STUDIES IN SOCIAL ATTITUDES: II. SELECTIVITY IN MASS COMMUNICATION MEDIA AS A FUNCTION OF ATTITUDE -- MEDIUM DISCREPANCY.

The purpose of the present study was to study selectivity in mass-communication media as a function of one's stand on a controversial social issue: namely, the issue of Arab unity. The sample used in this study consisted of 260 undergraduate Arab students at the American University of Beirut. The subjects were given a questionnaire on Arab unity (1) on the basis of which their stand towards this issue was determined; also, subjects were asked to indicate their preferences for various newspapers and radio stations available in the Arab Middle East area. In general, the results demonstrate that subjects with an extreme stand on the issue of Arab unity (particularly those with an extreme negative stand) show high selectivity in the kinds of mass communication media to which they expose themselves, the selectivity being in the form of preferences for media (i.e., newspapers and radio stations) expressing points of view similar to their own. However, subjects with a moderate stand on the issue of Arab unity also showed behavior similar to that of the extreme anti-Arab unity subjects. This result raises questions as to the adequacy of the attitude- measuring technique that was employed in this and in similar previous studies in the assessment of "moderate" or "neutral" attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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