Transcript Media Effects

Chapter 15
Media Effects and Cultural
Approaches to Research
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Should Life Imitate Culture?
Since the emergence of popular
music, movies, television, and
video games as influential mass
media, the relationship between
make-believe stories and real-life
imitation has drawn a great deal
of attention.
Researching the Effect of Mass
Media on Individuals and Society

Media effects research


Attempts to understand, explain,
and predict the effects of mass
media on individuals and society
Cultural studies

Focuses on how people make
meaning, articulate values,
comprehend reality, and arrange
experiences through cultural
symbols
Early Media Research Methods
Propaganda analysis
 Public opinion research
 Social psychology studies
 Marketing research

Early Theories of Media Effects

Hypodermic-needle model


Media shoot effects directly into
unsuspecting victims.
Minimal-effects model

Researchers argued that people
generally engage in selective
exposure and selective retention
with regard to the media.
Early Theories of Media Effects
(cont.)

Uses and gratifications model

Researchers studied the ways in
which people used the media to
satisfy various emotional or
intellectual needs.
Conducting Media Effects
Research

Private or proprietary research
Generally conducted for a
business, a corporation, or a
political campaign
 Usually applied research


Public research
Usually takes place in academic
and government settings
 More often theoretical information

Conducting Media Effects
Research (cont.)

Most research today employs
the scientific method.
Identify the research problem.
 Review existing research.
 Develop a working hypothesis.
 Determine an appropriate method.
 Collect information or relevant
data.
 Analyze results.
 Interpret the implications.

Conducting Media Effects
Research (cont.)

Scientific method relies on:
Objectivity
 Reliability
 Validity


Hypotheses

Tentative general statements that
predict the influence of an
independent variable on a
dependent variable
Conducting Media Effects
Research (cont.)

Experiments
Test whether a hypothesis is true
 Utilize an experimental group and
a control group


Survey research


Collecting and measuring data
from a group of respondents
Content analysis

Studies specific media messages
Contemporary Media Effects
Theories

Social learning theory

Four-step process
 Attention
 Retention
 Motor
reproduction
 Motivation

Agenda-setting

Media set the agenda for major
topics of discussion.
Contemporary Media Effects
Theories (cont.)

Cultivation effect


Heavy viewing of television leads
individuals to perceive reality in ways
consistent with portrayals on television.
Spiral of silence

Those whose views are in the minority
will keep their views to themselves for
fear of social isolation.
Contemporary Media Effects
Theories (cont.)

Third-person effect
People believe others are more
affected by media messages than
they are themselves.
 Instrumental in censorship

Evaluating Research on Media
Effects

Media effects research is inconsistent
and often flawed.


Continues to resonate because it offers
an easy-to-blame social cause for realworld violence
Limits on research


Funding
Inability to address how media affect
communities and social institutions
Early Developments in Cultural
Studies Research

Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci
Investigated how mass media
support existing hierarchies
 Examined how popular culture and
sports distract people from
redressing social injustices
 Addressed the subordinate status
of particular social groups

Early Developments in Cultural
Studies Research (cont.)

Frankfurt School

Three inadequacies of traditional
scientific approaches
 Reduce
large “cultural questions” to
measurable and “verifiable categories”
 Depended on “an atmosphere of
rigidly enforced neutrality”
 Refused to place “the phenomena of
modern life” in a “historical and moral
context”
Conducting Cultural Studies
Research

Textual analysis


Audience studies


Highlights the close reading and
interpretation of cultural messages
Subject being researched is the audience
for the text.
Political economy studies

Examines interconnections among
economic interests, political power, and
how that power is used
Cultural Studies’ Theoretical
Perspectives

The public sphere
A space for critical public debate
 Advanced by German philosopher
Jürgen Habermas
 Society in England and France in
late seventeenth century and
eighteenth century created spaces
(coffeehouses, pubs) for public
discourse.

Cultural Studies’ Theoretical
Perspectives (cont.)

Communication as culture

James Carey argued that
communication is a cultural ritual.
 Described
it as “a symbolic process
whereby reality is produced,
maintained, repaired, and
transformed”

Leads researchers to consider
communication’s symbolic process
as culture itself
Evaluating Cultural Studies
Research

Cultural studies research



Involves interpreting written and visual
“texts” or artifacts as symbolic
representations that contain cultural,
historical, and political meaning
Affords the freedom to broadly interpret
the impact of mass media
Like media effects research, it has its
limits.
Media Research and Democracy

Academics in media studies
charged with increased
specialization and use of jargon
Alienates nonacademics
 Many researchers isolated from life
outside of the university
 Larger public often excluded from
access to the research process

Media Research and Democracy
(cont.)

Public intellectuals based on
campuses help carry on the
conversations of society and
culture, actively circulating the
most important new ideas of the
day and serving as models for
how to participate in public life.