Hypotheses

Many say media images became more graphic of the war in Iraq as the conflict changed from air war to urban combat (Robertson, 2004). Do graphic images have the ability to alter public support for U.S. combat operations? This investigation examines participants’ opinions toward military efforts in Iraq before and after being exposed to a war photograph with a caption, a photograph with full text, or full text alone in an attempt to determine the influence of graphic war photographs on public opinion.
Impact on Attitude

An underlying concern for military public affairs practitioners is how graphic pictures from the war zone affect public attitude about U.S. involvement in combat operations. Can one poignant photograph turn a war supporter into a war protestor? Some think so, and this investigation is based on the premise that it is crucial to understand how an image might change an attitude. Currently, there is no hard evidence on the impact of photographs in news stories in an individual’s attitude. However, there is research within the advertising realm relating to the impact of photographs on attitude that can be drawn from.
Images have a powerful impact on a viewer’s attitude, and this impact cannot be created by text alone. In a news context, the presence of a photograph will significantly alter the consumer’s attitude toward the framed issue.

Houston, Childers, and Heckler (1987) noted that little research examined the effects of nonverbal message elements on consumer information processing. They also proposed that the nature of pictorial stimuli suggests that pictures can be used effectively to embed expectations within a message. If this is true, there are many implications for advertisers and news producers alike. For instance, Singh, Lessig, and Kim (2000) show that advertisers use pictures for several reasons, including getting attention. In newspapers, visuals have proven to be a crucial connection point, and Moses (2002) noted that graphics, photographs, and headlines get far more attention from readers than text does. In a marketing saturated environment, winning the consumer’s attention is half of the battle. Furthermore, the mere association of a product with a positively evaluated stimulus like an attractive picture, regardless of the picture content, may be sufficient to alter attitude toward the product “without any rational belief change preceding the effect” (Harris, 1983, p.112).

If it is understood how consumers react to pictures in the marketing context, insight can be gained into how photographs serve to influence news consumers. Advertisement practices appear to be predicated on the belief that vivid information is more persuasive than pallid information, with vividness typically viewed as a characteristic of the stimulus; hence; pictures are vivid and verbal statements are pallid (Kisielius & Sternthal, 1984). Persuasion is usually measured by asking subjects to make attitudinal judgments about the message promotion. Within the advertising framework, one can study the impact of images in relation to influencing consumer attitude.

The research of pictures in advertising has focused on two broad categories: the effects of pictorial messages on memory and the impact of pictures on consumer attitudinal response (Houston et al., 1987). The attitudinal studies are significant because the manner in which an image influences a consumer’s opinion toward an advertisement could realistically explain the way a photograph influences a news consumer’s opinion about an article, or the issue discussed in the article. Petty and Cacioppo (1981) have defined attitude as “a general and enduring positive or negative feeling about some person, object, or issue” (Morris, Woo, Geason, & Kim, 2002). The visual component in advertisements may affect both the formation of product attribute beliefs and attitude toward the advertisement (Mitchell, 2001). If the images in an advertisement can directly affect a consumer’s attitude, what is portrayed in those images is crucial. One explanation for those effects is the belief structure change hypothesis, which states that pictures’ effect on attitudes occurs thorough their influence on product-related thoughts and beliefs (Singh et al., 2000).
The results of a Mitchell (2001) study indicate that the visual elements of advertisements may affect brand attitudes in at least two ways. First, consumers might make presumptions about the brand based on the visual information presented. These presumptions may “result in the formation or change of beliefs about the advertised brand” (Mitchell, 2001, p. 21). Second, if the visual element is positively or negatively evaluated, it might affect a brand attitude operating through attitude toward the advertisement. In essence, the valence of a photograph can significantly influence a consumer’s attitude toward an advertisement.

In fact, having more pictures or a larger picture in an advertisement can influence consumers. A Rossiter and Percy (1978) study found that high pictorial emphasis in print advertising, that is, a large picture of the product relative to the space devoted to copy, generated significantly more favorable overall attitude ratings for a new, hypothetical product that those advertisements with low pictorial emphasis, that is, a small picture of the product with larger size copy. The imagery explanation of this picture-superiority effect relates to advertisements where the information presented in words is the same as the information presented in the pictures (Houston et al., 1987).

In a news story, the photograph serves to draw attention to a big story, further illustrate statements made in the story, and give the readers’ more details about the information presented. Just as in advertisements, photographs in news stories can stimulate opinion change about brand attitude. In the case of military print news stories, the brand affected is support of war. Hence, this study posits:

H1: In military print news stories, a) photographs with captions and b) photographs with full text exert greater impact on readers’ attitude towards U.S. military combat operations compared to full text without photographs.

Impact on Involvement Levels

Prior to the 2004 presidential elections and in the months following the election, many Americans ranked the War on Terror and the conflict in Iraq as important issues facing the country (Gallup, 2004). Since most Americans don’t experience the war directly, what impact do photos play in increasing levels of involvement with this issue? Photographs in news stories bring readers directly to the front of the action, and offer a front-row seat for U.S. combat operations. Reading about a particular battle is informative, but viewing graphic images of war dead from that battle allows the news consumer to feel drawn in to the action.
Visual images demand a viewer’s attention. Photos have the ability to convey drama and emotion and realism in a way that text alone cannot. Visual images can short circuit higher levels of cognition and reasoning, because they are more lifelike and easier for the brain to process. Also, because the brain codes visual and nonvisual information separately, the additional memory coding can increase information recall.
Visuals can have a dramatic impact on a reader’s involvement and feelings toward an event or issue. Newhagen and Reeves (1992) found the increased cognitive load caused by negative arousal raised by intense and vivid images on television actually caused viewers to forget the verbal and visual information presented prior to the image and heightened their memory for visual and factual information presented after the compelling images (Newhagen & Reeves, 1992).

By nature the visual medium demands receiver attention. The news photograph connects the reader to a story in a way that text alone cannot. Graber (1996) said “combining pictures with words makes the message more memorable” (p. 87). The overall content of pictures differ in the emotion, immediacy, and environment captured. These elements of a picture can produce dramatic information, which are not necessarily conveyed or included through textual information alone. Graber attributes this to the fact that the human brain absorbs larger amounts of information when messages are visual (1996).

Medium theory also explains this phenomenon. Chesebro (1984) argues each individual’s mind is conditioned to view and digest media modalities in different ways. He asserts that “specific media are linked to particular modes of understanding” (p. 119). Chesebro and Bertelsen (1996) compare several modes of communication with the type of understanding it generates:

Understandings are derived by substituting concrete references for the abstractions read; writer and reader are unlikely to share a commonly shared social context for interpreting language; knowledge is created/understood in an individual, unique, and private environment; knowledge takes the form of prepositional claims (p. 168).

The television modality interacts differently than textual because it effects orientation and awareness – “an inverse relationship exists between television viewing and reasoning: as a symbolic code increasingly approximates real life, the need to make inferences and judgments declines” (p. 169). Since photos work in the visual medium, it is possible they share some of the same effects on the consumer as television. Although this impact was studied using the television medium, Prabu (1998) adds to the validity of extending motion imagery research results to expectations of still images by citing similarities between the two. Prabu states that the findings between the two are similar and that any differences may be attributed to encoding, retrieval and level of audio-visual redundancy.

With respect to photographic images, the aspect of human sensation is an important one. An operational assumption of media is that “attention is best gained by appealing to sensation and human interest” (Myerowitz, 1985, p. 13). This assumption directly relates to arousal and the evidence that humans like to “feel.” An image can capture human interest within a momentary glance and evoke sensation soon after. While words alone have the same ability, it takes more effort on the part of the receiver. It is a less instantaneous and perhaps less vivid, effect. Myerowitz (1985) argues that all media focus on dramatic or exciting events and spectacles to gain attention. Yet it is possible photographic images may win more attention than the printed word simply due to ease of use. Once that attention is gained, do the images create a stronger arousal or emotional response?

Graber (1996) demonstrates that arousal does increase receiver involvement. Processing and retention of photographic information is based on two types of scholarly explanations. The first is pictures create a sense of participation or witnessing of an event and arousing the viewer’s interest and attention to a greater extent. This emotional involvement leads the viewer to a perceived realism of the visual in addition to the amplifying the credibility of the image (Graber, 1996). The second explanation is that the combination of visual information and nonvisual information are encoded for messages separately the likeliness of retrieval of stored information is greater. This means because of the additional memory coding, if for some reason one form of the information is not available; the other may be (Graber, 1996). Images create a sense of drama because they hold a reader’s attention and create emotional involvement resulting in personal identification between the subjects of a story and the consumer. In order to create dramatic impact, print stories will often “try to draw in exciting visuals stored in the audience’s memory” (Graber, 1996, p.90). Thus, this study predicts that:

H2: In military print news stories, a) photographs with captions and b) photographs with full text exert great impact on readers’ elicited involvement levels about specific military issues compared to full text without photographs.

Impact on Affect

Most Americans, even those not alive at the time the picture was taken, can recall the infamous picture from Vietnam of a naked young girl, burned from napalm, running down a road screaming in agony. On the other hand, most Americans probably cannot remember the combat actions surrounding that photo, or any other detail that would have been explained in a full text article on the incident. The photo is remembered over the information because of the way it evokes emotion. Graphic photographs of military action, or the consequences of such action, tend to elicit affective responses from the general public.

Readers are more likely to feel emotionally involved in a news story when a photograph is present. News photographs obtain more emotional responses than textual information alone.

Emotions are generally viewed as mental states representing evaluative reactions to events, agents, or objects that vary in intensity (Ortony, Clore, & Collins, 1988). A simple photograph can serve as an object that elicits emotion. According to Paivio (1986), imagery is more likely to be evoked by and used with pictures than with words and affective reactions would usually occur more quickly to pictures than to words because pictures have a more direct access to affect-mediating imagens. These emotions serve as heuristics, and guide one’s decisions with minimal information processing or thought (Dillard & Meijinders, 2002). Affect, therefore, plays an important part in determining how individuals view events. If an event is determined to be beneficial to an individual then it is likely to trigger a positive emotion, and when an event is considered to be harmful to an individual it is likely to trigger a negative emotion (Mesquita & Karasawa, 1999).

The impact of visuals on text isn’t restricted to content bolstering alone. Innis (1964) posited the idea that different media have differing potential for control. Much of this control potential stems from accessibility of the particular medium. McLuhan (1964) added that media can even work as extensions of the human sense or processes, suggesting that different media affect the organization of human senses differently. In consideration of these viewpoints, the accessibility of newspaper images may lend to some form of societal control. Newspapers physically permeate the nation and are inexpensive, many cheaper than a soft drink or a pack of gum, some costing nothing at all. If the print medium is a working factor in the organization of human senses, how does it affect human senses? Since newspaper images are overwhelmingly accessible and impact human senses, it’s possible that they have some control over emotion, which is inextricably linked with one’s senses.

The mental imagery processing model (Staats & Lohr, 1979) states that both words and images can serve to elicit an emotional response (Scott & Batra, 2003). It is not simply the descriptive words of a news story that stir up a reader’s sensations. Nabi (2003) notes that pictures have an unquestioned capacity to arouse emotions, and adds that such emotion may influence attitudes directly or indirectly by impacting message processing. News stories use images not only to clarify text, but also because they stimulate emotion in consumers. Strivers (1994) believed visual images appeal to human beings on an emotions level and posited the more vibrant, excited, or convincing an image is, the more likely it will affect an individual. In the marketing context, similar outcomes are noteworthy. In Morris et al.’s (2002) robust study of over 23,000 responses to 240 advertising messages, researcher’s found that affect dominates over cognition for predicting attitude and action, and that “emotional response is a powerful predictor of intention” (p. 14).
According to Mackie, Asuncion, and Rosselli, positive affect occurs when specific content from long-term memory is activated. In other words, “positive mood will be accompanied by a flux of predominately positive material in active memory” (1992, p. 251). Additionally, research suggests that affectively valenced material is allocated more emotional attention than non-affectively valenced material. Following this path, human beings tend to allocate more attention (and cognition) to material that is positively valenced. Mackie, Asuncion, and Rosselli (1992) suggested that less attention is given to negatively valenced material, leading to the suggestion that humans might focus on positively valenced material by suppressing negatively valenced material. Graber (1996) found emotionally valenced visuals have more impact for the receiver. Since images can create a sense of drama, they hold a viewer’s attention and create emotional involvement resulting in personal identification between the subjects of the story and the viewer. “In fact, to create dramatic impact, print stories often try to draw on exciting visuals stored in the audience’s memory,” (Graber, 1996, p. 90).
The intellectual impact of imagery is less important than the emotional force of an image, since imagery affects a receiver emotionally before cognitively dissecting the image into intellectual components (Strivers, 1994). This influence is precisely what news producers are aiming at, since “the image is intended to make an impression, to have an emotion impact on its audience” (Strivers, 1994, p. 132). Unlike photographs portraying political leaders or scenic landscapes, images of military action evoke some type of feeling. Hence, this investigation posits:

H3: In military print news stories, a) photographs with captions and b) photographs with full text elicit greater affect in readers compared to full text without photographs.

Inoculation

Military public affairs practitioners often deal with the effects of stirring images on public opinion. It is the spokesperson’s job to explain, clarify, or apologize for graphic and sometimes disturbing photographs relating to military action. Often times, public affairs officers’ know that moving pictures exist and will be distributed to the public, yet there is little that can be done to mitigate the effects of such images. Yet, if the above allegations are true, and images indeed influence attitude, involvement levels, and emotion, can anything be done to protect against this influence? It is inevitable, with the widespread use of embedded reporters and the ease of transmitting, that graphic images from the war zone will reach the American public. Effectively countering the impact of powerful images could enable political and military leaders to retain crucial public support in times of war.

A question of interest to academics and practitioners alike is whether it is possible to preempt the persuasive influence of the visual medium using inoculation. Inoculation research, based off the biological premise of inoculation that by inducing a small amount of an antagonistic agent into the subject the person will become stronger at fighting off more forceful attacks in the future, has proven capable of conferring resistance to persuasive appeals in a variety of settings.

McGuire established the framework for inoculation theory with his work in the early 1960s (McGuire, 1961a; McGuire, 1961b; McGuire, 1962; McGuire & Papageorgis, 1962; Papageorgis & McGuire 1961), and much of the theory is still intact more than 40 years later. Inoculation theory has 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), and public relations (Burgoon, Pfau, & Birk, 1995). This study extends the application of inoculation to a specific media channel, the news photograph. Communication and advertising research has demonstrated the powerful impact visuals have on attitudes, involvement, and emotion. What, if anything, can be done to protect individuals from the influence of a visual image? One answer may be to inoculate against the visual channel. As mentioned previously, inoculation has proven effective in many contexts. Inoculating against a specific channel would extend the theory beyond simply looking at messages, but also to the mode used to deliver the message.

At a basic level, inoculation theory is fairly simple and relies on two primary concepts: threat and refutational preemption. For an inoculation treatment to be effective in conferring resistance, it has to alert receivers that their attitudes are vulnerable to change. This awareness of perception of receiver vulnerability is what is known as threat (Pfau, 1997). The threat component consists of a forewarning that a present belief is likely to come under attack, and must be sufficient enough to challenge a receiver’s attitudinal integrity. McGuire (1961, 1964) argues that when receivers are threatened, they will be motivated to bolster their attitudes about potential attacks.

Refutational preemption is simply a counterargument to a possible persuasive attack. Armed with foreknowledge of a potential vulnerability and arguments to counter the attack, inoculation theory posits an individual will begin to generate counterarguments to bolster their belief to a greater extent than either a supportive defense only or no prior defense at all (McGuire, 1964). McGuire also showed that a time component is necessary for individuals to begin properly generating counterarguments (McGuire, 1961a ). Pfau et al. (1997) states that McGuire’s emphasis was on inoculation as an active cognitive process and that research on communication forms with cognitive messages suggests the superiority of the print form over video (Pfau, Holbert, Zubric, Pasha & Lin 2000). Until 2000, modality, or form of the message, in resistance research was “treated as a ‘neutral’ conduit of message content” (Pfau, 1990, p.195). However, a recent study in inoculation concerning the modality of the message (Pfau, Holbert, Zubric, Pasha & Lin, 2000) displayed a difference in how various forms of communication prompted resistance, specifically that video elicited a much greater counterarguing output. Emotion in the inoculation process is important, as is the possibility that one can inoculate against emotion-laden arguments (Nabi, 2003). Is it possible dissimilar modes of persuasive appeals differ in how they react to inoculation?

Thus, in the context of inoculating against visual attacks within news stories, this study posits:

H4: Compared to those who receive no pretreatment, readers’ of military print news stories who are inoculated prior to exposure to the story are less affected: They demonstrate a) less attitudinal influence, b) less elicited involvement, and c) less elicited affect.