Mass Society Theories

1
Mass Society Theories

• Hypodermic Needle
• Direct, strong effects

2
Media Intermediaries

• Minimal Effects
• 2-step flow
• Intermediaries of influence
• readers are active agents
• Agenda Setting
• Opinions of opinion leaders shaped in elite media
• Media coverage affects public opinion more than
  events in the real world

3
Problems with Media Theories

• Perceptual Gap
• People experience and ascribe more media
  influence than theories predict
• Narrow range of effects examined
• Narrow range of evidence sought
• Problems in measurement

4
Deep, Gradual Effects

• Sense-making
• Media combined with popular wisdom, other
  influences
• Socialization
• Media shapes undeveloped thinking
• Cultivation
• World view shaped over time

5
Cultivation

• Long term exposure
• Little or no mitigating experience
• Skewed sense of real world
• More violent
• Stereotypes

6
Media the Social World
Adapted from Croteau Hoynes, 2000
7

• Social Construction of reality
• Structure Agency
• Media and Institutions

8

• Concentration
• Conglomeration
• Integration
• Political power of media corporations

9
Integration
Music
Film
Books
10
Pressures on Regulation

• Political
• Commerical
• Technological
• TCA 1996

11
Ideology

• Ideological analysis
• Structures agency
• Fit between images/texts and ways of thinking
• Hegemony
• Naturalizes relationships, outlooks
• Media bring images point of view