Reading summary for Child development in Media
CHAPTER 4
Media Influence
N ow that you have broadened your perspective on media effects, it is time to shift your attention to media influence. In this chapter we examine the four general patterns of media influence. Then we introduce the factors about the media messages that have been found responsible for that media influence. The chapter concludes with a detailed example that shows how various factors work together to bring about patterns of media influence.
PAUERNS OF INFLUENCE
At the most fundamental level, the media exert four patterns of influence: gradual long- term change, long-term non-change (reinforcement), immediate shift, and short-term fluctuation change (see Figure 4.1). All media effects follow one of these four patterns. I know these terms may at first seem very strange and complicated, but once you under stand what they are, you will see that these are simple patterns and the only patterns pos sible for media-influenced effects. To illustrate these patterns, I first clarify the distinction between baselines and fluctuations as well as between manifestations and processes.
Basetines and FLuctuations With a long-term change type of effect, the messages from the media gradually alter a per son’s baseline. Figure 4.1 a illustrates this pattern. To understand this pattern, first look at the axes in the figure. The horizontal axis represents time. The vertical axis represents the degree of an effect; this can be any effect—a cognition, a belief, an attitude, an affect, physiology, or a behavior. The line in the figure represents a person’s baseline on a particular effect. Notice that in this example, the line ascends as it moves from left to right; this means that as time goes by the person is experiencing a slightly higher degree of this effect—whatever the effect is. Let’s make this example a little more concrete by saying this is a cultivation effect. A culti vation effect is the gradual increase over time of a person’s belief about the real world, such as that the world is a mean and violent place. Cultivation theory predicts that people who watch a great deal of television will gradually over time come to believe the real world is like the television world. Because the television world is a violent one, people who watch a lot of television will come to believe the real world is also a violent one. This cultivation effect can
53
High Long-Term Alteration of Baseline
Medium
Low
None Time Line
Reinforcement Effect
t — — — —
________
Low
None Time Line
CHAPTER 4 Media Influence 55
be illustrated graphically in Figure 4.1 a by the very gradual upwardly sloping line. This line indicates that as time goes by, people show an increasing degree of cultivation; that is, they are more and more likely to believe the real world is like the television world. Now let’s consider a different type of effect: reinforcement. Let’s say that over time a
person’s attitude about a political candidate gets stronger and stronger; that is, with more media exposure to campaign ads, news coverage, and expert pundits talking about political candidates, the person’s existing attitude is reinforced. This is illustrated by Figure 4.1 b, where the person’s baseline stays flat over time; that is, it does not increase or decrease. However, the baseline grows thicker to indicate that it is weightier and thus harder to change over time. With an immediate shift type of effect, the media influence serves to alter something in
a person during an exposure or shortly after a particular exposure, and that alteration lasts for a long time (see Figure 4.lc). That alteration can be relatively minor or it can be large and dramatic. An example of a dramatic immediate change effect that lasts over the long term might be when a young person watches a movie about an attractive person in a par ticular career—say a heart surgeon—and the person decides she wants to be a heart sur geon, talks about this career choice continually, and alters her study habits to earn the grades necessary to go to college and medical school. With a short-term fluctuation change type of effect, the media trigger a fluctuation off
the baseline during the exposure or shortly after. The change is short lived and the person returns to the baseline level quickly (see Figure 4.ld). This is a fairly prevalent finding in a lot of studies of public information/attitude campaigns. Researchers find a spike up in knowledge, attitude change, or behavioral intention as a result of exposure to some media material, but this change is not observed in subsequent measurement periods beyond a few days after the exposure. The baseline is the best estimate of a person’s degree of effect at any given time. Baselines
differ from one another in terms of slope and elasticity. Slope refers to angle (an upward slope indicates a generally increasing level of an effect, while a downward slope indicates a generally decreasing level of an effect) and degree (a sharp angle reflects a relatively large degree of change in effects level, while a flat slope reflects a continuing level in the baseline). Elasticity reflects how entrenched the baseline is. Over time, a baseline that has been rein forced continually by the same kind of media messages will become highly entrenched, making it less and less likely that there will be fluctuations off the baseline, and when there are fluctuation spikes, those fluctuation spikes are smaller and smaller over time. Fluctuations have three characteristics: duration, magnitude, and direction. The dura
tion refers to how long the fluctuation lasts before returning to the baseline. Magnitude refers to how far the fluctuation spike deviates from the baseline. And direction refers to whether the fluctuation spike moves upward (thus representing an increase in the level of effect) or downward (thus representing a decrease in the level of effect).
Manifestation and Process Effects Notice the dotted line in all four graphs in Figure 4.1. These dotted lines represent the manifestation level. In the first graph (a), notice that the baseline stays below the manifes tation level. This indicates that the degree of the effect has not reached a level where there
IZ IN C THINNG ABOUT MEDIA EF
Types of Media InftueflCe PaernS
________________________
High
e Medium
ee Meum
immediate Shth - -
on Time Line
Iree
Short-Term Fluctuation High I
Medium
None eLifle
56 PART I ORGANIZING THINKING ABOUT MEDIA EF FECTS
are spontaneous observables. By observables I mean tha t people exhibit something that
clearly indicates a change that can be attributed to medi a influence. In two of three graph
ics (4.1 c and 4.1 d), there are examples of the baseline b reaking above the manifestation
level; with those three patterns we can easily observe som ething that clearly indicates a
media-influenced effect. If we limited our thinking about effects to only those fluctu
ations that break through the
manifestation level, we miss a good deal about how the media continually influence
effects. We should also examine what occurs below the m anifestation level. Returning to
Figure 4.1 a, notice that the baseline has an upward slope, w hich indicates a gradual long-
term change. The line does not move above the manifesta tion level, so it is not observed;
however, something is happening that indicates media infl uence. For example, let’s say a
young girl is exposed to lots of print messages on a particul ar topic. Over time these expo
sures gradually increase her reading skills and increase her interest in that topic as her
knowledge base grows. Her baseline moves close to the m anifestation level. Then one day
she picks up an article on the topic and begins telling all her friends about what she has
just learned (this activity takes place above the manifest ation level because it is spontane
ous and easy to observe her knowledge, attitudes, and emot ions as she exhibits them to her
friends). However, is it accurate to conclude that this manif estation was caused by the one
exposure to the article alone? No, of course not. We must ac count for the long-term media
influence that allowed her to practice her reading skills and grow her interest in this topic.
The magnitude of the manifestation level is a combinati on of the initial level on the base
line and the magnitude of the fluctuation itself.
Contrast this with a young boy who did not have this patte rn of practicing his reading
skills or growing his interest on this topic; his baseline wou ld be far below the manifesta
tion level, If he were to read the same article, he would not be likely to manifest the same
indicators as did the girl; however the boy could still have be en influenced by his exposure
to the article (change in level), although he did not manifes t that effect.
Shaping the Patterns What pushes baselines up or down, and what triggers fluctua
tions? The answer is that factors
of influence are responsible for the shape of these patterns. T he termfactors is plural because
almost never is there one factor that is responsible for an effe ct; instead, effects patterns are
shaped by the continual influence of multiple factors acting in interaction over time.
Also, the factors that lead to media effects are not exclus ively media factors. While char
acteristics in the media messages are of course importan t influencers of those effects, other
factors—about the audience members and the exposure en vironment—are also important.
They all work together. With suddenly occurring fluctuation effects, it is easy to a
ttribute these effects to the
particular message the person is exposed to immediately b efore the manifestation. While
that exposure is likely to be influential in creating the fluc tuation, it is usually not solely
responsible for that fluctuation. For example, let’s say Han nah is listening to her car radio
while driving home after work and she hears an ad for a fast food place. She decides to go
to that place and buy some food for her dinner. The ad s eemed to trigger a fluctuation
effect, that is, the behavior of driving to the advertised res taurant and ordering the food
CHAPTER 4 Media Influence 57
featured in the ad. However, it is likely that factors about Hannah were also influential in triggering that fluctuation_factors such as Hannah’s hunger, her being too tired to cook something for herself, her past experience in eating food from that restaurant, her desire for something fast and inexpensive her proximity to the restaurant when she heard the ad, and so on. While factors in a media message are influential, they rarely act alone. Because media influence is both constant and pervasive, some of the factors of influence
come to us directly, but other factors work their influence indirectly. Indirect influence occurs when we interact with other people or with institutions, which are all themselves influenced by groups of media then pass that influence along to us. Also, once groups of media factors have exerted an influence on our algorithms, that influence continues when ever we access those algorithms, for example, when media factors shape our beliefs, they influence us later when we recall those beliefs. When media factors influence our standards, they influence our process of evaluation later when we use those standards, When media factors reinforce our behavior, they influence us each time we exhibit our habits. And when media factors shape how we think about things, they influence us each time we think.
FACTORS OF INFLUENCE
Now that you have seen what the patterns of media influence are, the next question is, What are the factors that are responsible for that influence? The answer to this question is that there are likely to be hundreds of factors, as you will see in upcoming chapters. For now, I simply introduce the idea of factors of influence by organizing them into three gen eral families of factors. Then I highlight what have been found to be the most important four factors.
Families of Factors Researchers have identified hundreds of factors that have been found to exert various degrees of influence on different kinds of media effects. To prepare you for all the detail on these factors that you will encounter in Chapter 6 through ii, i will focus your attention on three general families of factors. The first is an array of factors about the media mes sages. The second is a group of factors about the audience. And the third is a collection of factors about the exposure environment.
factors About the Media Messages. Researchers have examined a great many things about the media messages to determine which are associated with which effects. These factors include fairly general characteristics such as the medium (for example, print vs. broadcast) and genre (for example, news vs. comedy). When researchers use a general characteristic such as genre, they are assuming that all messages presented in that genre are similar and that each genre presents messages that are very different from one another. For example, researchers might ask people how much television they watch in the genres of news and comedy to test the assumption that news messages present more information about cur rent events than do comedy shows. The researchers then test audience members for their knowledge of current events to see if there is support for this assumption.
58 PART I ORGANIZING THINKING AB OUT MEDIA EFFECTS
Other researchers are uncomfortabl e assuming that all messages within a g
enre are
similar, so they examine more specific characteristics within those messages. S
ome of
these characteristics concern the types o f portrayals, such as violence, sexual ac
tivity, ste
reotyped characters, and so on. Other s of these characteristics are more conc
erned with
the context of portrayals, such as the motives characters attribute to their ac
tions, the
consequences of those actions, the use of humor, and so on.
Thus with media messages, there is a wi de range of factors that differ primarily on
their
level of generality. Some researchers pre fer to examine differences across broad c
lasses of
messages, while other researchers prefe r to analyze media messages in more
detail and
thus focus their attention on particular characteristics within messages.
Factors About the Audience. Researcher s have also examined factors about the
audience.
These can be organized in three groups: demographics, traits, and states. Demogr
aphicfac
tors are the relatively enduring surface ch aracteristics about people, such as their g
enders
ages, ethnic backgrounds, and the like. Demographics make general categoric
al distinc
tions. By general, I mean that researchers assume all people in one category (such
as pre
schoolers) are the same. By categorical, I m ean that either you are a member of one
group
or you are not (for example, either you are female or you are not). Demographics are
useful
variables because they are easy to measu re and test, but some researchers find
them too
PTER 4MaT
nfl5g
superficial For example, just because one male exhibits an effect does not mean that all males will exhibit the same effect. While biological sex is an important characteristic for medical doctors, media researchers are more interested in gender socialization which is a continuous variable and one that recognizes that biological females are not all alike in gender role socialization and that these differences in role socialization are more strongly related to media exposure preferences and media effects than is their biological sex. Researchers also like to measure audience traits and states, both of which are psycho
logical characteristics and then relate them to media effects. Traits are fairly stable psy chological characteristics of an individual. Examples of traits are IQ, extroversion, compulsiveness ambitiousness and the like. Traits are continuous rather than categorical. For example, we do not say that some people have IQ while others have none; instead we say that there is a wide range of IQ among people. States are temporary conditions that an individual experiences. These include drives for
food sex, information, entertainment and so on. Once a drive is satisfied, the person no longer finds him- or herself in that state and is likely to experience a different state. Emotions are states. A person can experience the state of fear while watching a horror show or the state of anxiety right before a big test. States can be either categorical (either you feel fear or you do not) or continuous (your degree of fear).
Factors About the Eosure Fnvironme7?t These are usually sociological factors that reveal things like whether people expose themselves to the media either alone or with others and whether they discuss their media experiences with others or not. Also, some researchers focus their examinations of influence on characteristics about the physical environment, such as how many TVs there are in a household, where those TVs are located, how far people sit from their TVs when viewing, and how many distractions occur during the exposures.
Most Influential Factors Given the hundreds of factors that have been found to be related to media influence on the many effects on individuals is there some way to whittle that list down to a small set of the factors that have been found to be most influential? In this section of the chapter, 1 direct your attention to four factors about media messages that have been found to be Particularly influential in bring about media effects. These factors are the message’s arousing nature, consequences of actions, point of view, and repetition. If you keep reminding yourself of these four factors, you will be better able to keep your focus on the big picture of media influence as you read through subsequent chapters.
Arousing Nature. Perhaps the most influential factor found in the media effects literature is the degree of arousal in audience members. Designers of media messages of all kinds know they must build elements into their messages to achieve this audience arousal. If a message is not arousing, it has little chance of attracting and/or holding audience attention. Media messages must first arouse us Physiologically in order to trigger an orienting reflex that is needed to get our attention. Second, they must arouse our interest cognitively through suspense and curiosity to get us to keep paying attention to a message to find out what will happen next.
a)
a) a) C
e are tWO arousal systems. One generates in a persons lim
bic system; this is autonomic
t is hard wired to respond to threats and get us ready to fight or flee
. The other
that1 system is cortical and energizes attention, alertness, and vigilance; thus
it is more
ar0’ ed with informaniO ThPToCeSsmg tasks of acquisition, processing, a
nd retrieval. As for
arousal, media mes sages exploit the orienting reflex, that is, the capt
uring attention
co1t° ercept. elements su ch as loud and unusual noises as well as fastpaceä a
ction, color
due to and the like. Media messages can capture our attention through
what has been called
response; this is short-term attention. Stimu li that are novel, surprising, intense,
the lex trigger the or ienting response. The orienting response slows the h
eart rate down.
or CO1TW anges in attention are called tonic attention. T onic attention speeds up the heart
are indications of concent ration, vigilance, and thinking (Lang, 1 994b).
rate e media are
expert at generating arousal. Producers know ho w to trigger our innate
logical responses with the use of motion, sound, and images. Succes
sful producers
phY°0 experts at pulling our interest into a s tory and taking us step by step through the
a way that makes us feel we must continue. This is suspense. Zillmann
(1991a)
aCtt° suspense as “an experience o f uncertainty whose hedonic properties can vary fr
om
def50 pleasant” (p. 281). Audien ces enjoy suspense to the extent that they have emp
a
110 ith characters and that this empath y distress is relieved. The more suspense distress,
thYw ore relief, and t
herefore the more enjoyment of the suspensefu l story. In books,
th called a “page turner,” m eaning the reader could not put the book down
until
tory was comp leted. In film, producers must grab attention e
arly and hold it for almost
thC 5urs—a major challe nge. And television presents the greatest challenge
to storytellers
hOuse those stories need to be interr upted every 10 minutes or so for commercial brea
ks;
beca.500 producers must make the stories so comp elling that viewers will not tune out
tel the relatively long bre aks that repeatedly interrupt their stories.
dutmnb
sequences of Ac tions. By the way the media tell their stories, they
signal to us what is
CO table behavior and w
hat is not. These social lessons are revealed to us b y the way the
aCCe1elIers treat the characters who perform actions a s well as the characters who receive
StOfction. As for the performers of the actio n, we can watch to see if they are rewarded or
the shed Also, what
do the performers feel about their actions, that is, are they portrayed
Peing happy or proud? Or are th ose performers portrayed as being sad and remorse
ful?
sfor the receivers of the action, we need to watch to see if they are h
armed by actions
ot If we expect characters to be harmed by certain actions but then
they are portrayed
Of ° being harmed, we tend to
adjust our expectations of harm. Over time, we are d esen
zed to the suffering of others in the real world, because we
do not expect them to be
perienc much harm.
etitiofl Repetition is a powerful force of influence for two reasons. F
irst, the sheer vol
RI’ of essage5 repea
ted over time is a constant reminder of certain thin gs. Repetition
fines the status quo. It is easier to go along with the mainstream flo
w of ideas and behav
s When the media present the same messages over and over ag
ain, it wears down oppo
and reinforces compliance .
secon’1 reason for why repetition of media messages is such a powerful for
ce is that
11e repetitiO’ is like a metro nome that hypnotizes us into routines. We fall into
rituals that
zrereinf0rl continually by the media, and these habitual patte
rns are performed without
PTER4M eUnfl61
thinking, thus making them harder to alter. The longer we mindlessly follow a habit, themore it defines us, and the harder it is to perceive it—much less change it. Repetition reinforces our existing thoughts and behaviors.
Point of View. When the media tell their stories, they must present the action from a particular point of view. This is the case whether the story is a fictional one designed to entertain, a vignette designed to advertise a product, or a news story designed to inform. Thepoint of view puts the audience member into the story by seeing the action through theeyes of one character The audience members identify with that one character and tend tofeel what that character feels. Fictional stories are often told in the first person. This iS especially the case with music. Asinger tells a story about what happened to him or her and how that felt. The listener is meantto identify with the singer and experience the same feelings. With the visual media of filmand television the camera becomes the eyes of the audience member. As the camera movesthrough the action, the audience is shown certain things, while other things are left out. Thusthere is a selection process that producers use to put the audience in a certain Position, usually identiing with a particular character who is regarded as the protagonist. We as audience
members come to care about what happens to this protagonist. When this character is happy,we feel joy; when this character is in danger, we feel the threat; when this character is unfairlyharmed, we feel anger. This is the “good” character, because even when the character makesmistakes, we can justi that character’s actions. That is, we do not hate the protagonist whenshe makes a mistake; instead we still like the character but feel sad that she made a mistakeand root for her to overcome the situation that results from the mistake. Advertising messages are told from the point of view of the target audience. Designersof these messages are saying that they know a need you have and they have just the product that would satisfy that need. The typical television ad presents a person with a need or
problem; thus the point of view is you, the target audience member. The story then unfoldsto show that you are bothered by this need or problem; then quickly there is a solutionNews messages are also told from a particular point of view. in their quest for objectivity,journaIist try to present facts in a neutral manner. Also, when they cover Controversiesjournalists try to present at least two sides. However, journalists can never present all thefacts about an event, nor can they cover all sides of complex issues. They must be selectiveand what they select privileges one point of view over others Also, journal ists do not coverall Possible stories; they make judgments about which events and people are worthy ofbeing covered. This selection process is itself a point of view on the society So in a givenstory, when journali try to avoid slanting the coverage to show the event through onlyone participant’s point of view, the journalists themselves bring a point of view to the taskof selecting and writing their stories.
To illustrate these patterns, let’s consider a disinhibition effect, which is a lowering ofpeople’s inhibitions that prevent them from behaving aggressively. Let’s say Leo is a 12-year-old boy who has been raised to be highly aggressive and who has low degree of
THINKtNG ABOUT MEDIA EFFECTS
AN ILLUSTRATION OF MEDIA INFLUENCE
ORGANIZING THINKING ABOUT M EDIA EFFECTS
hy for other people, while Julie is a 35- year-old mother who was raised by the
golden
rid who has a high degree of empathy. Leo’s disinhibition effect baseline is lik
ely to
her than Julie’s. Let’s say that Leo is con tinually exposed to many media messa
ges of
ce (in movies, television shows, and vid eo games) that are high in arousal. Also,
these
t stories are usually told through the h ero’s point of view, and heroes are likel
y to be
lent as the villains. But the heroes are rewarded for their violent actions while
the
is are punished. Given the repeated vie wing, the arousing nature of the message
s with
positive consequence for violent action from the hero’s point of view, Leo is like
ly to
an increasing baseline that is now cl ose to the manifestation level, that is, li
kely to
fest a disinhibition effect. In contrast, Julie avoids violent messages as much a
s she
snd therefore her baseline is likely to be much lower and far below the manifes
tation
Furthermore, over time Leo’s baseline is likely to continue with an upward
slope
]uIie’s baseline is likely to be flat or ev en have a downward slope.
w let’s say that Leo and Julie watch a Dirty Harry movie in which a great deal
of vio
is perpetrated by a rogue police officer who is glamorous, humorous, and succe
ssful
5 use of violence. The movie is presen ted from Harry’s point of view, wher
ein he
atedly exhibits acts of aggression and f eels rewarded for these actions. Leo is
likely to
v a sharp fluctuation increasing his level on a disinhibition effect; that is, during
or after
exposure to this movie, Leo is likely to e xhibit his own aggressive behavior. In c
ontrast,
is horrified by Harry and finds his acti ons reprehensible and insulting to her.
Julie is
y to show a sharp fluctuation decre asing her level on a disinhibition effect
. Although
media message presented is the same fo r both Leo and Julie, the experience for
each is
i different because of what the two peo ple bring to the exposure situation as ref
lected
heir different baselines.
et’s say that later on Julie watches a lot of crime drama but with a very different po
int of
v and very different consequences of th e violent action. She watches shows such
as the
& Order TV series, in which criminals ’ violent acts are not glamorized or sani
tized.
:ead, the story is told from the point of view of law enforcement officials who
usually
id aggressive behavior, and when they do find themselves behaving aggressively, t
hey are
ished for it. Even though Julie continue s to watch crime drama, the point of vie
w of the
ry and the way the consequences are p ortrayed would tend to push Julie’s disi
nhibition
eline even lower and serve to keep it far away from the manifestation level. If she
were to
a violent portrayal in which the perpetr ator was glamorized and the violence wa
s sani
d, she would likely not experience muc h of a fluctuation effect, because her bas
eline has
en so strongly reinforced. A reinforceme nt pattern is one where the position of the
baseline
entrenched; that is, the baseline contin ues at its current level, and its elasticity i
s reduced,
idering fluctuations more rare. If the ela sticity of the baseline is narrow, then the
long-term
thle factors (traits and typical story form ula) are dominant: but if the elasticity is w
ide, then
e immediate factors (dispositions and idi osyncratic factors in the portrayals) are
dominant.
inforcement narrows the elasticity and thus makes fluctuations smaller and rare
r.
As you can see from this example, two people can be exposed to the same me
dia mes
ge but have two very different reaction s. This difference can be explained by a
history of
fferent factors that have been acting on b oth people. Not only do we need to take a
broad
rspective on media effects; we also need a broad perspective on factors of influ
ence that
dude characteristics about the audience members as well as characteristics a
bout the
edia messages themselves.
TER4M ediaInf
l6
Structured Glossary of Terms About Media Influence
Media influence The many ways the media work in a contjn5 ongoing manner within aconsteljation of many factors to shape micro and macro effects on baselines and fluctuations.
• Baseline pattern effect: The best estimate of a person’s degree of effect at any giventime. It is formed over the long term by the continual interaction of three types of factors: psychologicaj traits of the person, sociological experiences of the person, andmedia exposure patterns
• Reinforcement pattern effect: Through repeated exposures of the same type ofmessages, a person’s baseline Position is made more weighty; that is, it becomes overtime much more resistant to change and it loses its elasticity, thus rendering fluctuations more minor and rarer. • Fluctuation pattern effect: Observed in research studies in which there is a changebetween a person’s pre-exposure and Post-exposure effect level Scores. The larger the difference, the larger the influence of the media exposure on the effect level. Fluctuation changes can be in the direction of increasing the level of an effect or decreasing the level. ln either case, fluctuation changes are usually temporary. Theyare typically traceable to particular interpretations that the person made about the message.
Manifest effects Spontaneous observable5, evidence of an effect is easy to observe andto link to media exposures.
Process effects Changes in the level of elasticity of a person’s baseline; because thesethings occur below the manifestation level, they cannot be directly observed.
SUMMARY
This chapter focused on increasing your understanding of how the media exert their influence on you by making a distinction beeen baselines and fluctuations as well as a distinction beeen manifestation and process effects. Fluctuations are changes that occur duringa media exposure or immediately afterward while baselines take a long time to build.Baselines can indicate change, where that change can be a decrement to the baseline (suchas with a gradual loss in intensity of emotional reactions to horror films over time), anincrease in the baseline (such as gradually and constantly rewarding a person’s exposure toa particular program thus increasing their habitual viewing of that program over time), or areinforcement of the baseline (such as a steady stream of a particular kind of media messagecontributing greater and greater weight to a person’s attitude about a Political issue, thusmaking it much more difficult over time to convert that attitude to a different one).
ivienia trniuence is on going ann constant. O
IIIeciit
influence as with ma nifestation effects. Oth
er times their influen ce is very difficult or
impossible to observe, b ut this does not mean
the media are not exer ting an influence, only
that their influence is shaping a process that
cannot yet be observe d.
The media exert thei r influence both direct
ly on people as well a s indirectly. Also, the
media exert their influ ence through a conste
llation of factors. Som e of these factors com
e
from the media in the f orm of how they tell th
eir stories, while other factors come from the
person and the person’ s environment.
It is important to keep these ideas in mind w
hen reading through the next 10 chapters
as I lay out the many different media effect
s on individuals as we ll as on the more mac
ro
units. Think about wh ere you are on these e
ffects and see if you c an answer the Further
Thinking Questions at the end of this chapter.
(Review Questions
1. What is the differen ce between a baseline
and a fluctuation?
2. What is the differe nce between a manife
station and a process effect?
3. What are the three families of factors that
researchers typically e xamine with media eff
ects?
4. What are the four m ost influential factors?
(Further Thinking Questions
1. Can you think of any effect that suddenly sh
owed up as a fluctuati on from your normal b
ehav
ior and really surprised you?
• For this effect, can you attribute it to med
ia exposures?
• What other factors about yourself and yo
ur environment were also likely to have bee
n
influential in bringing about this effect?
2. Think about the dis inhibition effect illust
rated in this chapter.
• In what ways are yo u more like Leo and t
hus have a similar dis inhibition baseline?
• In what ways are yo u more like Julie and
thus have a similar ba seline?
• Which effects have manifested and which
have not been manife sted in your life? Am
ong
the nonmanifested ef fects, where do you th
ink your baseline is? Is your baseline clos
e to
the manifestation lev el or not? And what ar
e the factors in your li fe that are suppressin
g the
manifestation of some of these effects and w
hich factors are pushi ng your baseline up
to a
manifestation level?
Source: ©iStockphoto Com/Jamessrey
Beginning With Theories What Are the Most Prevalent Media Effects Theories? Profiling Most Salient Media Effects Theories
1. Cultivation 2. Third Person 3. Agenda Setting 4. Uses and Gratifications 5. Priming 6. CognitjV Capacity 7. Framing 8. Feminism 9. Social Learning 70. Elaboration Likelihood 77. Schema 72. Diffusion of Innovations
The Big Picture With Media Effects Theories
SUmmary
65
CHAPTER 5
Media Theories
S cholars have created a large number of theories to identify many effects of the mediaand to explain the processes behind those effects. Any book that deals with media effectsmust necessarily highlight the scholarly work that is encapsulated in theories. So this chapter begins with a brief analysis of the importance of theories, then poses the question: Whatare the most salient media effects theories? The chapter profiles the most salient dozentheories of media effects, then concludes with an argument for why it is so important tomove beyond theories when examining the full range of what we know about media effects. BEGINNING WITH THEORIES
Theories are essential tools for scholars. Theories help organize thinking about a phenomenon by highlighting key ideas and by providing carefully crafted definitions that can beshared by all scholars as they build knowledge about their phenomenon of interest.Theories can predict which effects will occur under certain situations. Theories can explaineffects by revealing the factors that lead to those effects and showing how those factors worktogether. And theories can provide critiques of scholarly practices by pointing out shortcomings and suggesting alternative explanations, predictions, definitions, and structures.Without theories, scholarly fields grow slowly and in a haphazard way. Scholars have fewcommon sets of ideas or definitions for those ideas, so they spend a lot of time “reinventingthe wheel,” so to speak, as they waste their precious few resources struggling to construct adefinition of a concept that someone else has already defined well. Scholars have few predictive statements to focus their work so they intuitively select factors that might or mightnot predict an effect. Scholars have few explanations for the “how” or “why” questions, andthose explanations that do exist are shallow and not well developed. And with few critiquesof their practices, they have little vision to correct faulty practices and make better use oftheir resources. Therefore theories are needed to help scholars develop understandings oftheir phenomena of interest in an efficient and effective manner. When a scholarly field hasa few good theories, there is great efficiency because all scholars can share a common visionof which concepts are most important, how those concepts should be defined, how thoseconcepts predict one another, and how those concepts work together in an effective systemof explaining the phenomenon of interest to the field.
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67
68 PART I ORGANIZING THINKING A BOUT MEDIA EFFECTS
With the phenomenon of media effects , scholars have created a great many theo
ries
over the years. for a partial list of the m ore popular of these media effects theo
ries, see
Exhibit 5.1. While some of these are lab eled as models, some as hypotheses, and s
ome as
effects, they all can be regarded as theori es, because each one provides some sort o
f orga
nization, prediction, explanation, or critiq ue of some facet of the media effects phe
nom
enon. Notice also that this list looks sim ilar to Exhibit 3.1 in Chapter 3. You shóuld
not be
surprised that the lists are similar, becau se the theories in Exhibit 5.1 are effects th
eories
and they focus on organizing thinking , making predictions, and offering expla
nations
about media effects as listed in Exhibi t 3.1. However, the lists are not identical b
ecause
some effects have stimulated the creati on of more than one theory. Also, there ar
e other
effects that have been identified through e xploratory research, and scholars have no
t yet
presented conceptualizations to organize, predict, explain, or critique that effect.
The large number of theories is an indic ation of the vitality of the research field; th
at is,
the topic of media effects has attracted a large number of scholars, each of whom h
as gen
erated explanations about how the media effect people and society. However, the l
arge
number of theories is also an indication th at scholars have not converged on a smal
l set of
theories that they agree are the best and m ost useful explanations of media effects. W
ith
such a large number of theories, it is diff icult to see the big picture of media effe
cts. We
need to do something to sift through all t hese theories, some of which have accoun
ted for
only a study or two and which may deal with only a tiny fraction of the overall phen
om
enon of media effects. In order to keep the focus on the big picture in this chapter on
theo
ries, I highlight only those theories that h ave received the most attention by media
effects
scholars. These are the theories that ha ve generated the most research activity an
d have
been found to receive the strongest emp irical support for their predictions and ex
plana
tions. First, I identify these popular theo ries. Second, I offer a brief profile of each.
Then I
use the Media Effects Template (MET) to plot the theories and show where their at
tention
has been directed and which parts of th e overall media effects phenomenon ha
ve been
relatively ignored.
WHAT ARE THE MOST PREVALENT MEDIA EF FECTS THEORIES?
The theories listed in Table 5.1 were gat hered in a study I did with Karyn Riddle (P
otter &
Riddle, 2007). We analyzed a good deal o f the media effects literature published
in the
major scholarly journals, and those the ories were what we found. We also count
ed how
often each theory appeared prominently in different articles. We reasoned that if our
schol
arly field had a dominant theory or two , those dominant theories would each app
ear in a
relatively large percentage of articles. We found no such dominant theory. Among th
e 336
articles that we identified as theory drive n, cultivation theory was mentioned in 27
articles,
or about 8% of that literature. The top d ozen mentioned theories are listed in Tab
le 5.1.
These 12 theories accounted for abou t half of all theory-driven articles. The rest
of the
theories on the list in Thble 5.1 were men tioned only once or twice, so it is reason
able to
conclude that they are not having much of an impact on the research field. Ther
efore the
top 12 of these theories can be regarde d as the most salient, that is, they have been
found
to be the most visible in the literature. Th ey are profiled in the next section of the
chapter.
Exhibit 5.1 Theoes Explaining Some Aspect of the Media Effects Phenomenon
ABX balance model (Newcornb, 1953) Advertising and social change (Berman, 2981) Affective aggression model (Anderson, Collins, Schmitt, & Jacobvitz, 1996) Affluent society (Galbraith, 1976) Agenda building (Lang & Lang, 1981, 1991) Agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972, 1993) Associative network model (John Anderson, 1983) Attitude construct approach (Fazio, 1990) Audience as commodity (Jhally & Livant, 1986) Audience flow (Eastman, 1993) Audience polarization (Webster & Phalen, 1997) Alitomatic activation Model (Fazio, 1990) Availability heuristic (Iversky & Kahneman, 1973) Availability_valence model (Kisietius & Sterntha[, 1984)
Buffering Hypothesis (Davis & Kraus, 1989)
Capacity model (Fisch, 2000) Catharsis (Feshbach, 1961) Channel repertoire (Ferguson & Perse, 1993) Channel theory of publication (Coser, Kadushin, & Powell, 1982) Character affiliation theory (Raney, 2004) Civic engagement (Putnam, 2000) Coalition model of agenda building (Protess et al., 1991) Cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) Cognitive flexibility theory (Lowrey & Kim, 2009) Cognitive response theory (Greenwald, 1968) Communication/persuasion matrix model (McGuire, 1985) Consumer culture theory (Ewen, 1976) Cue theory (Berkowitz, 1965) Cultivation (Gerbner, 1969; Gerbner & Gross, 1976) Cultural imperialism (Boyd-Barrett, 1977; Schiller, 2969) Culture of narcissism (Lasch, 1973)
Decision-making models (Ryan & Peterson, 1982) Diffusion of innovations (Rogers, 1995; Rogers & Shoemaker, 1971) Direct effects model (Lasswell, 1927) Disinhibition effect (Bandura, 1994) Disposition theory (Zillmann & Cantor, 2976) Distribution of knowledge (Mcfluail & Windaht, 1993)
TER5MediaTheorieS6g
(Continued) I
70 PART I ORGANIZING THINKING ABOUT ME DIA EFFECTS
Double action model of gatekeeping (Bass, 1969)
Drench hypothesis (Greenberg, 1988)
Elaboration likelihood model (Petty & Cacioppo, 198 1)
Elite pluralism theory (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee , 1954; Key, 1961)
Empathy theory (Zillmann, 1996)
Encoding-decoding model (HatI, 1980)
Exchange model of news (Sigal, 1973)
Exchange theory (Solomon, 1989)
Excitation transfer theory (Zillmann, 1983)
Exemplification theory (Zillmann, 1999; Zillmann & B rosius, 2000)
Expectancy value model (Palmgreen & Rayburn, 198 2)
Fraction of selection (Schramm, 1954)
Frame analysis (Ervng Goffman, 1974, 1979)
Framing (Cappella & Jamieson, 1997; Scheufele, 1999 )
Free market modet of media (DeFteur, 1970)
Gatekeeping (White, 1950) Genre theory (Kaminsky, 1974) Global village (McLuhan, 1964; Mctuhan & Fiore, 19
67)
Gratification seeking and audience activity model ( Rubin & Perse, 1987)
Hegemony theory (Gramsci, 1971)
Heuristic processing model of cultivation effects (Sh rum, 2002)
Hidden persuaders (Packard, 1957)
Homogenization hypothesis (Bagdikian, 1997)
Hostile media perception (Hwang, Pan, & Sun, 2008)
Imitation (Millet & Dollard, 1941)
Indirect effects model (Caftwright, 1949; Hyman & S heatsley, 1947)
Information flow theory (Davis, 1990; Greenberg & P arker, 1965)
Information model of advertising (cited in Jeffres, 1 994, pp. 279—281)
Information seeking (Donohew & Tipton, 1973)
Tntegrated model of media enjoyment (Vorderer, Klimm t, & Ritterfeld, 2004)
Integrated response model (Smith & Swinyard, 1982, 1988)
Interpretation by social class (Morley, 1980)
Interpretive resistance theory (Carragee, 1990)
Knowledge gap theory (Tichenor, Donohue, & Otien, 1 970)
Law of double jeopardy (McPhee, 1963)
Least objectionable programming (Klein, 1971)
PTER5Me daTheoes7
;
Levels of processing theory (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) Limited_capacity model of mediated message processing (Lang, 2000)
Market power model of advertising (cited in Jeffres, 1994, pp. 219—281) Marketplace model (Webster & Phalen, 1994) Marxist theory (McQuai[, 1987) Mass audience (Blumer, 1946) Media access (Westley & MacLean, 1957) Media as culture industries (Jhal[y, 1987; Hay, 1989) Media culture (A[theide & Snow, 1979, 1991) Media enjoyment as attitude (Nabi & Krcmar, 2004) Media entertainment theory (Mendelsohn, 2965) Media flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988; Sherry, 2004) Media-public relationships (McQuail & Windahl, 2981) Media system dependency (DeFleur & Baft-Rokeach, 1975) Medium is the message (McLuhan, 1962, 1964) Medium theory (Meyrowitz, 2994) Message construction (Shoemaker & Reese, 1991) Mood management (ZiHmann, 1988; Zillmann & Bryant, 1994) Motivated attention and motivated processing (Nabi, 1999)
Neo-assocjationjstjc model (Berkowitz, 1984) Neo-mass audience (Webster & Phalen, 1997) Network model of political priming (Price & Tewksbury, 1997) News content theory (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996) News diffusion (Greenberg, 1964) News factory (Bantz, McCorkle, & Baade, 1980) News frame Theory (Iuchman, 1978)
One-dimensional man (Marcuse, 1964)
Parasocjat interaction (Horton & WohI, 1956; Rosengren & Windahl, 1989; Rubin, Perse, & Powetl, 1990)
Play theory (Stephenson, 2957) Pluralistic ignorance (Allport, 1924) Political socialization theory (Graber, 1980) Politics of signification (Hall, 1982) Polysemy theory (Fiske, 2986) Power elite theory (Mills, 1957) Priming (Berkowitz, 1955; Roskos-Ewoldsen Raskos-Ewoldsen, & Carpentier, 2002) Principled reasoning theory (McLeod, Sotirovic, Voakes, Guo, & Huang, 1998) Profit_driven logic of safety theory (Gittin, 1985) Program choice theory (Steiner, 1952) Proteus effect (Peña, Hancock, & Merola, 2009) Pseudo-events blur reality (Boorstin, 1951)
Exhibit 5.1 (Continued)
(Continued)
Psychodynamic model (DeFleur, 1970) Psychological conditioning (Ktapper, 1960; Skinner, 1974)
Rally effect (Coser, 1956) Reasoned action theory (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) Reception paradigm (Katz, 1987) Reinforcing spirals model (Zhao, 2009) Resource dependency theory (lurow, 1984) Revealed preferences (Mansfield, 1970) Riley & Ritey sociological model of mass communication (Riley & Riley, 1959)
Ritual model of communication (Turner, 1977)
Exhibit 5.1 (Continued)
Selective exposure (Freedman & Sears, 1966; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944)
Self-perception theory (Bem, 1972) Semiotic theory (Baudrillard, 1983) Social cognitive theory of mass communication (Bandura, 2001)
Social construction of meaning (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Lippmann, 1922; Mead, 1934)
Social identity (Meyrowitz, 1985) Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977) Social norms theory of enjoyment (Denham, 2004) Social responses to computer technologies model (Nowak, Hamilton, & Hammond,
2009)
Sociology of news theory (Schudson, 2003) Spiral of silence (Noelle_Neumann 1974, 1991) Star theory (Croteau & Hoynes, 2001) Storage battery model (Fiske & Taylor, 1991) Storage bin model (Fiske & Taylor, 1991) Suspense theory (Knobloch_WeSterWicl< Hastall, & Rossmann, 2009)
Synapse model of priming (Fiske & Taylor, 1991)
Technological determinism (Fischer, 1992) Technological drivers (Neuman, 1991) Television trivialization of public life (Postman, 1985) Third-person theory (Perloff, 2002) Transactional model (Graber, 1988; McLeod & Becker, 1974) Transmission model (Shannon & Weaver, 1949) Transportation model (Carey, 1975) Transportation theory (Green & Brock, 2000) Two-step flow (Katz & Cazarsfeld, 1955)
Uses and dependency model (Rubin & Windahl, 1986) Uses and gratifications (Katz, Blumler, & Gurevitch, 1974; Lasswell, 1948;
Rosengren, 1974; Rosengren,
Wenner, & Palmgreen, 1985; Wright, 1960)
Videomalaise (Robinson, 1976)
CHAPTER 5 Media Theories 73
Tabte 5.1 Twetve Most Salient Theories
Theory n Cultivation 27 8.0 Third person 25 7.4 Agenda setting 24 7.1 Uses and gratifications 19 5.7 Priming 16 4.8 Cognitive capacity 14 4.2 Framing 12 3.6 Feminism 11 3.3 Social learning 7 2.1 Elaboration likelihood 7 2.1 Schema 6 1.8 Diffusion of innovations 4 1.2
Note: Percentages are based on 336 articles that mentioned a theory.
PROFILING MOST SALIENT MEDIA EFFECTS THEORIES Each of the top dozen media effects theories is briefly profiled in this section. If you are interested in learning more about any one of these theories beyond the short descriptions provided here, you can read the citations that are provided.
1. CuLtivation Cultivation theory was created by George Gerbner in 1969 as a response to his criticism that media effects research had been focusing only on short-term laboratory effects and ignoring the long-term effects that were gradually taking place over the course of a person’s everyday life. He argued that television, which lie called the dominant storytelling of the time, presented messages with consistent themes and that people who were exposed to these stories over time came to believe that the themes and patterns in these television stories applied to the real world. Gerbner (1969) argued that the media cultivate a “collective consciousness about ele
ments of existence” (p. 138) and explained:
I use the term [cultivation] to indicate that my primary concern in this discussion is not with information, education, persuasion, etc., or with any kind of direct communication “effects.” I am concerned with the collective context within
72 PART I ORGANIZING THINKING ABOUT MEDIA EFFECTS
74 PART I ORGANIZING THINKING ABOUT MEDIA EFFECTS
which, and in response to which, different individual and group selec tions and
interpretations of messages take place. (p. 139)
Key to cultivation is the focus on public information with an
awareness that a certain item of knowledge is publicly held (i.e., not only known
to many, but commonly known that it is known to many) makes colle ctive thought
and action possible. Such knowledge gives individuals their awarene ss of
collective strength (or weakness), and a feeling of social identificatio n or
alienation. (pp. 139—140)
The media have the ability to construct publics by making certain info rmation available
that shapes “collective thought and action quickly, continuously, and p ervasively across
previous boundaries of time, space, and culture” (p. 140). In creating cultivation theory,
Gerbner was not interested in particular messages but broad patterns. A lso he was not inter
ested in individual interpretations of receivers but instead the beliefs t hat they shared.
2. Third Person The third-person effect (TPE) was first observed in 1983 by W. Phi
llips Davison, a sociolo
gist, who was examining patterns across the results of public opinion polls and noticed that
typically people felt that the media exerted a strong effect on other peop le (third persons)
but not on themselves (first person). He found consistent patterns that pe ople overestimate
the effect of media messages on other people and underestimate the effe ct of media mes
sages on themselves. This effect has been explained as a “self-serving” perception whereby
people think
the media exert powerful influences, but only on other people, not on themselves. This
allows people to complain about the media and call for regulation of harmful content
so as to control the media exposures of other people. At the same t ime, it excuses them
from having to take responsibility for possible negative consequen ces of their own
exposures as long as people tell themselves that the media have no in fluence on them
personally. This effect has been widely cited in the research literature (Tal-Or, Tsfati, &
Gunther, 2009), and it has been found to have strong empirical supp ort (Paul, Salwen, &
Dupagne, 2000).
3. Agenda Setting Agenda-setting theory focuses its explanation on how news content
in the media shapes
the public’s beliefs about what is important in society. The first clea r empirical support
of this agenda-setting effect was provided by McCombs and Shaw (1972 ) in their analysis
of the 1968 campaign for president. They found that when the medi a presented certain
issues more saliently than others, those salient issues became the foc us of the campaign.
Over time, this agenda-setting research has included findings that the m edia also tell us
what to think about; this is called second-level agenda setting. This s econd-level agenda-
setting research has found that media messages do not just emphasize issues but they
present informational elements about those issues, and those informational elements tell us what to think about the issue Closely related to the agenda-setting theory is the spiral of silence theory, which also
focuses on how the media influence public beliefs. However, the spiral of silence theory also moves into explaining how public beliefs influence public discourse. Noelle-Neumann (1974) created this theory after observing patterns of news coverage in Western Europe. In her theory, she explained that when the media avoid covering an issue, people typically will not express their beliefs on that issue even if those beliefs are very important to them. They will remain silent. Thinking that they are in the minority, they refrain from expressing their beliefs for fear of being ostracized. Then silence begets more silence, and the belief that the issue is not important gets reinforced over time.
4. Uses and Gratifications Uses and gratifications is a very broad theory that is based on two assumptions about media audiences. One of these assumptions is that individuals are active in making choices about selecting media and messages. The other assumption is that individuals are aware of their motives for information and entertainment; people use these motives as guides as they actively seek out media messages to satisfy their needs. The explanatory system of uses and gratifications theory makes five claims:
1. Communication behavior is goal directed, purposive and motivated. 2. People initiate the selection and use of communication vehicles. 3. A host of social and psychological factors guide, filter, or mediate communication behavior.
4. The media compete with other forms of communication in the gratification of needs or wants.
5. People are typically more influential than the media in the effects process (Rubin, 2002).
Because uses and gratifications theory regards audience members as active, the effects of the media are not viewed as particularly powerful; that is, people can control the effects to a large extent. Rosengren (1974) argued that the key idea of uses and gratificatfons was that individual differences among audience members intervene between the media and any effects. This means that media effects are explained not just by the media content but also by audience characteristics, such as their motivations and involvement with the content. These ideas can be traced back to Wilbur Schramm (1954), who argued that people
make their selection of media exposures by comparing expectation of a reward with effort required. This idea was later elaborated by Palmgreen and Rayburn (1985), who contended that people compared gratifications sought (GS) with gratification5 obtained (GO). Because media exposure is a process repeated over the course of a person’s life, each person has a lot of experience with GOs from past exposures, and this helps in forming expectations for each decision in the present.
CHAPTERS MediaTheories 75
Priming theory focuses on how one set of informatiOn or stimuli can affect the interpre
tation of a subsequent set in a person’s memory. This theory conceptualizes the human
mind as being organized in associative networks where each node in the nenNork is a bit
of information. When people think about a particular bit of information, that node is
activated and the thinking proceeds from that node outward through associative net
works to other nodes that are most closely related to the activated node. Thus when a
node is activated, the next closest nodes in the associative network are primed; that is,
they are most likely to be activated next (Jo & Berkowitz, 1994). The primed node is
important because it sets up our expectations for our thought paths. ROSkosEWO1d5en,
RoskosEWOldsefl, and Carpentier (2002) say, “As applied to the media, priming refers to
the effects of the content of the media on people’s later behavior or judgments related tO
the content” (p. 97).
CHAPTER 5 Media Theories 77
Originally referred to as cue theory, Leonard Berkowitz (1965) conducted early testing that showed that media portrayals contain particular symbols and when these symbols appear in a person’s real life, those symbols cue the person to remember the media por trayal. Berkowitz conducted empirical research in the area of violent media content and how it affected viewers’ behaviors. He found that when violent portrayals contained weap ons, these weapons were powerful cues to people in real life. So when people saw a par ticular kind of weapon in real life, this real-life weapon triggered memories of the media portrayal and these memories were likely to lead to aggressive behavior. Priming theory has undergone a good deal of testing with the topic of media violence.
People shown a violent message in which characters are wronged will have the idea that violence is a good tool to use in getting revenge against one’s aggressors. Later, in real life, when these people are victims of aggression, they will recall the use of violence as a successful tool to use in gaining vengeance and be more likely to behave in a vengeful manner.
6. Cognitive Capacity Lang (2000) developed the cognitive capacity theory to provide a cognitive explanatory system for how people screen information then process it. She said that this process is structured by three tasks of encoding information, storage, and retrieval. The process begins with a person’s sensory organs being stimulated; information then automati cally enters a person’s brain, where it spends up to a few seconds in a sensory storage area where most of it is wiped out, and only a small fraction moves on to short-term working memory. The person then selects certain bits of information to use in con structing what she called a “mental representation” of the outside event that stimulated the person’s sensory organs. This selection is guided by a person’s goals, existing knowl edge, and the environment. Thus what is encoded is not an identical replica of the event; instead it is composed of a small fraction of the stimulus and is a highly idiosyncratic representation of the event. These representations are then stored in associative net works where ideas are linked together, making later retrieval possible. People undertake this processing in a parallel fashion; that is, there is more than one line of information being processed at the same time. Because processing resources are limited, people divide these resources across tasks at any given time. Those information-processing tasks that are given the most resources get processed in more detail and are therefore more likely to be remembered.
7. Framing Framing regards meaning as residing primarily in the message, particularly news messages. The frame of news stories is constructed by journalists in the way they select certain bits of information while ignoring others and by how they structure their stories to direct atten tion toward certain facts. The frame is the way the story is presented; that is, it is the point of view from which the story is told. The frame is the news angle or the context for the story (Tuchman, 1978).
76PARTIORGANIZING THINKING ABOUT MEDIA EFF
5. Priming
CHAPTER 5 Media Theories 79
audiences use and interpret gendered me dia texts?, and How does audience recep
tion con
tribute to the construction of gender at t he level of individual identity? Some fe
minist schol
ars also contend that women can use th e media to empower themselves by for
ming groups
and creating their own meanings that reject the paternalistic themes (Radway
, 1984).
9. Sociat Learning
This theory has its origin in the ideas o f Miller and Dollard (1941), who found
that people
learned behaviors by observing the acti ons of others; they did not need to p
erform the
behaviors themselves in order to learn t hose behaviors. Bandura (1977) took th
is idea and
elaborated on it with the concepts of identification, vicarious reinforcement,
and self
efficacy. Bandura showed that this obser vational-type learning was enhanced to
the extent
that observers identified with people wh o performed the behaviors (role models
) as well as
when those behaviors were rewarded or at least not punished. He also showed th
at the role
models need not be people in real life bu t can be characters in fictional stories
presented
through the media. Bandura (1986) con tinued to elaborate this explanation by a
dding cog
nitive components. Bandura argued tha t is was not only characteristics about th
e environ
ment that accounted for social learning but also characteristics about the perso
n; that is,
people think about what they experien ce and transform their experiences into
cognitive
models. This transformation is guided by four types of processes: attention
, retention,
production, and motivation.
10. ELaboration LikeLihood
The elaboration likelihood model (ELM ) was developed by Petty and Caciop
po (1981) to
move scholarly thinking beyond the lim ited approach to opinion formation tha
t assumed
people paid attention to arguments and logically weighed the merits of those a
rguments
when making up their own minds. Alt hough the ELM is typically regarded as a
theory of
persuasion—not learning—fundament ally it is focused on how people enco
unter and
process information. ELM acknowledg es that there are times when people d
o carefully
attend to information—what they call the “central route of information proce
ssing”—but
that there are also times when people e ncounter information and arguments in
an uncon
scious state or when they are not logica l in their handling of the information—
what they
call the “peripheral route.” The central route involves effortful cognitive activi
ty whereby
the person draws on prior experience and knowledge in order to scrutinize c
arefully all
of the information relevant to determ ine the central merits of the position
advocated
(Petty, Priester, & Brinol, 2002, p. 165). Using this route, people actively think
about the
importance of claims, saliency of info rmation, and the consequences of acc
epting the
message claims. In contrast, the periphe ral route requires low-effort processing o
f persua
sive information; people react to simple cues in messages and act as cognitive m
isers, that
is, allocate very little mental effort. With little mental effort, people are likely to
select a
peripheral reason and ignore more impo rtant reasons. Which route a person use
s is really
a decision about how much effort he or s he is willing to expend in processing th
e informa
tion in a message. The key factors that af fect the amount of thinking a person is w
illing to
78 PART I ORGANIZING THINKI
NG ABOUT ME DIA EFFECTS
The frame of a news story tells the audien
ce members what the theme or meaning
of
the event is and the refore constrains and
shapes the meaning of the event for the
audience.
The frame provides context in the way it
defines a problem diagnoses causes, m
akes moral
judgments and suggest s remedies.
framing theory is rela ted to both the
agenda5etting and priming theories. framing ex
plains
how the agenda is set by the way the media
frame their stories. O nce a person is expo
sed to a
media message. it is the fradilng of the
message that determine s which nodes get
primed.
8. Feminism Feminist theory cont
ends that there is a sexist ideology perm
eating the media. This ideol
ogy presents a patriarchal world wh
ere there is a ma1edominated social
order that is
assumed to be natural and just. In this id
eology, women are weaker and less capa
ble than
are men, so women gain their identity
through their associa tion with male
characters.
Under feminist theory, the media continually
present messages with paternalistic themes
that foster a false be lief system in their
audiences (Rakow, 19 92).
According to van Zoon efl (1994), the fo
cus of feminist theor y is to provide
answers to
questions such as, How are discourses about
gender encoded into media texts?, How
do
GANIZING THINKING ABOUT M EDIA EFFECTS
are a person’s cognitive trait of the general motivation to think, as wel
l as a
action to characteristics in the mess age—such as the perceived person
al rele
message, trustworthiness of source , whether source is stigmatized or n
ot, key
presented as questions or assertions , number of message sources, and e
xpect-
the position being argued.
teory has attracted a wide range of scholars. George Herbert Mead(1934)
is often
iith originating the idea of schema in his book Mind, Self, and Society in wh
ich he
at symbols mediate and structure all our experience. Sets of symbols,
called
te the templates that help us make sen se of all the sensory stimuli we are e
xposed
itly. ive psychologists built on this idea
by conceptualizing schemas as asso ciative
that reside in a person’s mind. A sch ema is “a cognitive structure that rep
resents
e about a concept or type of stimu lus, including its attributes and the
relations
iose attributes” (Fiske & Taylor, 1991 , p. 98). Ideas are organize
d as nodes in asso
tworks. When we activate one idea , other ideas that are most closely
related to
ated idea are also activated. Thus thin king proceeds from idea to idea acc
ording to
‘ are related together in these associative networks.
schemas serve to organize an individ ual’s memory for people and events.
They are
d of linguistic and nonlinguistic info rmation, images, words, sounds, and s
equences
iences (Graesser & Nakamura, 1982) . Some schemas are sequences of eve
nts and
referred to as scripts. They are cultu re specific, so they contain prejudi
ces and
mbedded in the culture.
mas are used by individuals to help them comprehend events. Thus sch
emas are
es of expectations for people and ev ents that have been developed and
modified
course of a person’s lifetime. When we meet a new person, we read the
salient
out that person (for example, body t ype, obvious personality characteri
stics, and
and match these cues to our schema about people. When we find a sche
ma that
Ltches the cues, we use that schema to set our expectations for that new
person.
rn of Innovations
Everett Rogers conducted a major rev iew and synthesis of the literature on h
ow infor
gets disseminated in societies. He cam e up with the diffusion of informatio
n theory,
cli he built on the ideas of Lazarsfe ld and extended those ideas beyond
the realm
tical information and paid special atte ntion to how information about inn
ovations—
ally about agriculture and health—w as disseminated. Rogers argued that
information
innovations was disseminated in a ste p-by-step fashion to different group
s of people
ciety. The first group to receive and use the information were people he
labeled as
adopters.” These are people who lik ed to try new things and were contin
ually moni
the media to find out what those new things were. Rogers said that these e
arly adopt
;sed their information along to the o pinion leaders (a Ia Lazarsfeld), who then teste
d
TER5M ediaThe
Qries8;
out the idea or innovation. If the opinion leaders found they liked the innovation, they passed it along to other people in their interpersonal networks (the opinion followers). Finally the information spread out to the “laggards” or later adopters.
THE BIG PICTURE WITH MEDIA EFfECTS THEORIES
The salient media theories are a good place to begin when learning about media effects. However, as you will Soon see, they do not cover the entire phenomenon. Take a look at figure 5.1, which is a minor modification of the indivjduallevel MET with
its six types on the lines and the four functions in the columns. The three columns from the macro-level MET have been collapsed into one column at the right. This modified matrix has 30 cells. Onto this matrix, i have plotted the dozen most salient theories profiled in the previous
section of this chapter. Notice that there are theories plotted in only 10 of these 30 cells, which indicates that while these 12 theories are salient in the sense that they are the most tested theories, as a set they cover only about one third of the full media effects phenomenon. We of course need to remember that there are many more theories than the 12 salient
ones plotted on the MET in Figure 5.1, so this argument is not made to convince you that there is no theoretical activity in many cells. Instead, my argument is that the most well- known theories of media effects are concentrated into a few cells. first, learning a lot about what these 12 theories have to say about media effects is a good beginning, but this strategy will deliver only partial understanding of the full phenomenon of media effects. In order
Figure 5.1 P[ofting Theoes Onto the Media Effects lemptate
fri Note; Percentages are based on 336 afticles that mentioned a theo. “Grats’ is shoft tot Gratiflcatjons”
to get a more complete picture of the overall media effects phenomeflOn we would have
to learn about several hundred theories, and this makes for a rather inefficient approach.
There is also a second reason for why a theoretical approach is not a good strategy for
learning about the big picture of media effects. This argument is based on the finding that
much of the large literature concerned with media effects is not generated by theory. To
illustrate this point, let’s return to the content analysis study I mentione’d earlier in this
chapter (Potter & Riddle, 2007). This was a content analysis of the media effects literature
published in the major scholarly journals. Recall that we found that 336 articles that were
theory driven and that 144 theories were mentioned, with the top 12 most mentioned
theories accounting for 168 of those articles or about 50% of the set of theory-driven
articles. However, what I did not mention yet is that the total sample we analyzed was 962
media effects studies. Thus only about 35% (336 articles out of 962) of the total media
effects literature featured a theory. The other 65% of the media effects literature was gen
erated by no theory at all. Other studies of the media literature also reported similar
findings. This pattern of a low
percentage of theory-driven studies has been found in the larger media literature percent
ages run as low as 8.1% (Potter, Cooper, & Dupagne, 1993) and as high as 27.6% (Riffe &
Freitag, 1997) and 30.5% (Kamhawi & Weaver, 2003). In an analysis of published literature
on mass communication from 1965 to 1989 in eight journals, Potter et al. (2003) found that
only 8.1 % of 1,326 articles were guided by a theory and provided a test of that theory;
another 19 5% were tests of hypotheses but these hypotheses were not derived from a
theory Kamhawi and Weaver (2003) reported that only 30.5% of all articles published in
10 ommunicatiofl journals from 1980 to 1999 specifically mentioned a theory, which led
them to argue that
theoretical development is probably the main consideration in evaluating the
disciplinary status of the field. As our field grows in scope and complexity the
pressure for theoretical integration increases. It seems that scholars in the field
should be developing and testing theories to explain the process and effects of
mass communication. However, that was not widely evident in our sample. (p. 20)
While theories have been important to the development of the media effects scholarly
field, we cannot conclude that our understanding of media effects is predominantly theory
driven. Instead theory development is sporadic and thin. This clearly indicates that our
research is not organized efficiently by a handful of theories that present scholars with a
parsimonious set of conceptualizations and that direct long paths of programmatic
research, much like what is done in other scholarly fields, particularly in the physical sci
ences. Returning to the Potter and Riddle (2006) analysis, there seem to be few examples
of programmatic research guided by theory; among the 336 articles we found that did
feature a theory, 144 theories were mentioned, and only 12 of those theories were men
tioned in more than five studies. The remaining 132 theories were spread out over the
remaining 16$ articles that were theory driven. This indicates a pattern of rather thin
theory development. This finding was also in evidence in the study by KamhaWi and
Weaver (2003), who found that only three theories (information processing, uses and
CHAPTER 5 Media Theories 83
gratifications, and media construction of social reality) were mentioned in as many as 10% of their analyzed articles. Less than one third of the very large media effects literature is guided by a theory of any
kind. Therefore, in order to understand more than a relatively small segment of knowledge about media effects and how they work, we need to move beyond the theory-driven por tion of the literature. That is the purpose of the next nine chapters.
Theories are important to the development of any scholarly field. With the scholarly field of media effects, many theories have been developed. However, few of those theories account for more than a handful of research studies. And the most salient dozen theories as a set has generated only a small fraction (about 17%) of the total media effects research literature. When trying to build your own understanding of media effects, the study of theories is a
good place to begin. The most salient media effects theories orient us to the most popular effects. However, there is much more wisdom about media effects that is not conveyed by theories; that is, much of the vast literature of 10,000 research studies is not theory driven. In Part II of this book, I take you through that literature. Of course, we will not visit each
of the 10,000 studies—that would be too much detail! Just to list the citations of those stud ies would consume 650 typed pages. Instead of focusing on all the detail, I will try to direct your attention to the big picture patterns so that you develop an understanding of the overall phenomenon of media effects.
(Review Questions
1. What is the purpose of theories?
2. List the most prevalent dozen media effects theories. What is the main idea of each one?
3. Why is it insufficient to limit our study of media effects to effects theories?
(Further Thinking Questions
1. Figure 5.1 shows the most salient media effects theories mapped onto the Media Effects Template. Can you think of any reasons why certain areas of the map have multiple theories while other areas have none?
2. Pick an area on the Media Effects Template where there are no theories plotted. Can you create a theory to fill that gap?
MEDIA EFFECTS82 PART I ORGANIZING THINKING ABOUT
SUMMARY