When President Lincoln was shot in 1865, people in London learned about it five days later. When Pre

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When President Lincoln was shot in 1865, people
in London learned about it five days later. When
President Reagan was shot in 1981, journalist
Henry Fairlie, in his office one block away,
heard about the assassination attempt from his
London editor who had seen it on television and
phoned Fairlie to get him to go to the scene.
John Vivian (p. 385)
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Media Effects

• CMM 201 Chapter 16

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October 30, 1938

• 800 PM
• War of the Worlds
• CBS Radio Network
• Stay tuned
• Powerful effects theory

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Powerful Effects Theory

• Hypodermic Needle media can inject information,
  ideas, attitudes into audiences.
• Also called bullet theory media events can be
  like bullets impacting audiences.

Can they?
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Wrong assumption ?

• People are passive and absorb media output
  uncritically and unconditionally.

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Minimalist Effects Theory

• 1940, 1948 Voter behavior studies
• Sociologist, Paul Lazarsfeld
• Interviewed 600 people (several times)
• Results Voters were influenced more by the
  opinions of other people than by media messages
  about the candidates.
• Clergy, teachers, merchants Opinion Leaders

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Related theories

• Status Conferral If issues (or candidates) are
  covered, they become more important.
• Agenda-setting Dont tell people what to
  think tell them what to think about.
• Narcoticizing Dysfunction information overload
  can cause a person to withdraw from an issue.
  (Shutdown of interest)

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Cumulative Effects Theorycurrent

• Elisabeth Noell-Neumann Media do not have
  powerful immediate effects instead, they have
  cumulative effects over time.

Really, Dr. Noelle-Neumann?
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EDITORIAL

• I think that social scientists are often too
  ready to discard an old idea, rather than let it
  evolve.
• I think the Bullet Theory and Cumulative Effects
  are compatible and complementary.

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Uses and Gratifications

• This is the mainstream of media research for the
  last 60 years.
• How do people use media to satisfy their personal
  needs?
• Surveillance
• Socialization
• Diversion

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Surveillance

• News
• Weather
• Traffic
• Markets
• Politics
• Fashions
• Music

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Socialization

• Did you see Letterman last night? Wasnt Farah
  Fawcett outrageous?
• What about those Browns?
• Rachel is hot!

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Diversion

• Entertainment stimulates us relieving boredom.
• Entertainment relaxes us giving us a change of
  pace.
• Entertainment releases our tensions.

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Another way we use media

• Its called Consistency Theory.
• It means simply that we use media to reinforce
  our own personal views and values.
• We pick our books to read, movies to see, shows
  to watch, music to enjoy.
• We interpret things from our own perspectives.
• We remember what is important to us.

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Violence Research

• Basically, two schools of thought
• Seeing violence in the media reduces violent
  behavior cathartic effect.
• Seeing violence in the media causes violent
  behavior 1960 Bobo doll studies.

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I think that Vivians summary is a good one (p.
381) The preponderance of evidence is that
media-depicted violence has the potential
emphasis is mine to cue real-life violence.
However, the aggressive stimulation theory is
often overstated. The fact is that few people
act out media violence in their lives.
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George Gerbner

• Since 1967, he has been doing massive, on-going
  content analysis of media violence.
• Its a mean world out there.
• Typical American 18-year old has seen 32,000
  on-screen murders and 40,000 attempted murders.
• BUT -- Bugs Bunny being bopped on the head counts
  as a violent incident.

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Violence Effects

• To terrorize us give us anxiety, make us expect
  violence.
• To desensitize us make us apathetic, maybe even
  skeptical.
• Which? Maybe both at times?

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Newer Research on Violence

• 1990s, UCLA
• Violence Assessment Monitoring Project
• Bugs Bunny and Three Stooges not counted.
• Of 121 primetime TV shows studied, only 10 had
  frequent violence.
• By 1998, only 2 had frequent violence.

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Even a relatively slender weekday edition of the
New York Times contains more information than the
average person in the 17th century was likely to
come across in a lifetime, according to Richard
Saul Wurman in his book Information Anxiety.
John Vivian (p.
388)
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the media have effects on individuals and on
society, but it is a two-way street. Society is
a shaper of media content, but individuals make
the ultimate decisions about subscribing,
listening, and watching.
John Vivian (p. 390)
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Acknowledgements
I wish to express my thanks to the many fine news
photographers and news organizations who put
their photographs of the World Trade Center
disaster on the World Wide Web with copy
permissions. Thank you.
Glenn Walters