Chapter 16 Research and Theory

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Chapter 16Research and Theory

• Effects of Mass Media

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Basics of Research and Theory

• Research often looks at questions and the answers
  to those questions are turned into theories
• American research begins in the 1920s
• Most media research is quantitative
• Content analysis/violent acts/drugs used
• Questions about consumption/volume
• Arbitron
• Nielsen

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More

• Questions about impact/make you violent
• Developmental view
• Slow and steady accumulation of knowledge
• Self-correcting

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Legacy of Fear

• Do mass communications present false images of
  the world to the public?
• Do the American media promote unacceptable
  behavior among children?
• Can mass media shape our attitudes, beliefs, or
  behaviors?
• Are mass communications dominating the political
  process and limiting intelligent decision making?

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Magic Bullet Theory

• Immediate, direct and uniform effects on everyone
  who received a media message
• Darwin/evolution
• Uniform inherited instincts
• Basic biology would say all humans will respond
  to stimuli in the same way

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Payne Fund Studies

• Motion Picture Research Council 1920s
• 40 million minors in a year including almost half
  under 14 went to the movies weekly
• This is the first large scale attempt to measure
  effects of a major medium
• 13 reports published in the 1930s
• Confirmed critics charges and parental fears
• Established important questions STILL being
  pursued

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Two of the Reports

• Blumer says movies are source of imitation,
  unintentional learning and emotional influence
• Peterson/Thurstone say seeing movies changes
  childrens attitudes
• Both were and can be shown to be invalid due to
  improper almost unethical research methods

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Research SHOULD

• Have a random sample
• Be validmeasures what it claims to measure
• Be reliableif repeated using the same techniques
  it would yield similar results
• Be unbiased
• Use both control and experimental groups
• Experimental groups each element can be
  controlled and evaluated individually
• Control groups allow elements to occur naturally

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H.G. Wells

• War of the Worlds