Levels of Knowledge in an Emergent Crisis

Testing the general hypothesis that information gain is not uniform among respondents who learn of major news events, level of knowledge was found to be associated with organismic indicators such as age and sex and sociocultural indicators such as occupation and residential area. The bases for these associations were found in several information seeking behaviors of respondents lowest on information gain. It is commonly assumed that persons are functionally selective in what they perceive. People neither perceive nor expose themselves to all events occurring around them. From the study of awareness about various political events, Hyman and Sheatsley concluded that there exists in every community a hard core of persons that remain chronically uninformed, regardless of opportunity for exposure to information.1 Such persons have been labeled the "know-nothings." A series of investigations concerned with the flow of news provided further substantiation for the "know-nothing" hypothesis. Whether the news story was about a technological achievement, a political decision, a community occurrence, the death of a senator, or a collective delusion, the usual finding was that not all respondents had heard the news.2 However, at least seven separate investigations which focused on the assassination of President Kennedy found that the news of the assassination had reached all respondents.3 These results paralleled closely an earlier finding that all respondents were aware of President Roosevelt's death.4 One implication to be drawn from the series of assassination studies is that the "knownothing" contention is more clearly applicable to events of limited magnitude than those of universal concern. When an event of such magnitude occurs that seven independent 1 Herbert H. Hyman and Paul B. Sheatsley, "Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail," in Eleanor Maccoby, Theodore Newcomb, and Eugene Hartley (eds.), Readings in Social Psychology (3d ed.; New York: Henry Holt Co., 1958), pp. 85-94. 2 Paul J. Deutschmann and Wayne A. Danielson, "Diffusion of Knowledge of The Major News Story," Journalism Quarterly, 37 (1960), pp. 345355; Wayne A. Danielson, "Eisenhower's February Decision: A Study of News Impact," Journalism Quarterly, 33 (1956), pp. 433-441; Otto N. Larsen and Richard J. Hill, "Mass Media and Interpersonal Communication in the Diffusion of a News Event," American Sociological Review, 19 (1954), pp. 426-433; Leo Bogart, "The Spread of News on a Local Event: A Case History," Public Opinion Quarterly, 14 (1950-51), pp. 769772; and Nuhum Z. Medalia and Otto N. Larsen, "Diffusion and Belief in a Collective Delusion: The Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic," American Sociological Review, 23 (1958), pp. 180-186. 3 Thomas J. Banta, "The Kennedy Assassination: Early Thoughts and Emotions," Public Opinion Quarterly, 28 (1964), pp. 216-224; Waldo W. Burchard, Reactions to the Assassination of President Kennedy-A Preliminary Report (I). Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society, Kansas City, Mo., 1964; Bradley S. Greenberg, "Diffusion of News of the Kennedy Assassination," Public Opinion Quarterly, 28 (1964), pp. 225-232; Harold Mendelsohn, "Broadcast vs. Personal Sources of Information in Emergent Public Crises: The Presidential Assassination," Journal of Broadcasting, 8 (1964), pp. 147-156; Paul B. Sheatsley and Jacob J. Feldman, "The Assassination of President Kennedy: Public Reactions," Public Opinion Quarterly, 28 (1964), pp. 189-215; Richard J. Hill and Charles M. Bonjean, "News Diffusion: A Test of the Regularity Hypothesis," Journalism Quarterly, 41 (1964), pp. 336-342; and Stephan P. Spitzer and Nancy S. Spitzer, "Diffusion of the News of the Kennedy and Oswald Deaths," in Bradley S. Greenberg and Edwin B. Parker (eds.), The Kennedy Assassination and the American Public (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965). 4 Delbert C. Miller, "A Research Note on Mass Communication," American Sociological Review, 10 (1945), pp. 691-694. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.132 on Thu, 15 Sep 2016 06:12:15 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms KNOWVLEDGE IN CRISIS 235 studies fail to find unaware people, the question becomes one of extent or level of knozvledge rather than one of whether knowledge per se was present. Yet, recognition of the limited comprehensiveness of the "know-nothing" hypothesis still leaves unresolved the important problem of specifying the personal, social, and information seeking habits of those persons who are least well informed. Hyman and Sheatsley's statement that. . . "Scientific surveys are needed to determine who these people [know-nothings] are, why they lack interest, and what approach can best succeed in reaching them ... is equally appropriate when the question is approached in terms of levels of information."5 The purpose of this investigation is to examine those personal and social characteristics associated with media usage patterns and levels of knowledge about a major news event, the death of President Kennedy. This approach should contribute to the understanding of why some individuals are better informed than others in emergent crises situations. Several earlier studies have indicated that news diffusion is not equal in all segments of the population. Bogart's study of diffusion of a local event found that only 27 percent of persons with less than a high school education and 77 percent of persons with some college had heard the news.6 In seven community samples drawn to study the diffusion of four news stories, Deutschmann and Danielson found 100 percent knowledge only in the community with the highest percenlt of college graduates.7 Larsen and Hill found that a faculty community heard the news of Senator Taft's death considerably earlier than a laboring class community.8 A tentative conclusion drawn from these investigations, that there is a positive relationship between social class components and attentiveness to news events, provided one central guide to the present investigation.