SELECTIVITY IN COMMUNICATION - IV

(c) AVAILABILITY THEORIES:

The Consistency theory and the Utility theory both assume that people actively select certain materials from the stream of communications available to them - in the former case, because these materials match or go with with their existing ideas; in the latter case, because the selected communications might help satisfy some of their needs. These theories presuppose an ‘active’ audience. Some scholars however, see the audience as active only part of the time. They may accept the concept of selectivity, but with the reservation that people often select for attention the communications that are most easily available to them and are the easiest to absorb. This phenomenon is labelled as “learning without involvement”. Educators have been interested in this process because materials learned under conditions of low involvement are likely to be soon forgotten, however, unless people are continually reminded of it.

Studies show that people consume mass media when they have the time to do so rather than in pursuit of particular subject matter; this also tends to support availability theory; that is, some TV programs are more available than others - and more watched - because they are presented when most people are at home. Support for the idea that there is a large passive audience comes also from the TV ratings, which show that total TV audience is fairly constant at given times of the day and night.

Availability of time for the media, in turn, is at least partly a matter of habit। Those who like to watch TV during dinner will probably turn the set on regardless of what programs are scheduled। Even people who are attending to communications under conditions of low involvement have to make some choices. In this, they are assisted by “cues” that call their attention to certain parts of the subject matter.

The information overload in the present times is dealt by us by selecting some communications and ignoring or skipping over the rest. Selectivity cannot be explained by any single principle. There seem to be a number of factors involved. The most important ones include:
CONSISTENCY: We have a tendency to favour communications that are congruent with our existing ideas over information that that conflicts with our mental map of the world.
UTILITY: We select communication that we think will be helpful in satisfying some need or that will give us pleasure.
AVAILABILITY: If we have no preference for one communication over the other we will expose ourselves to the one that is more easily available.

There is no agreement among scholars as to the relative importance of these factors. Commonsense would suggest that all of them should be taken into account by anyone who is seeking to gain the attention of a particular audience.

Needless to add that selecting communications for attention is of vital importance to all mass media enterprises and therefore important to communicators in the media and those engaged in the art of persuasion, the advertisers, propagandists, and public relations specialists.