De-Westernizing Media and Communication Theory in Practice: Toward a More Inclusive Theory for Explaining Exemplification Phenomena

Abstract

This experimental study models an approach for de-westernizing communication theory by exploring exemplification within a Global South context. Incorporating local knowledge from Nigerian journalists on their motivations for using exemplars in poverty reporting and their anticipated audience outcomes, the study identifies and tests constructs that align with previous experimental studies on exemplification—such as perception of issue significance, awareness of social responsibility to address a social issue, and emotional connection with exemplified group—and those that diverge from previous scholarship—such as trust in media and trust in government. The study also identifies the mediating influence of identification, true to Nigerian journalists’ expectations. By grounding theoretical explanations for exemplification effects on local knowledge from this context, this study challenges the assumption of the universality of exemplification theory, enriches the theory by making it more cumulative, and advances an argument for a more inclusive and just theorizing of exemplification phenomena.

1. Introduction

Following recent stampedes that resulted in the death of dozens of people in different parts of Nigeria, journalists attempted to understand and appropriately represent the causes of these stampedes and potential preventive measures. Beyond reporting the death of community members who attended charity events during the 2024 Christmas season to receive handouts from churches and philanthropists, journalists used a variety of news sources to draw attention to the severity of poverty in Nigeria and document how the stampedes unfolded. Expert sources were used to provide in-depth analysis, while ordinary persons on the street provided eye-witness descriptions and illustrations of lived experiences. For example, in Arise News reporting on the stampedes (Arise News, 2024), ordinary person perspectives, or exemplars, functioned strategically to humanize the news.

Because of their preponderance in journalism, exemplars have been studied extensively, particularly by Global North scholars who have theorized the effects of exemplification on news audiences (Oschatz et al., 2021). While the need to de-westernize communication and media scholarship has been emphasized in recent years, very few studies have demonstrated what this might look like in actual practice. In this study, we model an approach for de-centering ethnocentric and western ways of knowing by re-investigating exemplification theory, one of the most widely studied theories in media effects scholarship. While conceptualized in Global North countries like the United States and Germany, journalistic exemplification is a universal practice, as our earlier example shows. Yet, what we know about exemplification, how we understand its motivations and effects, proceeds only from Global North contexts. In other words, when talking about exemplification phenomena, media scholars and practitioners around the world draw from knowledge about exemplification steeped in western knowledge traditions, developed by Global North scholars, and tested among Global North audiences. Even global media effects research, in general, has focused primarily on Asia and the Middle East while neglecting African countries and communities (Banjo & Umunna, 2022).

In response to this, we build a case for a more inclusive and just theorizing of exemplification. First, our research team, which comprises a Nigerian scholar (PhD student, qualitative researcher, male) and an American scholar (associate professor, social scientist, female), affords an opportunity for cultural exchange and working across difference. We argue that this confluence of unique positionalities supports a grounded approach to theory building. Second, our study focuses on a Global South context, Nigeria, and studies the exemplification of poverty, a topic that is ever-present in Nigerian newsrooms. Located in West Africa, Nigeria, with its more than 200 million population, is one of the most populated countries in the world, with an equally staggering poverty rate. At least 60% of the population live in poverty, according to a report by Nigeria’s statistics bureau (National Bureau of Statistics, 2022), and Nigeria is one of the countries with the highest number of people living in extreme poverty in the world, according to World Bank data (Katayama & Wadhwa, 2019). Focusing on this crucial socioeconomic issue that affects many Nigerians allows a detour from western scholarship’s emphasis on the exemplification of health and risk issues.

Finally, our study integrates Nigerian journalists’ perspectives on using people experiencing poverty as sources to test and expand exemplification theory. Existing theorization of exemplification predicts effects that are interesting and familiar to Global North scholars. While drawing from previously studied constructs, we ground our study in Nigerian journalists’ intended exemplification effects. In doing this, our study presents an opportunity to add new insights to exemplification theory from journalists’ articulations of the intended outcomes of their practices. We thus model an approach to social science theorization that values the voices of practitioners, especially those in the Global South. Altogether, we show through our own practice how a decolonized communication research agenda might thoughtfully integrate Global South perspectives into established theories to make knowledge production in the communication field more “cosmopolitan” and to practice what Silvio Waisbord calls “multicultural theorizing” (Waisbord, 2022, p. 31).

2. Literature Review

2.1. Effects of Exemplars on News Audiences

The use of illustrative persons, or exemplars, to describe an issue or a series of events, is a powerful strategy in journalistic work (Bigsby et al., 2019; Hinnant et al., 2013). Appearing in 13% to 46% of news stories on any given topic (Jahng & Littau, 2022; Wheatley, 2020; Young et al., 2021), exemplars are often used to make a news story come alive. When incorporated appropriately, the thoughts and feelings of exemplars appeal to the humanity in audiences (Hinnant et al., 2013). An exemplar’s experiences can help others see what it is like to be someone else. Exemplification also represents a break from the traditional inverted pyramid style that prioritizes the quick presentation of a set of informative facts—who, what, when, where, why, and how—and helps show how abstract, complex issues manifest in people’s day-to-day lives.

Exemplification theory explains how beliefs are formed based on exposure to these single cases or individual stories (Zillmann, 2006). Exemplars in news accounts “influence our perception and judgment of essentially all phenomena and issues of the so-called real world,” particularly when we lack direct experience of exemplified issues (Zillmann, 1999, p. 73). Exemplification has been associated with changes in attitudes and behavioral intentions of news audiences (Oschatz et al., 2021); perception of responsibility for an issue (Li, 2021); emotional connection to an issue, group of people, or story (Zillmann, 1999, 2006); perception of issue significance and risk (Dixon, 2016); and message recall (Dixon, 2016).

In fact, the mere presence of an exemplar in a hard news story, regardless of how much space the exemplar takes up or how the exemplar is portrayed, can make a story more persuasive and poignant (Brosius & Bathelt, 1994; Oschatz et al., 2021; Tukachinsky et al., 2011). Research in health communication shows that news audiences are persuaded to view a health issue as serious and deserving of their attention when exemplars share their experiences and thoughts about the issue (Dixon, 2016; Gibson & Zillmann, 1994; Zillmann, 2006). Exemplars in stories about social issues can also increase intention for pro-social behavior and perceived social responsibility. In a study of news representation of migrant workers in Germany, Oschatz et al. (2021) find that exemplar presence in news stories impacts attitudes toward migrant workers and willingness to improve their conditions.

In the case of poverty, a sometimes-abstract social issue, exemplars could help demystify complex statistics and general statements by illustrating the causes, manifestations, and consequences of poverty. Poverty exemplars might impact perception of how big of a problem poverty is and who might be responsible for addressing it, in line with previous studies on exemplification outcomes (e.g., Dixon, 2016; Li, 2021). The resulting effect is that news audiences, typically middle-class citizens who consume news regularly, develop greater understanding of and emotional connection with persons living in poverty, which may catalyze social action (Oschatz et al., 2021).

2.2. Exemplification Outcomes in Global South News Contexts

Exemplification in journalistic storytelling transcends geographic boundaries, and journalists around the world use exemplars, or people with direct experience of a social issue, as sources. Yet, most empirical studies of exemplification effects from news media are conducted in the United States and Europe, with news messages and audiences specific to the Global North. The following question remains underexplored: In what way do exemplars’ effects on news audiences vary across topic and geography? Answering this question necessitates a decolonial approach that deprioritizes the current focus on Global North contexts and accounts for the locus of enunciation (Moyo, 2022, p. 1569). One way in which Western knowledge achieves its dominance is by concealing its locus of enunciation, in other words “the geo-political and body-political location of the Western journalist/storyteller or academic/theorist” (Moyo, 2022, p. 1569). The resulting effect is that theories are assumed to be universally truthful and objective when they represent particular ways of thinking and being.

True decolonization of media and communications theories requires grounded theorizing from the Global South that emerge from the unique epistemologies of that region (Dutta & Pal, 2020). However, we also argue that research using extant theories in under-studied contexts should also challenge their assumption of universality. Adaptions of media and communications theories developed and tested in the Global North should also take into account emergent constructs from the local contexts that may be more relevant to media and communications systems, and experiences, in the Global South. Ramasubramanian and Banjo (2020) argue that connections to critical theory in social scientific work are “important for media effects theorizing to go beyond the individual to also consider how structural, institutional, and societal influences shape media experiences” (p. 2).

One method for introducing new conceptual grounding to media effects theories is to use local knowledge to interrogate theoretical linkages and to affirm, revise, or re-define theoretical constructs. While scholarship on exemplification has focused on outcomes predicted by social science theorizing, less research has investigated journalists’ stated motivations for using exemplars and the audience outcomes they expect. One U.S. study found that health journalists use exemplars to humanize a health issue and attract the attention of audiences (Hinnant et al., 2013). Journalists’ intended outcomes align with some outcomes predicted by exemplification theory, namely increasing attention to an issue and perceptions of issue significance, while introducing new potential outcomes for study, such as the goal of connecting audiences to an exemplar’s experience.

The outcomes identified as relevant in exemplification theory, or in interviews with U.S. journalists, emerge from Global North media contexts. Past research on exemplification and its intended effects may miss outcomes of relevance to Global South media systems and audiences. Research on newsmaking cultures in Africa in the past two decades has shown journalistic norms and practices in this context differ significantly and require careful attention (Mabweazara, 2018; Moyo, 2022). For instance, the journalistic production practice of receiving monetary compensation from news sources in some African countries like Nigeria guarantees the wealthy and powerful are featured predominantly in the news and ordinary persons appear marginally, though social media offers a promising alternative for resisting this. Through careful attention to Nigerian journalists’ perspectives, motivations for seeking out and including ordinary persons in news stories can be more expansively understood. It is also especially important to ground exemplification research in this context on a pervasive issue like poverty. Therefore, in this study, we include Nigerian journalists’ anticipated or intended outcomes from using exemplars in reporting about poverty to alter or expand the potential outcomes from exemplification. We consider journalists’ perspectives because we believe exploring journalists’ expectations about the effects of exemplification on audiences will highlight existing constructs that have resonance in Global South contexts and identify new outcomes worth exploring empirically in research with audiences.

Interviews with twelve Nigerian journalists revealed that journalists covering poverty use exemplars strategically, with the expectation of specific effects on audiences (Amah & Young, 2023). The journalists report using exemplars, or personal stories of people experiencing poverty, to achieve several audience outcomes already studied in past experiments, like perceived issue significance; increased awareness of social responsibility for poverty and other social ills; and increased identification and emotional connection with people experiencing risk or harm. Nigerian journalists also use exemplars to accomplish two outcomes not previously identified in media effects research: (1) to strategically challenge government narratives and (2) to increase audience trust in media (Amah & Young, 2023). These latter outcomes emerge specifically from the journalistic context in Nigeria and are worth exploring in research with Nigerian news audiences as they are relevant to people’s experiences with the news in the Global South.

The advocacy aims for Nigerian journalists in using exemplars go beyond the goals of raising awareness of issues to fulfilling the watchdog function of journalism to hold those in power accountable. In Nigeria, government data about poverty is often misleading and does not tell the truth about the reality of poverty (Akinola et al., 2022), so journalists seek out and incorporate exemplars into news stories to demonstrate the enormity and pervasiveness of the issue. Exemplars are also used as counter-evidence to claims from government that minimize scope of poverty and inflate the government’s role in alleviating poverty and its harms. One journalist stated that exemplars can be used to “shame the government,” and another described how exemplars from communities without safe drinking water or local schools could illustrate the lack of government action and force intervention (Amah & Young, 2023).

By including the perspectives of persons experiencing poverty in news stories about poverty, journalists also distinguished themselves from the government in their care for “ordinary people” and their voices. Journalists explained that including exemplars was a way to signal to people experiencing poverty that “their voices matter” and that “someone is looking out for them, not just the elites, those who have.” In this case, journalists and news organizations are the “someone” working to identify and elevate the voices of individuals who lack representation in government and other elite spaces. The practice of exemplification served dual goals of increasing representation of people who’d been marginalized and increasing the trust of audiences that journalists actually cared about these underrepresented voices. Journalists hoped that including exemplars would build trust from audiences that news organizations cared about the experiences and perspectives of people experiencing poverty.

Based on interviews with Nigerian journalists affirming intended exemplification outcomes and proposing new outcomes, it would therefore be expected that:

H1. 

Individuals who read stories that include an exemplar will have increased agreement that poverty is a significant issue (a); increased agreement in social responsibility to address poverty (b); increased trust in media (c); and decreased trust in government (d).

2.3. Exemplar Portrayal of Individual and Social Responsibility

Though most exemplification studies focus on the presence or absence of exemplars in news stories, recent studies have explored variations in exemplar portrayals and their effects on audiences, especially in news about social issues. Li (2021) found that exemplification of high-power members of a marginalized group, specifically the transgender community, might influence a news audience’s psychological response toward that group. Testing for effects of transgender exemplars with high power (e.g., CEOs, White House employees, academics), low power (e.g., an aspiring entrepreneur), or exemplars without distinguishing details (as in the control condition), Li (2021) finds that high-power exemplification caused male audiences to blame society or government for transgender issues and caused female audiences to dehumanize transgender people. Respondents in the control condition reported significantly higher levels of aggressive behavioral tendencies toward transgender individuals, compared to those who read the articles that contained high- or low- power transgender exemplars. In addition to intended positive effects, such as increased emotional connection to an issue, exemplification content can contribute to or reinforce negative views of vulnerable groups. Attribution of responsibility within exemplar portrayals (for example, whether the exemplar is portrayed as personally responsible for their situation) can have positive or negative effects. Attribution theories suggest that the controllability of a stigma is directly related to perceptions of responsibility (Weiner, 1993). If poverty exemplars indicate that the individual is responsible for poverty (compared to poverty exemplars that indicate social forces are responsible for poverty), readers may be prompted to believe poverty is not a significant social issue and may believe that entities like the government or social elites have less responsibility to address poverty. In line with this, we expect that:

H2. 

Individuals who read stories that attribute responsibility for poverty to social forces will have increased agreement that poverty is a significant issue (a) and increased agreement in social responsibility to address poverty (b) compared to individuals who read stories that attribute responsibility to individual behavior.

2.4. The Mediating Role of Identification

In interviews, Nigerian journalists say they hope to decrease the psychological distance between news audiences, more likely to be middle class, and people experiencing poverty by using exemplars in their reporting. Psychological distance is reduced when readers are transported into the story or when they identify with the story’s characters (Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010). Although exemplification research has substantively explored the mediating role of transportation, few studies have investigated identification as a crucial and distinct form of audience engagement and an important mediator of exemplification outcomes. Exemplars narrate poignant human stories and elicit identification from audiences (Oatley, 1999; Van Krieken et al., 2015), which means identification deserves closer attention in exemplification research and a clearer distinction from transportation.

Transportation occurs in a narrative when a reader engages with a chronicle of events in a storyline (Kim et al., 2012). Identification, on the other hand, occurs when a reader engages with a story’s character (Cohen, 2001; Ma et al., 2023; Tal-Or & Cohen, 2010). While a reader might be said to be transported into the narrative if they can picture the scenes described in the story, are mentally involved in the story, or want to learn how the story ended, the reader would be described as identifying with the character or other people like the character if the reader understands the character’s experiences and perspectives and feels what the character feels. In other words, all exemplars (whether presented as narratives or as character portraits) offer the opportunity for identification, but not all exemplars offer the opportunity for transportation.

We argue that journalists often present an exemplar to help the reader see what it is like to be this person and possibly feel something for this person—in other words, to identify with them—which does not necessarily include transportation especially if the story does not describe a chronology of events to be transported into. Past research with health journalists in the U.S. has stated that a goal of exemplification is to “humanize” news stories that do not focus on personal narrative. Our interviews with Nigerian journalists about exemplification in poverty reporting also suggest they primarily use exemplars in the same way; news stories about poverty are often about poverty data or describing the severity of poverty, and exemplars are incorporated briefly for vividity and emphasis without any chronology of events. Because including even a brief exemplar perspective provides a direct opportunity for audiences to identify with people experiencing poverty, we pose the following hypothesis:

H3. 

Individuals who read stories that include an exemplar will have increased identification with people living in poverty.

In our interviews with Nigerian journalists, identification (i.e., relatability) is the primary goal for including exemplars and the main mechanism through which they expect exemplars to engage and impact audiences. Research on entertainment education suggests that increased identification with characters should lead to attitude change, such that reading about a character living in poverty should promote attitude change in line with that character’s interests, through increased identification (Moyer-Gusé, 2007). Therefore, in our final hypothesis, we predict that:

H4. 

There will be an indirect relationship between exemplar condition and outcome variables, such that viewing a story with an exemplar will lead to increased agreement that poverty is a significant issue (a), increased agreement in social responsibility to address poverty (b), increased trust in media (c), and decreased trust in government (d) through increased identification with people living in poverty.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Experiment Overview and Sample

For this study, we conducted an online experiment, recruiting Nigerian participants through a company with expertise fielding surveys in Nigeria (TGM). The study was fielded between 10 July and 31 July 2023. The survey company set quotas to ensure representation at the same rate as the Nigerian population for: gender, age, and region of the country. A total of 2497 participants began the study; 1653 were screened out because they belonged to a demographic category for which a quota had already been met. An additional 95 did not complete the study beyond the stimuli, 4 did not answer “yes” to the question “Can you commit to reading the story carefully and answering questions honestly?”, 12 completed the study in less than the preset limit (5 min), 17 completed the study in more than the preset limit (60 min), and 69 failed both attention checks (selecting a specific answer option within a list of items). Finally, this paper does not include participants who read a control story not about poverty (n = 115). The final sample size was 511, with sample sizes varying for some analyses due to missing data. Demographic information about the sample is presented in

Table 1. Sample Demographics.

Demographic Characteristic	Median (Range) or %
Age, years	27 (18–68)
Gender
Male	56.6%
Female	43.1%
Other	0.4%
Region
North Central	20.0%
North East	1.0%
North West	8.4%
South East	12.7%
South South	13.1%
South West	44.8%
Highest Level of Education
Primary or Secondary school	11.4%
Post-secondary school vocational training	6.5%
OND/HND	13.1%
Bachelor’s degree	51.9%
Postgraduate diploma or higher	17.1%
Social Class
Poor	2.3%
Lower middle class	56.9%
Upper middle class or affluent	40.8%

below. Participants who completed the survey were compensated approximately $2.50 through the survey company.

3.2. Experimental Protocol and Design

Participants first viewed information about the study and consented to participate by clicking through. Participants then answered screener questions (age, gender, region), and those for whom the relevant quota had not been met continued with the study. Three message conditions (randomly assigned) are included in this study: individual responsibility, social responsibility, or story about poverty with no exemplar.1 Participants then answered questions related to the mediating variable and dependent variables, as well as additional demographic questions (See Appendix A). Finally, participants were debriefed about the study aims and predictions.

3.3. Independent Variable and Stimulus Materials

We created the stimulus materials from a news article about multidimensional poverty in Nigeria published in 2022 by Premium Times, an online Nigerian newspaper. The article was 300 words long, contained 11 paragraphs, and did not contain any exemplars. We used this article as one of our stimulus materials (story about poverty with no exemplar) without making any changes to it. This was our base story. To create the exemplification experimental conditions (See Appendix B), we included a fictional individual exemplar to the base story, varying exemplar character depiction. As former professional journalists, we created these conditions taking journalistic news writing conventions into account. For each exemplification condition, we embedded a brief exemplar perspective (ranging from 129 to 185 words) that presents the views of a person experiencing poverty within the base story. We used the journalistic style of spreading the exemplar story throughout the base story as a way of grabbing the reader’s attention at different points in the story.

We conducted a pilot test with 20 Nigerians who consume news regularly; based on the feedback we received, we strengthened the manipulation so that the distinction between individual responsibility and social responsibility would be more evident. For the exemplar individual responsibility condition, we included exemplar details that portray the exemplar as lazy, despondent, and dependent on external sources for survival. In the exemplar social responsibility condition, we included exemplar details that portray the exemplar as a hardworking person affected by weak government policies, unemployment rate, and inflation.

3.4. Mediating Variable

Identification. Participants rated their agreement with five items related to identification, adapted from Cohen (2001) and Tal-Or and Cohen (2010). Items included “At key moments of reading the story, I felt I really understood persons living in poverty,” “While reading the story, I felt I could really ‘get inside’ the head of a person living in poverty,” and “While reading the story, I could understand why persons living in poverty live their lives the way they live them” (1 = Strongly disagree; 5 = Strongly agree) (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.90) (mean (SD) = 4.29 (0.75)).

3.5. Dependent Variables

Issue Significance. Participants rated their agreement with six items related to perception of poverty as a significant issue. Two items (e.g., “Poverty is a serious national problem”) were adapted from Gibson and Zillmann (1994) and three items were added (e.g., “Poverty deserves more attention than it currently gets in the media”) (1 = Strongly disagree; 5 = Strongly agree) (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.81) (mean (SD) = 4.58 (0.60)). The issue significance scale was negatively skewed (−2.72), but skewness (−0.84) level was within the acceptable range after exponential transformation.

Social Responsibility to Address Poverty. Participants rated their agreement with seven items adapted from Oschatz et al. (2021). Items included “Government should prioritize policies that improve the lives of people living in poverty,” “Everyone in society has an obligation toward persons living in poverty,” and “Elites, most especially, have a responsibility toward persons living in poverty” (1 = Strongly disagree; 5 = Strongly agree) (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.80) (mean (SD) = 4.39 (0.61)). The social responsibility scale was negatively skewed (−1.50), but skewness (−0.02) level was within the acceptable range after exponential transformation.

Trust in Media. Participants rated their agreement with eight items adapted from Strömbäck et al. (2020). Items included “The media are fair when covering poverty” and “If citizens need help, the media will do its best to help them,” including two reversed items (e.g., “The media do NOT tell the whole story when covering poverty”) (1 = Strongly disagree; 5 = Strongly agree). The scale did not reach adequate reliability, so one item with low correlation with others was deleted, “The media separate facts and opinions when covering poverty.” The Cronbach’s alpha without this item was 0.75 (mean (SD) = 3.13 (0.83).

Trust in Government. Participants rated their agreement with 12 items that addressed whether the government was competent, benevolent, and had integrity (Grimmelikhuijsen & Knies, 2017). Items included “The government is capable,” “The government is genuinely interested in the wellbeing of citizens,” and “The government keeps its commitments,” along with three reversed items (e.g., “The government is NOT effective”) (1 = Strongly disagree; 5 = Strongly agree). All items were retained (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.92) (Mean (SD) = 2.41 (0.99)).

3.6. Data Analysis

Data analysis was conducted using SPSS, version 29. Linear regression was used to answer questions comparing all exemplar conditions to participants who read a story about poverty but with no exemplar. Because sample sizes for these two groups were unequal (n = 446 for exemplar condition; n = 117 for no exemplar condition), a series of linear regressions was conducted for each dependent variable with a dummy variable for exemplar condition (1 = exemplar; 0 = no exemplar). Analysis of covariance (with Bonferroni correction) was used to answer questions about the direct or interaction effects of experimental conditions on mediation and outcome variables. Mediation analyses were conducted using Model 4 of the PROCESS Macro, version 4, with 20,000 bootstrapped samples. Control variables for all analyses were age, male gender (vs. female), and social class (See Appendix C and Appendix D).

4. Results

To address H1, all exemplar conditions were combined and compared to the no exemplar condition. People who viewed a story with an exemplar reported slightly less agreement that social actors like government, elites, and non-governmental organizations had an obligation to address the issue of poverty (mean = 4.35, SD = 0.66) than people who viewed a story without an exemplar (mean = 4.52, SD = 0.56), and the relationship approached significance (p = 0.06) (H1a). There was no significant difference between conditions in perception of poverty as a significant issue (exemplar condition: mean = 4.59, SD = 0.58; no exemplar condition: mean = 4.66, SD = 0.58) (p = 0.63) (H1b). H1a and H1b were not supported.

Linear regressions with a dummy variable for exemplar condition were conducted to test the relationship between condition and trust in media and government. Exemplar condition was not a significant predictor of trust in media (p = 0.58), and no control variables were significant predictors. While higher social class predicted trust in government (p < 0.001), exemplar condition did not significantly predict trust in government (p = 0.49). H1c and H1d were not supported.

To test the effects of reading a story with an exemplar attributing responsibility for poverty to social factors compared to reading a story attributing responsibility for poverty to individual behavior, we ran a series of ANCOVA tests with social class, age, and male gender as covariates. Reading a story attributing responsibility to social factors did not increase agreement that poverty is a significant issue (mean = 4.62, SD = 0.53) compared to reading a story attributing responsibility to individual factors (mean = 4.59, SD = 0.61) (p = 0.74) (H2a). However, reading a story attributing responsibility to social factors did increase agreement with social responsibility to address poverty (mean = 4.46, SD = 0.56) compared to reading a story attributing responsibility to individual factors (mean = 4.30, SD = 0.68) (F(1,369) = 6.23, p = 0.01, partial η² = 0.02) (H2b).

The next set of hypotheses investigates the direct effect of conditions on identification with people living in poverty and the mediating role of identification. Participants who viewed a story with an exemplar reported greater identification with people living in poverty (mean = 4.36, SD = 0.65) than participants who viewed a story without an exemplar (mean = 4.15, SD = 0.95) (p = 0.002) (F(1,457) = 9.26, p = 0.002, partial η² = 0.02). H3 was supported.

Identification mediated the relationship between exemplar condition and issue significance. Viewing an exemplar increased identification with people living in poverty, which led to increased agreement that poverty was a significant issue (indirect effect of X on Y: B = 5.78, bootstrapping SE = 2.36, bootstrapping CI = 1.29–10.62.) (H4a). Controlling for identification, the direct effect of exemplar condition on issue significance was negative (Figure 1). The positive indirect effect canceled out the negative direct effect and the total effect of X on Y was not significant (model summary: R² = 0.21, MSE = 1167.00, F (5,455) = 23.62, p < 0.001).2

The pattern of results was the same for agreement in social responsibility to address poverty. Identification mediated the relationship between exemplar condition and agreement in social responsibility; while the direct effect of viewing an exemplar on social responsibility, when controlling for identification, was negative (B = −14.82; SE = 4.73), viewing an exemplar increased identification with people living in poverty (B = 0.25; SE = 0.09), and increased identification led to increased agreement with social responsibility to address poverty (B = 21.19, SE = 2.60) (indirect effect of X on Y: B = 5.35, bootstrapping SE = 2.27, bootstrapping CI = 1.07–9.99) (H4b). The total effect of X on Y was not significant (model summary: R² = 0.16, MSE = 1601.21, F (5,455) = 17.68, p < 0.001).

Identification also mediated the relationship between exemplar condition and trust in media. There was no significant direct effect of viewing an exemplar on trust in media (B = −0.0003, SE = 0.10). However, the significant indirect effect demonstrates that viewing an exemplar increased identification with people living in poverty (B = 0.27, SE = 0.09), and in turn increased identification then led to increased trust in media (B = 0.19, SE = 0.05) (indirect effect of X on Y: B = 0.05, bootstrapping SE = 0.02, bootstrapping CI = 0.01–0.11) (model summary: R² = 0.04, MSE = 0.69, F(5,455) = 4.03, p = 0.001) (H4c).

Identification did not mediate the relationship between exemplar condition and trust in government, however. In addition, there was no significant direct effect of exemplar condition on trust in government, and no significant relationship between identification and trust in government (H4d).

5. Discussion

The current study demonstrates how to build a more inclusive exemplification theory that incorporates emergent constructs from Global South contexts. We implemented this approach by seeking out and including local knowledge in our interrogation of theoretical explanations for exemplification effects. Through an online experiment consisting of 511 Nigerian participants, we tested for the effects of exemplars on audience perception of issue significance, perception of responsibility for poverty, and trust in media and government, based on Nigerian journalists’ motivations for using exemplars in news stories about poverty. Our findings extend current experimental research on the complicated effects of exemplars on audience perceptions of social issues, signaling potential areas for future research.

The central argument we have advanced in this study is that extant theories, such as the exemplification theory, cannot be assumed to be universal without due consideration of how the constructs of these theories operate in understudied contexts. A truly de-westernized communication theory should be applicable to different situations and contexts beyond the Global North and must be fruitful or cumulative, yielding new explanations and leading to the discovery of new phenomena (Shoemaker et al., 2004). Exemplification theorizing in the Global North has significantly focused on health and risk communication, with very little explanation for journalists who use this strategy beyond this context. By grounding our study on a prevalent and critical issue in a Global South context where more than half of the population live in poverty, we explored the exemplification of a topic of relevance to journalists working in this context.

As previously discussed, Nigerian journalists use exemplars to achieve audience outcomes already identified and studied in past experiments, such as increased perception of issue significance, increased awareness of social responsibility to address an issue, and increased emotional connection with the exemplified group. Yet, Nigerian journalists unanimously described using exemplars to additionally challenge the government and increase trust in media, identifying important constructs for further exploration. In our experimental study, we examined these constructs—both those that align with previous experimental studies on exemplification effects and those that diverge from previous scholarship—with the goal of interrogating existing theoretical linkages and identifying new ones.

Similar to recent studies on the relationship between exemplification and the perception of responsibility toward social issues in Germany and the U.S. (e.g., Oschatz et al., 2021), we found little support for the expected direct effects of exemplification on Nigerian participants, including participants’ perceptions of the significance of poverty, social responsibility to address poverty, and trust in media and government. In other words, participants who viewed stories with exemplars did not report significantly different outcomes from those who read the stories without exemplars. However, participants who viewed a news story with an exemplar that emphasized social and structural determinants of poverty were slightly more likely to agree with attribution of responsibility for poverty to social factors, compared to participants who viewed an exemplar story that attributed responsibility for poverty to individual factors. Our second hypothesis was therefore partially supported, providing preliminary evidence that attribution of responsibility in a crucial social issue like poverty can have an impact on audience perception of social responsibility to address poverty. Exemplification tends to be individual-focused since it involves using one person’s personal story to represent an entire group or illustrate an issue, but when done carefully, exemplification can draw attention to the structural determinants of a social issue like poverty and can slightly increase beliefs in collective responsibility to address poverty. Lugo-Ocando (2015) and Varma (2020) caution that journalistic reporting on poverty tends to focus predominantly on the feelings of the individual exemplar, with very little attention to the historical, political, and social determinants of poverty. Our study provides preliminary empirical evidence on the positive effects of careful inclusion of exemplars to emphasize the social determinants of poverty.

The current study identified the novel outcome of trust in media and government through preliminary interviews with Nigerian journalists. When the mediating role of identification was considered, stories with exemplars did indeed increase participants’ self-reported trust in media fairness in relation to the issue and demonstrated concern for people living in poverty. While experiments deductively testing established theory are crucial for building social scientific knowledge, theorizing from ground up, as we have done in this study, can also play a role in identifying important outcome variables in experimental studies of news content, thereby enriching the theory and making it more cumulative (Shoemaker et al., 2004). As those selecting exemplars and shaping exemplar representation, journalists’ ideas about the intended exemplar effects are important to explore both when they align with academic theorizing, as with issue significance and social responsibility to address poverty, and when they diverge or introduce new concepts, like media trust. It makes for more inclusive theorizing when these concepts emerge from marginalized contexts in the academe. Future exemplification research should continue to take seriously journalists’ reported intentions for exemplars or other constructs emerging from understudied contexts, and because these findings may be context-specific, more studies should explore these theoretical linkages in other Global South contexts.

An additional contribution of our study is the examination of the mediating influence of identification, which also emerged from Nigerian journalists’ motivations for using exemplars. True to journalists’ expectations, exemplification increased identification, which in turn increased agreement that poverty was a significant issue, agreement in social responsibility to address poverty, and trust in media, though we did not find support for our hypothesis that identification increased trust in government. Our study provides initial evidence that identification plays a mediating role in facilitating exemplification outcomes. The more an audience identifies with an exemplar, the more they will see poverty as a significant issue that needs to be decisively addressed, believe in the need for collective responsibility in addressing poverty, and trust the media. Our finding thus converges with extant research on exemplification, which has reported some indirect effects of exemplification through narrative involvement/engagement. In most of these previous studies (e.g., Oliver et al., 2012; Oschatz et al., 2021), narrative involvement/engagement is measured as transportation into the story events and scenes. Our study diverges from these studies by accounting for the mediating role of identification as a crucial means of audience involvement/engagement, especially when exemplars are an element of the story but not the main narrative focus. We have argued that exemplars are often portrayed briefly in news stories without events into which audience members can be transported, which warrants the investigation of whether exemplification facilitates getting inside the head of another person, according to Tal-Or and Cohen (2010), or transportation into a story’s scenes and events. This opens important lines of inquiry that should be explored in future studies.

Finally, our research identifies a troubling issue associated with exemplification—the backfire or unintended effects of exemplification of social issues. Li (2021) notes exemplars can either improve or worsen audience perceptions of marginalized groups, depending on which exemplars are selected. While the direct effect of exemplar condition on issue significance and social responsibility to address poverty did not reach significance, regression analyses demonstrate that the effect was not in the predicted direction—and in the case of social responsibility to address poverty, the negative effect of exemplars approached significance. In mediation analyses controlling for identification, the effect of exemplars on outcomes was indeed negative, suggesting that including a personal story about a person living in poverty can actually lead audiences to view the issue as less significant and to agree less that social institutions have a responsibility to address poverty. While these outcomes are not what most exemplar research has predicted, or what Nigerian journalists say they intend, they do align with potential unintended effects of personal stories in health communication campaigns (Cho & Salmon, 2007). By virtue of including a personal story, a news story could situate a problem within the realm of the individual, thereby diminishing the importance of the issue particularly for news audiences that, like most of our participants, have not personally experienced poverty. This finding emphasizes the crucial role of identification, which served as a mediator reversing the direction of the direct effect, and it also highlights the need to proactively explore negative effects of representation of marginalized groups through controlled experiments. Experimental studies examining the backfire effects of exemplification can offer more robust explanation of exemplification effects beyond the current emphasis on the benefits of exemplification.

6. Limitations, Directions, and Conclusions

Like any other study, the current study has a number of shortcomings. Due to limited time with participants, we opted to construct a manipulation rather than use one or more existing stories. While this allowed us to carefully control the exemplar manipulation, our findings should be replicated in future studies with additional messages and with other topics. Because participants might have strong prior beliefs about poverty, a major social issue in Nigeria, exemplar manipulations may not have been strong enough to influence already very strong views about poverty or government specifically (i.e., the ceiling effect). For instance, a participant who believes that the Nigerian government is corrupt, incompetent, and unresponsive to poverty will already have strong feelings about who should be responsible for poverty, and exemplar presence or absence may not make a significant difference in a news story.

To avoid alerting participants to the topic of the experiment before they viewed the stimuli, our study did not measure the participants’ prior attitudes and beliefs about the significance of poverty, responsibility for addressing poverty, and trust in media and government. Future studies might account for these prior feelings and attitudes or study exemplification in the context of social issues for which attitudes are not already firmly set. Also, participants in this study were asked to self-report their beliefs and attitudes, which previous research, particularly in social cognition, has argued differ from actual beliefs and attitudes. A question for future exemplification studies to carefully address is how to get as close as possible to measuring actual beliefs and attitudes, rather than self-reported beliefs and attitudes that may be plagued with over-exaggeration or under-estimation for social desirability.

Another important area for attention is identification. While none of the demographic variables in our study were significantly associated with identification, it is crucial to understand what contributes to identification, including differences in how exemplars are presented and differences in persons viewing the stories and how they experience the stories. The contribution of constructs such as attention to story, empathy, and others to identification should be proactively explored. Equally warranting attention is the distinction between identification and transportation, as well as which aspects of identification are most significant in facilitating exemplification outcomes: understanding people’s lived experiences, feeling similar to them, or sharing their identity? Given the crucial mediating role identification plays in exemplification, media effects scholars should continue to explore the workings of identification in journalists’ use of exemplars to deepen our understanding of exemplification.

Finally, future scholarship on exemplification must engage critically with the theory by adopting the cultural reflexivity necessary for multicultural theorizing in a globalized world. Such an agenda requires an intellectual shift that brings about multicultural dialogue by “foregrounding southern scholarship in the north, and revisiting the ontological and analytical premises of scholarship” (Waisbord, 2022, p. 31). We have demonstrated what a version of this work might look like in this study by using Global South perspectives to investigate theoretical linkages of the exemplification theory. Our study shows incorporating the views of journalists working in the Global South into media and communication theory can help generate important constructs and connections that would otherwise remain invisible. Seeking out and thoughtfully including southern voices and perspectives strengthens theory and makes extant theory more attuned to journalistic practice around the world. Moving forward, scholarly labor in the communication field must create space within long-established, Eurocentric theories for voices from the margin in order to align real-world realities with intellectual conversations about de-westernizing the field.