Title page
Theory Development
Origins of schema theory
The word schema is of Greek origin. In modern day use, it typically refers to an outline or
diagram-like representation of the main features of a phenomenon, the relationships between it
and other phenomena.
The implication of the word "outline" in this layman definition is that a schema is only a sketch of
a particular idea or thing, its components, or relationships between it and other ideas. It does
not show the details of the phenomenon.
According to Adekoya (2013), the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary referred to it as a form
of diagram that shows the main features or relationships but not the detail.
A schema, as it is used in discussions of schema theory, however refers to a mental template
used for perceiving, describing and interpreting information. Schemas also determine what
information is remembered and how.
The first uses of the term schema as a unit of examination can be traced back to the works of
philosophers such as Plato (ideal types), and Kant. Piaget's use of the term in his expositions
on human development marked the incorporation of the term in psychology. The consideration
of the schema as the basis of any theory in psychology however began with Sir Frederick
Bartlett, British psychologist, in 1932.
The foundation for schema theory
1932—Sir Frederick Bartlett, a British psychologist, authored Remembering: A Study in
Experimental and Social Psychology in 1932. In the book, he was concerned with how people
remember and make long term memories. In the book, he argued against the common sense
idea of seeing memory as traces stored away in the brain, to be reproduced exactly as was
"stored" on demand at a later date—like a CD player or a computer's hard disk.
He conducted experiments which showed that humans do not file away experiences and
"recollect" them during the process of remembering; rather, they reconstruct those memories
from previous experiences they've had and, more importantly, the ideas abstracted (gotten,
drawn out) from that prior experience.
The mechanism (mental tool, instrument) by which they *reconstruct* memories are things
called schemas. These mental templates or cognitive structures are influenced by personal
experiences, cultural backgrounds, and social interactions.
>>>>These mental templates are like slots in which essential information from a particular
experience is stored in the brain. For new information to fit into the "slots," it has to be related to
the information already existing in the slots, else it is usually discarded. Totally unrelated
information is not perceived and forgotten, except there is a motivation to understand and
remember the information. Information that is somehow related is integrated into the memory
based on how related it is to information already existing in the "brain slots".
And information already existing in the "brain slots" is shaped by various societal influences,
such as cultural norms and cultural expectations.
Bartlett showed that that long-term memories are neither fixed nor unchanging but that they are
continuously adjusted to fit with preconceived ideas gotten from previous experience.
Bartlett gave a perfect example in a research he conducted where he had British people read
stories of Native Americans. He then asked them to recall the stories several times up to a year
after reading.
When they were asked to retell exactly what they read, Bartlett found that they had transformed
the details of the story in such a way that it reflected their cultural norms and expectations, that
it reflected what they had in their heads—their mental templates, frameworks, or structures;
their schema.
Specifically, what they did in retelling the story was:
- Leave out information they considered irrelevant (They considered it irrelevant because what
was in their mental structures told them it wasn't.)
- Shift the emphasis of the story, or the order in which events were recalled;
- Re-explain details and aspects of the tale that would not make sense would in an attempt to
make sense of them
-Alter the content and the style of the story for it to align better with their cultural background.
Bartlett said, in essence, that much of what people "remember" is made up narrative because
the process of retrieval contains active, re-interpretive elements which he called schemas.
This means that every time we remember stuff, our memories are actively recreated to be
consistent with everything that has gone before— specifically, related memories. All related
memories are then interwoven and grouped. This is one reason why we can have a sense of
consistency and narrative when recalling past events.
In summary, what Bartlett did, was to introduce and clarify the concept of schemas by his study
of how prior knowledge affects memory. This formed the foundation of schema theory.
(Note that a clarification of the term schema was necessary because even in Bartlett's time, the
term was "widely used in controversial psychological writing to refer generally to any vaguely
outlined theory.")
After Bartlett
After Bartlett, schema theory grew specifically in the cognitive and educational psychology
subfields.
Extensive discussion and application of the theory in aspects of psychological research such as
educational psychology (reading comprehension) (Rumelhart, (1980), and Piaget again in
children's development in the 1950s.
Since then, political scientists began to be concerned with how people process political
information. They started applying concepts similar to the idea of schema theory in their
analyses of politics. Doris Graber (1984) noted that concepts such as "social scripts," "cognitive
maps," and "preliminary cognitive representations" developed as a result.
Taking a cue from their social science colleagues, mass communication researchers began to
apply schema theory in mass communication research. Being an information processing theory,
schema theory was used in audience reception studies.
Processing the News
According to Baran and Davis (2015), however, the first major mass communication work
explicating the schema theory was Doris Graber's *Processing the News: How People Tame the
Information Tide*
As the book title tells, Doris Graber was interested in understanding *how* the average
American was able to take in just enough information to be an active citizen without getting
overloaded with the ever expanding tide of information from mass media messages and other
sources.
As the news was the major medium of mass political information and communication, she
settled for "processing the news".
Next, she asked the following questions:
● How do people select information for processing?
(Of all the different kinds of information available to the political audience in the news, how do
they select the ones they want to process? How do they select what matters?)
● How do they process it?
(What *techniques* do they use, so that they efficiently process the parts of the news that are
most beneficial to their daily existence, and efficiently discard the rest?)
● How do people impose a structure on information from the news to make sense of it or
"fit it into their established belief structures"?
(How do they *interpret* the bits and pieces of information they get from the news everyday to
form a coherent whole — to form an a understanding of political issues, a political perspective, a
political ideology, a worldview?
~~What meanings do people impose on this information?~~
To answer these questions, Graber selected 21 voters in the city of Evanston, Illinois ahead of
the 1976 presidential election. She conducted a year-long panel study with this cohort which
started in January 1976 and ended in January 1977.
Graber selected the schema theory because she felt the theory's assumptions fit with the
questions she was trying to answer and her view of the news audience. These assumptions are
implicit in the phrasing of the questions asked. To fully understand the questions, then, one has
to examine the assertions upon which the schema theory is built.
Assumptions of Schema Theory:
1. Humans are "cognitive misers".
This presupposes that humans have evolved to be naturally limited in their information
processing capacities. They therefore keep thinking activities to the barest minimum to save
energy and "memory space".
If this is the case, then in the situation of information onslaught with which Graber was
preoccupied, humans need to have strategies to deal with it. Commonly mentioned strategies
involve reliance on habits (routine) and "rules of thumb" over deep, deliberate thinking. All
strategies of this sort are classified as heuristics.
2. Mental structures (schemas) exist.
Schema theory posits that abstract structures called schemas exist in people's minds. It says
that these mental structures help people in processing information they receive. They help
individuals organize incoming information and group these based on previous experiences.
These structures enable people to process vast amounts of information efficiently, and in so
doing, serve as a kind of heuristic.
3. Schemas guide perception and interpretation (of every conceivable thing, including political
information.)
When individuals encounter new information, they interpret it through the lens of their existing
schemas. Schemas act as a filter, influencing how information is perceived, understood, and
organized in the mind.
Individuals have schemas for different objects, people, or situations, among other things that
can be classified. Baran and Davis (2015) give the trivial example of a boat and the more-to-the
point examples of the Republican and Democrat parties.
What those mean in this context is that a schema of a party represents in a condensed form all
the important features of that party and its associations, such that when you hear that a political
candidate is a Democratic Party flagbearer, certain things come to mind—does he support
progressive policies? Does he value A over B?
Based on your preconceptions about Democrats, you then process his message. If his
campaign promises fit with what you know about Democrats, they may be easier to process and
remember.
But if they contradict what you already know, you can create a new category for this exceptional
case or selectively pay attention to and only process the facts of her presentation that align with
your Democrat schema, forgetting all others.
But that's not all. In the case where you meet a Democratic candidate that does not align with
your Democrat schema, if your cognitive-miser self is willing and motivated enough, you can
revise your schema to fit with the positions or presentation of the new candidate.
If this "Democrat" candidate's case is so perplexing and there's no motivation to understand,
schema theory says you would easily forget it because you had not even processed it to begin
with.
(Note: All these assumes that party and candidate are alike. You can create better scenarios.)
4. Schemas are built through experience.
Schemas develop and evolve from experiences with other entities; these experiences can be
personal or impersonal.
In the case of Graber's application of schema theory to news information processing, the kind of
experiences are impersonal (because mass media is impersonal). However, other political
experiences can be personal, such as meeting with the Democrat candidate in No. 3 above.
As individuals encounter new information in the world or have new experiences, their schemas
adapt to incorporate this new knowledge.
So a person's set of schemas—plural "schemata" more appropriate—are flexible and are
constantly changing. In the same way, one's impressions of the past (memories) and
impressions of the present (incoming information/new experience) is changing from moment-to-
moment. ...Remember Bartlett? ...
If you have questions on the degree of change—how much change, and in what direction?—
hold on.
4. Schemas influence memory encoding and retrieval.
Information that fits into an individual’s set of schemas (henceforth schemata) is more easily
remembered and retrieved. Conversely, information that does not align with any pre-existing
schemas may be distorted, forgotten, or ignored.
It's also important to note that information does not have to fit in one of the schemata a person
has. One experience could fit into multiple schemata from an individual.
Also, one experience or piece of information can be broken down into smaller parts, with each
part fitting into different schemas (or schemata).
(Note: Both schemas and schemata refer to the same thing; one is just simpler to grasp than the
other.)
5. Schemas can be activated by cues.
Environmental stimuli or cues can trigger specific schemas, which then shape how individuals
interpret the situation. This activation helps individuals quickly respond to familiar situations
based on their past experiences.
Environmental stimuli in this case will also encompass media cues — signs in the media text
that tries to guide you, the audience, on how to interpret the information.
6. Schemas help fill in gaps in presented information.
We are going straight to our news focus here. When information in the news is incomplete or
ambiguous, schemas of information in the news allow individuals to "fill in the gaps" with what
they expect to happen based on previous knowledge and/or experience— previous news
watching or previously held political information gotten from other sources.
This can lead to inferences that may not be accurate but feel logical; that is, it may lead to
deductions that "make sense" or "feel right" but are actually wrong.
7. Schemas are resistant to change.
Once established, schemas tend to be stable and resistant to change. New information that
contradicts an existing schema may be ignored, rejected, or altered to fit the schema, which
helps maintain cognitive consistency.
8. Schemas can change over time.
While schemas are resistant to change, they are not static. It takes considerable effort on an
individual's part to revise het schema. However, significant new experiences, learning, or
contradictory evidence can lead to schema modification, especially when existing schemas fail
to explain new realities.
The extent of schema modification that happens is not clearly stated in schema theory. How
frequently it changes is also in doubt. One can assume, though, that it changes very frequently,
although the extent of degree of change is usually small per time. It's incremental most of the
time, except for rate changes that upset entire schemas suddenly.
9. Schemas vary among individuals.
Different individuals have different schemas based on their unique experiences, cultural
backgrounds, and social interactions. Thus, people can perceive and interpret the same
information in distinct ways.
10. Schemas affect behavior.
Schemas do not just influence thought processes but also guide behavior. For example, when
people have specific schemas about social roles, they tend to act in ways consistent with those
roles, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Graber details six types of schemas in relation to her focus—news processing. These
are:
1. Simple situation sequences: These are standard or prototypical scenarios gotten from the
condensation of various similar news stories to their bare essentials.
Audience members normally don't process news stories to remember factual details about how
a particular news event unfolded. They don't need to remember details. What they need are
general sketches of news events similar to what are called scripts.
2. Cause-effect sequences: Audiences need to be able to link an event reported in the news
both to to its causes and to its possible impacts or effects.
Information that does not have a cause and effect through which the story can be tied to others
in the schematic network is easily forgotten. The mention of causes and effects contextualizes a
story and makes it more likely to be remembered although it doesn't guarantee that it'll be
remembered.
3. Person judgements: Mass media audiences make judgements about the characteristics of
persons presented before it by trying to fit them into into their schema of demographic group
nature, behavior and goals.
4. Institution judgements: People process information about institutions based off ideas about
how they're supposed to operate based on norms about how the institutions are supposed to
operate.
5. Cultural norms and cultural interests: People have general conception (schema) of pre-
existing cultural norms and cultural interests. They use this to evaluate emerging cultural norms
and interests.
6. Human interest and empathy
So how exactly is information processed according to Graber?
According to Chandler (1997), Graber makes a distinction between initial screening and
information processing.
Initial screening
⬇️
Information processing
_______________________________
Initial screening is when people get to select the information paid attention to. This has three
key steps and is influenced by a number of factors....
*STEPS*
Attention arousal,
Information selection,
Information decay and forgetting.
Attention arousal
⬇️
Information selection
⬇️
Information decay and forgetting
*FACTORS INFLUENCING ATTENTION AROUSAL*
Message factors: e.g., media cues
Audience motivation: e.g., interest
Contextual factors: e.g., lifestyle and political socialization
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/short/graber.html
[Read the page in the following link to be able to explain these well enough.]
Deuze and McQuail’s conception of schematic information processing
………….
………..
……….
Recent theory “updates” and research
One major weakness of this theory is that it is not well developed. This is evidenced by the fact
that there are multiple labels for studying the same concept, as pointed out earlier. In addition to
the earlier mentioned concepts, others such as "frame of reference" and "propositions" or
"frame keepers".
This theory is also not well developed because it appears researchers are yet to be clear what
they mean when they use the term. (Baran and Davis, 2015; Graber, 1984).
This confusion gives room for various ideas to be called "developments" or "updates" to the
theory. However, one interesting idea may be worthy of being called a recent development
because it looks very much an extension of the theory itself: social media schemas.
### "Platform affordances and "social media schemas"
Platform affordances in social media refer to the features and functionalities that a particular
platform offers, which shape how users can interact and engage with content and other users.
“Social media schemas” as an update on the schema theory is based on the notion that people
not only have schemas for specific pieces of information to be processed from the media, or
specific media formats, but that they also have schemas for whole media platforms.
These platform schemas, the line of thinking goes, have significant effects on what people
expect to process on each platform. This means that if your message is not aligned with the set
of expectations that is the platform schema, it may not be processed at all (ignored at the initial
screening stage) or processed inefficiently and forgotten.
According to Bowen Li (2023), who did a review of the schema theory literature and found this
usage, platform schemas are influenced by platform affordances—platforms' unique features
and feel. Platform schemas change as the platform affordances change or as users perception
of them changes.
Explaining this, Li (2023) says:
"Technological affordances of multiple social media platforms facilitate the development of
distinct forms of communication, norms, and cultures within each platform.
For instance, Schulze et al showed that infor-mation bearing utilitarian purposes might not be
effective on platforms catering to entertainment (e.g., Facebook), where hedonic messages are
the mainstream.
Hence, individuals’ platform schema may shape their interpretation of information and influence
the content they generate and share on the platform.
Moreover, the dynamic nature of social media platforms means that these schemas are
constantly evolving as users adapt to new features and changes within the platforms.
For example, the introduction of stories and live-streaming features on Instagram and Facebook
has shifted user expectations and engagement patterns, thereby altering their platform
schemas.
Users now anticipate more ephemeral and real-time content, which affects how they process
information and interact with others online."
[Note: You can further explain this in your own words.]
Study
Najib Slimani, in a study titled 'Making Sense of Aljazeera’s Televised News: A Schema Theory
Perspective' sought to examine how Moroccans viewers make sense of Aljazeera 24-hour
English news discourse in terms of comprehension and recall.
Although this was not a politics-focused study, the results partly confirm Bartlett and Graber's
earlier findings.
Designing tasks before, during and after viewing, Slimani (2016) explored how extent to which
the linguistic and *extra-linguistic prior knowledge* of Moroccan university students studying
English mediate their processing of Aljazeera’s televised news content.
He found that:
- the participants were able to recall the overall discourse schemata of the newscast, but they
generally did not manage to recall some recurrent information in the newscast.
- although the participants missed some factual information deeming them less central to the
storylines, they exhibited insightful interpretation capacities of the newscast’s main issue and
came up with *various pertinent headlines for the story*.
- visuals were a ‘meaning-potential’ component which enhanced the viewers’ recall and
interpretation faculties
In sum, he found that "the ability to comprehend, interpret and recall televised news content was
mediated by several factors, namely the *richness of the general-topic knowledge* and linguistic
literacy.
Implications and applications of schema theory
As Graber applied this theory in relation to politics, it is pertinent to touch on its political
implications or applications.
1. For the political landscape:
- Understanding the political landscape and the media's influence on politics.
This theory has been applied by scholars to understand how the media influences politics.
Although this theory portrays the audience as active rather than passive, it shows that the media
can have negative influences if media reportage schemas do not align with audience schemas.
Baran and Davis (2015) discuss this in "Battle of The Competing Schemas," where they suggest
that the clash between reporters' "game schemas" of election coverage and the people's
"governing schema" of the same may be one reason contributing to a growing distrust of the
media in America.
2. For political communicators:
This theory also implies that it may be harder to inspire belief or attitude changes among the
populace, because then the changemakers would have to present information that's capable of
causing people to revise or discard long-held notions. This theory gives political communicators
are more realistic framework for preparing and passing their messages. It also shapes their
expectations of its effectiveness.
Application: Schema-inconsistent advertising — appropriated reality.
Advertising historian Hazel Warlaumont noticed that in the 1990s, advertisers started making
ads that didn't appear like ads.
As ads at the time were known for surrealistic imagery and verbal exaggeration to persuade,
these ads seemed to turn 'advertising' on its head when they started appearing in formats closer
to 'not advertising' than anything else.
They were mimicking more realistic formats such as news, editorials, documentaries, sitcoms—
and birthing now-unsurprising advertising types as "infomercials, sitcommercials, advertorials,
docudramas, pho- to-documentary print ads, and video news releases (VNRs)". But at the time,
advertisers appeared to be jumping on the trend of this new big thing and it was working!
Warlaumont felt that the cause of the positive reception lied in the unusualness of the ads—in
the fact that they "appropriated reality". She reasoned that the effectiveness of the ads could be
explained in terms of their ability to "collide schemas" of TV formats associated with "real," non-
salesy information with those of commercial ones, thereby causing a little cognitive discomfort
audiences would be motivated to solve by paying more attention. Paying more attention,
Warlaumont thought, resulted in favourable evaluation of the ad. She tested this line of thinking,
and it proved right. The result was the publication of a 1997 paper which detailed her research;
and the result of that paper was the eventual incorporation of schema inconsistency as a
principle of creative advertising.
[Note: Baran and Davis (2015) have a quote from Warlaumont's (1997) paper on page 264 of
the PDF. You can check that out to supplement this.]
Schemas in the age of the information superhighway and "social media"
The schema theory is a theory of information processing. If the theory assumes any kind of
information can be processed, going beyond the bounds of the mass media of the 1970s which
Graber (1984) examined is necessary.
With the information glut Graber described exponentially increased in this digital age, it is worth
speculating how the same conclusions and postulations hold up.
While there was mass media in the past, today there's also the Internet, which can be described
as a mass-interpersonal media. Today, impersonal messages have given way to personal ones,
and delayed or no feedback has given way to "interactivity". Previously, one person—the
broadcaster/publisher— had a voice in the mass communication sphere; now, dramatically
more people are talking.
At the time of Graber's writing, there was TV news and radio news and newspaper news—not
viral videos reposted a million times on Twitter (that could count as news). All these should
surely count for something in terms of how the news—or political information in general— is
processed by the audience. And common sense, educated guesses, and real research tell us
that they do.
With that in mind, here are few inferences that could be made from the application of schema
theory to making sense of the current information landscape, with specific reference to the
broad range of Web 2.0 technologies Haenlein (2010) calls "social media".
[Note: What you know as social media is actually called social networking sites in research.
Strictly speaking, "social media" is a broader term that covers almost everything on the Web.]
1. Spiking levels of information overload mean that social media users rely more on blunt
categorizations that do not make the best use of their schemas to filter, make sense of, respond
to, and prioritize content. This leads to more selective engagement (and a lot of "acting out of
character").
2. The dramatically increased freedom to decide what gets to initial screening stage in one's
information processing machine, based on one's social media preferences, leads to what's
called echo chambers. Echo chambers are created and maintained when one continuously
receives information that confirms existing beliefs and belief structures (schemas).
3. User-generated content and interactive engagement on "social media" have enormous
implications for schema formation and change. It is safe to assume that more information at
faster speeds can lead social media users to reinforce, amend or, displace schemas *quickly*.
4. The rapid spread of information through social media can trigger schema activation across
large audiences, influencing public discourse quickly.
5. Diverse voices on social media challenge dominant schemas and can reshape collective
understandings of issues. The potential for negative schema/stereotype reinforcement is also
counterbalanced by the fact that individuals can pods access a more diverse set of people in the
virtual rather than physical world.
6. While Graber's work in applying schema theory had a local (American) focus, the
interconnectedness of users worldwide can facilitate the exchange and evolution of schemas
across cultures. This potentially gives a more global bent to the political schemas of Graber.
Final evaluation: Strengths and weaknesses of Schema Theory
Strengths
1. Focuses attention on individual cognitive processing in the mass communication process
2. Respects the information-processing ability of media consumers
3. Provides specificity in describing the role of experience in information processing
4. Provides exploration of a wide variety of media information
5. Provides consistent results across a wide range of communication situations and settings.
Weaknesses
1. Too oriented toward micro-level
2. Suffers from label confusion (e.g., schema, frame, script)
3. Insufficiently accounts for neurological influences
4. Above all, more research is needed to understand the processes involved in schema
formation and change.
