ABSTRACT
This is of interest to students of media in that many of these cognitive elements, as well as individual communications designed to change them (e.g., advertisements), would be introduced via mediated messages. To present a particularly horrid example from recent headlines, if one believed that both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were enemies of the United States, then it would be cognitively consistent (and so "balanced") to conclude that the two were allied (i.e., "my enemy and my enemy are allies" is a logical construction). For most Americans, the first two beliefs would necessarily have been inculcated by mediated messages, as few Americans have had any first-hand contact with either madman.
