Hanson, Mass Communication 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
Lecture Notes
Chapter 2: Mass Communication Effects: How Society and Media Interact
Learning Objectives
1-1 Discuss the history and development of our understanding of media effects
1-2 Identify and describe four types of effects the mass media can have on people
1-4 Explain the three steps Alfred Bandura created to engage in social learning
1-5 Describe how the critical/cultural approach takes a more qualitative examination of who
controls media systems
Annotated Chapter Outline
I. The Evolution of Media Effects Research
A. Prior to the 1800s: most people in Europe and North America lived in rural communities
where their neighbors were likely to be similar in ethnic, racial, and religious
background
i. Industrial Revolution: massive migration from the rural areas into the cities and
between various countries
a. People went from small, close-knit communities where they knew
everyone to a mass society where they learned about the world from
mass media sources
B. End of the nineteenth century: people came to believe that the traditional ties of
church, community, and family were breaking down and losing their power to influence
people
C. During WWI and the 1930s: fears of strong, direct effects from media messages
D. 1940s and 1950s: researchers sometimes doubted whether media messages had any
effect on individuals at all
E. Issue with the direct effects approach: everyone is socialized differently
F. The Limited Effects Model
i. The indirect effects approach reviews the effects that messages have on
individuals, but it accounts for how audience members perceive and interpret
these messages selectively according to personal differences
ii. The Payne Fund Studies
a. See Figure 2.1
b. Sponsored a series of thirteen studies that found that:
a. A small number of basic themes continually appeared in movies
Hanson, Mass Communication 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
iii. The People’s Choice
a. Large-scale social-scientific study of the 1940 presidential election
between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie
b. Opinion leaders: influential community members who spend significant
time with the media
iv. The Two-Step Flow Today
a. Continues to be relevant in the age of twenty-first century social media
influencers
v. The Importance of Meaning
II. Effects of Media in Our Lives
A. Message Effects
i. How messages might change people’s behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs
ii. The most common and observable message effect is on the short-term learning
of information
B. Attitudinal Effects
i. Feelings about a product, an individual, or an idea
ii. Easier to get people to form new opinions than to get them to change existing
ones
C. Behavioral Effects
i. Actions such as buying a product or voting for a candidate or imitating attractive
behaviors
D. Psychological Effects
ii. Major psychological effect: arousal
E. Medium Effects
i. Importance of the medium used to communicate
ii. The method of message transmittal is a central part of the message
F. Ownership Effects
i. Influence of those who own and control the media
ii. Determines which ideas will be produced and distributed by those media
G. Active Audience Effects
i. Geographics: where people live
Hanson, Mass Communication 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
ii. Demographics: people’s gender, race, ethnic background, income, education,
age, educational attainment, etc.
iii. Psychographics: a combination of demographics, lifestyle characteristics, and
product usage
iv. Classification of audiences by the amount of time they spend using media or by
the purposes for which they use media
III. Media and Society
A. Surveillance of the Environment
i. Surveillance: seeing what is happening within our own culture and in other
societies
ii. Status conferral: the process by which individuals seem important because
media coverage exposes them to large audiences
B. Correlation of Different Elements of Society
i. Correlation: the selection, evaluation, and interpretation of events to impose
structure on the news
C. Socialization and Transmission of Culture
i. Socialization: the process of integrating people within society through the
transmission of values, social norms, and knowledge to new members of the
group
ii. Socialization provided through the media
a. Role models in entertainment programming
iii. Entertainment
a. Entertainment: communication designed primarily to amuse
iv. Agenda Setting
a. Agenda-setting theory: issues that are portrayed as important in the
IV. Our Interactions With Media
A. Social learning theory: Albert Bandura’s theory that people are able to learn by
observing what others do and the consequences they face
B. Uses and Gratifications Theory
i. Uses and gratifications theory: views audience members as active receivers of
information of their own choosing
ii. Assumptions
Hanson, Mass Communication 8e
SAGE Publishing, 2022
a. Audience members are active receivers who have wants and needs and
make decisions based on those needs and wants
C. Symbolic Interactionism
i. Symbolic interactionism: the common creation of society through our
interactions based on language
D. Cultivation Analysis
i. Cultivation analysis: argument that watching large amounts of television
cultivates a distinct view of the world that is sharply at odds with reality
ii. Mean world syndrome: a response to heavy television viewing of violence
V. The Critical/Cultural Approach
A. Critical theory: social science thinking
i. There are serious problems that people suffer that come from exploitation and
the division of labor
ii. People are treated as “things” to be used rather than individuals who have value
iii. You can’t make sense out of ideas and events if you take them out of their
historical context
B. Critical/cultural approach: a more qualitative examination of the social structure in
which communication takes place; considers how meaning is created within society,
who controls the media systems, and the roles the media play in our lives
C. Media and Body Image
i. Widespread body dissatisfaction
ii. Plus-sized model: a model who has a larger figure than the industry’s
conventional figure
iii. Diversity and Size
a. Regulations on industry use of underweight models
iv. The Importance of Representation
a. Ethnic/racial differences
b. Gender differences
v. Range of Beauty
