How do media stimuli receive attention: Salience or relevance? The perspective of cognitive approaches to media

There is no consensus as to whether attentional allocation to mediated messages is driven by message features (salient information receives attentional priority) or by peoples goals and intent (relevant information receives attentional priority). Reviewing 30 years of studies in cognitive approaches to media, this paper emphasizes that attentional control during mediated message processing relies on the joint influence of stimulus-driven (automatic) processing and goal-directed (controlled) processing rather than either of them. Finally, the processing mode model is proposed as a new theoretical framework for future research.