The turn of a depressed tourism industry. Yesterday the retailers. Today the bad new from the Australian Bureau of Statistics is about the tourism industry. During June 2011, short-term visitor arrivals (473,700 movements) recorded a decrease of 2.6% compared with May 2011 (486,300 movements). This followed a monthly increase of 3.8% in April 2011 and a decrease of 1.5% in May 2011.

The trend estimate by the ABS points sharply downwards. The current trend estimate for arrivals is 2.2% lower than in June 2010.

They don’t con me. It’s other people who get influenced by those misleading political campaign ads we don’t agree with. Not us. We’re a wake up to that nonsense.

That’s a rough and ready summary of research by Fuyuan Shen, associate professor, communications, at Penn State University in the United States. In an experiment, people who viewed negative political advertising told researchers the advertisements had little effect on their own opinions, but believed the ads would have a greater influence on others.

According to Prof. Shen:

“People have a tendency to overestimate the effect media messages have on others. The perception is that negative messages, like television violence and p-rnography, in mass media affect others more.”

Shen added that when the message is socially desirable, such as donating money, the perception is reversed; people think the message has more of an effect on themselves than on others.

“There is a gap in perception,” he said.

The exaggerated perception of media power may prompt people to believe that media censorship and campaign finance reform are necessary to limit media influence, according to Shen.

“People have a tendency to overestimate the media’s impact, especially when we don’t necessarily like the message,” said Shen. “And this belief could have larger behavioral implications on censorship and the regulation of media content.”

The research, published in the current issue of the Journal of Political Marketing — which is not available free online — involved showing 129 students negative television advertisements created by MoveOnPac.org for the 2004 presidential election. A press release summarising the findings said the ads focused either on then-President George W. Bush’s character or on political issues, such as the Iraq war and the environment. About 45% of the participants identified themselves as Bush supporters and 55% considered themselves opponents of the president.

Both supporters and opponents indicated that the effect of the ads on others was significantly greater than their own reaction to the ads. The experiment also indicated that watching more negative ads increased the effect. People who watched from three to five ads perceived that the influence of the advertisements was greater on others compared to people who just viewed one ad. “The more ads you see, the more you believe that those ads are affecting people,” said Shen.

The researchers say they tried to create the most natural conditions for the experiment as possible, Shen said. The experiment featured actual political advertisements and was conducted a few weeks before the election when attention on the election was at its height.

A badge of honour for Quiggin. From the New York Times blogs this morning:

The full sliming article referred to, by Michael Stutchbury, is here.

Gotcha! Or perhaps that should be Gotme! An apology to Internet Explorer users is called for. Those beautiful charts in Snippets yesterdayshowing that Opera users are smarter was just part of an elaborate hoax. The BBC tells the true tale this morning. I am chastened.