1. Chapter 2 Chapter Outline History Theory and Research Controversies
MEDIA IMPACT: Understanding Research and Effects
Chapter Outline
History
Theory and Research
Controversies
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2. A Brief History of Media Research
Early Studies
Concerns about the impact of media are as old as the media themselves.
Fifteenth-century church leaders thought printed bibles would corrupt society.
Many parents felt the same way about the first novels.
Systematic research into these effects did not begin, however, until the 1920s.
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3. A Brief History of Media Research
Propaganda is information that is spread for the purpose of promoting a doctrine or cause.
Propaganda had been so blatant and useful to both sides during World War I that people feared media was powerful enough to “brainwash” an innocent public and influence them in ways they did not realize.
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4. A Brief History of Media Research
In 1929, the Payne Fund conducted 13 separate investigations into the influence movies had on the behavior of children.
People were concerned that, through a phenomenon known as modeling, children picked up antisocial habits from their movie viewing.
Content analyses demonstrated that the vast majority of movies dealt with crime, sex, and love.
Laboratory experiment studies found that romantic and erotic scenes did not have much effect on young children or adults but had a noticeable effect on teenagers.
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5. A Brief History of Media Research
Survey methods included administering questionnaires to young movie viewers, and their parents and teachers, as well as asking teenagers to recall the effects that early movie viewing had on them.
Results suggested that movie viewing was harmful to a child’s health, contributed to an erosion of moral standards and had a negative influence on the child’s conduct.
The Payne Fund studies were instrumental in developing public support for the 1930 Motion Picture Production code that limited the amount of sex and violence that could be shown in movies.
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6. A Brief History of Media Research
The People’s Choice study examined how media affected voter behavior in the 1940 presidential election between FDR and Wendell Willkie.
A random sample of subjects were chosen from Erie County, Ohio which had deviated very little from national voting patterns in earlier elections.
Selective exposure caused Republicans to avoid messages that seemed to support Roosevelt, while Democrats would seek out these messages.
Selective perception caused Republicans to hear FDR’s “fireside chats” as evidence of incompetence and duplicity while Democrats would hear it as evidence of his great abilities and integrity.
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7. A Brief History of Media Research
Selective retention caused people with different views to remember the same event differently.
Certain well-informed members of families and neighborhoods tended to be opinion leaders who then created a two-step flow of communication.
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8. A Brief History of Media Research
In 1942 film director Frank Capra produced a series of films for the orientation of army recruits. Social scientists then conducted “The American Soldier” studies.
They measured knowledge and opinions before the soldiers saw the films, assessed changes after seeing the films, and determined that film was a powerful teaching aid for acquiring factual knowledge.
They also found that film did not improve or change deeply felt attitudes.
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9. A Brief History of Media Research
Applied Research: Conducted by Industry
Applied research is devoted to practical, commercial purposes.
All media began using scientific techniques to determine how best to attract an audience and maximize advertising profits.
Advertising and public relations agencies established research department that hired media research Ph.D.s who sought work outside academia.
Less scientific studies often received more attention, e.g., Dr Fredric Wertham’s studies into the effects of comic books, which did great damage to the industry in the 1950s.
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10. A Brief History of Media Research
Studies into the Effects of Television
Television in the Lives of Our Children was a study by Wilbur Schramm and colleagues at Stanford University in the late 1950s.
Thousands of school children and their parents were interviewed, surveyed (through questionnaires and diaries) and tested on how children used TV and how that use affected those children.
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11. A Brief History of Media Research
Studies into the Effects of Television
The study found that some TV is harmful for some children under some conditions.
For other children under the same, or other, conditions TV may be beneficial.
For most children, under most conditions, most TV is probably neither harmful nor particularly beneficial.
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12. A Brief History of Media Research
Television and violence
In 1968, following riots in Detroit and Newark, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence which partly dealt with media and TV.
The commission found that desensitization was one effect of long-term exposure to mass-media portrayals of violence.
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13. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
A theory is a set of related statements that seek to explain and predict behavior.
The Payne Fund studies supported the powerful-effects model, which predicted that media will have an immediate and potent influence on their audiences.
Later studies, including the People’s Choice and American Soldier studies, led to the minimal-effects model which predicts that media will have little influence on behavior.
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14. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Today, researchers accept a mixed-effects model, which predicts that sometimes media will have powerful effects, sometimes minimal effects, and sometimes – depending on a complex variety of contingencies – a mixture of both.
The mixed-effects model makes the most sense.
We know that an effective ad can make a product fly off shelves, and that a news report can fuel a riot.
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15. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Over time researchers changed their perceptions of flow theory, or how effects traveled from the mass media to their audiences.
The bullet theory implied that media effects flowed directly from media to individual – like a bullet.
Today’s researchers recognize a multistep flow, which implies that media effects are part of a complex interaction.
There is really no general, simple answer to the question of how media affects behavior.
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16. Milestones in Media Research timeline
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17. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Social Science Perspectives
Social learning theory: is based on the assumption that people learn to behave by observing others, including those portrayed in the mass media.
Socialization: An important part in the process of social modeling in which a child learns the expectations, norms, and values of society.
This theory suggests that stereotypical depictions of minorities and women teach others to react to them as stereotypes and teach these groups to behave in the ways they are depicted.
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18. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Social Science Perspectives
Two other theories are closely related to social learning theory:
Both Aggressive stimulation and Catalytic theories suggest that media might be one of several factors that could cause someone to act out in an antisocial way.
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19. Flow Theories
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20. Media Effects: Social Science Perspectives
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21. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Individual differences theory looks at how media users with different characteristics are affected in different ways by the mass media.
According to diffusion of innovations theory five types of people have different levels of willingness to accept new ideas from the media:
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22. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Individual differences theory looks at how media users with different characteristics are affected in different ways by the mass media.
According to diffusion of innovations theory five types of people have different levels of willingness to accept new ideas from the media:
Innovators tend to be politically liberal extroverts who are venturesome and eager to try new ideas.
Early adopters make quick but informed choices.
The early majority makes careful, deliberate decisions.
The late majority tends to be skeptical.
Laggards tend to be conservative, traditional and resistant to any type of change.
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23. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
George Gerbner’s cultivation theory predicts that over time, media use will “cultivate” a particular view of the world within users.
Researchers in the 1970s found that agenda-setting, not telling people what to think, but telling them what to think about, was the main effect of media.
The Newtown Shooting and Media Coverage
One story will replace another
Short attention spans – Issue attention cycle
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26. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
On the other hand, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s cumulative effects theory holds that media messages are driven home through redundancy, have profound effects over time, and do, in fact, tell us how to think.
Uses and gratification theory is based on the ways in which consumers actively choose and use media to meet their own needs.
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27. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Cultural Studies
The role that media plays in changing entire societies is difficult to measure.
Media ecology suggests that media make up an ecological system for humans similar to the one nature provides for animals and plants.
Gender studies examine how the media construct and perpetuate gender roles.
Political/economic analysis looks at how media becomes the means by which the haves of society gain the willing support of the have-nots to maintain the status quo.
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28. Understanding Today’s Media Theory and Research
Media Theory: A Complex Whole
The various theories of media impact demonstrate it is usually ill-advised to make blanket statements about media effects.
Many researchers have pointed out that some media effects are not readily observable.
Baseline effect is the subtle way in which media exposure is always affecting us, whether we realize it or not.
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29. Baseline and Fluctuation Effects
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30. Controversies
Some media experts insist that most people continue to hold a powerful-effects point of view of the media.
Isolated examples and anecdotes are used to support conventional wisdom.
The general public is unable to understand the highly specialized jargon and methodologies of most academic research.
Limitations of social science research also include problems with conflicting interpretations and causations.
Catharsis theory is the idea that viewing violence actually reduces violent behavior because it satisfies a person’s aggressive drive.
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31. Controversies
Most people find it difficult to distinguish between causation and correlation in research findings.
About 80 percent of killers who commit sexual crimes have been proven to have a taste for violent pornography but that does not prove that violent pornography caused the violent behavior.
Media producers point out that Shakespeare’s Hamlet contained seven murders and say dramatic violence is as old as the great classics.
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