Hypodermic Needle Theory
direct influence via mass media
Or: Magic Bullet Theory
(in Dutch also known as: ‘almacht van de media-theorie’, stimulus-response,
injectienaald, transportband, lont in het kruidvat theorie).
History and Orientation
The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct,
immediateand powerful effect on its audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s
were perceived as a powerful influence on behavior change.
Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including:
- the fast rise and popularization of radio and television
- the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda
- the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures
on children, and
- Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public
behind the Nazi party
Core Assumptions and Statements
The theory suggests that the mass media could influence a very large group of people
directly and uniformly by ‘shooting’ or ‘injecting’ them with appropriate messages
designed to trigger a desired response.
Both images used to express this theory (a bullet and a needle) suggest a powerful and
direct flow of information from the sender to the receiver. The bullet theory graphically
suggests that the message is a bullet, fired from the "media gun" into the viewer's
"head". With similarly emotive imagery the hypodermic needle model suggests that
media messages are injected straight into a passive audience which is immediately
influenced by the message. They express the view that the media is a dangerous means
of communicating an idea because the receiver or audience is powerless to resist the
impact of the message. There is no escape from the effect of the message in these
models. The population is seen as a sitting duck. People are seen as passive and are
seen as having a lot media material "shot" at them. People end up thinking what they
are told because there is no other source of information.
New assessments that the Magic Bullet Theory was not accurate came out of election
studies in "The People's Choice," (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1944/1968). The
project was conducted during the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 to determine
voting patterns and the relationship between the media and political behavior. The
majority of people remained untouched by the propaganda; interpersonal outlets
brought more influence than the media. The effects of the campaign were not allpowerful to where they persuaded helpless audiences uniformly and directly, which is the
very definition of what the magic bullet theory does. As focus group testing,
questionnaires, and other methods of marketing effectiveness testing came into
widespread use; and as more interactive forms of media (e.g.: internet, radio call-in
shows, etc.) became available, the magic bullet theory was replaced by a variety of
other, more instrumental models, like the two step of flow theory and diffusion of
innovations theory.
Conceptual Model
Magic bullet theory model
Source: Katz & Lazarsfeld (1955)
The hypodermic needle model (also known as the hypodermic-syringe model) is a model
of communications also referred to as the "magic bullet" perspective, or the transmission-belt model.
Essentially, this model holds that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver.
The model is rooted in 1930s behaviorism created by the Frankfurt School in Germany and is considered by
many[who?] to be obsolete today.
Concept
The hypodermic needle theory implied that mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on their
audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour
change. Several factors contributed to this "strong effects" theory of communication, including: the fast rise and
popularization of radio and television, the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising
and propaganda, the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on
children, and Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind
the Nazi party.
This view of propaganda took root after World War I and was championed by theorists such as Harold
Lasswell in his pioneering work Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927). He argued that the people had
been duped and degraded by propaganda during the war. Lasswell based his work on a stimulus-response model
rooted in learning theory. Focusing on mass effects, this approach viewed human responses to the media as
uniform and immediate. E. D. Martin expressed this approach thus: "Propaganda offers ready-made opinions for
the unthinking herd" (cited in Choukas, 1965, p. 15). The "Magic Bullet" or "Hypodermic Needle Theory" of
direct influence effects was not as widely accepted by scholars as many books on mass communication indicate.
The magic bullet theory was not based on empirical findings from research but rather on assumptions of the
time about human nature. People were assumed to be "uniformly controlled by their biologically based 'instincts'
and that they react more or less uniformly to whatever 'stimuli' came along" (Lowery & DefFleur, 1995, p. 400).
Later developments
The phrasing "hypodermic needle" is meant to give a mental image of the direct, strategic, and planned infusion
of a message into an individual. But as research methodology became more highly developed, it became
apparent that the media had selective influences on people.
The most famous incident often cited as an example for the hypodermic needle model was the 1938 broadcast
of The War of the Worlds and the subsequent reaction of widespread panic among its American mass audience.
However, this incident actually sparked the research movement, led by Paul Lazarsfeld and Herta Herzog, that
would disprove the magic bullet or hypodermic needle theory, as Hadley Cantril managed to show that reactions
to the broadcast were, in fact, diverse, and were largely determined by situational and attitudinal attributes of the
listeners.
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School came into existence in order to explain the success of Nazism in Weimar Germany. It sees
the loss of individuality through decline of privacy as the main cause of dependence on great mass
organisations. Habermas to a certain extent depends on some early critiques of the media from the ‘Frankfurt
School’, such as that of Max Horkheimer use. For these three, media was a 'culture industry' which was creating
an impact on passive individuals. These individuals merely absorb any information they are exposed to. (A clear
influence of Karl Marx can be seen here, with links to the theory of alienation.) According to Thompson, the
cause of this is the commodification of art and culture, which allows the possibility of "manipulation by
demagogues".Emile Durkheim claimed that the interdependence of highly specialised individuals, or what is
known as ‘organic solidarity’, is seen as being succeeded by a new and barbarous homogeneity. Due to this,
only a ‘mechanical’ cohesion is possible, dependent on similarity and standardisation. Horkheimer thus argued
that, paradoxically, individuality was impaired by the decline in the impulse for collective action. According to
him, ‘As the ordinary man withdraws from participating in political affairs, society tends to revert to the law of
the jungle, which crushes all vestiges of individuality.’ In this analysis the Frankfurt school
saw totalitarianism emerging as a result of corrupt social institutions and the decline of liberal principles. Thus
Oppenheimer claimed that: “Just as the slogans of rugged individualism are seeking exemption from social
control, so in mass culture the rhetoric of individuality, by imposing patterns for collective imitation, subverts
the very principle to which it gives lip service.” Adorno in The Jargon of Authenticity claimed that “mass media
can create an aura which makes the spectator seem to experience a non-existent actuality”. Thus a massproduced, artificial culture replaces what went before.
Communication Theory/Uses and Gratifications
Introduction
Uses and gratifications ejon approach is an influential tradition in media research. The original conception of the
approach was based on the research for explaining the great appeal of certain media contents. The core question
of such research is: Why do people use media and what do they use them for? (McQuail, 1983). There exists a
basic idea in this approach: audience members know media content, and which media they can use to meet their
needs.
In the mass communication process, uses and gratifications approach puts the function of linking need
gratifications and media choice clearly on the side of audience members. It suggests that people’s needs
influence what media they would choose, how they use certain media and what gratifications the media give
them. This approach differs from other theoretical perspectives in that it regards audiences as active media users
as opposed to passive receivers of information. In contrast to traditional media effects theories which focus on
“what media do to people” and assume audiences are homogeneous, uses and gratifications approach is more
concerned with “what people do with media” (Katz, 1959). It allows audiences personal needs to use media and
responds to the media, which determined by their social and psychological background.
Uses and gratifications approach also postulates that the media compete with other information sources for
audience’s need satisfaction (Katz et al., 1974a). As traditional mass media and new media continue to provide
people with a wide range of media platforms and content, it is considered one of the most appropriate
perspectives for investigating why audiences choose to be exposed to different media channels (LaRose et al.,
2001).
The approach emphasizes audiences’ choice by assessing their reasons for using a certain media to the disregard
of others, as well as the various gratifications obtained from the media, based on individual social and
psychological requirements (Severin & Tankard, 1997). As a broader perspective among communication
researches, it provides a framework for understanding the processes by which media participants seek
information or content selectively, commensurate with their needs and interests (Katz et al., 1974a). Audience
members then incorporate the content to fulfill their needs or to satisfy their interests (Lowery & Nabila, 1983).
Origin and History
It is well accepted that communication theories have developed through the realms of psychology and sociology
over the past 100 years. With illumed by valuable ideas as well as exploring more untilled fields in these two
disciplines, researchers elicit a series of higher conceptions of understanding media. As a sub-tradition of media
effects research, uses and gratifications approach is suggested to be originally stemmed from a functionalist
paradigm in the social sciences (Blumler & Katz, 1974).
To some extent, however, functional theory on communication agrees with media’s effects towards people. For
example, a model often used in the theory, the Hypodermic Syringe model, discusses that “the mass media have
a direct, immediate and influential effect upon audiences by ‘injecting’ information into the consciousness of the
masses” (Watson & Hill 1997, p. 105). Functional theory influenced studies on communication from the 1920s
to the 1940s. After that, a shift which rediscovered the relationship between media and people occurred and led
to establishment of uses and gratifications approach.
The exploration of gratifications that motivate people to be attracted to certain media is almost as old as
empirical mass communication research itself (McQuail, 1983). Dating back to the 1940s, researchers became
interested in the reasons for viewing different radio programmes, such as soap operas and quizzes, as well as
daily newspaper (Lazrsfeld & Stanton, 1944, 1949; Herzog, 1944; Warner & Henry, 1948; etc.). In these
studies, researchers discovered a list of functions served either by some specific content or by the medium itself
(Katz et al., 1974b). For instance, radio soap operas were found to satisfy their listeners with advice, support, or
occasions for emotional release (Herzog, 1944; Warner and Henry, 1948); rather than just offering information,
newspaper was also discovered to be important to give readers a sense of security, shared topics of conversation
and a structure to the daily routine (Berelson, 1949). For these diverse dimensions of usage satisfaction,
psychologist Herzog (1944) marked them with the term “gratifications.”
Uses and gratifications approach became prevailing in the late 1950s till 1970s when television has grown up.
Some basic assumptions of the approach were proposed when it was rediscovered during that era. Among the
group of scholars who focus on uses and gratifications research, Elihu Katz is one of the most well-known and
contributed greatly to establishing the structure of the approach.
Elihu Katz is served both as a sociologist and as a communication researcher. He received his Ph.D. in
Sociology in 1956 from Columbia University and began teaching at the University of Chicago until 1963.
During the next thirty years, he taught in the Department of Sociology and Communication at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. In the late 1960, invited by the Government of Israel, Katz headed the task force
charged with the introduction of television broadcasting. This experience led to his subsequent academic work
about broadcasting and television in leisure, culture and communication from the 1970s to1990s (UPENN,
2001). In 1992, he joined the faculty of the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania, and also
directed its experimental Scholars program for post-doctoral study.
Katz’s mentor in Columbia University is Paul Lazarsfeld, who is one of the pioneers of gratifications research.
Their cooperating work produced important outgrowths that connect the concept of gratifications with the
functional theory model. Later, Katz introduced uses and gratification approach when he came up with the
notion that people use the media to their benefit. In a study by Katz, Gurevitch and Haas (1973), a subject which
is known as the uses and gratifications research were explored. They viewed the mass media as a means by
which individuals connect or disconnect themselves with others and found that people bend the media to their
needs more readily than the media overpower them (Katz, Gurevitch and Haas, 1973).
Along with colleague Jay G. Blumler, Katz published a collection of essays on gratifications in 1974 which
were entitled The Uses of Mass Communication. They took a more humanistic approach to looking at media
use. They suggest that media users seek out a medium source that best fulfills the needs of the user and they
have alternate choices to satisfy their need. (Blumler & Katz, 1974). They also discovered that media served the
functions of surveillance, correlation, entertainment and cultural transmission for both society and individuals
(Blumler and Katz, 1974).
Five basic assumptions were stated in a study of Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch in 1974 as follows. They provide
a framework for understanding the correlation between media and audiences:
1. The audience is conceived as active, i.e., an important part of of mass media use is assumed to be goal
oriented … patterns of media use are shaped by more or less definite expectations of what certain
kinds of content have to offer the audience member.
2. In the mass communication process much initiative in liking need gratification and media choice lies
with the audience member … individual and public opinions have power vis-à-vis the seemingly allpowerful media.
3. The media compete with other sources of need satisfaction. The needs served by mass communication
constitute but a segment of the wider range of human needs, and the degree to which they can be
adequately met through mass media consumption certainly varies.
4. Methodologically speaking, many of the goals of mass media use can be derived from data supplied by
individual audience members themselves- i.e., people are sufficiently self-aware to be able to report
their interests and motives in particular cases, or at least to recognize them when confronted with them
in an intelligible and familiar verbal formulation.
5. Value judgments about the cultural significance of mass communication should be suspended while
audience orientations are explored on their own terms. (p. 15-17).
In addition, Katz, Blumler, and Gurevitch also commented that, although previous researches on gratifications
detected diverse gratifications that attract people on the media, they did not address the connections between
these gratifications (Katz et al., 1974a). They suggested that uses and gratifications research concern with
following aspects: “(1) the social and the psychological origins of (2) needs which generate (3) expectations of
(4) the mass media or other sources which lead to (5) differential exposure (or engaging in other activities),
resulting in (6) need gratification and (7) other consequences, perhaps mostly unintended ones” (Katz et al.,
1974b, p. 20).
The studies of Katz and his colleagues laid a theoretical foundation of building the uses and gratifications
approach. Since then, the research on this subject has been strengthened and extended. The current status of uses
and gratifications is still based on Katz’s first analysis, particularly as new media forms have emerged in such an
electronic information age when people have more options of media use.
Needs and Gratifications
Uses and gratifications approach emphasizes motives and the self-perceived needs of audience members.
Blumler and Katz (1974) concluded that different people can use the same communication message for very
different purposes. The same media content may gratify different needs for different individuals. There is not
only one way that people uses media. Contrarily, there are as many reasons for using the media as there are
media users (Blumler & Katz, 1974).
Basic needs, social situation, and the individual’s background, such as experience, interests, and education,
affect people’s ideas about what they want from media and which media best meet their needs. That is, audience
members are aware of and can state their own motives and gratifications for using different media. McQuail,
Blumler, and Brown (1972) proposed a model of “media-person interactions” to classify four important media
gratifications: (1) Diversion: escape from routine or problems; emotional release; (2) Personal relationships:
companionship; social utility; (3) Personal identity: self reference; reality exploration; value reinforces; and (4)
Surveillance (forms of information seeking).
Another subdivided version of the audience’s motivation was suggested by McGuire (1974), based on a general
theory of human needs. He distinguished between two types of needs: cognitive and affective. Then he added
three dimensions: “active” versus “passive” initiation, “external” versus “internal” goal orientation, and emotion
stability of “growth” and “preservation.” When charted, these factors yield 16 different types of motivations
which apply to media use (Figure 1).
Figure 1. A structuring of 16 general paradigms of human motivation (McGuire, 1974).
Katz, Gurevitch and Haas (1973) developed 35 needs taken from the social and psychological functions of the
mass media and put them into five categories:
1. Cognitive needs, including acquiring information, knowledge and understanding;
2. Affective needs, including emotion, pleasure, feelings;
3. Personal integrative needs, including credibility, stability, status;
4. Social integrative needs, including interacting with family and friends; and
5. Tension release needs, including escape and diversion.
Congruously, McQuail’s (1983) classification of the following common reasons for media use:
Information

finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world

seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices

satisfying curiosity and general interest

learning; self-education

gaining a sense of security through knowledge
Personal Identity

finding reinforcement for personal values

finding models of behavior

identifying with valued others (in the media)

gaining insight into oneself
Integration and Social Interaction

gaining insight into the circumstances of others; social empathy

identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging

finding a basis for conversation and social interaction

having a substitute for real-life companionship

helping to carry out social roles

enabling one to connect with family, friends and society
Entertainment

escaping, or being diverted, from problems

relaxing

getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment

filling time

emotional release

sexual arousal (p. 73)
These dimensions of uses and gratifications assume an active audience making motivated choices.
McQuail (1994) added another dimension to this definition. He states:
Personal social circumstances and psychological dispositions together influence both … general habits of media
use and also … beliefs and expectations about the benefits offered by the media, which shape ... specific acts of
media choice and consumption, followed by ... assessments of the value of the experience (with consequences
for further media use) and, possibly ... applications of benefits acquired in other areas of experience and social
activity (p. 235).
This expanded explanation accounts for a variety of individual needs, and helps to explain variations in media
sought for different gratifications.
[edit]Gratifications
sought (GS) and gratifications obtained (GO)
The personal motivations for media use also suggest that the media offer gratifications which are expected by
audiences. These gratifications can be thought of as experienced psychological effects which are valued by
individuals. Palmgreen and Rayburn (1985) thus proposed a model of the gratifications sought (GS) and
gratifications obtained (GO) process shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. An expectance-value model of media gratifications sought and obtained (Palmgreen and Rayburn,
1985).
The model distinguishes between GS and GO. Thus, where GO is noticeably higher than GS, we are likely to be
dealing with situations of high audience satisfaction and high ratings of appreciation and attention (McQuail,
1983).
To investigate the relationship between GS and GO, Palmgreen et al. (1980) conducted a study of gratifications
sought and obtained from the most popular television news programs. The results indicated that, on the one
hand, each GS correlated either moderately or strongly with its corresponding GO; on the other hand, the
researchers found that the gratifications audiences reportedly seek are not always the same as the gratifications
they obtain (Palmgreen et al, 1980). A later study conducted by Wenner (1982) further showed that audiences
may obtain different levels of gratifications from what they seek when they are exposed to evening news
programs.
Uses and Gratifications Research in a New Era
The uses and gratifications has always provided a cutting-edge theoretical approach in the initial stages of each
new mass medium, such as newspapers, radio and television, and now the Internet, which receives the
significance via this approach (Ruggiero, 2000).
The uses and gratifications theory has been widely used, and also is better suited, for studies of Internet use. In
the Internet environment, users are even more actively engaged communication participants, compared to other
traditional media (Ruggiero, 2000). The theory also suggests that people consciously choose the medium that
could satisfy their needs and that audiences are able to recognize their reasons for making media choices (Katz
et al., 1974). Some surveys have shown that users have little trouble verbalizing their needs when using the
Internet (Eighmey & McCord, 1997; Lillie, 1997; Nortey, 1998; Piirto, 1993; Ryan, 1995). Katz et al. (1974)
argued that available media choice compete to satisfy individual needs. Thus, there exists competition not only
between the Internet and other traditional media, but among each options in the Internet itself as well.
Despite the robustness of this list, history has shown that new media often create new gratifications and new
motivations among various audience groups (Angleman, 2000). These new dimensions of users’ motivations
and gratifications need to be identified and satisfied. Although motivations for Internet use may vary among
individuals, situations, and media vehicles, most uses and gratifications studies explore them based on some or
all of the following dimensions: relaxation, companionship, habit, passing time, entertainment, social
interaction, information/surveillance, arousal, and escape (Lin, 1999).
Examining how and why students use a university computer bulletin board, Rafeali (1986) found that users
seldom skip the factual or informative messages, which indicates their strong interest in messages of this type.
Maddox (1998) also suggested that the most important reason why people use the Internet is to gather various
kinds of information. Lin (2001) found similar results when she examined online services adoption. She found
that online services are perceived primarily as information-laden media, and that audiences who need to create
more outlets for information reception are the ones most likely to adopt online services (Lin, 2001).
Internet use is also linked to a series of instrumental as well as entertainment-oriented gratifications (Lin, 1996).
Some scholars ranked diversion/entertainment as more important than exchanging information in triggering
media use (Schlinger, 1979; Yankelovich Partners, 1995). Rafeali (1986) found that the primary motivation of
bulletin board users are recreation, entertainment, and diversion, followed by learning what others think about
controversial issues by communicating with people who matter in a community. Entertainment content appears
to satisfy users’ needs for escapism, hedonistic pleasure, aesthetic enjoyment, or emotional release (McQuail,
1994). Providing entertainment, therefore, can motivate audiences to use the media more often (Luo, 2002).
Examining the Internet as a source of political information, Johnson and Kaye (1998) found that people use the
web primarily for surveillance and voter guidance and secondarily for entertainment, social utility and
excitement. In a study of the web as an alternative to television viewing, Ferguson and Perse (2000) found four
main motivations for Internet use: entertainment, passing time, relaxation/escape and social information.
The Internet combines elements of both mass and interpersonal communication. The distinct characteristics of
the Internet lead to additional dimensions in terms of the uses and gratifications approach. For example,
“learning” and “socialization” are suggested as important motivations for Internet use (James et al., 1995).
“Personal involvement” and “continuing relationships” were also identified as new motivation aspects by
Eighmey and McCord (1998) when they investigated audience reactions to websites. The potential for personal
control and power is also embedded in Internet use. Pavlik (1996) noted that online, people are empowered to
act, communicate, or participate in the broader society and political process. This type of use may lead to
increased self-esteem, self-efficacy, and political awareness (Lillie, 1997).
Heightened interactions were also suggested as motivations for using the Internet. Kuehn (1994) called attention
to this interactive capability of the Internet through discussion groups, e-mail, direct ordering, and links to more
information (Schumann & Thorson, 1999; Ko, 2002). As such, Lin (2001) suggested that online services should
be fashioned to satisfy people’s need for useful information as well as social interaction opportunities.
Group support is another important reason for using the Internet. The Internet can provide a relatively safe
venue to exchange information, give support, and serve as a meeting place without fear of persecution
(Tossberg, 2000). It provides an accessible environment where individuals can easily find others who share
similar interests and goals. As part of a group, they are able to voice opinions and concerns in a supportive
environment (Korenman & Wyatt, 1996).
Other studies identified anonymity as one of the reasons why people go online. According to McKenna et al.
(2000), people use the security of online anonymity to develop healthy friendships and gratify their need to
socialize. Those who play massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) report that anonymity
reduces their self-awareness and motivates their behaviors in game playing (Foo & Koivisto, 2004). Another
survey done by Choi and Haque (2002) also found anonymity as a new motivation factor for Internet use. Some
also suggested that the Internet offer democratic communication to anonymous participants in virtual
communities such as chat rooms. Ryan (1995) indicated that anonymity motivates users to speak more freely on
the Internet than they would in real life. With small fear of social punishment and recrimination, minority
groups can equally participate in the communication process provided the technology is universally available
(Braina, 2001).
Criticisms of Uses and Gratifications Research
Although uses and gratifications approach holds a significant status in communication research, the research of
the approach receives criticisms both on its theory and methodology represented.
McQuail (1994) commented that the approach has not provided much successful prediction or casual
explanation of media choice and use. Since it is indeed that much media use is circumstantial and weakly
motivated, the approach seems to work best in examining specific types of media where motivation might be
presented (McQuail, 1994).
The researcher Ien Ang also criticized uses and gratifications approach in such three aspects:
1. It is highly individualistic, taking into account only the individual psychological gratification derived
from individual media use. The social context of the media use tends to be ignored. This overlooks the
fact that some media use may have nothing to do with the pursuit of gratification - it may be forced
upon us for example.
2. There is relatively little attention paid to media content, researchers attending to why people use the
media, but less to what meanings they actually get out of their media use.
3. The approach starts from the view that the media are always functional to people and may thus
implicitly offer a justification for the way the media are currently organized (cited by CCMS-Infobase,
2003).
Since it is hard to keep track of exposure patterns through observation, uses and gratifications research focus on
the fact relied heavily on self-reports (Katz, 1987). Self-reports, however, are based on personal memory which
can be problematic (Nagel et al., 2004). As such, the respondents might inaccurately recall how they behave in
media use and thus distortion might occur in the study.
Uses and gratifications theory
Uses and gratifications theory, is not a single approach but a body of approaches developed out of empirical
studies beginning in the mid 20th century (1940). It is one of many audience theories recognized in the media.
The basic theme of uses and gratifications is the idea that people use the media to get specific gratifications.
This is in opposition to the hypodermic needle model that claims consumers are strongly affected by the media
and have no say in how the media influences them. The main idea of the Uses and Gratifications model is that
people are not helpless victims of all powerful media, but use media to fulfill their various needs. These needs
serve as motivations for using media. The Uses and Gratifications Theory follows a basic model. It is an
audience-centered approach. When an audience actively seeks out media, they are typically seeking it in order to
gratify a need. For example, in social situations, people may feel more important and knowledgeable when they
have specific facts and stories from media to talk about. By seeking out media, they fulfill their need to seem
informed. Therefore, the following model is postulated.
Social situations and psychological characteristics motivates a need for media, which motivates certain
expectations of that media which leads you to expose yourself to media that would seemingly fit your
expectations, which would lead to your ultimate gratification and other sometimes unintended consequences.
For example, if you were seeking out media to appear informed at social gatherings, you would read headline
news articles expecting them to give you talking points. When you read the articles and are satisfied with their
content, you become gratified. However, you might have been somewhat entertained by the articles. Even
though you weren't originally seeking out entertainment, it was an unintended consequence of your gratification
process.
Explanation of Theory:
Blumler and Katz’s uses and gratification theory suggests that media users play an active
role in choosing and using the media. Users take an active part in the communication
process and are goal oriented in their media use. The theorist say that a media user seeks
out a media source that best fulfills the needs of the user. Uses and gratifications assume
that the user has alternate choices to satisfy their need.
Theorists:
Blumler and Katz
Date: 1974
Primary Article:
Blumler J.G. & Katz, E. (1974). The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives
on gratifications research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Metatheoretical Assumptions:
Ontological Assumptions:
Deterministic----------------X---free will
Epistemological Assumptions:
Truth------------------------------X----Multiple Truths
Axiological Assumptions:
value neutral-----------------X----value laden
Individual Interpretations and Critique:
Uses and gratifications theory takes a more humanistic approach to looking at media use.
Blumler and Katz believe that there is not merely one way that the populace uses media.
Instead, they believe there are as many reasons for using the media, as there are media
users. According to the theory, media consumers have a free will to decide how they will
use the media and how it will effect them. Blumler and Katz values are clearly seen by the
fact that they believe that media consumers can choose the influence media has on them as
well as the idea that users choose media alternatives merely as a means to and end. Uses
and gratification is the optimist’s view of the media. The theory takes out the possibility
that the media can have an unconscience influence over our lives and how we view the
world. The idea that we simply use the media to satisfy a given need does not seem to fully
recognize the power of the media in today’s society.
Ideas and Implications:
Uses and gratification theory can be seen in cases such as personal music selection. We
select music not only to fit a particular mood but also in attempts to show empowerment or
other socially conscience motives. There are many different types of music and we choose
from them to fulfill a particular need.
The uses and gratification tradition developed from the
Functionalist theory by well known sociologist researchers,
including, Jay Blumler and Elihu Katz. The functionalist paradigm
insists on media effects towards people, such as the frequently
used model of the "hypodermic needle" or a "bullet theory" aimed
at a passive audience (Severin & Tankard, 1997). This model was
used by practitioners from the 1920's to the 1940's, but a shift
occurred during the middle of the 20th century that lead mass media
to further develop and understand the notion of Uses and
Gratifications.
The Uses and Gratification approach was first denoted by Elihu Katz
in 1959. Most communication research up to this point was questioning,
"What do media do to people?" However, Katz suggested asking the
question, "What do people do with media?" (Severin & Tankard, 1997).
Nevertheless, the uses and gratification approach, within the
Functionalist theory, shifted the focus from the purposes of the
communication to the purpose of the reader (Severin and Tankard. 1997)
and opened a door to a modern understanding of mass communication.
Agenda-setting theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The agenda-setting theory is the theory that the mass-news media have a large influence on audiences by their
choice of what stories to consider newsworthy and how much prominence and space to give them.[1] Agendasetting theory’s main postulate is salience transfer. Salience transfer is the ability of the mass media to transfer
issues of importance from their mass media agendas to public agendas.
History
Foundation
The media agenda is the set of issues addressed by media sources and the public agenda which are issues the
public consider important.[2] Agenda-setting theory was introduced in 1972 by Maxwell McCombs and Donald
Shaw in their ground breaking study of the role of the media in 1968 presidential campaign in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina.[3] The theory explains the correlation between the rate at which media cover a story and the
extent that people think that this story is important. This correlation has been shown to occur repeatedly.
In the dissatisfaction of the magic bullet theory, McCombs and Shaw introduced agenda-setting theory in
the Public Opinion Quarterly.[3] The theory was derived from their study that took place in Chapel Hill, NC,
where the researchers surveyed 100 undecided voters during the 1968 presidential campaign on what they
thought were key issues and measured that against the actual media content.[3] The ranking of issues was almost
identical, and the conclusions matched their hypothesis that the mass media positioned the agenda for public
opinion by emphasizing specific topics.[4]Subsequent research on agenda-setting theory provided evidence for
the cause-and-effect chain of influence being debated by critics in the field.
One particular study made leaps to prove the cause-effect relationship. The study was conducted by Yale
researchers, Shanto Iyengar, Mark Peters, and Donald Kinder. The researchers had three groups of subjects fill
out questionnaires about their own concerns and then each group watched different evening news programs,
each of which emphasized a different issue. After watching the news for four days, the subjects again filled out
questionnaires and the issues that they rated as most important matched the issues they viewed on the evening
news.[5] The study demonstrated a cause-and-effect relationship between media agenda and public agenda. Since
the theory’s conception, more than 350 studies have been performed to test the theory. The theory has evolved
beyond the media's influence on the public's perceptions of issue salience to political candidates and corporate
reputation.[6]
Functions
The agenda-setting function has multiple components:
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Media agenda are issues discussed in the media, such as newspapers, television, and radio.
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Public agenda are issues discussed and personally relevant to members of the public.
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Policy agenda are issues that policy makers consider important, such as legislators.
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Corporate agenda are issues that big business and corporations consider important, including corporations.
These four agendas are interrelated. The two basic assumptions underlie most research on agenda-setting are
that the press and the media do not reflect reality, they filter and shape it, and the media concentration on a few
issues and subjects leads the public to perceive those issues as more important than other issues.
Characteristics
Research has focused on characteristics of audience, the issues, and the media that might predict variations in
the agenda setting effect.
Research done by Weaver in 1977 suggested that individuals vary on their need for orientation. Need for
orientation is a combination of the individual’s interest in the topic and uncertainty about the issue. The higher
levels of interest and uncertainty produce higher levels of need for orientation. So the individual would be
considerably likely to be influenced by the media stories (psychological aspect of theory). [2]
Research performed by Zucker in 1978 suggested that an issue is obtrusive if most members of the public have
had direct contact with it, and less obtrusive if audience members have not had direct experience. This means
that agenda setting results should be strongest for unobtrusive issues because audience members must rely on
media for information on these topics.[2]
Levels of agenda setting
The first-level agenda setting is most traditionally studied by researchers. In this level the media use objects or
issues to influence the public. In this level the media suggest what the public should think about (amount of
coverage). In second-level agenda setting, the media focuses on the characteristics of the objects or issues. In
this level the media suggest how the people should think about the issue. There are two types of attributes:
cognitive (subtantative, or topics) and affective (evaluative, or positive, negative, neutral). Intermedia agenda
setting involves salience transfer among the media.Coleman and Banning 2006; Lee 2005; Shoemaker & Reese,
1996
Usage
The theory is used in political advertising, political campaigns and debates, business news and corporate
reputation,[6] business influence on federal policy,[7] legal systems, trials,[8] role of groups, audience control,
public opinion, and public relations.[6]
Strengths and weaknesses of theory
It has explanatory power because it explains why most people prioritize the same issues as important. It also has
predictive power because it predicts that if people are exposed to the same media, they will feel the same issues
are important. It can be proven false.[citation needed] If people aren’t exposed to the same media, they won’t feel the
same issues are important.[citation needed] Its meta-theoretical assumptions are balanced on the scientific side and it
lays groundwork for further research. Furthermore, it has organizing power because it helps organize existing
knowledge of media effects.
There are also limitations, such as media users may not be as ideal as the theory assumes. People may not be
well-informed, deeply engaged in public affairs, thoughtful and skeptical. Instead, they may pay only casual and
intermittent attention to public affairs and remain ignorant of the details. For people who have made up their
minds, the effect is weakened. News media cannot create or conceal problems, they may only alter the
awareness, priorities and salience people attached to a set of problems. [citation needed] Research has largely been
inconclusive in establishing a causal relationship between public salience and media coverage. [citation needed]
Agenda Setting Theory
Overview
Agenda setting theory emerges from communications studies and focuses on mass media
influence on setting political agenda, as articulated in the seminal article by McCombs and
Shaw (1972), which through content analysis of a local election documented a high
correlation between media agenda and the public agenda - a correlation corroborated in
numerous studies since. Their 1972 article coined the phrase "agenda-setting." Subsequent
agenda setting theorists have followed their lead in contending that the media agenda
influences the political agenda more than vice versa.
Key Concepts and Terms
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Agenda setting Agenda setting is giving priorities to alternative policy issues. Whereas early
communications studies had shown a mixed picture about the ability of media to influence
opinions on a given issue, Cohen (1963) and others showed that the media had much
greater capacity to influence which issues were perceived as important. That is, the media
agenda (policy rankings by importance in the media) influences both the public
agenda (rankings in opinion surveys) and the policy agenda (rankings in legislative bodies).
Salience transfer refers to the capacity of the media (or other actors) to influence the
relative importance individuals attach to policy issues. A notable study proving the existence
of salience transfer was that by Iyengar, Peters, & Kinder (1982), where experimental groups
gave baseline priorities, then were exposed to different news broadcasts with different
policy emphases over four dayst, then rated priorities again. The authors found subjects'
issue rankings realigned to match the media agenda.
Gatekeeping refers to how media content is controlled. Gatekeeping determines the
content of salience transfer.
Framing. The importance and interpretation people attach to potential items on the public
agenda are strongly influenced by how the media present news stories (Chyi & McCombs,
2004). Entman (2004), for instance, attributes differential foreign policy perceptions to how
the media cheered American victories in Grenada and Panama but took scant note of
success of far more difficult missions in Haiti and Kosovo. Another example cited by Entman
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is the media labeling an incident in which a U.S.S.R. aircraft shot down a civilian aircraft as an
"attack," while labeling as a "tragedy" a similar incident in which an American aircraft shot
down a civilian Iran Air airplane. Earlier work by Entman (2001) focused on framing examples
related to racial issues in the U. S.
Priming. Where framing centers on political loading of the presentation of news, consciously
or not, priming has to do with drawing attention to certain issues even in a neutral manner.
For instance, priming survey respondents with information about street crime may affect the
views expressed on crime policy as compared to the same survey administered without
priming.
Determinants of agenda-setting effects.
o Media exposure: Wanta & Ghanem (2006) found exposure was a stronger
determinant than media credibility or media reliance, which were unrelated, in a
study of Hispanic cable news. Earlier, Wanta and Miller (1996) had found exposure
to be more important than media credibility in relation to presidential state of the
union addresses. The same study found exposure led to thinking issues were
important.
 Obtrusiveness refers to the extent that the public has experience with the
policy issue. The nor unobtrusive the issue, the more the individual may rely
on media exposure for orientation. Zucker (1978) found that salience
transfer was greatest for unobtrusive issues.
o Need for orientation. Weaver (1977) and others found that some individuals have
greater need for policy orientation and thus are more affected by salience transfer.
Need for orientation, in turn, is a function of individual interest in the policy topic
combined with issue undertainty..
Agenda Setting Theory
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the creation of what the public thinks is important
History and Orientation
Agenda setting describes a very powerful influence of the media – the ability to
tell us what issues are important. As far back as 1922, the newspaper columnist
Walter Lippman was concerned that the media had the power to present images
to the public. McCombs and Shaw investigated presidential campaigns in 1968,
1972 and 1976. In the research done in 1968 they focused on two elements:
awareness and information. Investigating the agenda-setting function of the mass
media, they attempted to assess the relationship between what voters in one
community said were important issues and the actual content of the media
messages used during the campaign. McCombs and Shaw concluded that the
mass media exerted a significant influence on what voters considered to be the
major issues of the campaign.
Core Assumptions and Statements
Core: Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient
issues by the news media. Two basis assumptions underlie most research on
agenda-setting: (1) the press and the media do not reflect reality; they filter and
shape it; (2) media concentration on a few issues and subjects leads the public to
perceive those issues as more important than other issues. One of the most
critical aspects in the concept of an agenda-setting role of mass communication is
the time frame for this phenomenon. In addition, different media have different
agenda-setting potential. Agenda-setting theory seems quite appropriate to help
us understand the pervasive role of the media (for example on political
communication systems).
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Statement: Bernard Cohen (1963) stated: “The press may not be successful
much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in
telling its readers what to think about.”
Conceptual Model
Agenda-setting
Source: McQuail & Windahl (1993)
Favorite Methods
Content-analysis of media, interviews of audiences.
Scope and Application
Just as McCombs and Shaw expanded their focus, other researchers have
extended investigations of agenda setting to issues including history, advertising,
foreign, and medical news.
Example
McCombs and Shaw focused on the two elements: awareness and information.
Investigating the agenda-setting function of the mass media in the 1968
presidential campaign, they attempted to assess the relationship between what
voters in one community said were important issues and the actual content of
media messages used during the campaign. McCombs and Shaw concluded that
the mass media exerted a significant influence on what voters considered to be
the major issues of the campaign.