categorized as either “thematic” or “episodic” in nature. The thematic frame places public issues in a less tangible framework directed at general outcomes or conditions. Conversely, the episodic news frame is a case study or event-based and depicts public issues by concrete illustrations (Iyengar, 1991).

This study posits that embedded reporting is more episodic than thematic in nature. The purpose of having embedded reporters with military units is to give television viewers a more intimate look at the war. This close-up look gives the audience a personal and tangible view of events as they unfold. Therefore, embedded stories by their very design must be more episodic.

The concept of framing was introduced in the context of mass media communications by Gitlin (McCombs & Shaw, 1993), though it came to fruition with the development of a mass media theory called “agenda setting.” The agenda-setting theory was born out of work by journalist Walter Lippmann (1922) who proposed that media leads us to create “pictures in our head” about issues in society. In 1963, Cohen published his beliefs about how the news media and governmental foreign policies are related (Perry, 2002). Cohen (1963) stated the press “may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about.” In 1972, McCombs and Shaw published their research that supported that concept and coined the communication observation as “agenda-setting” (Miller, 2002).

McCombs and Shaw (1972) also observed, “both the selection of objects for attention and the selection of attributes, that is frames for thinking about those objects, are powerful agenda setting roles.” These “frames” were studied by many researchers, including Goffman, who wanted to examine the particular vulnerabilities to which these frames of orientation are subject (Goffman, 1974). From his work and that of others, Gitlin (1980) posited that the attributes of an issue emphasized in the news (frames) can directly influence the direction of public opinion.

There are many types of frames media use for framing, though this study focuses on two, thematic and episodic, based on the descriptions by Iyengar (1991). A thematic frame tends to place topics in a less concrete structure. For instance, a thematic news story on the war might focus on the technology used in the battles, citing statistical information about how far a particular weapon reaches. An episodic frame makes an issue more tangible (and possibly more personal) for viewers. An episodic story about the war might also focus on the technology used in battle, but instead center on how it allows Sergeant Smith to be further away from the enemy than he might have been traditionally, thereby keeping him safer. We believe this example is also typical of many in that the episodic framing of these embedded reporter stories will tend to elicit more emotion from viewers because the context is more personal.
While most stories contain aspects of both, Iyengar (1991) believes there is a primary frame of either episodic or thematic in most stories. However, embedded reporting coverage has a higher propensity for episodic framing because journalists are assimilated into the military culture for extended periods of time, making their stories more personal in nature. Based on these definitions and explanations, this study posits:

H2: Compared to non-embedded coverage, embedded journalists produce television reports that are more episodic.

The Role of Affect
This study posits that embedded reporters will tend to produce stories that elicit more positive affects, as compared to stories from non-embedded reporters. This is because, based on previous reasoning, embedded reporters develop intimate relationships in the military units they are in. This fosters feelings of camaraderie, which then become noticeable through positive affects in their stories. Embedded reporter coverage has also been established to be more episodic, which we believe means it will tend to elicit more emotion from viewers. Additionally, affect is primarily caused by interpersonal interaction, and viewers tend to interact with people shown in the mass media as if they were actually present (Reeves & Nash, 1996). Therefore, there will be positive affect elicited from viewers.
Forgas (1999) defines moods as low-intensity, diffuse, and enduring affective states that have no salient cause, and thus little cognitive content, such as feeling good or being in a good mood. Emotions are more short-lived, intense phenomena that usually have a highly accessible cause and clear cognitive content. Nabi (2002) offers fear, guilt, anger, sadness, disgust, and envy as examples of negative emotions and happiness, pride, compassion, relief, and hope as examples of positive emotions.

Although early researchers often used the terms affect, emotion, and mood interchangeably, there is a growing consensus that affect refers to the general valance of an emotional state. Emotions are defined as a specific group of feelings that occur in response to an event, and moods are the enduring states of pleasant or unpleasant feeling (Guerrero, Anderson, & Trost, 1998).

In the 1990s, researchers reached a consensus that the primary cause of many emotional experiences is interpersonal interaction. Bowlby (1979) said that the most intense emotions “arise when people are forming, maintaining, disrupting, terminating, or renewing close relational ties with others.” He associated forming and renewing attachment with love and joy, and relational disruption with emotions such as jealousy and anxiety.

These relations with others are not confined to verbal communication. According to Zajonc (1980), affect in conversations is transmitted by verbal channels and nonverbal cues. He posited that these nonverbal cues may hold the key to the principal components of affect information, and said, “It is much less important for us to know whether someone has just said “You are a friend” or “You are a fiend” than to know whether it was spoken in contempt or with affection.”

Affect and interpersonal interaction is taken a step further when the mass media are considered. Equating mediated and real life is something that Reeves and Nass (1996) called the “media equation.” Their research found that individuals’ interactions with computers, televisions, and new media are fundamentally social and natural, just like interaction in real life. And, according to Reeves and Nash (1996), “There is no switch in the brain that can be thrown to distinguish the real and mediated worlds.”

People presented in the media are perceived by our brains as actually present, and viewers evaluate faces on screen the same as they would evaluate actual people. In fact, Reeves and Nash (1996) stated that people are comfortable thinking about media personalities as friends and confidants. They believed this tendency can be traced back to the primitive experience of another person’s presence, even though the presence is pictorial, not real.

The human brain also is configured to distinguish good from bad quickly and efficiently in order to protect us from harm. This same process of evaluation used in real life occurrences is present via pictures. Reeves and Nash (1996) believed it is easier for a person to determine if they like a speaker based on how close the speaker stands than by evaluating what the speaker has to say. They noted, therefore, that it is natural for a person to be comfortable judging the personal qualities of a political candidate once he or she has seen a picture of the candidate, regardless of their knowledge of the candidate’s platform.

This study postulated that embedded reporters develop camaraderie with the units they are assigned, which leads to positive feelings of bonding. These positive emotions then transfer to the viewer through the episodic framing of the stories. Given that this review of affect found that the primary cause of affect is interpersonal interaction, and that individuals interact with people shown in the mass media as if they were actually present, this study anticipates:

H3: Compared to non-embedded coverage, embedded journalists produce reports that elicit more positive affect.

Relational Messages
Relational communication is a type of interpersonal communication that focuses on verbal and nonverbal signs and symbols that specifically denote how messages are to be treated and how those messages define the relationship between the communicators. Wherever there is communication between two people, relational communication concepts seek to help explain how each person is being perceived and perceiving the other.

This paper posits that military members in the stories by embedded journalists will elicit more positive relational messages than those in stories by non-embedded journalists. This is based on a chain reaction starting with the physical embedding when the reporter builds a bond with the members of the unit they are assigned to. This causes positive feelings of camaraderie to develop between the reporter and military members, causing the media to frame their stories more episodically and eliciting more positive emotion. Specifically, the military members will exude more positive relational messages to the viewer.

The implications and ramifications of relational communication theory touch relationships with family, friends, and co-workers, as well as broader and more abstract relationships such as presidential elections/party affiliations and interaction with the mass media.

The origins of relational communication pre-date language itself, but the study of relational communication is somewhat new. Since Bateson (1958) first introduced the contemporary study of relational aspects of communication, scholars have identified overarching themes that are present in relational messages and have moved toward systematizing the field in order to quantify and measure the dimensions and their effect on interpersonal relationships and relational messages. One area that has blossomed as a result of this emphasis on quantification and measurement is how these relational messages are conveyed during interpersonal exchanges. Scholars have shown that relational messages can be communicated both verbally and nonverbally, but are predominantly nonverbal and subconscious (Dillard, Soloman, & Palmer, 1999).

Nonverbal relational cues are the primary way we receive these command messages. By identifying the nonverbal areas of communication, scholars can further quantify the intensity of these messages as alluded to by Dillard et al. (1999). Nonverbal communication can be defined as communication perceived consciously by either the sender or receiver, intended as a message by the sender, or interpreted by the receiver as intended (Trenholm & Jensen, 2000).

Other theorists believe that nonverbal communication can be unintentional and purely subconscious both in the mind of the sender and receiver (Buck, 1984).

Nonverbal relational communication can be categorized in two ways, spontaneous and symbolic. Spontaneous communication refers to a sender’s involuntary display of inner emotional states and a receiver’s direct and immediate sensory awareness of those states (Buck, 1984). When we communicate spontaneously, our nonverbal signs are simply external manifestations of our internal emotions; they are not planned or intentional messages to others. Buck believed, “It is possible for both sender and receiver to communicate in a purely spontaneous manner, where neither person consciously intends to send or receive the nonverbal signal” (Buck, 1984).

Nonverbal communication predates language itself. Since we spend the first 12 to 18 months of our lives relying solely on nonverbal communication, it is little wonder that when in doubt, we tend to put our faith in nonverbal messages (Trenholm & Jensen, 2000). Nonverbal communication is emotionally more powerful than verbal communication because nonverbals are seen to reflect “what we really think/feel.” The myriad of gestures and intonations that express emotional bonding (interlocking arms, shoulder embraces, hand-holding, etc.) are “tie signs” that physically connect people in ways words cannot (Morris, 1977).

Our final hypothesis builds on our previous hypotheses that stories by embedded reporters will be more positive in tone, episodic in nature, and elicit more positive affect. We posit that this will lead to positive relational messages being conveyed by military members in the units covered in the stories. Therefore we predict:

H4: Compared to non-embedded coverage, embedded journalists produce
television reports in which the military member interviewed elicited more
positive relational messages.