The "Rule of Three"
How media outlets use a tried-and-true advertising technique to manipulate consumers' opinions
Every weekday I get this journalism newsletter from an established (75-years-old) media organization called the American Press Institute. It features summaries of studies and stories about the business of journalism and a lot of great insight (for my purposes anyway) into the thinking behind why the media does what it does. We’ll cover more on those kinds of stories in later posts, but for now, I want to show you the top story from last Friday’s newsletter - a summary of the findings from an annual study called the Edelman Trust Barometer:
HOLY MOLY! A 13% drop in media trust over two years is bad enough, but check out those stats I highlighted in pink. Suffice to say, the U.S. media is not headed in a good direction in most Americans’ eyes.
I also find it REALLY interesting how this study defines the differences between the “Informed Public” and the “Mass Population” on page two. In order to be “informed,” per Edelman, you “must meet four criteria:”
Age 25-64
College-educated
In top 25% of household income per age group in each country
Report significant engagement in public policy and business news
We could talk for days about that misguided means of determining who to include in the “informed” category (all I’ll say is this: it 100% reminds me of Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the pigs deem themselves more important than the rest of the animals because only the pigs can read and write). We could talk for days, too, about the overall results of this study (it’s really fascinating to go back and look at previous years’ study results to see the bigger picture / trends). But there’s one infographic in particular, on page 26, I want to hone in on today, and that’s this:
The graphic itself is interesting but the part I want to focus on here is the part I circled in pink – the number of times people need to see information repeated before believing it. If you were scrolling through the whole report, you might not even notice this graph, but – stop and think about it for a minute – why on earth would anyone in media care about the number of times consumers need to see something before you believe it’s true?
Interestingly, I had already been researching an advertising concept a friend told me about called the “Rule of Three” before I saw this graphic. You might know it some other way but the concept by any name is based on something advertisers have been studying for a LONG time, called “Effective Frequency.” Basically, it’s about trying to figure out how many times a person has to see an ad (some people think the magic number is three, while others think it’s more) before they will consider buying / using / trying a product. In non-advertising terms, it’s about how many times a person has to read or see something before they believe it’s true.
Here’s an excellent excerpt about “effective frequency” from a random blog post I found online, published by a Pennsylvania advertising agency:
On its face, using a strategy like “effective frequency” to connect with people isn’t necessarily bad… but, like everything else we know about how the human brain works, these kinds of strategies CAN be used in dangerous ways. Check out the statement in the image above, that I highlighted with three stars. Call me crazy, but it’s got kind of an invasive and ominous tone to it…
Either way, right about now you’re probably thinking - So what? The information you’re giving me today is all about advertising - what on earth does this have to do with news? But here’s a question for you: Is it possible that news outlets are using the same “effective frequency” methods as advertisers to not only draw your attention to specific news stories, but also to get you to agree, almost without realizing it, with the very specific narratives they’re pushing?
I didn’t study marketing or advertising or even journalism in school (I studied creative writing, which is probably one reason why I can see the problems with journalism so clearly; I never drank the journalism-school kool-aid). And it’s been a few years since I worked in a newsroom. So I can’t tell you if journalists study this stuff in school or at seminars. I can’t tell you if news directors physically teach it to new hires (I really hope they don’t), or if editors add it to the stories after other people write them (possible), or if it just gets passed down in a collective memory kind of way (likely). What I can tell you is that somehow, a lot of what gets injected into journalism today seems to be following this “Three Times Rule” / “effective frequency” strategy. Why else would the Edelman study be focused on those kinds of metrics?
Remember this Washington Post story that I covered in “Speculation, Burying a Lede and more,” back in August? One word in this story keeps getting repeated over and over and OVER again - “Crash.” The whole point of that post was to show you how journalists use sneaky writing techniques to push a desired narrative; in this case they kept making it seem like the driver of the truck was trying to mow people down on a sidewalk; later in the story we learn he ended up on the sidewalk because he was being chased (he was then pulled from his car and beaten by the people who were chasing him). When I wrote that post, I’d never heard of “effective frequency,” but now that I have, I see pretty clearly that the repetitive use of the word “crash” was yet another way for the writer of this piece to hit readers over the head with the “aggressive truck driver” narrative.
Or what about a few months ago, when accusations of election fraud first became a big story? I kept poking fun at how almost every major national news outlet was - bizarrely – using the exact same word, “baseless,” to describe any allegations anyone made regarding election fraud. Back then, I thought everyone in news was just cumulatively suffering from a lack of creativity (there MUST be more synonyms for “baseless” out there in the world!); now, I think they were using the effective frequency technique in full force (and no, this is not any kind of commentary on whether election fraud occurred or not; Remember! Don’t get distracted by the politics of anything I’m dissecting here – this is me literally pointing out to you an example of how the media uses this tool).
Effective frequency doesn’t only pertain to word choice, either. It can also pertain to the way news organizations repeatedly push the same message over and over and over again, day after day after day. It can also pertain to the way a newspaper or website organizes headlines on its homepage. Here’s a screenshot of CNN’s homepage from last night:
You can’t make this stuff up, folks. See how four stories on the left side of the page were glommed together and all basically about the same topic (ie: negative stories about Republicans / the GOP)? This is a fantastic example of the “effective frequency” tactic in use. Even if you don’t read the stories, you walk away thinking “those GOP people are pretty lousy.” Not necessarily because you believe it, or because CNN has presented you with any factual evidence of it (they haven’t - you’ve only read the headlines), but because your brain has been manipulated into thinking it’s true. How? By processing it four times, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. It happens in an instant. Almost subconsciously. That’s just how brains work, especially when we’re skimming things.
So how does all of this tie together? How do I think Americans’ growing distrust of the media ties in to the media’s abuse of the “effective frequency” tactic? Honestly, every “journalist” in practice today would do well to read that advertising company blog I referenced earlier in this post. They go on, very clearly, to explain what happens when you overuse these tactics (the pink highlights are mine):
Once you, as consumers, understand what the very repetitive “effective frequency” or “rule of three” tactic is designed to do, and once you start looking for it, you’re going to be able to see it very easily – and you’ll have another great tool for being able to tell when news organizations are trying to manipulate your opinions.
I want to emphasize here, too, that real journalism should NEVER involve this level of planning and intense manipulation of thought and words. Real journalism is about reporting facts as they happen. That’s all. It’s sort of like the difference between running an actual household and playing house. One is relevant and real. The other is based on reality, but gets dangerously close sometimes to a literary genre called “historical fiction.”