978-1319102852 Chapter 15

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Chapter 15

Media Effects and Cultural Approaches to Research

In this chapter, we will:

• Examine the evolution of media research over time

• Focus on the two major strains of media research, investigating the strengths and limitations

of each

• Conclude with a discussion of how media research interacts with democratic ideals

Preview Story:

Every day media culture helps to make sense of our world, and it both shapes and is shaped by

our history, politics, and economics. Fears of nuclear war in the 1950s and 1960s were expressed

in films like Godzilla (1954), Them (1954), Mothra (1961), and Night of the Living Dead (1968).

Twenty-first century fears, particularly since 9/11, have led to terrorism-themed media content

like 24, which has been cited in political, ethical, and legal debates.

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I. Early Media Research Methods

A. Propaganda Analysis

B. Public Opinion Research

C. Social Psychology Studies

D. Marketing Research

II. Research on Media Effects

A. Early Theories of Media Effects

1. The Hypodermic-Needle Model

2. The Minimal-Effects Model

3. The Uses and Gratifications Model

B. Conducting Media Effects Research

1. Experiments

2. Survey Research

3. Content Analysis

C. Contemporary Media Effects Theories

1. Social Learning Theory

2. Agenda-Setting

3. The Cultivation Effect

4. The Spiral of Silence

5. The Third-Person Effect

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D. Evaluating Research on Media Effects

III. Cultural Approaches to Media Research

A. Early Developments in Cultural Studies Research

B. Conducting Cultural Studies Research

1. Textual Analysis

2. Audience Studies

3. Political Economy Studies

C. Cultural Studies’ Theoretical Perspectives

1. The Public Sphere

2. Communication as Culture

D. Evaluating Cultural Studies Research

IV. Media Research and Democracy

Global Village: International Media Research

Media Literacy and the Critical Process: Wedding Media and the Meaning of the Perfect

Wedding Day

Examining Ethics: Our Masculinity Problem

LECTURE IDEAS

I. Early Media Research Methods

• Detail the four influential areas of media effects research: propaganda analysis, public

opinion research, social psychology studies, and marketing research.

• Discuss the benefits and hazards of various types of public opinion research. Explain why

journalists depend on polls, and explore the purpose of pseudo-polls. Even as polling has

become more sophisticated and accurate over time, polls always report estimates within a

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particular margin of error. The imperfection of polling was clear in the 2016 presidential

election.

• Educational psychologist Jane Healy wrote Endangered Minds (1990), which posited that the

rapid pace of television and other image-oriented media can impede brain growth and make

children less able to concentrate and analyze information, and less able to think. Her book

quotes Jennings Bryant, a researcher at the University of Alabama:

Healy also notes the following:

• Steven Johnson, author of the best-selling book Everything Bad Is Good for You (2005),

discusses the impact of popular culture on young people and argues the following:

• Popular culture has grown more engaging and intellectually demanding in recent years.

• Young people are increasingly engaging with (or “exercising their minds” with) more and

more sophisticated media content and are in turn becoming smarter, not dumber. Johnson

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refers to this “upward trend” as the sleeper curve, taken from Woody Allen’s movie Sleeper,

where in the year 2173 hot fudge is good for you. Johnson points to the cognitive advantages

of increasingly complex video games, television narratives, and film narratives. Johnson

explains:

II. Research on Media Effects

• Cover the three historical models used to explain or predict human behavior relating to mass

media: the hypodermic–needle model, the minimal–effects model, and the uses and

gratifications model. Discuss why these models aren’t considered especially useful today in

the evaluation of media effects on audiences.

• Collecting relevant data can sometimes be tricky. In 1996, Governor Pete Wilson of

California announced that there was an “epidemic” of unwed mothers in his state. He based

his statements on a study conducted by the federal Department of Health and Human

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Services, which had gathered data on unwed mothers. The study’s flaw was classifying a

mother’s marital status according to the name she signed on her baby’s birth certificate. If the

mother signed her birth name but the baby was given the father’s last name, it was

automatically assumed that the mother was unwed. The result was the misclassifying of

hundreds, perhaps thousands, of women who had retained their birth name after they were

married.

filled with toys, including a Bobo doll. Observers recorded the child’s play for ten minutes

from behind a one-way window. The play behavior of children who had seen the film was

• Interpreting dated survey information and poorly written survey questions resulted in the

Roper poll’s most embarrassing moment. In 1948, Roper polls indicated that Thomas E.

Dewey would beat President Harry Truman for the nation’s highest office. Unfortunately,

Roper’s election day forecast was based on polls conducted in August, many weeks before

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the November vote. Republicans, who presumed that their candidate, Dewey, would win,

were complacent, whereas Truman’s campaign worked vigorously until the end, with the

result that Truman was reelected.

• In his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (2000),

Robert D. Putnam concludes, based on survey data, that Americans have become

increasingly disconnected from family, friends, social organizations, neighbors, and

democratic structures. Some trends that he identifies are that attending club meetings is down

58 percent since the 1950s, family dinners down 33 percent, and having friends over for a

visit is down 45 percent.

• Pew Research Center Internet, science, and technology research puts out many survey–based

reports each year. (In 2015, the thirty publications included reports on privacy, parental

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monitoring of teens’ media use, gaming, apps, libraries, technology and friendships, and

mobile messaging.) The organization explores the impact of the Internet on families,

communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life.

One report from a few years back found that most artists and musicians have embraced the

Internet as a place to sell their creative works, and that two-thirds consider file-sharing to be

a minor threat or no threat at all. Pew relies on phone surveys as well as online surveys to

gather data. The nonprofit organization makes all data available online at

http://www.pewinternet.org.

• A famous study published in 1992 in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical

Association found a correlation between the number of murders in the United States and

Canada between 1945 and 1974 (beginning with the introduction of television) and the

number of murders in white South Africa, which introduced television after 1975. The study

concluded that homicides doubled in both cases after the introduction of television, and it

held television responsible for higher murder rates. The study has been roundly rebuffed as

ludicrous by a number of researchers, but it continues to be cited as if the conclusions were

valid. Centerwall’s conflation of correlation with causation provides an excellent case for

understanding the key distinction between correlation and causation. (Brandon S. Centerwall,

• Describe the five mass media theories posited by researchers: social learning theory, agenda–

setting, the cultivation effect, the spiral of silence, and the third–person effect.

• Shortly after the Columbine High School massacre, Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner

blamed lax gun laws, not media, for violence in American culture, writing:

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In Japan, Canada, Australia and, indeed, most Western industrialized nations, violent movies,

music and video games are the norm but access to firearms is not. In 1996, handguns were

used to murder two people in New Zealand, 15 in Japan, 30 in Great Britain, 106 in Canada,

213 in Germany and 9,390 in the United States. (Jann S. Wenner, “If You’re Looking for a

Scapegoat, Try NRA,” Commentary, Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1999, p. B7,

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/may/21/local/me-39429.)

• Michael Moore investigates the connection between handgun access and social violence in

Bowling for Columbine. Guns are as accessible in Canada as they are in the United States,

but the culture is not as violent. Why?

• Concerns over the impact of violent messages on the public are not limited to movies and

video games. Following the January 2011 shooting of Democratic Arizona congresswoman

Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others, critics quickly latched on to what they described as

“hate–filled” and “violent” political rhetoric and images put forward largely by conservative

political figures; included were former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who at one

point before the shooting had a graphic on her Web site with a picture of Giffords and other

political opponents in gun–site crosshairs. Some critics argued that such rhetoric carries some

of the blame for pushing an already troubled person into an act of violence. Others said that

this incident was simply a case of a deranged individual and not the fault of a political

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viewpoint. The debate heated up again in July 2011, when Anders Behring Breivik admitted

mass communication research try to answer the question about the impact of political speech,

especially speech that uses violent rhetoric and imagery?

• In 2000, Richard Rhodes wrote a comprehensive study called “The Media Violence Myth”

that persuasively discredited media violence scholarship that has been part of effects research

for decades. Here are some of his observations:

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• In 2007, the FCC finally released a report on TV violence and its impact on children, three

years after it was commissioned. To many observers, the report was a disappointment in that

it was extremely vague. For example, the report offered little direction on what the FCC

III. Cultural Approaches to Media Research

• Discuss the ways in which political economy theory provides a lens through which to view

and understand the implications of concentration of corporate ownership, and go over some

critiques of that view.

IV. Media Research and Democracy

• Discuss the usefulness of academic media research to the culture at large. Also note why

some media research seems inaccessible to the general public.

• Some other public intellectuals:

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• Kembrew McLeod (University of Iowa) has done such public pranks as claiming the

copyrighted trademark.

• Melissa Harris–Perry (Wake Forest University) writes about race, class, and politics for

the Nation and also hosted a news and opinion show for MSNBC.

MEDIA LITERACY DISCUSSIONS AND EXERCISES

SOLVING NEGATIVE MEDIA EFFECTS

This think-pair–share exercise focuses on negative media effects and how modifications in the

college education of future mass media professionals might help change things.

1. Think: On your own, write down two or three ways in which mass media may contribute to

or cause negative social effects.

2. Pair: Turn to your neighbor and discuss your lists. Do you agree that mass media contribute

to the effects that you have listed? Can people working in media do something to lessen the

negative effects?

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3. Share: As a class, consider what interventions could be made in the education of media

professionals to solve these problems. What factors work against your proposed solutions? In

other words, what are competing influences in media industries that might stymie reforms?

Do people working within mass media have a responsibility to try to lessen negative media

effects?

CODING VIOLENCE

Is an act of nature violent? Is the context of violence important? Does remorse after a violent act,

or “real” consequences to violence in a certain program, mitigate the conception of violence? Is

it possible to count acts of violence? Can the context of violent acts on television be objectively

understood, or is context more a matter of personal interpretation? If there can be many

definitions of violence, what are the implications for TV ratings systems?

George Gerbner and his colleagues offered this definition for coding violence in their

content analysis of television: “The overt expression of physical force (with or without a

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weapon, against self or others) compelling action against one’s will on pain of being hurt and/or

killed or threatened to be so victimized as part of the plot. Idle threats, verbal abuse, or gestures

without credible violent consequences are not coded as violence. However, “accidental” and

“natural” violence (always purposeful dramatic actions that do victimize certain characters) are,

of course, included.” (p. 11) The authors also noted that the definition includes violence that

occurs in a fantasy or humorous context. (See George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan,

and Nancy Signorielli, “The ‘Mainstreaming’ of America: Violence Profile No. 11,” Journal of

Communication 30 no. 3 [1980]: 10–29.)

HOW TO APPROACH MEDIA RESEARCH

1. Description. Describe how you could best investigate this argument using first a social

scientific method and then a cultural approach. Explain fully how each study would be

developed, step by step.

2. Analysis. Look at completed plans of study using each of the two methodological

approaches, noting similarities and differences. Also, consider each methodology in terms of

the potential breadth and depth of findings.

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3. Interpretation. What kinds of questions are certain to be answered by each or both studies?

How much does the phrasing of the research question or argument determine the best

methodological approach? What kind of approach seems to offer more definite, conclusive

answers? Which approach offers more of a broad, big-picture point of view?

4. Evaluation. Based on the comparative analysis, if you had to do this study using only one

methodological approach—social scientific or cultural—which would you use? Why? Would

it ever be helpful or even possible to combine both approaches?

5. Engagement. Of course, actually completing one or both of the proposed studies would best

answer the original question and direct you toward a plan of engagement. But for now,

assume that college students should be even better informed, and consider some feasible

SCIENCE MEETS THE MUSIC REVIEWS

Pre–Exercise Question: Have you ever disagreed with a music-recording review, thinking that

the reviewer was too “subjective”?

This exercise is designed to illustrate the differences between scientific and interpretive

methods.

1. Choose a recent music review from Rolling Stone, Spin, or another popular music magazine.

Scan the review for statements that seem to be debatable or subjective (e.g., “This is the best

recording since the artist’s debut album,” “The tone of this recording is melancholy,” “The

lyrics are silly and pretentious”).

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2. Decide on a scientific method—experiment, survey, or content analysis—to test the

reviewer’s interpretations. Explain in detail how you would carry out this study,

incorporating the ideas of objectivity, reliability, and validity. For example, say you were

doing a content analysis that intended to show that Lady Gaga’s lyrics embrace feminist

3. Evaluate the effectiveness of the scientific–method alternative. Does this approach produce a

better record review than the interpretive approach? Would a different scientific method have

worked better, or would it simply have raised other difficult questions?

Options: This exercise can work both as a classroom discussion and as an individual writing

assignment.

For an advanced Critical Process exercise, students may actually carry out their scientific

research method and document the results in a short paper.

CLASSROOM MEDIA RESOURCES

LAUNCHPAD FOR MEDIA & CULTURE:

launchpadworks.com

Media Effects Research (2009, 5:40 minutes). Scholars and industry insiders discuss how media

effects research informs media development and distribution. Featuring Richard Campbell,

Terry Curtis, Jeff Goodby, and Liz Perle.

TV Effects: 2 Broke Girls (2015, 1:12 minutes). A brief clip from season 4 of 2 Broke Girls

shows an example of a TV show that pushes the limits of sexual humor.

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Game Over: Gender, Race, and Violence in Video Games (2000, 41 minutes). This video offers a

dialogue about the complex and controversial topic of video game violence, and it is

designed to encourage students to think critically about the video games they play.

Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, 800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.

How the Media Affects youth | Oda Faremo Lindholm | TEDxOslo (Feb. 10, 2015, 9:56 minutes).

TEDx talk on sexualization and prejudice gender roles in the media effects a generation of

Norwegian youth. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjnclEhy960.

Nicholas Carr writes about how technology affects culture. His 2010 book The Shallows:

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What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a New York

Times bestseller. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF1JgIWbSlQ.

Tough Guise 2: Violence, Media, and the Crisis in Masculinity (2013, 82 minutes). A long video

that illustrates how media images present lessons in what makes boys become “real men.”

Good when discussing media effects. Contains quite a bit of violence. Distributed by the

Media Education Foundation, 800-897-0089; http://www.mediaed.org.

WEB SITES

American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication: http://www.aejmc.org

National Communication Association (NCA): http://www.natcom.org

Roper Center for Public Opinion and Research: http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu