Effects of textual, numeric, and visual messages in digital political communication (2019)

Some news messages come in the form of a narrative. It tells you a story filled with characters, emotions and intricacies. A narrative may be text-heavy or rich in visuals. Other news messages, however, convey information primarily via numbers and statistics. They aim to present facts and provide objective evidence. This study will draw on insights from transportation theory, which examines the ability of narratives to persuade individuals by connecting them with the narrative world rather than reality. This project not only investigates this repeated exposure phenomenon, but also examines the format through which the news message is repeatedly delivered to us. Considering such variation in message format, we seek to understand whether these formats, when repeatedly disseminated to us at different frequencies, may yield different impacts on our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors toward critical sociopolitical issues.