Image effects on selective exposure to computer-mediated news stories

Do pictures accompanying news stories influence selective exposure to the stories as compared to the same stories viewed without pictures? Further, does the emotional nature of the image – non-threatening versus threatening – impact selective exposure? This study aimed to answer these questions by examining the impact of different types of pictures on selectivity of and duration of exposure to computer-mediated news stories. Male and female participants were randomly assigned to one of four image conditions (text only control, reporter portrait, non-threatening, threatening) in which they were able to freely select and view news stories via a computer based delivery system. The findings of this study revealed that exposure to both non-threatening and threatening images resulted in significantly longer self-exposure to that portion of the news story where the image and text were presented concurrently. Furthermore, the data at hand shows that the incorporation of negatively valenced images accompanying news stories resulted in significantly longer self-exposure time to subsequent sections of the news story text devoid of an accompanying image. This latter finding provides the first evidence of selective exposure induced by a graphic, threatening image that is not confounded with the presence of the image. Some implications of these findings and avenues for future research are discussed.