MAKING SENSE WITH TELEVISION NEWS: SITUATION, CONTEXT, AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AUDIENCE EXPERIENCE

Research has limited ability to demonstrate media "effects". Since scholars have suggested fragmentation among research traditions is itself a major problem, constructivist research methods are described which approach people's encounters with mass media more holistically.;The research focus is that of Morley (1980) who failed in an attempt to identify "differential decodings" of television news by social class. The social basis for differential decoding of TV news is high on the agenda of British Cultural Studies, though that scholarly tradition has seldom acknowledged the validity of receiver-oriented research.;In telephone interviews, 225 viewers draw upon recent TV news experiences and select a specific news story on which to report. Their encounter with that story is judged by whether viewing the story was associated with the expression of social criticisms. A Sense-Making variable, "Societal Involvement State" distinguishes each TV news user's manner of situational involvement with a news story.;Two by two by two factorial analysis of variance compares the viewer's Social Class and Societal Involvement State as alternative predictors of Social Criticism Decoding. Analysis of Covariance controls for each of four variables: Cognitive Intensity; Credibility of Coverage; Frequency of News Viewing; and, Education.;Three research approaches are examined from a constructivist perspective: Uses and Gratifications; Audience Abilities and Constraints; and, British Cultural Studies. While each prioritizes a different aspect of the media encounter, all are found wanting. One constructivist approach, Sense-Making (Dervin, 1983) is selected for the present study, whose purpose is to demonstrate the utility of constructivist methods for the dilemmas faced by each of several scholarly approaches.;Under all controls, Societal Involvement State is a highly significant predictor of Social Criticism Decoding, while Social Class is not. The study concludes that situational cognitive variables are superior to demographic ones for predicting human behavior.;The utility of the methods demonstrated is considered for each of the three media research traditions as well as for Sense-making itself. Implications of the research findings are examined for communications practitioners. A need for further research is identified, to relate situational cognitive variables to demographic ones under various conditions.