Doctoral Dissertations

Dale A. Brill

Date of Award

8-1996

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Communication

Major Professor

Susan Lucarelli Dimmick

Committee Members

Ron Taylor, Roxanne Hovland, David Schumann, Michael Stankey

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the advertising industry's reaction to the introduction of a new communications medium. Cable television was chosen as the new medium. Advertising Age was chosen as the trade industry publication that would serve to gauge reaction to the medium. The text of Advertising Age formed the database from which potential frames were delineated and examined. A time scale was constructed using the diffusion of innovations model. The time periods delineated by the consumer adoption cycle were constructed from consumer cable television subscription data as markers for possible shifts in advertising industry thinking about the viability of the new medium. It is reasonable to expect that the advertising industry pays careful attention to the types of media consumers use so that the industry can purchase human attention. The selective attention to different topics constitute frames. This study examined the advertising trade press' framing of the diffusion of cable television. There were several findings. First, Advertising Age discussed the impact of cable television in business terms rather than cultural terms, giving rise to a commercial variation of futures rhetoric. Second, there was a statistically significant co-occurrence between frames reflecting advertising industry concerns and consumer adoption cycles related to the diffusion of an innovation. Advertising Age's preoccupation with Regulation issues occurred during the Innovator and Early Adopter stages of diffusion of cable television, when there were few consumers using this new medium. However, the emphasis in Advertising Age coverage shifted to Delivery issues in 1975, and this corresponded with shifts in consumer usage of cable television as reflected in the Early and Late Majority stages of diffusion. These findings indicate that the use of consumer subscriber to cable television data to construct a time scale for gauging potential advertising industry frames and frame shifts was a viable demarcation for understanding and contextualizing advertising industry concerns related to acceptance and eventual adoption of the new medium by the industry itself. The use of the diffusion of innovation paradigm to trace an industry's reaction to the introduction and eventual diffusion of a new communications medium has given rise to the idea that there may be a "rite of passage" that new media go through. This ritual, should it be documented to exist through careful retrospective studies of the diffusion of other media, could serve as a useful tool for gauging how and when an industry might itself adopt a new medium so that risks are minimized and advantages maximized. The usefulness of frame and concept mapping to study industry reaction to a new medium also could be extended to the arena of issues management. This methodology has the ability to handle very large text-based data sets and can be used to systematize identification of issues and issue shifts important to organizations as they seek to stabilize the social, political and economic environments in which they operate.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS