Mass Media Effects Models
A Brief History
• Concern over the effects of media can be traced back as far as the
fifth century BC (Perloff, 2009), long before what we now think of as
“media” came into modern parlance.
A brief History
• Although scholars who were interested in the effects of media on
audiences came from disciplines such as sociology, psychology,
education, and political science, the commonality of their questions
drew them together, at least topically if not always in terms of
method.
A brief History
• Overall, the decades of the 1920s and 1930s saw an emergence of
what we now think of as mass communication, although, at the time,
the questions were still studied in other academic disciplines.
A brief History
• First, propaganda as a concept was identified, in part due to wartime
messages, and social concerns arose about it.
• Second, media such as newspapers and radio expanded in terms of their
reach, being adopted into homes at an ever-increasing rate, which
increased concerns about the effects of these media on the
impressionable minds of children.
• Third, systematic methods of data collection and various measurement
tools were developed.
• Fourth, statistical techniques for analyzing large sets of data were
developed, allowing for a means to deal with the large quantities of data
that emerged from the former three developments.
A brief History
• Despite the intersection of these many topics and methods of inquiry,
mass communication itself did not begin to cohere as a field until the
mid-1940s, when its greatest champion and administrative father,
Wilbur Schramm, called attention to it. Schramm sought to establish
mass communication as an independent and legitimate academic
field with a firm grounding in the behavioral sciences.
What Do We Mean by Media
Effects?
• In any case, mass communication was defined as a single, typically
powerful source, delivering a message created by that source or its
designees, over a particular channel with a large, heterogeneous
audience, allowing for minimal feedback (Pearce, 2009).
What Do We Mean by Media
Effects?
• The expansion and convergence of media not only render the term
“mass communication” itself obsolete, but make the study of the
effects of media more variable, complex, and interesting.
What Do We Mean by Media
Effects?
• “if the term “mass media” still enjoys widespread currency, this is
more by force of habit than anything else; a convenient way of
marking out an area of study rather than a means of stating how that
area should be studied or of outlining assumptions from which
research should proceed.” (Bennett, 1982)
What Do We Mean by Media
Effects?
• Instead, the current focus must, at a minimum, be on media effects,
but really should focus on media processes and effects.
What Do We Mean by Media
Effects?
• Although Potter and Bolls address media effects research as
examining changes in perception, attitude, and behavior, they
conceptualize and then categorize actual changes or effects as
occurring in one of four ways: a gradual long-term change in
magnitude; a reinforcement of a perception, attitude, or behavior; an
immediate shift; or a short-term fluctuation change.
What Do We Mean by Media
Effects?
• Despite problems with conceptual issues regarding the nature of
effects, various models and theories of effects have emerged in the
past seven decades.
Sociological-Level Theories
Cultivation Theory
• At its inception, cultivation theory was developed to help understand
the consequences of living in a cultural environment dominated by
television (Morgan et al., 2009).
Sociological-Level Theories
Cultivation Theory
• Although some of the assumptions and methods of the earliest
cultivation research have been heavily criticized, the main premise,
that exposure to television influences our perceptions of the real
world, has been studied and supported more than perhaps any other
theory in the area of media effects (Nabi & Oliver, 2010).
Sociological-Level Theories
Cultivation Theory
• Cultivation theory was initially tested using a two-stage approach.
First, Gerbner and his team conducted content analyses, or message
system analysis; Second, cultivation analysis was conducted using
survey research to examine the relationship between individuals’
amount of television exposure and their perceptions of the real world
regarding the message.
Sociological-Level Theories
Cultivation Theory
Critiques of several of the assumptions and critiques of the methods
applied by the theory.
• Initially, Gerbner argued that because the main themes of television
were so consistent across programs and so persistent, actual program
content did not need to be taken into consideration (Gerbner, 1972).
• As a result, early studies examined only how much television an
individual watched and not the content or preferences of that
individual.
Sociological-Level Theories
Cultivation Theory
• A second criticism was that cultivation theory did not emphasize the
importance of individual differences and environmental effects in
Gerbner’s earliest research.
• A third criticism of the earliest research was methodological, or more
precisely, statistical. Early research reliably found significant
correlations between television exposure and perceptions of crime;
however, correlation does not equal causality.
Sociological-Level Theories
Social Learning Theory
• Like cultivation theory, social or observational learning theory
(Bandura & Walters, 1963) was initially conceived of as an approach
to understanding human learning that focused predominantly on
environmental features and stimuli that might encourage imitation.
Sociological-Level Theories
Social Learning Theory
• Based on basic principles of socialization that emphasized the
importance of parents, teachers, peers, clergy, and other socializing
agents in the environment in comprehending how learning occurs,
social learning theory had its beginnings (Bandura & Walters, 1963) at
almost the same time that television was becoming a staple in many
homes.
Sociological-Level Theories
Social Learning Theory
• Decades of research have demonstrated that exposure to various
media, including television (Mares & Woodard, 2012) and video
games (Sherry et al., 2006), could teach everything from prosocial
behavior to sexual behaviors and aggression.
Sociological-Level Theories
The Third-Person Effect
• The third-person effect is not a well-articulated theory, not even really
a model. Instead, it is an extremely robust phenomenon that garners
so much attention in part because it is found so reliably.
Sociological-Level Theories
The Third-Person Effect
• Consider the cascading effects of the third-person phenomenon: it
posits that one of the strongest influences of media is that we assume
they affect others. In doing so, we then indirectly influence our
perceptions of others’ behaviors and attitudes. In other words, we
think others are imitating or conforming to media messages.
Sociological-Level Theories
The Third-Person Effect
• Critics of the third-person effect have suggested that the
phenomenon is an artifact of the method used to assess it.
Sociological-Level Theories
The Third-Person Effect
• Although the third-person effect is presumed to influence our
attitudes and behaviors via perceived norms, the data are somewhat
varied in terms of actual effects.
Sociological-Level Theories
Agenda Setting and Framing
• Agenda setting and framing are two theoretical approaches to the
study of mass media that grew almost exclusively out of an interest in
the role of news media in covering political issues.
Sociological-Level Theories
Agenda Setting and Framing
• Agenda setting focuses on the way in which news media, with its
attentionto particular topics (and concomitant neglect of others), can
influence the perceived salience of a given topic and thus influence
the public agenda (McCombs & Reynolds, 2009).
Sociological-Level Theories
Agenda Setting and Framing
• Unlike agenda setting, which focuses on the effect of mass media on
what audiences think about, framing theory focuses on the way in
which media presents a given story and offers a particular frame for it.
Cognitive-level theories
• Sociological theories largely dominated the study of media effects
into the 1980s. At that time, scholars started to become more
interested in the processes that led to media effects.
Cognitive-level theories
• Cognitive theories focus on the psychological processes that are going
on within the individual that explain why the particular effect is likely
to occur.
Cognitive-level theories
Priming
• Priming theory, broadly defined, is the “short-term impact of
exposure to the media on subsequent behavior” (Roskos-Ewoldsen et
al., 2009). Cognitive and social psychologists have used priming
experimental methodologies since the early 1970s to study how
humans process information and how that remembered information
affects our behavior (Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2007).
Cognitive-level theories
Some theories of memory, such as network models of memory, assume
that information is stored in memory in the form of nodes and that
each node represents a unique idea (e.g., there is a “Batman” node in
memory).
Cognitive-level theories
Priming
• Once a related node is activated (in this example, “The Joker”), it then
requires less additional activation for it to fire. This means that the
concept has been primed.
Cognitive-level theories
Priming
There are three important characteristics of priming. First, the effect of
a prime dissipates with time. Typically, the effects of a prime on social
judgments fade within 20 to 30 minutes (but may last up to an hour;
Carpentier et al., 2008;
Cognitive-level theories
Priming
• Second, primes tend to have stronger effects when a situation is more
ambiguous.
Cognitive-level theories
Priming
• Unfortunately, the research on media priming currently is disjointed
and there has been little focus on understanding the cognitive
mechanisms and processes underlying the media priming
phenomenon.
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
A schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and
interpret information. We use schemas because they allow us to take
shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of information that is
available in our environment.
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
• The media can have long-term effects on people’s thoughts and
behaviors by creating schemas. A schema is a collection of knowledge
about some concept that is stored in long-term memory (Fiske &
Taylor 1991; Schank & Abelson, 1977).
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
• Unlike the network models of priming where knowledge is
represented as a single concept, schema involves more complex
representations of knowledge.
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
• Often, the metaphor is used that a node within a network is like a
dictionary definition, whereas a schema is more like an encyclopedia
entry. Schemas include information about typical elements of the
concept, the relationship of the concept to other concepts, and other
pertinent knowledge.
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
• Schemas are learned both through a person’s own experiences with
his/her real-life environment as well as by exposure to the media.
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
• Schemas can provide a mechanism for explaining the effects of media
violence on long-term behavior, because schemas influence what
people attend to in their environment, how what they see is
interpreted, what they remember, how people judge behavior, and
their actual behavior.
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
• Despite the widespread use of schema as an explanatory device by
media effects scholars, the concept of schema has been heavily
criticized.
Cognitive-level theories
Schema
First, schema theory has often been criticized for being vague.
Second, to the extent that predictions can be made with schema
theory, the predictions concerning the influence of schemas on
memory have not been supported.
Third, schemas are a rather static representation of knowledge, which
may be inadequate for explaining how people comprehend and
interpret media stories (Roskos-Ewoldsen et al., 2007).
Cognitive-level theories
Mental Models
Mental models is a theory drawn primarily from cognitive psychology
that sees cognitive processing of information to consist of abstract
mental models or templates including cognitive representations of
events, situations, people, concepts, settings, and interrelations
involved.
Cognitive-level theories
Mental Models
Like priming and script theories, mental models are grounded in the
premise of cognitive processing occurring in semantically related
networks.
Cognitive-level theories
• Sociological-level theories that focus on media as a part of the social
environment that influences our perceptions, attitudes, and
behaviors.
• Cognitive-level theories focus more distinctly on the way we process
media and how that processing then affects outcomes.
Arousal-based models
Excitation Transfer
Arousal-based models
Excitation Transfer
Arousal-based models
Excitation Transfer
• Developed by Zillmann (1983), excitation transfer (ET) focuses on the
role of arousal in increasing aggression after exposure to media
violence.
Arousal-based models
Excitation Transfer
• Specifically, ET argues that separate from the extent to which
depictions of violence, per se, may influence aggressive outcomes, the
arousal that results from exposure to violent media can explain
variance observed in aggressive response following exposure to
different levels of media violence.