Unlike before, the emergence of mass communication technologies has rendered mass media more pervasive in presence. Increasing concerns towards how contemporary media has also become more concentrated in ownership, more centralized in operations, and more international in reach have culminated in extensive research investigating mass media effects over the audience’ cognition and behavior within not only media studies and mass communication theory, but also linguistics, Cultural Studies, political communication, Critical Discourse Studies, etc.
While each of these theories help sensitize us to important dimensions of media effects both on the micro and the macro level, each still exhibits deficiencies and blind-spots that limit our field of vision and capacity to engage with the multidimensional complexities involved, and hence the need to combine them together in one coherent, though not all-encompassing, exposition. This article introduces the main mass media effects theories, attempting to answer: i) what exactly is meant by media effects? ii) to what extent media affects audiences iii) how do media messages affect us? vi) why mass media affects (or aims at affecting) us? and related questions.
The choice to start with the Third-person Effects Hypothesis arises from its stress on, not the direct effects of mass media, but rather why most, even media literate individuals are still subject to such effects. According to Davison (1983), “individuals who are members of an audience that is exposed to a persuasive communication (whether or not this communication is intended to be persuasive) will expect the communication to have a greater effect on others than on themselves” (p. 3).
Forwarding the question “to what extent does media affects us?”, researchers examining the effects of Nazi propaganda and Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s considered media audiences as vulnerable, passive receivers in the communication process (Hasani, 2006). This viewpoint was later referred to metaphorically through multiple names, most of which are the Hypodermic-needle or Magic Bullet Model of communication as it suggests that mass communication inject ideas, attitudes, and dispositions directly into the behavior of passive, atomized, extremely vulnerable individuals (Simonson, 2012).
In his study of 1940s presidential elections, Lazarsfeld (1944) forwarded the concept of opinion leaders and the two-step flow theory. Opinion leaders point to individuals who pay close attention to media and pass on their interpretation of media messages to others. This concept later gave rise to The two-step Theory, suggesting that media effects are indirect (as opposed to direct) and established through the personal influence of opinion leaders (Lazarsfeld et al. 1948).
Klapper (1960) argued that TV, indeed, played an important role in the lives of people, but it did not dominate them. He viewed Mass communication as a contributory agent, but not the sole cause, in the process of reinforcing existing conditions, arguing that people resist media’ influence by relying on community norms, beliefs, and values (Klapper, 1957, p.458).
It is important to remember that the Limited Media Effects Model was forwarded in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when mass media’s presence as well as development were notably incomparable to the decades that followed. As mass media became more integrated in society, and with the increased interest towards media’s effects within media studies, Cultural Studies, political communication, mass communication theory, linguistics, semiotics, Critical Discourse Studies, and other disciplines, the extent to which individuals’ cognition and behavior was shaped by media messages was, once again, considered more than ‘limited’.
Cultural Studies is primarily concerned with contest and contention within media representations (and misrepresentations). A -justified- premise in the field is that media discourse is heavily infused with the ideologies of its producers; the mission of scholars is, hence, to scrutinized such discourse deploying textual, structural, semiotic, and other methods attempting to deconstruct it to construct the hidden ideologies beneath it.
In this viewpoint, media is seen as (in Althusser’s words) an ideological state apparatus functioning to disseminate certain ideologies through certain discourses with the ultimate goal of “positioning or interpellating subjects within such ideologies (Althusser, 1971), manipulating them (the subjects), and persuading (not convincing) individuals to unquestionably accept such ideologies as commonsense. Ideologies (perpetuated by media), therefore, get naturalized and eventually evolve into common-sense, propping up the status quo by privileging the already-accepted interpretation of reality (Griffin, 2010). And as a result, media contributes to binding society to sovereign power by will rather than by power (see Gramsci’ hegemony).
Herman & Chomsky (1988) hold that he major decisions -within society- are in the hands of a relatively concentrated network of major corporations, conglomerates, investment firms, etc., and that the primary function of mass media is to mobilize public support for such decisions and other special interest that dominate the government and private sector. In this theory, Mass media are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion (Herman & Chomsky, 1988).
Noelle-Neumann (1977) asks, “Why some groups remain silent while others are more vocal in forums of public disclosure?’. She then answers, through her Spiral of Silence Theory that people who believe that they hold a minority viewpoint on a public issue will remain in the background where their communication will be restrained; those who believe that they hold a majority viewpoint will be more encouraged to speak (West & Turner, 2010).
Rather than focusing on how does Media effect the audience, Katz (1973) came up with a new Media and Communication theory called Uses and Gratification. It mainly focus on the fact that people have needs and gratifications which make them choose to consume a type of Media, and that the effect of media messages differ from one person to another. The theory is in contradiction with the Magic Bullet Theory. It Is based on the socio-psychological communication tradition and focuses on communication at the mass media scale. It assumes that audience members are not passive consumers of media. Rather, the audience has power over their media consumption, and aims to understand why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs.
Media dependency theory is expended from uses and gratifications theory and introduced by Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur in 1976. According to the theory, there is an internal link between media, audience and the large social system. Audience’s learning from the real life is limited, so they can use media to get more information to fulfil their needs.
The theory was first developed by Professors Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in 1972 when it was published as a scholarly article in Public Opinion Quarterly. McCombs and Shaw conducted a study on the 1968 US Presidential elections which featured Lyndon Johnson against Richard Nixon. They concluded that news media have a strong impact on the public opinion pertaining to important issues. They found a strong correlation between the most important election issues as reported by the media and the citizens’ perception of the most important issues.
Thus, they argued that media set the agenda for the public opinion because media filter and shape reality rather than reflecting it. Shaping reality is achieved through increasing the salience of particular issues using various techniques such as frequent and prominent coverage, placement of news and articles as well as the size of headings.
In 1998, McCombs argued that the media do not only tell us what to think about, but they also influence how we think about a story. Framing is a process in which some aspects of reality are selected, and given greater emphasis or importance, so that the problem is defined, its causes are diagnosed, moral judgments are suggested and appropriate solutions and actions are proposed (Entman, 1993).
Frames draw attention to some aspects of reality at the expense of others. Defining frames must take into account what is described and what is left out. Framing strategies include selection, omission, emphasis and elaboration. These strategists aim at normalizing and naturalizing events and practices.
Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. In L.Althusser (Ed.), Lenin and philosophy and other essays. New York: MonthlyReview Press.
Ball-Rokeach, S. J., & DeFleur, M. L. (1976). A dependency model ofmass-media effects. Communication Research, 3(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1177/009365027600300101
Bryant, J., & Heath, R. (2003). Human communication theory andresearch: Concepts, contexts, and challenges. Routledge.
Cohen, B. C. (1963). The press and foreign policy. Princeton, N.J:Princeton University Press
CommunicationTheory 5(2):162 – 177.
Cottle, S. (2006). Mediatized conflict: Developments in media andConflict Studies. Open University Press.
Entman, M. R. (1993). Framing : Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journalof Communication,43, 51-58.
Gerbner, G. (1998). Cultivation analysis: An Overview. MassCommunication & Society.
Hall, S. (1973). Encoding and decodingin the television discourse. University of Birmingham.
Klapper, J. (1957). What we know about the effects of mass communication:The brink of hope. Public Opinion Quarterly, 21(4), 453–474. https://doi.org/10.1086/266744
Katz, E., Blumler J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Utilization of masscommunication by the individual. In The uses of mass communications: Current perspectiveson gratifications research. Blumler J. G. & Katz E. (eds.). Sage, BeverlyHills.
Klapper, J. T. (1960). The effects of mass communication. FreePress.
Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1944). Thepeople's choice. Duell, Sloan & Pearce.
Lippmann, W., & Oliver Wendell Holmes Collection (Library ofCongress). (1922). Public opinion. New York: Harcourt, Brace andCompany.
McCombs, M. E., & Shaw,D. (1991). The agenda-setting function of mass media. In D. L. Protess & M.E. McCombs (Eds.), Agenda setting: Readings on media, public opinion, andpolicymaking (pp. 17–26). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. (Reprinted from"Public Opinion Quarterly," Vol. 36, pp. 176-185, 1972, University ofChicago Press).
Noelle-Neumann, E. (1984). The spiral of silence: Public opinion,our social skin. University of Chicago Press of Communication.
Peter, J., Valkenburg, P. M.,& Walther, J. B (2016). Media effects: Theory and research: Annual Reviewof Psychology, 67. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-122414033608
Simonson P. (2012). The Rise and fall of the limited effects model.University of Colorado Boulder.
.svg)
