Media Effects Research

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Media Effects Research
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The Early Years

• The history of media research begins in the
  period leading up to WWII when radio was
  beginning to make an impact on the cultural
  world.
• Two important early works
• Cantril and Allport, 1935, The Psychology of
  Radio
• Cantril, Gaudet, and Herzog, 1940, The Invasion
  From Mars A study in the Psychology of Panic.

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The Early Years

• Early media effects theory The Hypodermic Needle
• Term coined by Lasswell, 1935
• The injection of ideological bias that
  contaminated radio listeners in the manner of
  brainwashing.

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The Early Years

• Much of the academic literature about media in
  the early days of radio and television had a
  strong negative flavor.
• Two biggest influences on media theory
• North American sociology
• The Frankfurt School

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Critics of Early Approaches

• The overly negative hypodermic needle approach
  to mass media received much criticism.
• The critical theories (predominantly European)
• Marshall McLuhan
• Challenged the view that media is inherently
  dangerous.
• the medium is the message
• global village
• Postmodernism a historical period a
  theoretical position.
• Refers to a a break with tradition characterized
  by the collapse of the traditional values.
• Media can bring different cultures together,
• Breaking away from the high culture may not be
  a bad thing.

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Critics of Early Approaches

• The empirical science
• Postmodern theories had little impact in the
  North America
• However, the scientists have incorporated some
  core concerns from the critical theories into
  their research.
• Critical theorists, on the other hand, largely
  ignored and discredited scientific methods.
• This is where modern approaches to media started
  to diverge from each other.

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Critics of Early Approaches

• The limited effects paradigm
• Some media content may influence some people some
  of the time under some circumstances.
• The effects of media are often indirect

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The Effects Tradition

• The media effects tradition has probably had
  the greatest impact of all media research on
  public.
• Concerns of the psychological effects of media
  are so common that they are rarely questioned
  outside of academia, except for the industry
  itself.

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The Effects Tradition

• In the broadest sense, media effects research
  explores the social, psychological and behavioral
  consequences of media exposure, particularly
  those consequences that are negative.

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The Effects Tradition

• The key question to ask is
• WHO sends WHAT message to WHOM, WHEN, in WHAT
  WAYS, and with WHAT EFFECT?

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The Effects Tradition

• Media effects research can be organized across a
  five basic dimensions
• content
• timing
• type
• direct versus indirect effects
• explanatory mechanisms

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Content

• Media effects are the result of exposure to
  different media content. Media effects scholars
  often study, for example, the impact of
  advertising, news, as well as many other forms of
  entertainment programming.
• Two of the most frequently studied types of media
  content in the effects tradition are portrayals
  of violence and sex

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Timing

• Media effects can occur either immediately or
  long time after exposure. Some effects of media
  exposure may last only for a few minutes (e.g.,
  physiological arousal) whereas others may last
  for a long time, even for a lifetime (e.g.,
  attitudes and beliefs about the world). Other
  effects are perpetuated across time through
  repeated exposure to the media.

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Types of Effects

• Most research about negative media effects focus
  on individuals physiological, cognitive,
  emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral changes
  through media exposure.
• e.g., arousal, fear, happiness, learning, etc.

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Direct/Indirect Effects

• Media effects can happen directly as a result of
  an individuals exposure to media content
  unmitigated or mediated by other people or
  processes. Or, individuals can be affected by
  media indirectly through changes in ones social
  environment, the presence of other people or a
  variety of other contextual features of the media
  consumption situation.

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Explanatory Mechanisms

• WHY do certain effects happen? Through what
  process do they happen? How? This is the most
  important and interesting question to ask.
• e.g, media effects happens through physiological
  arousal. The nervous system reacts to media input
  and causing viewer to think or act in certain
  ways.
• Media effects happens through cognitive process.
  People think about the incoming message
  understand it and then affected by it.
• A mix of the two
• Other factors include personality, context of
  viewing, etc.

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Methods of Media Effects Research

• Almost exclusively quantitative, especially
  experimental.
• Cares about the causal relationship (the word
  effects should give this away).
• Stemmed firmly in the experimental psychology
  tradition.

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Theories of Media Violence (an example of media
effects research

• Theories are not truths.
• They are intelligent speculations supported by
  empirical evidence.
• Some theory received more support empirically
  than others.
• However, intuitive theories often have more
  believers regardless of actual evidence.

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Theories of Media Violence

• Functions of theories
• Description
• Prediction (practical for social research)
• Explanation (the ultimate goal of science)

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Theories of Media Violence

• Explanatory mechanisms the whys
• Biological
• Cognitive
• Psychological
• Social
• Comprehensive (multiple perspectives)

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Theories of Media Violence

• Human behavior is influenced by many factors
• Internal vs. Environmental
• Nature vs. Nurture

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A Biological Perspective

• Fear and aggression are two of the primary
  survival tools for human.
• We either flight (fear) or fight (aggression)
  when facing a threat from the environment.

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A Biological Perspective

• Media violence triggers biological
  (physiological) changes, specifically a general
  arousal, similar to how people respond to a real
  life threat (flight or fight).

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A Biological Perspective

• Our assessment or appraisal of this arousal may
  have two outcomes
• Fear the situation is threatening
• Excitement the situation is challenging
• Fear ? discomfort, anxiety, and possibly
  emotional harm
• Excitement ? aggression

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A Biological Perspective
Fear
Flight
Exposure to Media Violence
General Arousal
Fight
Challenge
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A Biological Perspective

• Excitation Transfer Theory (Dolf Zillmann)
• Violent Media ? general arousal.
• Physiological arousal leaves residual excitation.
• This excitation is being transferred to the
  subsequent real life event.
• This leads to aggression in real life.

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A Cognitive Perspective

• Human consciousness and self-control is powerful
  enough so that mere physiological arousal may not
  be enough to cause real life aggressive behavior.
• Thus, the impact of media violence is ore
  cognitive than biological.
• How do we cognitive process media messages is the
  key here.

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A Cognitive Perspective

• Recall an earlier lecture on the cognitive
  perspective
• Associationistic cognitive structure
• Schematic cognitive structure

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A Cognitive Perspective
Acceptance of violence
Exposure to Media Violence
Cognitive Processes
Real life violence
Learning of violence
Existing knowledge memory structure
Familiarity with violence
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A Cognitive Perspective

• Priming Theory
• Media primes or activates violent nodes (e.g.,
  gun, killing, murder) in the associative memory
  network.
• The activation of these nodes in turn activates
  other linked nodes in this network through the
  process of spreading activation.
• This process leads to an increase in the
  accessibility (familiarity) of violent thoughts.
• When facing threats or challenges in real life
  (e.g., a guy pushed in a crowed subway) we are
  more likely to access violent thoughts in our
  cognitive network.
• This leads to real life violence.

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A Psychological Perspective

• There are a number of psychological factors that
  are not included by the biological and cognitive
  perspectives.
• But they are equally powerful sources of
  influence

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A Psychological Perspective

• A psychological perspective emphasizes on the
  importance of individual differences.
• Gender
• Motivation
• Personality
• Cognitive ability
• Self-awareness
• Self-esteem
• And many more

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A Psychological Perspective

• The Confluence Model of Aggression (Neil
  Malamuth)
• Media impact is considered only within the
  confluence of other psychological factors
  relevant to a particular behavior.
• In other words, we should not worry about
  everyone being influenced by mass media. We
  should focuses on those people who are more
  easily influence due to certain psychological
  pre-dispositions.
• e.g., HEAVY PORNOGRAPHY USE PREDICT GREATER
  SEXUAL AGGRESSION ONLY FOR MEN HIGH IN RISK FOR
  SEXUAL AGGRESSION.

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A Social Perspective

• We are not isolated beings. We live in a social
  world.
• Biology and psychology are not enough to make us
  behave in certain ways.
• We have to consider the social factors.

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A Social Perspective

• Media can influence society
• Violence as a social norm (e.g., war coverage on
  TV, high amount of violence on TV, etc).
• It enhances a heroic cowboy culture
• It changes our social perception
• But media is only one of the social factors that
  may contribute to real life violence.

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A Social Perspective

• Our Society also has a number of pre-dispositions
• Availability of guns in the society
• High level of stress among citizens (e.g., long
  working hours)
• Individualism
• Education
• Poverty

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A Comprehensive Perspective

• A good theory must be empirically testable.
• Thus a good theory is usually narrow and with
  constrains.
• Thus one theory can never explain everything.
• Thus recent efforts in media violence research is
  to synthesize different theories.

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A Comprehensive Perspective
Social factors
Cognitive factors
Attitude emotion behavior
Psychological factors
Biological factors
Media violence
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A Comprehensive Perspective

• A good idea but
• Lack of specification
• Impossible to be empirically tested
• The relations are way to complex to be meaningful
  
• The most accurate map of the world is the world
  itself, but it will be a useless map in terms of
  its function.

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A Comprehensive Perspective

• A good synthesis of theories must
• Include only those theories that are well-tested.
• Be logical and not have internal contradictions.
• Limit only to relevant factors and variables.
• Empirically testable.

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A Comprehensive Perspective

• Some examples of good comprehensive theories
• Social Cognitive Theory (Banduras own revisions
  of the social learning theory) a cognitive
  theory that considers several psychological and
  social factors.
• General Affective Aggression Model (Craig
  Anderson) has both emotional and cognitive
  components, and accounts for long term and short
  term effects.