“When President Lincoln was shot in 1865,
people in London learned about it five days later.
When President Reagan was shot in 1981,
journalist Henry Fairlie, in his office one block
away, heard about the assassination attempt from
his London editor who had seen it on television
and phoned Fairlie to get him to go to the scene.”
John Vivian (p. 385)
Media Effects
CMM 201
October 30, 1938
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8:00 PM
War of the Worlds
CBS Radio Network
Stay tuned
Powerful effects
theory
Powerful Effects Theory
• Hypodermic Needle – media can inject
information, ideas, attitudes into audiences.
• Also called “bullet theory” – media events
can be like bullets impacting audiences.
Can they?
Wrong assumption …?
• People are passive and
absorb media output
uncritically and
unconditionally.
Minimalist Effects Theory
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1940, 1948 Voter behavior studies
Sociologist, Paul Lazarsfeld
Interviewed 600 people (several times)
Results: Voters were influenced more by
the opinions of other people than by media
messages about the candidates.
• Clergy, teachers, merchants – Opinion
Leaders
Related theories
• Status Conferral – If issues (or candidates)
are covered, they become more important.
• Agenda-setting – “Don’t tell people what to
think; tell them what to think about.
• Narcoticizing Dysfunction – information
overload can cause a person to withdraw
from an issue. (Shutdown of interest)
Cumulative Effects Theory
current
• Elisabeth Noell-Neumann: Media do not
have powerful immediate effects – instead,
they have cumulative effects over time.
Really, Dr. Noelle-Neumann?
EDITORIAL
• I think that social
scientists are often too
ready to discard an old
idea, rather than let it
evolve.
• I think the Bullet
Theory and
Cumulative Effects are
compatible and
complementary.
Uses and Gratifications
• This is the mainstream of media research
for the last 60 years.
• How do people use media to satisfy their
personal needs?
• Surveillance
• Socialization
• Diversion
Surveillance
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News
Weather
Traffic
Markets
Politics
Fashions
Music
Socialization
• Did you see Letterman
last night? Wasn’t
Farah Fawcett
outrageous?
• What about those
Browns?
• Rachel is hot!
Diversion
• Entertainment stimulates us – relieving
boredom.
• Entertainment relaxes us – giving us a
change of pace.
• Entertainment releases our tensions.
Another way we use media
• It’s called “Consistency Theory.”
• It means simply that we use media to reinforce our
own personal views and values.
• We pick our books to read, movies to see, shows
to watch, music to enjoy.
• We interpret things from our own perspectives.
• We remember what is important to us.
Violence Research
• Basically, two schools of thought:
• Seeing violence in the media reduces
violent behavior – “cathartic effect.”
• Seeing violence in the media causes violent
behavior – 1960 Bobo doll studies.
I think that Vivian’s summary is a good one:
“The preponderance of evidence is that mediadepicted violence has the potential [emphasis is mine]
to cue real-life violence. However, the aggressive
stimulation theory is often overstated. The fact is
that few people act out media violence in their lives.”
George Gerbner
• Since 1967, he has been doing massive, ongoing content analysis of media violence.
• “It’s a mean world out there.”
• Typical American 18-year old has seen
32,000 on-screen murders and 40,000
attempted murders.
• BUT -- Bugs Bunny being bopped on the
head counts as a violent incident.
Violence Effects
• To terrorize us – give
us anxiety, make us
expect violence.
• To desensitize us –
make us apathetic,
maybe even skeptical.
• Which? Maybe both at
times?
Newer Research on Violence
• 1990’s, UCLA
• Violence Assessment Monitoring Project
• Bugs Bunny and Three Stooges not
counted.
• Of 121 primetime TV shows studied, only
10 had frequent violence.
• By 1998, only 2 had frequent violence.
“Even a relatively slender weekday edition of
the New York Times contains more
information than the average person in the 17th
century was likely to come across in a lifetime,
according to Richard Saul Wurman in his book
Information Anxiety.”
John Vivian
“…the media have effects on individuals and on
society, but it is a two-way street. Society is a
shaper of media content, but individuals make the
ultimate decisions about subscribing, listening,
and watching.”
John Vivian
Acknowledgements
I wish to express my thanks to the many fine
news photographers and news organizations
who put their photographs of the World Trade
Center disaster on the World Wide Web with
copy permissions. Thank you.
Glenn Walters