POLI 311 - Reality and Mediated Reality

Massive Effects Model

In mass communication and media studies, the effects model (often referred to as mass media effects models) studies how media content—such as television, news, film, and digital platforms—shapes audience thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors

Minimal Effects Model

The minimal effects model (also known as the minimal effects hypothesis or limited effects theory) is a concept in political science and mass communication stating that political campaigns and mass media messages rarely persuade or convert voters on their own.

Argues that media only persuades if two conditions are met: people receive the message and they accept it

Agenda-setting

The process of choosing what to cover and what not to cover. It is not persuasion, but focusing the public’s attention on some particular issue at the expense of others, without making deliberate effort to tell it what to think. A critique to minimal agenda setting

eg: Fox News choosing to spend more time discussing migrant caravan

Priming

When media changes the evaluative weight of some considerations over others. Instead, it just make some factor more important than it was instead of convincing somebody to judge one thing or the other

eg: the news heavily emphasizes a specific issue, viewers automatically use that issue as the primary benchmark when evaluating a politician’s performance and show how media can alter how people make decisions

Framing

The way the public makes sense of these alternatives. frames an isssue by encouraging readers/listeners to emphasize certain considerations above others when evaluating that issue, depending on the priority given to various considerations causing a framing effect

eg: A newspaper editorial defending a hate group rally in terms of free speech rights may move readers to favor allowing the rally by heightening the evaluative “weight” of speech concerns

AND

eg: WaPo framed the desclation of the Israel war in a netural way whereas Fox frames it as Biden slacking off on the fight bc of pressure from the left

The difference between agenda-setting, priming and framing

 The distinction between agenda-setting and priming is, in theory, that only the former provides new information.

The distinction between agenda-setting and framing is, again, that in framing no new information is provided; instead, frames offer a perspective to organize information that people already have.

The key distinction between framing in priming is mostly emphasis:

 Those studying priming generally assume that evaluations will be made in response to whatever criterion is primed such that it floats to the the “top of the head”

 Those who study framing are generally more interested in the effect of competition between competing “frames” or ways of thinking about a piece of information.

 Ultimately, any piece of political media

Selective exposure

But another possibility is that people simply choose whatever source of news lines up with their predispositions

• People are free to watch/read what they want

• Media companies adapt their ideological message to their target market

Negativity bias

People are much more likely to engage and interact with negative content than positive ones

R-A-S Model

R-A-S model. This model imagines the process by which a political message/consideration is absorbed into a person’s mind, and by which it ultimately becomes part of an expressed opinion.

 Reception: The likelihood of a person’s receiving a political message, which in turn depends on various psychological predispositions (ie political interest), as well as socio-economic (ie technology access) and social (ie friendship networks) factors. Basically, anything that might alter the probability of somebody being exposed to it.

 Acceptance: The likelihood that a person will accept the message once it has been received. This depends on, among other things, whether it is consonant or dissonant with respect to what he/she already believed, and how rigid (or constrained) the existing beliefs are.

 Sampling: The likelihood that this message/consideration, once it has been accepted, will be salient (at the “top of his/her head”) at the moment somebody asks them. This depends on the extent and nature of media coverage (conditional on reception, of course), and subsumes priming and framing effects

Media effects on attitudes and behaviours

 Media effects on attitudes and behaviors are not monolithic and powerful as once feared

 Instead, the effects are subtle and highly contextual, but still meaningful

 It is hard to change peoples’ minds about an issue, but they can be told what to think about (agenda-setting), how important various considerations ought to be (priming), and how to think about it

 Media can also reinforce a prior belief

 Many of these trends are exacerbated by broader developments in the media environment

 The potential effect of any media message must be weighed in terms of the likelihood it will be received, accepted, and then sampled