MAPOR: An Old Dog Learns New Tricks

A guy comes into his office and sees his trusty golden retriever sitting over a deck of cards spread out over the table.  The dog motions to his master to take a card. He takes the 4 of hearts, looks at it and places it back in the deck.  The dog motions to the man again, so he starts turning cards over.  After 12 cards have been dealt the retriever lets out a loud bark.  The master turns the next card over.  It the 4 of hearts.  The master looks at the card in disbelief and then looks at the dog, who is panting happily. The master then says, “ I guess I was wrong sport. An old dog CAN learn a new trick.”

Now I wouldn’t call myself an old dog, even though I may be graying a bit around the muzzle.  But I do think I am able to learn a new trick now and then. I didn’t learn a new trick at MAPOR this year as much as accepted an idea I had dismissed five years ago.

A little more than five years ago Chip Eveland published an article in Journal of Communication about the mix-of-attributes model. Eveland argued that in an era of media convergence, it made less sense to consider media as qualitatively different entities, but rather  as a mix of attributes.  Rather than study the difference between discrete media such as newspapers and blogs and how they influence, say political participation, it would be more fruitful to study attributes and how more or less of each attribute might influence political participation.  Eveland identified five essential attributes of media:  interactivity, organization or structure (how the content is organized), control (amount of control provided to the user), channel (senses used to receive the message), and textuality (the extent they use textual symbols).  Eveland identifies several advantages of the mix-of-attributes approach, including  (a) more clear explication of each new medium; (b) aiding theorizing regarding the effects of media; (c) identifying new independent variables and therefore new dependent variables; (d) the ability to explain null findings for media effects;  and (e) eliminating the need to recreate the theoretical wheel with the introduction of each new medium.  I used the article soon after it came out in my graduate theories course, but then brushed it aside, not really clear how it was relevant.

At this year’s MAPOR, I was confronted again by the “mix-of-attributes” approach when I served as a discussant for a paper from one of Eveland’s grad students, Ivan Dylko. Dylko applied the mix-of-attributes approach to studying political user-generated content (UGC).  Dylko identified five attributes of UGC:  search efficiency (the degree to which information can be located quickly and easily), customizability (the degree to which a person can make incoming information closely match his or her preferences), system responsiveness (the degree to which the audience members change from passive to active users), cost reduction (in time and money) and community orientation (size of network and frequency of interpersonal contact) as important to understand the nature and effects of UGC on political participation.  I learned later that these were 5 of 16 attributes Dylko had identified, but he limited the paper to five because his original discussion of all 16 took up 60 pages.  As a discussant, I am thankful for 35 fewer pages of text (although I am curious what they other 11 attributes are).  During my discussion I praised the paper, but argued that the mix-of-attributes approach was perhaps was a theory ahead of its time.  When Dylko argued that low search efficiency, high customizability, low system responsiveness and low community orientation should produce attitude extremity, little knowledge gain and high levels of political participation, I tried to figure out which medium fit that pattern.  But the longer I thought about it , the more I realized Dylko (and Eveland before him) were right. As media types continue to merge (e.g.,  the distinctions between blogs and participatory journalism websites are getting smaller and smaller), media effects will probably become less meaningful and attributes more so.

So an old dog CAN learn new tricks, particularly when I am rewarded for good behavior with a treat or a scratch behind the ear.  What do you think? Does the mix-of-attributes approach seem like a logical progression for the mass communication field or will it be like the metric system:  A good idea that never really catches on? I would like to hear what you think

As an aside, MAPOR was a great conference as always. Few who attended are likely to forget the keynote address from Jeffrey Moore of the U.S. Census Bureau on the pitfalls, problems, and possibilities related to survey interviewing among the deceased whose response rates remain steady while “pre-deceased”  response rates continue to decline. Moore also argues as various sectors of  the economy continue to employ increasing proportions of the deceased (e.g., in customer service and technical support centers, motor vehicle departments, etc.), it becomes increasingly important that their voices be included in the nation’s political, social, and economic discourse.   Kudos to Patricia Moy, Dominique Brossard and others for making the conference a success.