MCM 733: Communication Theory Chapters 6, 7, 8. Ch 6: Rise of Limited-Effects … Orson Welles: The...

MCM 733:Communication Theory

Chapters 6, 7, 8

Ch 6: Rise of Limited-Effects …

• Orson Welles: The War of the Worlds– Only certain personality types were affected: • Emotionally insecure, phobic, lacking self-confidence,

fatalists

– Led social scientists to investigate these “narrow effects”? If it was true for WotW, then could it be true for all media – limited effects was born.

– Tied in well with fears surrounding propaganda– Neo-Marxist (critical-cultural) and LimEff battled


• LE was developed by methodologists in 40s & 50s

• We focus on Paul Lazarsfeld and Carl Hovland


• Lazarsfeld & Hovland– Did not assume the power of media, wanted to

prove it empirically– if media’s power could be understood then it

could be controlled or harnessed for good.– Believed that the society with the best scientists

would also have the best democracy– Found that Media influences were much less

powerful than SES (socio-economic status)


• Factors that led to limited effects– The refinement of and respect for empirical

methods.– Successful branding of mass society /propaganda

models as unscientific– Big commercial potential– Strong gov’t & private backers (NSF, Rockefeller)– Media corps started their own research depts– Gained interdisciplinary acceptance.


• Two-Step Flow Theory– An inductive theory: • data/observations first, generalizations second

– Led to middle-range theory: • empirical generalizations based on a empirical facts

– Unlike “grand” social TOE’s: Mass Society/Propaganda


• Presidential election of 1940 FDR vs Wendell Willkie• One of the largest LE studies ever• Chose Sandusky, Ohio for its averageness• Chose a panel of 600 who were interviewed seven times

from May until November• Used a long questionnaire that focused on speech

effectiveness (radio was prevalent mode of Mass Comm)


• Findings were telling because they led to voter typing– Early Deciders: chose a candidate in May and never

changed– Waverers: chose one candidate then were undecided or

switched, but ended up voting for their first choice– Converts: chose one candidate but then switched and

voted for his opponent (ideological conversion)– Crystallizers: did not choose early, but choose by e-day.

Their choice were predictable along certain vectors (party affiliation, farm or not, etc.)


• These findings directly conflicted with propaganda theory predictions

• Lazarsfeld concluded that mass media reinforced the voters’ choices.

• People were not converted by media. Rather they were “cross-pressured” (i.e. religion, friendship bonds, kinship)


• Generalizations that Lazarsfeld came up with– Gatekeepers: people who screen messages and

pass on those messages and help other share their views

– Opinion leaders: people who pass info on to opinion followers

– Opinion followers: passive receivers of info from opinion leaders

– Two step flow: message pass from media to opinion leaders then to opinion followers


• Limitations to Lazarsfeld Method– Surveys are not “real time”– Surveys are expensive and cumbersome– Very conservative in terms of media effects– Produced contradictory results (i.e. was contextual to

type of info transmitted)– Surveys are crude: only take a gross measurement– Surveys omit important things because the researcher

must choose what to include– Theory ignores the effects of historical context at the

time.


• Great Contributions of Limited Effects Theory– Media rarely directly influence individuals– There is a two-step flow of media influence– By adulthood, people have developed strong

group commitments– Media effects, when they do occurs, are modest

and isolated.


• Motivations for Attitude-Change theory– Success of Nazi propaganda challenges American’s

optimism about the people’s wisdom– The military needed methods to quickly induce

bonding among the diverse thousands who signed up from varied geo and cultural locations

– Psychologists saw a readily available and controlled subject pool.


• Karl Hovland used controlled variation to assess the strength of elements of propaganda– Why did Why we fight (Frank Capra) fail?– Propaganda did not have an immediate effect rather it

required a cultivated audience.– Time was a major factor in propaganda effectiveness– One-sided arguments were effective with people

already in favour of the message, – Two sided arguments worked better with the

undecided.


• The Communication Research Program (Yale)– High credibility communicators increased attitude

change– Fear-arousing appeals worked, but depended on

the experiences and knowledge of the participants– Individual differences research: your personal

attributes make you more or less susceptible to persuasion. • High intelligence = high persuasability


• Mass Comm Research & Media Effects– Individual Differences: people differ so media

messages must contain specific elements to appeal to specific personality types

– Social categories: people who belong to well-defined social categories will respond to media messages in a coherent fashion


• Cognitive consistency: people seek out and believe messages that are consistent with the values and beliefs of those around them

• Cognitive dissonance (Festinger): information inconsistent with people’s beliefs create discomfort


• Selective Processes: exposure (attention), retention, and perception – Selective exposure: people tend to expose

themselves to messages they feel are familiar– Selective retention: people remember messages

best that are in sync with their worldview– Selective perception: people will believe what

they want to believe, altering the meaning of messages to suit themselves.


• Limitations of the experimental persuasion research– Experiments were conducted in labs in controlled

environments– Experiments have opposite problems from surveys (i.e

focus on immediate effects, not long-term)– Conservative about assessing media influence: eliminated

key factors such as convos pre/post TV watching– Experiments are crude for studying long-term media

effects– Many variables that are hard to explore in experminents


• Information Flow Theory– 1950s saw a rise in interest of how messages flow

from media organizations to audiences– Based on the idea that maximizing how well-

informed citizens are will improve democracy– Hard News (politics, science, world events,

community organizations): people did not partake much and learned little

– Soft News (sports, life, gossip, entertainment): partook a lot and learned much


• The trick to making information flow theory work is embed soft ideas into hard news. These act as hooks making people pay attention to the hard facts (Colbert Report)

• Limitations: Info-flow is a simplistic, linear, source-dominated theory.


• Klapper’s phenomenistic theory– Argued that researchers exaggerated the effects

of media– Mass comm does not serve as a cause of audience

effects, rather functions through a nexus of mediating factors and effects

– These factors lend mass comm a reinforcing power – exaggerating already held beliefs and existing trends


• Elite pluralism– This theory came of the desire to understand

Lazarsfeld’s opinion leader observation.– Most audience members are apathetic, but they

listen to opinion leaders, who are well-informed– This is in contradiction to libertarian theory– Elite: a small number of opinion leaders– Pluralism: a diversity of groups


• C. Wright Mills and the Power Elite– Democratic theorists disdained elite pluralism• They felt it was just reflective of current trends and did

not offer a hope for a return to libertarian democracy

– Mills’ book raised lots of interesting questions• If elite pluralism was true, why were black and religious

minority elites not powerful?


• Major Generalizations of Limited Effects Perspective:– Role of mass media is limited, it mostly reinforces

existing trends– Role is limited in people’s lives, tends to be

positive, can be negative in certain pathological cases (personality dis., addicts)

– The role of mass media is overwhelmingly positive


• Drawbacks of Limited Effects Perspective– Survey and experimental research are very limited

methodologically– Systematically excluded certain effects for fear of

spurious effects– Too large of a focus on immediate effects. Very

little focus on long-term effects


• Contributions of Limited Effects– Supplanted Mass Society theories– Prioritized empirical observation and downgraded

speculative forms of theory construction– Provided a framework for research in universities

and colleges in the 50s and 60s

Ch. 7: Beyond Limited Effects: Focus on Functionalism and Children…

• Functionalism: a theoretical approach that conceives of social systems as living organisms whose various parts work, or function, together to maintain essential processes

• Communication Systems Theory: the mass media as a series of parts that work together to meet a goal

• Social cognitive theory: theory of elarnign through interaction with the environment that involves reciprocal causation of behaviour, personal factors and environmental effects


• Theories of the Middle Range and the Functional Analysis (Merton, 1967, p. 45):– consist of limited sets of assumptions from which specific

hypotheses are logically derived and confirmed by empirical investigation

– do not remain separate but are consolidated into wider networks of theory

– sufficiently abstract to deal with differing spheres of social behaviour & social structure; transcend sheer description

– cuts across the distinction between micro-sociological problems

– Involves the specification of ignorance


• Merton was value-neutral: he did not divide the world into “us and them” bad guys and good guys

• Merton promoted the cumulative nature of small, limited-effects studies that were empirically grounded

• Manifest functions: intended and observed consequences of media use

• Latent functions: unintended and less easily observed consequences of media use


• Merton’s Four Functions of the Media:• Surveillance of the environment• Correlation of the parts of society in

responding to the enivroment• Transmission of the social heritage from one

generation to the next (oral culture)• Entertainment


• Narcotizing dysfunction: as news about an issue inundates people, they become apathetic to it, substituting knowing about the issue for action on it.


• Mendelsohn’s Mass Entertainment theory:– The relaxing and entertaining properties of TV serve a vital

social function.– Some very few become addicted, but most are happily pacified

and removed from the daily tension of worklife• Typical of Functionalist theory: some functions are good,

some are bad, but they are balanced in the organism, like toxins and vital elements in a body.

• Researchers found that they could combine LE findings to come up with a functionalist middle-range theory

• Television and the Lives of Our Children (1961): TV made some kids violent, but most were simply pacified.


• The Rise of Systems Theories– System: consists ofa set of parts that are

interlinked so that changes in one part induce changes in other parts

– Cybernetics: the study of regulation and control in complex systems

– Feedback loops: ongoing mutual adjustments in systems

– Communication systems: systems that function primarily to facilitate communication


• Modeling Systems– Model: any representation of a system, whether

in words or a diagram– Goal-orientation: characteristic of a system that

serves a specific overall or long-term purpose• Systems models can be adapted to human

communication (email, internet use, etc.)• In mass comm, systems models replaced the

linear transmission model of Lasswell


• Criticisms of Functionalism– Humanists dislike the mechanistic and biological

analogies used in systems theory– Do not focus on traditional views of causality

because functional systems are not linear– Are biased towards the status quo because of

their basis in description and empiricism


• TV changed the global mediascape in at the World’s Fair in New York 1939. TV occurred simultaneously with big changes in USA society– WWII made USA more urban– Shift work and regularly scheduled jobs– Had more leisure– More regular incomes to spend on leisure– Non-Caucasian fought in WWII and demanded share of

American Dream– Women permanently entered the workforce – People moved away from small towns and traditional

influences, like church and school diminished in importance.– New demographic because of the baby boom: the Teenager!


• More changes:– Crime waves,– JFK, RFK, MLK assassinations– Civil rights & Anti-Vietnam War– Weathermen & Black Panthers– Young people behaving oddly: weird music and

taking drugs– Generation gap was observed


• Media’s role in these changes was hotly debated

• TV and film became the subject of many investigations

• Surgeon General Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social Behaviour was founded in 1969


• Television Violence Theories– Catharsis: viewing violence is enough to sate or

reduce people’s natural aggressive drives– This theory doesn’t really hold generally: people who

watch video sex don’t have diminished sex drive– Aristotle used catharsis to explain the effects of Greek

tragedy, so the argument from the tradition was used for TV

– Final finding: showing representations of violence can reduce violent behaviour, but because of learning – not catharsis.


• Humans learn from observation (although cognitivism denies this)

• Imitation: we learn by direct reproduction of others’ behaviours

• Identification: a special form of imitation that springs from wanting to be like an observed model relative to some broader characteristics or qualities (thin like Cindy Crawford, hip like Angeline Jolie, tough/sensitive/rugged like Brad Pitt)

• Social learning: encompasses both imitation and identification to explain how people learn through observation of others in their environments


• Social Cognition from Mass Media– Operant learning theory: learning occurs only

through the making and subsequent reinforcement of behaviour

– Behavioural repertoire: learned responses available to an individual in a given situation

– Negative reinforcer: particular stimulus whose removal, reduction or prevention increases the probability of a given behaviour over time

– Modeling: acquisition of behaviour through observation


• Social Cognition from Mass Media (cont)– Observational effects: when the observation of a

behaviour is enough to learn that behaviour– Inhibitory effects: the effects of seeing a model

punished for a behaviour, reducing the likelihood of the observer reproducing the behaviour

– Disinhibitory effects: model rewarded for an aggressive or prohibited behaviour, increasing the likelihood observer will engage in the behaviour


• Social Cognition from Mass Media (cont)– Vicarious reinforcement: reinforcement that is

observed rather than is directly experienced– Reinforcement contingencies: the value, positive

or negative, associated with a given reinforcer– Behavioural hierarchy: the likelihood that we will

engage in a particular behaviour.


• Aggressive Cues: information contained in media portrayals of violence that suggests (or cues) the appropriateness of aggression against specific victims

• Boxer example: boxer got shocked more often• Two observations:– Viewers’ psychological state can lead them to respond to

cues in programs that meet the needs of that state– Viewers who see justified violence see it as a good or

useful problem-solving device (disinhibition)• Aggressive cues research is supported by priming

effects research


• Bandura’s summary of so-coggie findings:• Reward/Punishment: rewarded aggression is more

frequently modeled (disinhibitory); punished aggression is less frequently modeled (inhibitory).

• Consequences: mediated violence accompanied by portrayals of negative or harmful consequences produces less modeling (inhibitory).

• Motive: motivated media aggression produces greater levels of modeling, and unjustified media violence results in less viewer aggression. Viewers are cued to the appropriateness of using aggression.


• Bandura’s summary of so-coggie findings cont• Realism: especially with boys, realistic media violence

tends to produce more real-world aggression. • Humor: because it reduces the seriousness of the

behaviour, humourously presented media violence elads to the greater probability that viewers will behave aggressively in real life.

• Identification with media characters: the more viewers identify with media characters (like themselves or attractive models) the more likely it is that they will model the behaviours demonstrated by those characters.


• Active Theory of Television Viewing: View of TV consumption that assumes viewer comprehension causes attention and, therefore, effects or no effects

• Viewing Schema: interpretational skills that aid people in understanding media content conventions

• Active-audience theories: put a focus on assessing what people do with media, these are audience-centered theories


• Developmental perspective: the view of learning from media that specifies different intellectual and communication stages in a child’s life that influence the nature of media interaction and impact.

• Jean Piaget – argued that children, as they move from infancy to adolescence have different cognitive abilities avail. to them.


• Video Games Reignite interest in media violence– There has been a shift away from TV toward video

game research– Kaiser Family Foundation study revealed that

more than eight out of ten young people have a game console at home, half have one in their bedroom


• Four major reasons why video games are of research interest:– Amount of game play kids engage in– Presence of video games in high-profile high

school shootings (Columbine/Jonesboro)– Video games’ interactivity: gamers are actors, not

viewers– Sheer brutality of many video games


• Media & Children’s Socialization– Early Window theory: media allow children to see

the world before the have the skill to successfully act in it

– This is particularly powerful for gender learning– Advertising, junk food and obesity: most ads are

for candy and snacks – leads to a desire to consume theses instead of healthy alternatives.

MCM 733: Communication Theory Chapters 6, 7, 8. Ch 6: Rise of Limited-Effects … Orson Welles: The...

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