Transcript Media Impact - Professor Leach

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Video Game Trailer
 Has anyone played this
game?
 What did you think?
MEDIA IMPACT:
Understanding Research and Effects
Chapter Outline
History
Theory and Research
Controversies
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
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Early Studies
 Concerns about media impact are as old as the media
themselves.
▪ 15th century church leaders thought printed bibles would
corrupt society
▪ Parents felt the same about the first novels.
▪ Consistent research into media effects did not begin until
the 1920s.
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
 Propaganda
▪ Information spread to promote a doctrine or cause.
 During WWI propaganda had been so blatant and
useful to both sides
▪ People feared media would “brainwash” an innocent
public and influence them in ways they did not realize.
▪ Do you believe the media is powerful enough to do this
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Payne Fund Studies
▪ 13 separate 1929 investigations into the influence movies had on the
behavior of children.
 Modeling (Payne Fund Study)
▪ The imitation of behavior from media examples
▪ Parent Concern
▪ Children may pick up antisocial habits from media
consumption
▪ Video Clip
Game
Devin Moore
▪ Do you think violent games like GTA Increase Violence in Society?
 Why/Why not
 Game Demo
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
Are these examples of positive or negative media? Why?
 Content analyses (Payne Fund Study)
 Research where observers analyze media subject matter
▪ (TV, Magazines, Radio, Web, Newspaper)
▪ Has shown that the vast majority of movies dealt with crime, sex, and
love.
 Laboratory experiment (Payne Fund Study)
▪ Research where variables are isolated and observed in a controlled
environment
 Survey methods (Payne Fund Study)
▪ Research that relies on questionnaires to collect data
▪ Administering surveys to young movie viewers, parents and teachers,
▪ Asking teens to recall effects that early movie viewing had on them.
▪ Results showed movie viewing was harmful to a child’s health,
 contributed to an erosion of moral standards and had a negative
influence on the child’s conduct.
 Payne Fund studies
▪ Instrumental in developing public support for the 1930 Motion
Picture Production code
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
 People’s Choice study
▪ Examined how media affected voter behavior in the 1940 presidential election
between FDR and Wendell Wilkie.
 Random sample
▪ Method to ensure members of population have equal chance of being selected
 Selective exposure
▪ Process by which people seek out messages that are consistent with their
attitudes
▪ Where do you get your News, What is your favorite TV show, What type of
movies do you like?
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
 People’s Choice
study
 Selective perception
▪ Process by which people
with different attitudes
interpret the same messages
differently
 Selective retention
▪ Process where people with
different views remember
the same event differently
 Peoples Choice Study
▪
▪
▪
▪
Media strengthened attitudes already held by voters –
Presidential campaigns persuaded only 8% to switch sides.
Also
Voters in all categories received much information and influence directly
from other people.
▪ Opinion leaders
▪ Certain well-informed members of families and neighborhoods who
then created a
▪ Two-step flow
▪ Process where media effects travel through opinion leaders
▪ From radio and print to the opinion leaders and from them to the less
active sections of the population.
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
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Studies into the Effects of Television
 Television in the Lives of Our Children study
 Thousands of school children and their parents were interviewed,
surveyed and tested
▪ On how children used TV and how that use affected those children.
 The study found
▪ Some TV is harmful for some children under some conditions.
▪ For other children under the same, or other, conditions TV may be beneficial.
 For most children, under most conditions, most TV is probably
neither harmful nor particularly beneficial.
 What do you think? Do you agree that TV is mostly neutral
▪ Or does it have a more positive or negative effect?
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
 Television and violence
▪ National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence
▪ Partly dealt with media and TV
▪ Commission found that
▪ Desensitization - Effect of long-term exposure to mass-media portrayals of
violence.
▪ Prevented onlookers from helping victims of crimes
▪ Video Clip
▪ Does more real violence occur between strangers or between
family members, friends or acquaintances?
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
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What is a Theory
 Set of related statements that seek to explain and predict behavior.
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Effects Models
 Powerful effects model,
▪ Predicted that media will have an immediate and potent influence on their
audiences. (Youth acting bad after violent movie)
 Minimal effects model
▪ Predicts that media will have little influence on behavior.
▪ People not changing voting behavior
 Researchers today accept
▪ Mixed effects model,
▪ Sometimes media will have powerful effects,
▪ Sometimes minimal effects,
▪ Sometimes - depending on a variety of factors - a
mixture of both.
 Mixed-effects model makes the most
sense.
▪ We know that an effective ad can make a
product fly off shelves, and that a news report
can fuel a riot.
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
 Theories
▪ Bullet theory (A.K.A. Hypodermic needle theory)
▪ Implies that media effects flowed directly from media to individual –
 like a bullet.
▪ From movie to viewer, from book to reader
▪ Multi-step flow,
▪ Media effects travel from high level opinion leaders to lower level
opinion leaders to us.
▪ Politicians to community leaders to clergy to public
▪ There is really no general, simple answer to the question of how
media affects behavior. The best answer usually is “It depends.”
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
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Social Science Perspectives
 Social learning theory, aka modeling theory,
▪ Assumption that people learn to behave by observing others,
including those portrayed in the mass media.
 Social modeling is an important part of socialization,
▪ Where expectations, norms, and values of society are learned
▪ What is an example of a person that is “cool”
▪ How did you learn what “cool is”
 Social learning theory suggests
▪ Stereotypical depictions of minorities and women teach others to
react to them as stereotypes and teach these groups to behave in the
ways they are depicted.
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Individual differences theory
▪ How media users with different characteristics are affected
in different ways by the mass media.
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Diffusion of innovations theory
▪
1.
2.
Five types of people have different levels of willingness to accept new
ideas from the media:
Innovators tend to be politically liberal extroverts who are venturesome
and eager to try new ideas.
Early adopters make quick but informed choices.
Diffusion of innovations theory
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Five types of people have different levels of willingness to accept
new ideas from the media:
1.
2.
-
3.
4.
5.
Early majority makes careful, deliberate decisions.
Late majority tends to be skeptical.
Laggards tend to be conservative, traditional and resistant to any type of
change.
 George Gerbner’s cultivation theory predicts that over time,
media use will “cultivate” a particular view of the world within
users.
 Researchers in the 1970s found that agenda-setting,
 Not telling people what to think, but telling them what to think
about , was the main effect of media.
Homicide report
2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved
 Cumulative effects theory
▪ Holds that media messages are driven home through redundancy, have
profound effects over time, and do, in fact, tell us how to think.
 Uses and gratification theory
▪ Based on the ways in which consumers actively choose and use media to
meet their own needs.