Transcript The direct effects paradigm

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THE DIRECT EFFECTS
PARADIGM
Hypodermic needle: overview
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Sometimes also referred to, after Schramm, as the
Silver Bullet Model (1982), this is the idea that the mass
media are so powerful that they can 'inject' their
messages into the audience, or that, like a magic bullet,
they can be precisely targeted at an audience, who
irresistibly fall down when hit by the bullet. In brief, it
is the idea that the makers of media messages can get
us to do whatever they want us to do.
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In that simple form, this is a view which has never been
seriously held by media theorists. It is really more of a folk
belief than a model, which crops up repeatedly in the popular
media whenever there is an unusual or grotesque crime, which
they can somehow link to supposedly excessive media violence
or sex and which is then typically taken up by politicians who
call for greater control of media output.
If it applies at all, then probably only in the rare circumstances
where all competing messages are rigorously excluded, for
example in a totalitarian state where the media are centrally
controlled.
Advertising and World War I propaganda
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The 'folk belief' in the Hypodermic Needle Model was fuelled initially by the
rapid growth of advertising from the late nineteenth century on, coupled
with the practice of political propaganda and psychological warfare during
World War I. Quite what was achieved by either advertising or political
propaganda is hard to say, but the mere fact of their existence raised concern
about the media's potential for persuasion. Certainly, some of the
propaganda messages seem to have stuck, since many of us still believe today
that the Germans bayoneted babies and replaced the clappers of church bells
with the churches' own priests in 'plucky little Belgium', though there is no
evidence for that. Some of us still cherish the belief that Britain, the 'land of
the free', was fighting at the time for other countries' 'right to selfdetermination', though we didn't seem particularly keen to accord the right to
the countries we controlled.
The Inter-War Years
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Later, as the ‘Press Barons' strengthened their hold on British newspapers
and made no secret of their belief that they could make or break
governments and set the political agenda, popular belief in the irresistible
power of the media steadily grew. It was fuelled also by widespread concern,
especially among élitist literary critics, but amongst the middle and upper
classes generally, about the supposed threat to civilised values posed by the
new mass popular culture of radio, cinema and the newspapers.
The radio broadcast of War of the Worlds seemed also to provide very strong
justification for these worries.
Concern also grew about the supposed power of advertisers who were
known to be using the techniques of behaviourist psychology. Watson, the
founding father of behaviourism, having abandoned his academic career in
the '20s, worked in advertising, where he made extravagant claims for the
effectiveness of his techniques.
Political propaganda in European
dictatorships
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1917 had seen the success of the Russian Revolution,
which was followed by the marshalling of all the arts
in support of spreading the revolutionary message.
Lenin considered film in particular to be a uniquely
powerful propaganda medium and, despite the
financial privations during the post-revolutionary
period, considerable resources were invested in film
production.
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This period also saw the rise and eventual triumph of fascism in
Europe. This was believed by many to be due to the powerful
propaganda of the fascist parties, especially of Joseph Goebbels.
Goebbels had great admiration for the propaganda of the Soviet
Union, especially for Eisenstein’s masterpiece Battleship Potemkin.
Though himself a fanatical opponent of Bolshevism, Goebbels
said admiringly of that film: 'Someone with no firm ideological
convictions could be turned into a Bolshevik by this film.' The
film was generally believed to be so powerful that members of
the German army were forbidden to see it even long before the
Nazis came to power and it was also banned in Britain for many
years.
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After the war, Speer, Hitler's armaments minister, said
at his trial for war crimes:
[Hitler's] was the first dictatorship in the present period
of modern technical development, a dictatorship which
made complete use of all technical means for the
domination of its own country ... Through technical
devices like the radio and the loudspeaker, eighty
million people were deprived of independent thought.
It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of
one man.
Post-War and the present day
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With the development of television after World War II and the
very rapid increase in advertising, concern about the 'power' of
the mass media continued to mount and we find that conern
constantly reflected in the popular press. That concern underlies
the frequent panics about media power. In the popular press,
Michael Ryan was reported to have gone out and shot people at
random in Hungerford because he had watched Rambo videos,
two children were supposed to have abducted and murdered
Jamie Bulger because they had watched Child's Play. After the
1992 General Election, The Sun announced 'It's the Sun what
won it' - a view echoed by the then Conservative Party
Treasurer, Lord McAlpine, and the defeated Leader of the
Opposition, Neil Kinnock.
Empiricist tradition: overview
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It probably wouldn't be correct to say that the researchers in the empiricist (or
empirical) tradition are empiricists in the strictest sense in which it is used in
philosophy. Their approach to the study of mass media effects is close to what we
might expect to be the methods of the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology
etc.). It is characterised by counting and categorising audience members and by the
attempted measurement of direct effects of communication on those audiences.
These entirely practical concerns are what we might well expect from university
departments in the USA, where this tradition has been most prominent. University
research in the States has long been funded by business and by political parties who
have given the university departments quite specific briefs. The sponsors of such
research are quite naturally concerned to know whether they are fully exploiting the
market or whether their newspapers, movies, TV programmes are failing to exploit
some sectors; whether their party propaganda really is encouraging the electorate to
vote for them; whether their advertising really is getting more people to eat their beans
and so on.
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The empiricist researchers were concerned to find out
as much as possible about media audiences, in much
the same terms as advertisers today would seek
information from, say the National Readership
Surveys: number of people, age, sex, social status,
occupation, leisure and so on.
By and large these data tended to be used to support
studies into the effectiveness of communication, rules
for mounting effective campaigns and so on.
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Contemporary commentators on media research are frequently
dismissive of the 'scientific', experimental methods often
employed in early empiricist 'Effects Research'. Whilst there is
much to criticize in this approach, the critics often unfairly
overstate their case, disregarding the methodological diversity
which did exist at the time. Such diversity was often forced upon
the researchers by the realization that their 'scientific',
‘positivistic' approach was based on a transmission model of
communication which conceives of a message being sent from
sender to receiver, disregarding institutional, psychological,
cultural and other factors which contribute to any possible
effects the media may have.
Cultural effects: overview
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We are using the term 'cultural effects' here as shorthand for the
investigation of social, political and cultural effects.
Broadly speaking, those analysts who are concerned with
cultural effects fall into two camps:
somewhat élitist literary critics who are distressed by the spread
of popular culture, which they see as diluting and undermining
the values enshrined in high culture
Marxist critics whose 'critical' perspective derives from the work
of Karl Marx and from the Frankfurt School. Their main
concern is with the way that the mass media are used to spread
and legitimate the dominant ideology.
Uses and gratifications: overview
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In the fairly early days of effects research, it became
apparent that the assumed 'hypodermic' effect was
not borne out by detailed investigation. A number of
factors appeared to operate to limit the effects of the
mass media.
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Katz and Lazarsfeld, for example, pointed to the
influence of group membership and Hovland
identified a variety of factors ranging from group
membership to the audience's interest in the subject
of the message.
The active audience
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As a result of this evidence, attention began to turn from the question of
'what the media do to the audience' to 'what the audience do with the media'.
Herta Herzog was one of the earliest researchers in this area. She undertook
(as part of Paul Lazarsfeld's massive programme of research) to investigate
what gratifications radio listeners derived from daytime serials, quizzes and so
on. Katz summarises the starting point of this kind of research quite neatly:
... even the most potent of the mass media content cannot ordinarily
influence an individual who has 'no use' for it in the social and psychological
context in which he lives. The 'uses' approach assumes that people's values,
their interests, their associations, their social rôles, are pre-potent, and that
people selectively 'fashion' what they see and hear to these interests (Katz
(1959) in McQuail (1971)
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Researchers in the uses and gratifications vein therefore see the
audience as active . It is part of the received wisdom of media
studies that audience members do indeed actively make
conscious and motivated choices amongst the various media
messages available.
Like much of the research in the Empricist vein, the American
tradition of Uses and Gratfications research has been located
within a pluralist view of the mass media. Within that context,
especially where news coverage is concerned, the
conceptualization of the media as the fourth estate is
particularly significant.
Recent developments: overview
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Postmodernity
Many of the recent approaches to the mass media are
influenced, or at least informed by, postmodernism.
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Hovland
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Very important amongst these researchers was Carl Hovland of Yale whose
carefully controlled experiments were designed to test the separate variables
in the communication process. The main focus of his research was
persuasion. Many of the principles he established are generally accepted
today - one finds them being repeated, in one form or another, by, for
example, political spin doctors, PR people, advertisers. However, it's worth
bearing in mind that such people are trying to sell their services and so may
be making greater claims for Hovland's principles than they deserve.
Certainly, as mentioned above, many contemporary critics would criticize the
unashamedly positivist approach adopted by Hovland, an approach which
implies that it is possible to discern general 'rules' for effective and persuasive
communication.
Lazarsfeld
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Paul Lazarsfeld was also a very important researcher who contributed much
to the development of empirical methods in the social sciences during his
work at the Columbia Bureau of Applied Social Research. The most famous
of the studies he conducted was that into voting behaviour carried out in the
1940s and which led him to develop the highly influential Two Step Flow
Model of mass communication.
As a result of his research, Lazarsfeld concluded that the media actually have
quite limited effects on their audiences. This view of the media is common to
many of the researchers in the US. Hovland, for example, whilst showing
what variables can be altered to make a communication more or less
effective, also places considerable emphasis on those factors, especially social
factors such as group membership, which limit the persuasiveness of the
message. Consequently, this view of the media is often referred to as the
'limited effects' paradigm or tradition.
Limited effects
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In Towards a Sociology of Mass Communication (1971), McQuail
summarises some of the main findings of the research which
confirms this 'limited effects' view:
'persuasive mass communication is in general more likely to
reinforce the existing opinions of its audience than it is to
change its opinion' (from Klapper (1960))
'people tend to see and hear communications that are favourable
or congenial to their predispositions' (from Berelson & Steiner
(1964))
'people respond to persuasive communication in line with their
predispositions and change or resist change accordingly' (from
Berelson & Steiner (1964))
Consequently:
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'political campaigns tend to reach the politically interested and converted', as shown for example
in Lazarsfeld's research
'mass media campaigns against racial prejudice tend to be unsuccessful', as demonstrated in
Kendall and Woolf's analysis of reactions to anti-racist cartoons. The cartoons featured Mr
Biggott whose absurdly racist ideas were intended to discredit bigotry. In fact 31% failed to
recognise that Mr Biggott was racially prejudiced or that the cartoons were intended to be antiracist (Kendall & Wolff (1949) in Curran (1990)).
'effects vary according to the prestige or evaluations attaching to the communication source', as
demonstrated by Hovland
'the more complete the monopoly of mass communication, the more likely it is that opinion
change in the desired direction will be achieved' - as in totalitarian societies, such as Nazi
Germany, for example
'the salience to the audience of the issues or subject matter will affect the likelihood of influence:
"mass communication can be effective in producing a shift on unfamiliar, lightly felt, peripheral
issues - those that do not much or are not tied to audience predispositions"' (from Berelson and
Steiner (1964)). This is also supported by the recent research of Hügel et al, who confirm other
studies' findings that media agenda-setting effects are limited to unobtrusive issues. (Hügel et al
(1989))
'the selection and interpretation of content by the audience is influenced by existing opinions and
interests and by group norms', as suggested by Hovland's research
'the structure of interpersonal relations in the audience mediates the flow of communication
content and limits and determines whatever effects occur', as suggested by Katz and Lazarsfeld's
research.
Powerful effects
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Schramm (1982) points to three powerful effects which the media can exert
and which are pointed to by the research of the Columbia Bureau:
the media can confer status on organisations, persons and policies. As
Schramm suggests, we probably work on the assumption that if something
really matters then it will be featured in the media; so, if it is featured in the
media, it must really matter;
the media can enforce social norms to an extent. The media can reaffirm
social norms by exposing deviation from the norms to public view - this
connects with British research by Cohen into folk devils and moral panics;
the media can act as social narcotics; sometimes known as the narcotising
dysfunction, this means that because of the enormous amount of
information in the media, media consumers tend not to be energised into
social action, but rather drugged or narcotised into inaction.
Violence and Delinquency
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As mentioned above, the empiricist vein of research in the US
was funded to a large extent by major corporations concerned to
investigate the influence of their advertising and public relations
and by political parties which wished to devise the most effective
campaigns. Another important impetus came from the
government which responded to widespread public concern
about media (especially film and then, later, television) portrayals
of violence and their possible link with juvenile delinquency.
The nature of the assumed links was then and continues to be
unclear and confused.
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Klapper (1960) reduced the assumptions to six
basic forms:
Mass media messages containing the portrayal of crimes
and acts of violence can
 be generally damaging
 be directly imitated
 serve as a school of crime
 in specific circumstances cause otherwise normal
people to engage in criminal acts
 devalue human life
 serve as a safety valve for aggressive impulses
Cultural effects - Marxist approach
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The Marxist view is referred to by a variety of terms.
Fairly common are the terms 'critical' and 'radical'. In
Britain and Europe Marxist approaches to the mass
media and, more generally, to culture as a whole
('cultural studies') were dominant from the mid '60s
to the mid 80s (approximately). Although less
dominant now, Marxism still colours much media
research.
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Generally, the Marxian view of media influence depends on an
understanding and elaboration of the operation of the notion of ideology.
Although perhaps in everyday parlance, the term 'ideology' refers to a set of
(especially 'political') beliefs and values which is not necessarily related to any
particular social class (for example: Marxist ideology, Anglican ideology,
proletarian ideology, Conservative ideology, socialist ideology, free market
ideology), in the Marxian literature the term is generally used in an entirely
negative sense to refer to a supposedly dominant ideology which supports the
interests of the dominant class. Various thinkers (Mannheim, for example)
have examined ideology from a class-neutral point of view, but it is this
crucial notion of domination which is central to the Marxian understanding of
ideology. Ideology is seen as a tool of the dominant classes, misleading and
illusory.
The Frankfurt School
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An important source of the left-wing critique of mass culture is the
Frankfurt School. Developing Marx's view that the dominant class in society
not only owns the means of material production, but also controls the
production of the society's dominant ideas and values (dominant ideology), the
‘critical theorists’ of the Frankfurt School examined the industrialisation of
mass-produced culture and examined the economic imperatives behind what
they dubbed the 'culture industries'. They saw the products of the culture
industries as providing the ideological legitimation of existing capitalist
societies and were the first to recognise the importance of the culture
industries as significant agents of socialisation. Thus, what is sometimes
referred to as 'vulgar Marxism' was developed by the Frankfurt School
theorists beyond its rather mechanistic materialism and economic
determinism to include consideration of culture as a vehicle of ideology, as
well as a critique of science and technology as tools of social domination
within capitalism.
Cultural effects - literary criticism
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This is generally a deeply pessimistic view of the
supposed triviality of mass culture, which is seen as
irredeemably commercial, and the pernicious effects of
media systems, which are seen as permeated by lies and
deceit. It dates back at least as far as Matthew Arnold's
warnings in Culture and Anarchy of 1869 of the
extension of 'philistine culture', which he considered to
be spreading with the development of literacy and
democracy.
The Leavisites
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Perhaps the strongest attack among British critics who present
this view of mass culture are the 1930s to 1960s literary critics,
Frank and Queenie Leavis. They saw the only salvation from
mass culture as lying in the 'Great Tradition' of Shakespeare,
Donne, Wordsworth, Keats and so on. Contemporary America
seemed to fill Frank Leavis with dread:
“.... the vision of our imminent tomorrow in today's America: the
energy, the triumphant technology, the productivity, the high
standard of living and the life-impoverishment - the human
emptiness, emptiness craving alcohol - of one kind or another.”
Leavis FR (1962)