Why the Same Message Can Mean Different Things
@jorgebscomm for @empowervmedia
Messages do not enter empty minds. They arrive with wording, images, sources and context, then meet audiences carrying knowledge of their own.
A headline can contain exactly the same factual sentence and still be encountered differently depending on what surrounds it. Pair it with a frightening photograph, attribute it to a trusted institution, place it inside a sceptical social-media post, or remove the surrounding context altogether, and the audience is no longer encountering words alone. It is interpreting a package of cues.
That gap between message and interpretation is the focus of mediated meaning. The term brings several established lines of research into one question: how does a communication environment become meaning for an audience?
More than words
Framing research provides one part of the answer. In classic experiments by Tversky and Kahneman, equivalent decision problems produced different preferences when outcomes were described differently. The underlying options remained equivalent; their presentation changed how the choice was evaluated.
Contemporary media are also multimodal. Words arrive alongside photographs, video, sound and interface cues. A 2025 systematic review examined 72 empirical studies of visual and multimodal framing effects across sensory, affective, cognitive and behavioural dimensions, with cognitive outcomes most commonly studied. Importantly, visual framing usually operated within broader textual-visual packages rather than as an isolated image.
Who says it matters too
Audiences also evaluate the source. A 2024 meta-analysis of 85 empirical studies found large correlations between perceived information credibility and three factors: message quality, source credibility and message fluency. These are associations, not proof that a credible-looking source automatically causes belief. They nevertheless show that judgements about the messenger can become part of judgements about the message.
The audience was there before the message
Evidence from learning-from-text research illustrates another part of the process. A systematic review of 54 articles found that activating relevant prior knowledge can support comprehension, but that outcomes vary with the amount, accuracy and specificity of the knowledge available.
That evidence should not be treated as proof of a universal media effect. It does, however, illustrate a broader point worth testing carefully: audiences encounter new information with existing knowledge already available for interpretation.
working model
WORDING + IMAGE + SOURCE + CONTEXT
↓
AUDIENCE UPTAKE
↓
MEDIATED MEANING
↓
POSSIBLE BELIEF, DECISION OR BEHAVIOURAL OUTCOME
Where communication becomes psychology
This is where the two disciplines meet. Communication can describe the message environment: wording, images, sources, platforms and context. Psychology can examine what happens during uptake: attention, interpretation, credibility judgement, comprehension and belief revision. Mediated meaning names the middle of that sequence: the point at which communication becomes an audience interpretation.
The stages should not be collapsed. Exposure is not understanding. Understanding is not belief. Belief is not behaviour. A message may be noticed but ignored, understood but rejected, or believed without changing what somebody does.
A contemporary example
Lateral reading offers a practical example of mediated meaning because it deliberately changes the context available to the audience. Instead of judging a claim only from what appears on one page, the reader leaves that page to investigate who produced it, what other sources say, and what relevant information may be missing. The claim itself may remain unchanged, but the meaning and credibility attached to it can shift as new context is added.
This short video demonstrates that process clearly:
Why the distinction matters
If meaning is mediated, better communication is not always a matter of supplying more information. Sometimes the relevant variable may be the wording, the visual frame, the source, the surrounding context or what knowledge an audience has available for interpreting what it encounters.
That creates a more precise research question than simply asking whether a message “worked”: What information was presented? What meaning became available from it? How was that meaning inferred, and what happened next?
The message is only the start. Meaning is mediated.
📚 Key references
Geise, S., & Xu, Y. (2025). Effects of visual framing in multimodal media environments: A systematic review of studies between 1979 and 2023. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 102(3), 796–823.
https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990241257586
Hattan, C., Alexander, P. A., & Lupo, S. M. (2024). Leveraging what students know to make sense of texts: What the research says about prior knowledge activation. Review of Educational Research, 94(1), 73–111.
https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543221148478
Ou, M., & Ho, S. S. (2024). Factors associated with information credibility perceptions: A meta-analysis. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 101(2), 346–372.
https://doi.org/10.1177/10776990231222556
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458.
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.7455683
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