Tertiary Students’ Comprehension and Remembering of the News from Traditional versus New Media

ABSTRACT: The effects of traditional news media on comprehension and remembering have been one of the important topics of research in communication studies. With the inclusion of the Internet and later technological developments that lead to the convergence of media instruments, the issue has become more complex than ever. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the preference shown towards of single or compound presentational formats and their effects on comprehension and remembering of university students as far as obtaining the news is concerned. In the study, single presentational formats used are: text and audio; dual presentational formats are: text-audio, text-video; and audio-video-text as the triple presentational format. This research consists of two steps. The first step which took place at the Eastern Mediterranean University located in North Cyprus consists of two controlled experimental studies. The topic of the news story chosen for the first experiment is the “benefits of breast feeding for the mother”. The topic of the news story chosen for the second experiment is the “benefits of the celery”. For the first experiment 240 students whose cumulative grade average was between 2.00 and 2.50 out of 4.00 in fall semester of 2003–2004 academic year participated. Students were grouped in 20’s and were exposed to single, double or triple stimuli. After the experiment, they were asked to answer comprehension and remembering questions. In the second experiment 112 students whose cumulative grade average are equal to or below 1.99 (n=56) and students whose cumulative grade average are 3.00 or above (n=56) participated. Groups of 14 students were formed and the same procedure of the first experiment was repeated. In the second step, a questionnaire on the preference for obtaining the news was prepared and administered on tertiary students both on North and South Cyprus. The results of this study suggest that comprehension and remembering are not formed based on individual effects of a stimulus or a stimulus compound. It depends on an increase in the forms of a stimuli and the preference of users. In other words, as users are exposed to multiple stimuli, they show preference towards the dual stimuli format which is familiar to them. The results of the second step indicate that there is no significant difference between the results obtained from the tertiary students studying on the North or South of Cyprus in terms of their preferences. Lastly, university students prefer to obtain news from double stimuli in the video – text format in which two-thirds of the screen is allocated to the video and bottom one-third is allocated to the text. Keywords: Media effects, Convergence, Comprehension and remembering, News. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………