Chapter 3: Mass Communication Effects

Study

The rise of the mass society was spurred by the industrial revolution. People moved from rural settings to urban areas and changed from a self-sufficient way of life to a reliance on wage paying jobs that allowed them to purchase mass-produced goods and commodities. During this transition, traditional means of information were replaced with the mass media, which increased speculation that the media may have powerful effects on consumers.

Early on, people feared media messages would affect large groups of people in the same, uniform manner. Later research showed that people respond to messages differently. Paul Lazarsfeld's research into the 1940 presidential election showed that undecided voters turned to knowledgeable members in their community, rather than the media, for election information.

Several common effects resulting from media exposure include cognitive, attitudinal, behavioral, and psychological effects. Researchers Marshall McLuhan and Joshua Meyrowitz stressed the significance in the medium as the greatest influence on effect, not the message itself.

Before they can understand the possible effects of media exposure, researchers must first know the makeup of the audience they are examining. Fields of study such as geographics, assessing where people live; demographics, measuring characteristics such as age, gender, and income; and psychographics, considering a mix of demographics and attitudes, are all factors in understanding audiences and how they react to media messages.

Agenda setting theory suggests that issues portrayed as important in the media then become important to the public. Donald Shaw and Maxwell McCombs's study of voters in the 1968 election supported agenda setting theory. The researchers' findings revealed a strong relationship between what the press covered and what the voters considered important.

George Gerbner argued that there was a significant correlation between the amount of television violence people watched and how they viewed the world around them. Gerbner concluded that people who viewed the most television violence had the most distorted views of the real world. Gerbner's research is the basis of the mean world syndrome.

Many observers suggest that specific segments in the media have deep-seeded biases and slant the news toward a liberal or conservative viewpoint. Herbert Gans ignored bias, and focused on the values portrayed in news stories. Through his content analysis, Gans found eight values that categorized the stories he examined: ethnocentrism, altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism, small-town pastoralism, individualism, moderatism, order, and leadership.

Learning Objectives

•  Understand the social changes brought about and influenced by the American industrial revolution.

•  Know the difference between direct and indirect media effects.

•  Know the conclusions from the research conducted on voters in Erie County, Ohio and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

•  Know the four types of common media effects.

•  Understand the uses and gratifications that the media supply.

•  Understand agenda setting theory and the concern over it.

•  Understand George Gerbner's mean world syndrome theory.

•  Understand the arguments that there is both liberal and conservative bias in the media.

•  Know the eight enduring values Herbert Gans found in the news stories he examined.

Review Questions

1. Describe in detail the results of Paul Lazarsfeld's 1940 study of voters in Ohio.


2. Provide examples of cognitive, attitudinal, behavioral, and psychological media effects.

3. What is an opinion leader?

4. What is the focus of the critical/cultural model?


5. What are the three major social functions of the media according to Harold Lasswell?

6. What is the difference between the resonance and competitive campaign models?

7. What is cultivation analysis and how does it pertain to the mean world syndrome?