This study had a two-fold purpose. Not only was it designed to determine the
impact of photographs on pre-existing news stories, but also to determine
whether inoculation has any ability to reduce the amount of persuasion such
photos may exert on individuals’ affect, involvement, and attitude.
Previous research (Pavio, 1986) showed that visual imagery does affect attitudes
in a very different way than textual messages. Mitchell (2001) claimed that
the positive or negative valence of a photograph can affect a consumer’s
attitude toward a product. However, the current study is the first to review
how this phenomenon might exist when applied to wartime newspaper coverage.
Wartime photography has presented some of the most enduring images from the
nation’s history. Photographs taken by embedded journalists in the Civil
War, photographs of the dead and dying from the D-Day invasion in World War
II, and photographs from the Vietnam War not only document this country’s
history, but played a powerful role in shaping public opinion about the conflicts.
The conflict in Iraq is embroiled in a public opinion war that is incredibly
significant and surely a vital aspect of the overall mission plan. Maintaining
a positive public opinion is undoubtedly a major concern of the current administration,
however, the deaths of military service members, civilian casualties from
U.S. military attacks, and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal are all incidents
which are likely to have affected public opinion about the war.
In each of the above cases, textual stories of these issues were in print
before actual photos were released to the public. The stories appeared to
obtain a much more prominent role in news coverage following the release of
photographs depicting these events. Understanding the extent of the impact
of these photos is a primary intention of this study. If military public affairs
practitioners were aware of this trend, they would have the opportunity to
be proactive in circumventing this erosion of public support when it is known
these types of photographs are going to be released. Furthermore, they could
plan long-term strategies based on the knowledge of this effect.
Much of the information that leads us to believe photographs impact public
opinion is circumstantial and anecdotal. What little empirical research exists
stems from the marketing realm, which supports prevailing thought that photographs
exert a greater impact than text on attitudes (Houston et al., 1987), involvement
(Newhagen & Reeves, 1992), and affect (Dillard & Meijinders, 2002).
This study seeks to extend this body of knowledge to print media in a way
not quantitatively tested previously.
The first three hypotheses stated the expectation that: a) photographs with
captions and b) photographs with full text would exert greater impact on readers’
(H1) attitudes, (H2) involvement, and (H3) affect as compared to text only.
These hypotheses were only partially supported.
Testing of the hypotheses found that the photographs-only category displayed
significantly more attitudinal, involvement, and emotional impact than either
the text-only or pictures-with-text categories. A possible explanation for
why the text and photograph combined did not exert the predicted superiority
over the text-only category could be that they exert persuasion in different
ways. Visual images are inherently emotional in nature while text tends to
be cognitive in nature, using arguments and details to more fully explain
the full issue. In the photograph-with-text category, the text may serve to
dilute the powerful, instantaneous emotion generated by the photograph and
provide a more balanced understanding of the issue instead of eliciting a
purely emotional response. It would be interesting to discover in future research
whether the photograph-only condition or the photograph-with-text condition
would have the longer-lasting effect on recall of the issue
Knowing the extent to which images affect opinions is important, but the question
that follows naturally, “What can we do about it?” is equally
valuable. Negatively valenced photographs such as the three selected for this
study certainly would cause military public affairs practitioners to initiate
crisis response procedures. However, most procedures involve “after-the-fact”
image restoration. Inoculation provides a potentially effective proactive
approach to the release of negatively valenced photographs.
This is the first time inoculation has been studied in relation to photographs
of war. Inoculation theory has, however, proven to be effective in reducing
persuasive appeals over a wide range of applications including: political
campaigns (Pfau & Burgoon, 1988; Pfau, Kenski, Nitz, & Sorenson, 1990),
smoking prevention (Pfau Van Bockern, & Kang, 1992), commercial advertising
(Pfau, 1992), public relations (Burgoon, Pfau, & Birk, 1995) as well as
others and, therefore, offers a potentially effective application strategy
in this context as well.
A somewhat intriguing result is that the inoculation message failed to confer
resistance to males, but worked for females. Women in the control group exhibited
a more significant impact from the photograph than those inoculated against.
Women’s attitudes toward the war in Iraq were initially much more strongly
against the war than men’s attitudes, and the photographs exerted a
greater impact on the women’s attitudes than men. The study wasn’t
designed to reveal the intricacies of gender differences though, so further
research to examine this finding would be useful. It should be emphasized
however, that this ineffectiveness of inoculation to function on males in
this study is likely to be due to the military nature of the study.
This study proves valuable to providing information regarding the impact of
photographs of the Iraq war on attitude, involvement, and affect, in addition
to the effectiveness of inoculation regarding images of the war. However,
some limitations must be considered in the analysis of the research. Lack
of power, lack of previous research, and sampling method pose certain limitations
for the study.
Lack of power in the control group limited the assertions made in hypothesis
four, which stated those who were inoculated would demonstrate less attitudinal
influence, less elicited involvement and less elicited affect. Although sufficient
to make certain assertions, the small number of participants in the control
group limits the strength of the inoculation conclusions drawn from the data.
Also, it was not necessary to inoculate against photos and have the condition
of text only in the experimental group. The text-only condition was deleted
during the running of analysis.
When reviewing literature for the four hypotheses, it became apparent an absence
exists in the realm of research on images and their impact on attitude, involvement,
and affect. The vast majority of the present research has been conducted in
the fields of advertising and marketing and with television images. While
it is exciting to forge into new territory, the noticeable void in research
within the communication context made gathering background information difficult
and in some areas, impossible. This study will greatly benefit future endeavors
in conducting research on print news images’ impact by providing a much-needed
perspective and baseline.
This study was conducted as part of a capstone class project for an eight-week
Department of Defense class in Communication Theory. This compacted the research
schedule severely limiting the planning and implementation time frames which
could be allocated for this study. Within this condensed time frame, it was
more difficult to eliminate the limitations that encompassed the study implementation.
Without the constraints of time and resources, it is likely many of the limitations
could have been removed, yielding more complete study results.