Experiment Shows Higher Information Recall for Soft Rather than Hard Business News

Abstract

For the fourth consecutive year the economy ranked as the leading news story in U.S. media. In 2011, nearly 40 percent reported paying attention to the topic, and in 2010 the domestic economy placed first or second news story of interest 41 weeks out of 52.1Since 2007 and the crisis of the housing market,2 the public's preference for domestic economic issues as measured by the Pew's News Interest Index has remained high regardless of the severity of the international economic turmoil.Subsequently, two questions bear investigation:* Despite abundant empirical evidence, do U.S. citizens truly favor domestic topics rather than international issues?* Scant research previously investigated whether Americans gravitate toward softor hard economic reports. So do U.S. citizens prefer articles with human interest or timely information instead?The Pew Research Center certainly presents the economy as a ubiquitous topic in the media,3 yet do business reporters really know which format leads to a higher recall of economic and financial information? As it privileges hard news, the Pew Index only focusdes on a partial picture. Focused on practical implications for the profession, this research relies on an experiment to evaluate what economic news yields the highest recall and consequently what type of stories should media present to the public.Domestic and International Economic CoverageResearch targeting economic news seldom introduces ample evidence regarding the difference in geographical perspectives of the stories covered. More regularly, content analyses distinguish between domestic and international stories, or local and national news. A recent investigation of the differences in coverage of the current recession between Chinese and U.S. media revealed that more than 75 percent of front-page articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal focused on domestic issues while international issues and the global economy accounted for 15 percent of the sample.4Similar disproportions had been previously divulged. A content analysis of national and local news organizations sampled in 2002 and 2003 found that local media devoted 41.6 percent of their coverage to national economic issues versus 4.8 percent for global topics. Furthermore, the national press secured 73.7 percent of its content for national matters and 18 percent for international issues.5As posited by agenda setting,6 issues salient in the media transpire into the public agenda as the most important questions. A survey previously showed a positive correlation between the public opinion about the economy as a major national problem and the extensive economic coverage.7 It thus appears logical considering the reported saliency of domestic economic news to present the following hypothesis:H1:People reading domestic economic news will recall more information than will those presented with international economic articles.Softand Hard NewsScholars have previously analyzed the dichotomy between hard and softnews in relation to the social history of the press, the sociology of news production and political communication. 8 Tuchman9 first introduced the distinction, defining hard news as a produced content with high news values demanding instant attention and softnews as its direct opposite. Recent publications further conceptualized softnews as typically more sensational, more personality-centered, less time-bound, more practical and more incident-based than other news.10Studies have since indicated a growing interest in softer news. A national survey revealed that international stories covering ordinary people rather than politics and governments generated a higher interest.11 Additionally, a content analysis of more than 5,000 news stories from 33 U.S. media between 1980 and 1999 exposed that articles with a human interest represented 11 percent of the sample in the early 1980s, and 26 percent 10 years later. …