Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1982

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Michael Singletary

Abstract

Purpose of the experiment was to compare effects of different newspaper accounts of nuclear power accidents on reader understanding and attitude. Random samples of 20 each from a college class judged four versions of stories about nuclear power accidents. Each story contained one condition of two independent variables-- presence or absence of mention of radiation leakage and presence or absence of a "No Harm Done" caveat downplaying the accident's consequences. Judgments on 11 semantic scales tapped the evaluative dimension of meaning. A control group judged the concept "Newspaper Articles About Nuclear Power Plant Accidents."

General hypotheses predicted that articles about radiation leaks would be judged more "serious" (threatening, unpleasant, exciting, etc.) than those not involving radiation, and that articles without "No Harm Done" statements would be judged more serious than those with such statements. Results showed judgments on the Nonthreatening/Threatening scale drew significantly different responses in line with general hypotheses, and several other scales were directionally consistent with hypotheses, but not statistically significant. On four scales the control group judged the concept of nuclear articles significantly more "serious" than treatment groups judged their articles, giving rise to a "No News is Bad News" explanation as one possible reason for the results. Factor analysis of the semantic scales yielded three item clusters labeled "Conclusive" (Complete/Incomplete, Definite/Uncertain, Clear/Unclear, Good/Bad); "Negative-Evaluative" (Optimistic/Pessimistic, Positive/Negative, Pleasant/Unpleasant, Calming/Exciting, Nonthreatening/Threatening); and "Priority" (Important/Unimportant, Meaningful/Meaningless). On Factor II, Negative-Evaluative, the control group again was found to differ significantly from treatment groups.

Closer examination of "nuclear power sentiment" of the treatment groups revealed that Croup (With Radiation, With "No Harm Done") had a decidedly anti-nuclear bias, which could account for the nonsignificance between its responses and those of Group 3 (With Radiation, Without "No Harm Done"). Another explanation posited for the inconsistent results was failure of participants to recognize and respond to components of the articles; results could reflect generalized responses to nuclear news.

A separate sample of 16 subjects participated in a Q-sort procedure to describe attitudes toward nuclear power.

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