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CMNS 331 – FALL 2009. WEEK 8,
MEDIA EFFECTIVITY AND AUDIENCE UNDERSTANDINGS: WHAT DIFFERENCE
DOES THE NEWS MAKE?
Allan and Bennett approach this question from different theoretical traditions: British cultural
studies, vs. US political comm. research. And different milieus: everyday life, vs. public
opinion/the political system. But they reach similar conclusions re: media effectivity.
First though, I want to overview traditions in ‘effects’ theory. Bring the ‘3 phases’ table from
Week 2 with you. ** And be ready to exercise your note-taking skills! **
INTRO: review of Phases (On overhead)
To look at the political effect of the media, we will start with to the three phases in the historical
development of media studies research and focus on their research into media effects. (ON
OVERHEAD)
(Ref: The three phases have come from a 1982 essay by Blumler and Gurevitch titled “The
Political Effects of Mass Communications” in the book Culture, Society and the Media 1982, )
Just to reiterate, the first phase, MASS SOCIETY, roughly 1900 and 1940, was dominated by
the belief that media had the power to shape and manipulate mass society through propaganda.
The second phase, Liberal Pluralism, from approximately 1940 to 1960, can be characterized by
the predominant view that the mass media had minimal effects on the political subject, except
perhaps to reinforce existing beliefs. (**remains the dominant political philosophy of the
western world**)
And the third phase they identify is the shift, from approximately the 1960s and beyond, where
media research has undergone a reconsideration of the minimal effects theory based on changes
in the political, media and scholarly environments. To some extent this has happened in both
Critical and Liberal perspectives…
Each had a view of the individual as a political citizen, and therefore the effects of the media.
Who and what is the make-up of the political subject. Prior to 1900, during the enlightenment
and democratizing of western society (revolutions etc) there was a predominant philosophy of
the rational citizen.
Early 20th century democratic theory suggested that democracy could only be successful if
voting citizens acquired sufficient information and sophistication to exercise the
responsibilities of citizenship and withstand manipulation. The concept of a “rational citizen” -deeply committed to the ideals of democracy -- was used as both a reason for the extension of the
franchise and a reason to restrict it (because inferior people – workers, women, etc. – cdn’t be
expected to be rational to the same extent as men of means and education).
PHASE I: ((MASS MEDIA and the IRRATIONAL CITIZEN))
But by the first phase of mass comm. research, the focus was on the propaganda effects of the
mass media, due to a variety of reasons.
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Theorists were concerned that war propaganda and the spectacle of fascism appeared to have
had massive effects on the attitudes and behaviors of large populations in Europe.
1. This concern coincided with decades of speculation about the impacts of industrialization
on community and social cohesion leaving mass society vulnerable to manipulation by
the growing mass media. (like the Marxists theorists in the Frankfurt school -- the
culmination of mass society theory pessimism during this phase of media effects
research.) The methodology of these theorists was primarily philosophical and
speculative.
Liberal theorists, such as Walter Lippmann (1922, Public Opinion) echoed this pessimistic view
of the political subject’s ability for rational thought, albeit without the critical analysis of
capitalism or concern for dominance.

Lippmann argued that people were ill-equipped to make crucial decisions and thus had to
be managed by rational “elites” who had superior access to information and superior
reasoning ability.

The media, argued Lippmann, were largely responsible for the “pictures in our heads”
helped along by our own narrow self-interests and stereotypes,

however media should not be blamed for this manipulation. Since they relied on nonscientific selection and reporting methods, argues Lippmann, the media should not be
expected to supply truth.
This pessimistic view of the political subject was reinforced by positivist research into public
opinion, culminating in a landmark 1960 study by Campbell et al (The American Voter) which
noted that the electorate was stunningly uninformed about the most basic political affair or
person and was unable to make even the simplest of rational judgments (Dalton 1996, 18).
(Think about Rick Mercer’s “Talking to Americans”… you could do that in Canada too…)
PHASE II: ((LP: MINIMAL EFFECTS and the **REASONING** PUBLIC))
The years from 1940 to approximately 1960 mark the prominence of the minimal effects theory
of media.

It was characterized by the theoretical dominance of liberal pluralism and a “consensus
model” of society, and empirical and positivist methodology of sociological opinion
surveys,

This media effects research concluded that mass media had minimal effect on political
behavior.
Its method was positivist, scientific, and used primarily opinion surveys. Public opinion surveys
beginning in the 1940s, (such as Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet The People’s Choice, 1944)
found that:

voter preference changed very little as a result of election campaigns,

party preference was one of the more stable reasons for this minimal effect, and

media messages were attended to selectively by respondents.
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Another major study done at the Columbia School (1960) culminated years of research into the
effects of “media bias” on people’s political preferences and concluded that:
1) Citizens are not sufficiently attentive to be affected.
2) Conflicting and intermittent messages tend to cancel out one another
(sic).
3) Individual level processes - selective attention and retention based on preexisting political predispositions - tend to distort media messages and
hence nullify their effects, and,
4) Any message that does leak through to the individual has been processed
through patterns of social interaction and communication.
In other words, voters generally didn’t pay attention. When they did pay attention they
received conflicting messages that tended to cancel each other out. If messages were not
canceled out, they were filtered through pre-existing party preferences and social interactions
to primarily reinforce existing preferences.
-
Within this view, then, most voters were seen as typically partisan, with stable political
preferences over their lifetimes and generally consistent with their social and familial
circles.
-
Thus, the prevailing belief was that voters minds were “closed” prior to elections and
that election campaigns were primarily about activating partisan loyalties, not persuading
voters to change their preferences (Blumler and Gurevitch, 245).
-
Although researchers did recognize that some voters were “floaters”, not particularly
attached or loyal to a partisan preference, these voters tended to have less political
information and less interest in seeking out political information, and thus remained
relatively immune to persuasion campaigns.
Thus, even though they were handicapped by lack of knowledge and sophistication, voters drew
on various ways of “reasoning” such as party affiliation, in order to make their political
decisions.
Other research into the “reasoning voter” drew on the work of Anthony Downs who suggested
an essentially economistic cost/benefits model of political behaviour. This model suggested that:

since the costs associated with collecting political information was far higher than the
potential “benefits” expected from the act of voting (measured primarily in terms of
direct self-interest) the most rational choice for a voter to make would be to abstain.
In order to explain why “rational abstention” was not the common behaviour, various studies in
social psychology looked at the heuristic short-cuts voters take to lessen the expense of political
information gathering, and the various methods voters use to make “reasonable” (vs. “rational”)
deductions about their preferences…(i.e.: we don’t all take time to research all the party’s
platforms…we take short-cuts… )
-
the personal characteristics of the candidate
-
their views or actions in other fields
-
family and kinship views
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Overall, liberal researchers could be comfortable in the knowledge that to a large extent voters
made political decisions relatively free from overt media manipulation and that elections
reflected the “will of the people”.
PHASE III: RECONSIDERING MINIMAL EFFECTS
A shift occurred in the 1960s.
There were changes in the political, media and academic environments, and challenges to
minimal effects theory came from both within the positivist – liberal-- tradition as well as from
critical perspectives.
-
The political environment of the era was characterized by shifting party loyalties, the rise
of “independents” and the emergence of social movements and issues politics.
-
The media environmental was affected by the growing concentration of media ownership
and the prominence of television as the prime source of information about politics and
elections.
-
academics were becoming less interested with persuasion and more interested in
cognition -- less with attitudes and more with the creation of knowledge/meaning such as
those suggested by social constructionist theories.
-
Primarily concerned with measuring short term changes in political preferences, behavior
or opinion was criticized as ignoring long-term constructions of political beliefs and
attitudes, and the overall definition of political issues themselves. It was behavior and
empirical.
-
Experimental methods and qualitative ethnomethodology approaches shifted the focus of
research within the positivist stream. Focus groups, participant observation, social
construction of meaning through routines, etc).
Liberal Pluralist - on the effects on individuals
If you lengthened the time of interest, you needed to consider less of a behavioral influence and
more of a cognitive (meaning) influence. Researchers began to ask : What is the media’s
cumulative long-term role in structuring audience’s cognition – in influencing their perceptions
of what exists and what is important.
So, instead of media’s effect, (the individualist, behavioralist, and linear causality term), research
began to look at media’s social effectivity
-
A socio-ideological term, of Fiske. … a more diffused and generalized process.
-
it doesn’t cause effects, but it does work to promote and prefer certain meanings.
((ASK. From the study questions: what are three of the contemporary concepts of media effects:
agenda setting, priming, and framing.))
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AGENDA SETTING
One of the most important streams of contemporary work on media effects from the Liberal
tradition, originated with a study by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972 on the
media’s role in agenda setting.
-
This study on the 1968 United States election set the stage for a series of studies into media’s
effect on “setting the agenda” in voter’s minds and other indirect and subtle media effects.
-
Using content analysis, surveys and qualitative interviews, they found that the frequency with
which an issue was covered in the media affected the importance the audience attached to
this issue. Thus, the media agenda influenced the priorities of the public.
-
the issues which receive the most prominent attention become viewed as the most important
Cf. Bennett, p. 16
EX: child poverty vs. business climate vs. environment as salient issues: Who wd you vote for?
PRIMING

Iyengar and Kinder took the concept of agenda setting one step further in their 1987 study
News that Matters, which introduced the concept of priming (see Iyengar and Reeves,
1997). [Cf. Bennett, p. 79]

They showed that not only did “even modest amounts” of television news coverage served
to “elevate the salience of newsworthy issues” but that the media “primes” citizens to make
evaluative decisions of their political leaders based on issues in the news. (the way they
are judged)

Thus, issues frequently highlighted by the television news casts are adopted by the audience
as standards by which they judge political candidates for election. Other studies have
supported these…

EXAMPLES: In the US: ‘security’ vs. ‘economy’  likelihood to vote Republican vs.
Democrat.

- US public was primed to regard Saddam as associated with WMD and bin Laden.
FRAMING
-
And finally, Iyengar continued his work by conducting a series of experiments and surveys
studies to look at the effect of news framing on audiences (Is Anyone Responsible? How
Television Frames Political Issues, 1991).
-
As opposed to agenda setting and priming concepts, both of which are based on the
measurement of indirect effects based on the frequency of an issue in the news, framing
studies considers the “type” of coverage an issue receives.
-
A frame is defined as a “question of slant, structure, emphasis, selection, word choice and
context” (Capella and Jamieson 1997, 57); its most effective if it draws upon a pattern of
association and cognitive activation which already exists in the view’s/reader’s habitual way
of thinking.
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Iyengar makes the distinction between “episodic” and “thematic” frames and notes that the
way the media frames a policy issue affects the attributions of responsibility for these
problems (Goodin, 242).

episodic frames of poverty are those depicting illustrations of specific
instances & individuals. They result in viewer’s finding the individual at
fault.

thematic frames are those which provide essentially a background report on
the issues -- and result in the viewer more likely to find larger societal factors
responsible for poverty (Iyengar and Reeves, 1997, 214).
-
Another framing study by Cappella and Jamieson (The Spiral of Cynicms1997) suggested
that strategic frames on the part of news media resulted in an increase of cynicism and a
demobilizing of citizens.
-
Strategic frames included media coverage on the “horse-race” aspect of an election where
politician’s actions are seen only as self-interested and conflict is emphasized (4). Ie; a
concentration on strategy vs policy content.
Other Liberal Challenges
-
other Liberal challengers to the minimal effects thesis used ethnomethodological studies and
in-depth interviews to ascertain how people reach the opinions they do and the role of the
media in their deliberations.
-
William Gamson (“Talking Politics” in 1992) for example, found that the media effect on
opinions depended on the personal and experiential knowledge the individual had on the
topic.
1. If participants had little direct knowledge the media effects were considered
“substantial” and media frames dramatically influenced the way participants discussed
an issue. (eg. foreign policy)
2. If they had extensive personal experiences the respondents were relatively immune to
media effects, although they did use information from media to elaborate on their views.
Thus , the less we know, the more easily we are influenced…
---- you can see how even the Liberal Pluralist research was moving towards recognizing a more
ideological effect of media on audiences…
CRITICAL VIEWS
The third phase of media studies was also characterized by challenges from outside the Liberal
pluralist tradition.
Critical perspectives challenged media effects research on both theoretical and methodological
grounds.
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Theory: For example, while liberal pluralism considered elections a “meaningful contest
between genuine alternatives” and therefore a legitimate focus of study, critical theorists from
the Marxist traditions saw elections as predominantly meaningless exercises between dominant
groups – more about elite legitimation, then popular representation.
Method: Further, focusing on the “individual” as the unit of study was criticized as resulting in
research which ignored the structural components of domination and the larger ideological
role of news media in maintaining existing relations of power.
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And issues such as ownership and the political economy of media structures were ignored
altogether.
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Instead, this third phase drew on the theoretical traditions of structuralism, the Gramscian
notion of hegemony, and the shift from the concept of “consensus” to “consent” in order
to explain how the media reproduce dominant ideologies.
SIDEBAR: PUBLIC OPINION POLLS
On both theoretical and methodological grounds, the Critical paradigm thus challenges ‘public
opinion’, as measured in opinion polls, as an indication of popular consent.
-
Some researchers from liberal pluralist traditions have noted that while public opinion
surveys may indicate low levels of political understanding, other research methods have
shown otherwise, indicating that the method of inferring “public opinion” from the sum of
individual opinions is not the most accurate or even the most ethical form of measurement.
(vs., focus groups, lengthy interviews… etc) As measured by polls, ‘public opinion’ may be
a construction rather than reflection of politically relevant popular consciousness.
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BENNETT: Why we should not take polls at face value:
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- poll questions follow the language of political spin/elite policies, triggering partisan
responses rather than more realistic, thoughtful ones (eg. 1991 Gulf War: Should the air war
continue, or is it time to launch the ground invasion?). Many polls are sponsored, by
advocacy grps, or news orgs; wording and reporting may reflect their purposes.
-
- News orgs pressure pollsters to ignore Undecideds/Don’t Knows  polarization is
exaggerated
-
Polls ignore whether people care if their favoured policies occur: are they likely to mobilize
or even notice?
-
RH: Polls don’t indicate knowledge-basis of opinions: would new info change views?
[What should we make of 39% of Americans wanting ‘govt to stay out of medicare’]
ENCODING-DECODING (Allan 107-10)
PLAY News CLIP [if available]: Make a few notes about how you interpreted this clip??
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In Allan this week you read about a critical model of audience “readings” , developed by Stuart
Hall (1980). Hall uses the 3 decoding frameworks (what were they?)
-
Hall suggested that rather than seeing media messages as a linear model think of moments of
production, circulation and distribution/consumption and reproduction as a “complex
structure in dominance”
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each communication has “encoding-message-decoding”
-
encoding: frameworks of knowledge, relations of production, technology infrastructure -these are all structures brought to bear on the message (last week).
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decoding: the structural social practice of making meaning. Audiences must appropriate the
message as personally relevant, in some way.
-
Audiences do not automatically decode, but they negotiate (note the influence of Gramsci
and hegemony)
-
We can look at the message to analyze the encoding, but must look at the audience to
analyze the decoding.
This results in looking at 3 hypothetical positions (per “moment”)
1. dominant hegemonic position, accepting the dominant code within the message (yes its
true)
2. negotiated position (okay, but MY tuition fees are protected) a mix of adaptive and
oppositions, often contradictory.
3. oppositional position – globally oppositional, alternative framework of reference,
(framework is wrong, corps don’t pay taxes)
4. refusal to read at all… turn off TV (Allan doesn’t talk about his one. But landmark
study in 1980 by Terry Morley looked at how sub-cultural groups looked at current
affairs shows – and one notable finding was that some, like black immigrant women –
simply turned off the TV)
-- now, what was your coding position of the clip I showed?
(How might this concept fit with Chomsky’s propaganda model??)
This framework of decoding, suggests that Chomsky’s propaganda model, needs qualifying, if
not a rejecting…
How can we juxtapose the concepts of preferred readings vs freedom to decode??.
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while we have options about what reading we make, we re not completely free in making
those choices.
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The very options we have available depends on a number of factors: our socio-cultural
status, our knowledge of the event or issue, etc.
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1) Readings are not equally open. There are preferred meanings embedded in the text.
-
2) And it may not wholly determined our response, but our response is conditioned by
our social position… …
They are related to our subjectivity, the groups, sub-cultures, occupations, social classes, shared
codes, etc.
Stuart Hall called the relationship one that was structured in dominance. Media aren’t a level
playing field. But the outcome is not entirely determined either.
Summary: Generally accepted impacts in most research:
Allan & Bennett come to similar conclusions on Media Effectivity:
I. SOME REASONS FOR NOT REGARDING MEDIA AS ALL-POWERFUL
* The media system is fragmented; many people are tuned out of politics.
* Many personal factors shape what people attend to, and what they think it means (Bennett: 87)
* People with direct experience, can reframe an issue (Bennett: 89)
* People process info thru their own intellectual-labor saving strategies (BUT, some of these
strategies reinforce or amplify the dominance of media frames, and/or political elites) – eg.
* Cueing: taking broad interpretive cues from news, eg. labels: screening info thru trusted
reference groups (which, in the case of the media-attentive and the educated, are pol
elites!)
* Bolstering: Selecting factoids that fit the cues
* Weighing: using emotions in news reports, to direct attention and learning
* Personal organizing: filtering this mediated info, into the values, interests, lifestyle, of
the indivl’s personal life experiences.
This last point resonates with Allan:
The ‘materiality’ of news culture is realized in the varied realities of everyday life. This limits
media effectivity in some ways: people aren’t always paying attention; friends and family
members provide local reference groups to filter media messages….
Indeed, Allan sees news as so ‘imbricated’ with everyday life, that he rejects the distinction btwn
media text, and media audience.
So, audiences are not passive dupes…
II. BUT: REASONS FOR REGARDING MEDIA AS POLITICALLY INFLUENTIAL:
The very everydayness of news, its integration in daily routines, makes it effective as hegemonic
vehicle. Hegemony is enacted in the household. News, esp. TV news and popular tabloids,
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speak in a popular idiom; arguably, translating elite perspectives into a language that resonates
with daily experience.
E.g. media use & interpretation is linked with gendered division of labour (Allan 111-12).
Women accept that news of public affairs is a man’s world; it’s seen as important, more
important than their own; but not of interest. [RH: That was a 1980 study; is it still valid?]
Pol Comm theorists generally accept the following impacts:
a) Agenda-setting” focuses public attention on particular political issues: sets the agenda
of public discussion. Help determine what issues we are aware of, what we consider to
be important in political life
b) Priming: Media influence how aud’s evaluate their poltical options: Media attn to a
partr issue seems to evaluate parties and govts in terms of that issue
c) Framing: But even further, HOW the media present issues, how the issues are “framed”,
helps shape public interpretations of the issues – esp in the case of new issues or new
social movements, or distant and unfamiliar events – where audiences don’t have much
previous knowledge or direct experience or emotional investment
Thru such mechanisms, media influence the formation of opinion camps and publics. EX: rise of
right-wing talk radio and Fox TV in the US has created a new mobilizable constituency.
Under the right conditions, well-designed pol comm. can influence pol behaviour, and the
outcomes of elections and issue campaigns.
What conditions? Cf. Bennett, p. 78:
Battles for public opinion tend to be won by those who can
- create simple messages
- that strike the strongest emotional chord
- that reach the most people
- that can be repeated often, so that
- they echo thru a fragmented society and media system, with the result of
- engaging shared considerations
- that help people convince each other to take partr positions in common.
What strategies can you use, to be both informed and actively engaged in democratic political
life, but also to protect your autonomy and independent judgement? (Stay tuned: Bennett, Chap.
9)
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