 |
 |
Mass media: effects research
|
|||
|
Mass media: effects research
|
This introduction provides a brief overview of the principal 'traditions' in effects research. Bear in mind that it's a somewhat artificial approach as the various 'traditions' overlap with one another. However, it should help you to understand what are the main characteristics of each approach. Note, incidentally, that the term 'effects research' is often used solely to refer to the, predominantly American, empiricist approach. Here, I have decided to lump all the various approaches under the heading of 'effects research,' since they are all concerned, in one way or another, with the effects the mass media might have.
For a very thorough account of the various schools of thought, see Denis McQuail's Mass Communication Theory: an Introduction (McQuail (1984)).
As you read through this section you will find links to more detailed sections on aspects of each of the traditions outlined.
The sections on the different research traditions only give you an overview, so it's worthwhile also taking a look through the terms listed in the glossary.
The hypodermic needle model
Empiricist tradition
Cultural effects
Uses and gratifications
Recent developments
|
|
|||
|
Mass media: effects research
|
Sometimes also referred to, after Schramm, as the Silver Bullet Model (1982), this is the idea that the mass media are so powerful that they can 'inject' their messages into the audience, or that, like a magic bullet, they can be precisely targeted at an audience, who irresistibly fall down when hit by the bullet. In brief, it is the idea that the makers of media messages can get us to do whatever they want us to do.
In that simple form, this is a view which has never been seriously held by media theorists. It is really more of a folk belief than a model, which crops up repeatedly in the popular media whenever there is an unusual or grotesque crime, which they can somehow link to supposedly excessive media violence or sex and which is then typically taken up by politicians who call for greater control of media output.
If it applies at all, then probably only in the rare circumstances where all competing messages are rigorously excluded, for example in a totalitarian state where the media are centrally controlled.
As you read through the various approaches, however, you will find that a rather weaker version of the hypodermic needle model underlies many of them, notably the 'cultural effects' approaches.
detailed information on the Hypodermic Needle Model
Empiricist tradition
Cultural effects
Uses and gratifications
|
|
|||
|
Mass media: effects research - empiricism
|
It probably wouldn't be correct to say that the researchers in the empiricist (or empirical) tradition are empiricists in the strictest sense in which it is used in philosophy. Their approach to the study of mass media effects is close to what we might expect to be the methods of the natural sciences (physics, chemistry, biology etc.). It is characterised by counting and categorising audience members and by the attempted measurement of direct effects of communication on those audiences.
These entirely practical concerns are what we might well expect from university departments in the USA, where this tradition has been most prominent. University research in the States has long been funded by business and by political parties who have given the university departments quite specific briefs. The sponsors of such research are quite naturally concerned to know whether they are fully exploiting the market or whether their newspapers, movies, TV programmes are failing to exploit some sectors; whether their party propaganda really is encouraging the electorate to vote for them; whether their advertising really is getting more people to eat their beans and so on.
The impetus to try to find answers to these essentially practical questions has been strongest in the USA, where such research has been mostly client-funded, and it is often thought of as being virtually an American tradition. However, there has also been much research of this kind in Britain and other European countries.
In very broad terms, there has been a progression from the notion that the mass media have strong effects (as presupposed in the hypodermic needle model - assumed in both the 'literary criticism' vein of the Leavisites as well as in the 'critical' approaches of the Frankfurt School (see the section on 'cultural effects')) to the view, resulting largely from American empiricist research, that the media have fairly weak effects - the 'limited effects paradigm' - and back again to the view that their effects might be quite strong after all (in the British and continental traditions of 'cultural studies'). It might be worth considering whether the Americans' definition of effects wasn't limited in the first place. If you're looking for measurable effects, you're likely to be looking for something easily measurable in the short term, whereas strong effects may only be apparent over the long term. So, could it be that if you start with a 'limited definition' of effects, then you're bound to end up with 'limited effects'?
Like much of the research in the Uses and Gratifications vein, the American tradition of research has been located within a pluralist view of the mass media. Because the American research employed a very simple view of society's structure and of the nature of media messages, the media were generally seen as being reflective of society in a fairly unproblematic way. In a democracy, it was assumed, all social groups have equal access to media output; consequently, no group is in danger of having its interests disregarded or under-represented.
detailed information on the Empiricist tradition
The hypodermic needle model
Cultural effects
Uses and gratifications
Recent developments
|
|
|||
|
Mass media: effects research - uses and gratifications
|
In the fairly early days of effects research, it became apparent that the assumed 'hypodermic' effect was not borne out by detailed investigation. A number of factors appeared to operate to limit the effects of the mass media. Katz and Lazarsfeld, for example, pointed to the influence of group membership (see Two-step flow) and Hovland identified a variety of factors ranging from group membership to the audience's interest in the subject of the message (see Hovland).
As a result of this evidence, attention began to turn from the question of 'what the media do to the audience' to 'what the audience do with the media'. Herta Herzog was one of
the earliest researchers in this area. She undertook (as part of Paul Lazarsfeld's massive programme of research) to investigate what gratifications radio listeners derived from daytime serials, quizzes and so on. Katz summarises the starting point of this kind of research quite neatly:
... even the most potent of the mass media content cannot ordinarily influence an individual who has 'no use' for it in the social and psychological context in which he lives. The 'uses' approach assumes that people's values, their interests, their associations, their social rôles, are pre-potent, and that people selectively 'fashion' what they see and hear to these interests
(Katz (1959) in McQuail (1971))
Researchers in the uses and gratifications vein therefore see the audience as active . It is part of the received wisdom of media studies that audience members do indeed actively make conscious and motivated choices amongst the various media messages available.
Like much of the research in the Empricist vein, the American tradition of Uses and Gratfications research has been located within a pluralist view of the mass media. Within that context, especially where news coverage is concerned, the conceptualization of the media as the fourth estate is particularly significant.
detailed information on the uses and gratifications approach
The hypodermic needle model
Empiricist tradition
Cultural effects
Recent developments
|
