Croteau, Media/Society, 6e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
Chapter Outlines
Chapter 9: Media Influence
Purpose and Goals of the Chapter
Chapter 9 considers media’s wide-ranging confluence in contemporary life; both how
individual users might be affected by media and, more broadly, how media may be helping to
transform impacting the social and political world.
Media does affect society in a variety of ways and Chapter 9 examines some of these
influences. We begin by considering some key ideas from “media effects” theory and
research, then we look at broader media influence on social institutions—sometimes called
“mediatization”—by considering the example of politics. Finally, we note some of the
influences that the Internet and social media may be having on society.
Outline of Key Chapter Themes
• Brief background of media research with consideration for how scholars, industries,
users, and technologies have been effected historically.
• Media influence on mass society, politics, and the various ways agenda setting and
framing both mitigates and aggravates media’s effects on all aspects of public life.
• The Concept of Mediatization, as a social change process in which media have become
increasingly influential in and deeply integrated into different spheres and logics of
society.
• Exploring the role digital media and the Internet has created dilemmas for social media
use, social movements, journalism, echo chambers, propaganda, and both government
and self-censorship.
Chapter Outline
• Learning from Media Effects Research
• Early Works: Establishing the Agenda
o The Press and Democracy
o Entertainment and Children
o Mass Society and Media Influence
• Mitigating Media Effects
o Limited Effects and the Two-Step Flow of Influence
o Active Audiences
• Highlighting Media Influence
o Agenda Setting and Framing
▪ Framing: Second-Level Agenda Setting
▪ New Agenda-Setting Players in the Internet Era
o The Spiral of Silence
o Learning from Media
Croteau, Media/Society, 6e
SAGE Publishing, 2019
o Cultivation Theory
• Mediatization
o The Concept of Mediatization
o The Mediatization of Society and Media Logic
• The Mediatization of Politics
o The Politics of Image
▪ Political Actors
▪ Setting the Stage
o The Decline of Political Parties
o Communication Professionals and the “Post–Truths” Politics
▪ Working with the News Media
▪ Using the Internet
o Social Movements
o Citizen Alienation
o The Internet’s Uncertain Political Future
• Digital Dilemmas: Online Media Influence
o Social Media Logic and Algorithmic Power
o The Crisis in Journalism
o Information Distortions: Misinformation and Echo Chambers
o Computational Propaganda: Trolls and Twitter Bots
o Hate and Censorship
o Managing our Social Selves
• Conclusion