Television and Information

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Abstract
Summary: In this report we have been concerned with some of the consequences of the introduction of television. Actually, it has only been possible to isolate some areas in which to locate such effects: in the mobilization of the voters to election campaigns and in the resulting distribution of political information. The data have been collected in the region of Norway that includes the greatest proportion of peripheral communities, but in spite of this ecology the acquisition of television increased at a faster rate here than in the south central parts.The points made in the analysis emphasize the importance of television as a link to the central society and to central decision‐making bodies. In an earlier analysis we have found the effects of television most marked in the peripheral areas,70 and in this study we have indicated an effect in the social periphery, on the less educated, the less informed.The increase of the information level is not limited to television owners. It can hardly be explained by a panel effect alone, and further explanations may well be looked for in individual motivations and alternative information‐seeking habits as well as in altered conditions for the traditional media. One promising aspect is a between‐level analysis: How is the information relayed in pre‐ and post‐television communities or in communities with different degrees of television accessibility? What is the ecological effect of television?This effect may be mediated in a number of ways, some of which are more significant than others, such as occasional viewing by non‐owners, in the reporting by local newspapers of the television debates ‐ which has been frequently done and in the increased exchange of information by personal communication between the two groups. In the first case we have to deal with a direct effect of cornmunication; in the latter cases we can draw on well‐established theories of the two‐step flow of communication in order to explain how this effect takes place.The main findings have been established in the introductory phase of television. It may well be that the effect is limited to this phase, but the society in which we can put this to a test will be an entirely diEferent one; there will be a general increase in the level of education and a rapidly decreasing group of families without television.

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