Unit 1 - Media Analysis

key issues in media effects

timing, duration, valence, change, and intention

timing

(immediate vs. long term) of course media exert immediate effects, but they also exert influences on people over the long term, when it takes a long time before we can see any evidence of an effect

duration

(temporary vs. permanent) some effects last s short time, then they go away, while other effects are permanent

valence

(negative vs. positive) there are times when a particular effect can be either negative or positive depending on the context

change

(difference vs. no difference) when we think of effects, we typically think of change in behavior or a change in attitude. If there is no change, some people argue that there is o effect. But some effects show up as no change, and perhaps they are the most powerful media effects.

intention

(or non-intention) there are many effects that occur even though the producers of those media messages (of violent movies), as well as the consumers, did not intend them to occur

media effects theories

cultivation, third person, agenda setting, uses and gratifications, priming, and habituation

cultivation theory

was created by George Gerbner in 1969 in response to his criticism that media effects research had been focusing only on short term laboratory effects and ignoring the long-term effects that were gradually taking place over the course of a person’s everyday life.

this theory suggests that media makes people think that the world they see on TV applied to the real world

third person theory

was first observed by W. Phillips Davison in 1983 who was examining patterns across the results of public opinions polls and noticed that typically people felt that the media exerted a strong effect on other people but not themselves.

this theory suggests that people overestimate the effect of media messages on other people and underestimate the effect on themselves

agenda setting theory

was provided by McCombs and Shaw in 1972 in their analysis of the 1968 campaign for president.

this theory suggests that media has the ability to influence public’s perception of which issues are most important

second level agenda setting theory

the media also tells us what to think about. media messages do not just emphasize issues but they present informational elements about those issues, and those informational elements tell us what to think about about the issue

spiral of silence theory

Noelle Neumann in 1974 created this theory after observing patterns of news coverage in Western Europe.

when the media avoids covering an issue, people typically will not express their beliefs on that issue even if those beliefs are very important to them

uses and gratification theory

Rosengren in 1974 argued that the key idea of this theory was that individual differences among audience members intervene between media and any effects

when people actively choose media to satisfy specific needs/wants

priming theory

Leonard Berkowitz in 1965 conducted early testing that showed that media portrayals contain symbols, and when these symbols appear in a person’s life, those symbols cue the person' to remember the media portrayal

focusses on how one set of information can affect the interpretation of a subsequent set in a person’s memory

habituation theory

when the media present the same pattern over and over again until those stimuli begin to lose their power to elicit the same degree of reflex over time