{"id":608,"date":"2007-09-22T03:21:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-22T09:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=608"},"modified":"2007-09-22T03:21:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-22T09:21:00","slug":"the-psychology-of-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2007\/09\/the-psychology-of-newspapers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Psychology of Newspapers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcaps\">F<\/span>rom a paper by Harvard psychologist <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gordon_Allport\" target=\"_blank\">Gordon Allport<\/a> and <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Janet Faden<\/span> in the December, 1940 edition of <span style=\"font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;\">Public Opinion Quarterly<\/span>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is well known that waves of interest in governmental reform are notoriously short-lived for the population at large; yet they do constitute a lasting tide of concern for a handful of professional reformers.<\/p>\n<p>So far as the average man is concerned, it appears that democracy will have to be content with brief periods of participation.<\/p>\n<p>After his short surges of interest in the public welfare, he must be expected to turn back to his vocational and domestic routine.<\/p>\n<p>In summary, the evidence reported in this study is interpreted as supporting five generalizations which are offered here as tentative laws in the new field of the psychology of newspapers:<\/p>\n<p>(1) issues are skeletonized;<br \/>(2) any given newspaper\u2019s field of influence is well-patterned;<br \/>(3) readers are more emotional than editors;<br \/>(4) public interest as reflected in newspapers is variable in time;<br \/>(5) public interest rapidly fatigues and presses for an early closure<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Allport and Faden drew their conclusions from the debate over the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Neutrality_Acts#Neutrality_Act_of_1939\" target=\"_blank\">Neutrality Act<\/a> in the long run up to American participation in WW2&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From a paper by Harvard psychologist Gordon Allport and Janet Faden in the December, 1940 edition of Public Opinion Quarterly: It is well known that waves of interest in governmental reform are notoriously short-lived for the population at large; yet they do constitute a lasting tide of concern for a handful of professional reformers. So [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[389],"class_list":["post-608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-journalism-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}