Media Effects
Socialization
Media Socialization Theories
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Strong media theories
Weak media theories
Purposive Audience Theories
Active Audience Theories
Processing Media Content
Culture
• Components of culture:
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symbols
beliefs
values
norms
• Socialization
– process by which components of culture are
transmitted from one generation to the next
Strong Media Theories
• Hypodermic Theory
– Media is sufficiently insiduous and powerful to inject
whatever message it wants into the “body politic”
– Women, children, and other “vulnerable” populations
may need special protection
– Particularly common to see versions of this whenever
new media are introduced (e.g., movies, television,
rock/rap music, internet)
– Tends to lead to calls for government
regulation/intervention
Strong Media Theories
• Cultivation Theory
– Exposure to particular media forms is positively
correlated with influence of those forms
– That is, the more television viewed, the greater the
likelihood that the viewer will come to accept that the
televised world is a representation of the real world
– People who inhabit an environment that mimicks or
conforms to the dominant medium of choice are more
susceptible to messages and more easily influenced
Weak Media Theory
• Other approaches argue that the Strong
Media theories overstate the influence and
power of media
• In particular, these studies emphasize
factors that help “mediate” the relationship
between the media and the people
Government
Media
People
These mediating factors include:
Weak Media Theory
• Importance of Preexisting Conditions
– Selective Exposure
• people choose media that already conform with or confirm
preexisting views, opinions, or inclinations
– Selective Perception
• people perceive media information according to preexisting
beliefs, opinions, inclination
– Selective Retention
• people recall content that that is consonant with views and
preferences
Weak Media Theory
• Interpersonal Dissemination
– Content of communication is disseminated and
influenced by:
• friends, family, shared interests, and opinions
• Group Membership
– Understanding and perception of media content is
influenced by prior group conditioning that provide
context for that understanding and perception
• e.g., religious, racial, political, geographic, age, gender
Weak Media Theory
• Opinion Leaders
– People often do not digest information directly, but
have it processed by “opinion leaders” who provide
context, cues, and meaning for audience
• Economics
– Due to economic constraints, media tend not to
broadcast, publish, or disseminate views that are likely
to be rejected or questioned by large segments of the
population
Purposive Audience Theories
• Uses and Gratification Approach
– People turn to media for a variety of reasons
beyond information gathering (uses)
– People choose media, then, based on needs of
the moment (gratification)
• e.g. emotional release (diversion)
stay informed (surveillance)
reinforce personal identity
Purposive Audience Theories
• For example, studies of televsion viewing show
that television serves a variety of uses and satisfies
a range or gratifications:
– environmental (background noise, companionship, entertainment)
– regulative (punctuates time, activity, talk patterns)
– communication facilitation (illustrate experience, enter
conversations, reduce anxiety, set agenda for talk, clarify values)
– affiliation/avoidance (family solidarity, relaxation, conflict)
– social learning (decision-making, value transmission, information
dissemination, substitute schooling)
Purposive Audience Theories
• Attention to television, then, will vary on
the context in which it is being viewed and
the specific needs/intentions of the viewers
attending to it
• The “message” of any programming, is just
as likely to be distorted, changed, ignored as
much as it is to be absorbed
Purposive Audience
• Media Systems Dependency
– To understand media influence, we need to understand
the divergent “needs” of people to fulfill their lives
(beyond basic biological necessities):
• understanding
• orientation
• play
– Given these needs, we can identify six “dependency
relations” between people and the media
Purposive Audience Theories
• Media Systems Dependency
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self understanding
social understanding
action orientation (what to buy, how to dress, etc.)
interaction orientation (how to handle social situations)
solitary play
social play
Purposive Audience Theories
• In both U&G and MSD, people use the
media to fulfill certain needs and goals
• Both are socio-psychological approaches in
which studying individuals (in the
aggregate) is viewed as the best way to
study broad social processes
Active Audience
• Response Approach
– Focus is on how people comprehend and
interpret media conent
– Comprehension may differ sharply from the
intentions (stated or implied) of the media
• Referential - relate program/content to reality
• Metalinguistic/critical - recognize program/content
as media construct and examine these various
components in addition to the “message”
Processing Media Content
• Attempts have been made to explain the
differences observed in these theories by
focusing on how people process the content
they experience
Processing Media Content
• Schematic Thinking
– A “schema” - cognitive structure consisting of organized knowlege
about situations and individuals that has been abstracted from prior
experience
• e.g., negative views on government, big business as corrupt,
democracy is great
– These schema enable people to extract and incorporate the
information they consider imiportant
– Note, then, without schema, people are less likely or even unlikely
to absorb the information that will allow them to understand these
areas; and in these situations, they are more likely simply to reflect
media content directly
Processing Media Content
• Constructionist Approach
– People operate from a core of “common
knowledge” that guides interest in, and
attention to, media fare
– This core consists of “frames” which people
use to convey, interpret, and evaluate,
information
Processing Media Content
• Constructionist Approach
– This sets up possibility (probability) that
individual frames will differ from media
framing of an event
• e.g., personal interest and morality
• political vs. apolitical framing
Processing Media Content
• All of these theories depend, at least in part, on
recall, that is, the ability for people to remember
what information they just received
• Factors influencing recall:
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demographics (education/income)
motivation
background knowledge
visual vs. textual
compilation pace and presentation
detail vs. general patterns
Learning Theories
• Given this importance, we need to understand or
at least have a theory for understanding, how
learning takes place
• One sense of learning would be the acquisition
and retention of new knowledge
• But how does that take place?
• To what extent is learning “stimulus determined”
and what extent is it “perceiver determined”?
Learning Theories
• Stimulus Determined
– mental image reflects the actual stimulus senses
have absorbed
• Perceiver Determined
– mental image is shaped by what the individual
already know/believe
Learning Theories
• On the other hand, information about
aspects/events that are not widely known
(and thus individuals are unlikely to have
any preconceived content) are open to
stimulus-determined images
• Media framing then becomes crucial to how
the images are going to be perceived, and
thus stored for future use
Learning Theories
• But keep in mind that all these studies are
laboratory based and we need to bear in mind the
transitory influences of actual media consumption
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attention
context (social setting)
quality/content of story (style impacts learning)
credibility
Learning Theories
• In political studies of attitudes towards
candidates/parties in an election, we find
that most people are largely “perceiver”
determined
– that is, they absorb the events of the campaign
(e.g., the candidates, the issues, the race)
through a filter of predetermined dispositions