This presentation discusses the impact different types of media content have on society. Also covered are several media theories and studies that have been conducted over time.

2.  Video Game Trailer
 Who’s played this game?
 What did you think?

3. Chapter Outline
History
Theory and Research
Controversies
MEDIA IMPACT:
Understanding Research and Effects

4. Why would anyone care
about or even do research on
the effects media have on
society?

5. Early Studies
 Concerns about media are as old as media themselves.
▪ Church leaders thought bibles would corrupt society
▪ Parents felt the same about the first novels.
▪ Consistent research on media begin in the 1920s.

6.  Payne Fund Studies conducted
▪ 13 separate investigations on the influence movies had on youth behavior
 Modeling (Payne Fund Study)
▪ The imitation of behavior from media examples
▪ Parents worry children may pick up antisocial habits from media consumption
▪ Video Clip Clip 2 Clip 3
▪ Do violent games
Increase Violence in Society?
▪ Why/Why not

7. Would these media influence negative behavior? How?

8.  Content analyses (Payne Fund Study)
▪ Observers analyze media subject matter
▪ (TV, Magazines, Radio, Web, Newspaper)
 Laboratory experiment (Payne Fund Study)
▪ Variables are isolated and observed in a controlled environment

9.  Survey methods (Payne Fund Study)
▪ Research that relies on questionnaires to collect data
 Payne Fund studies as a whole
▪ Instrumental in developing public support for the 1930 Motion
Picture Production code

10.  Random sample
▪ When members of population have equal chance of being selected
 Selective exposure
▪ When people seek out messages that are consistent with their attitudes
▪ Where do you get your News, What is your favorite TV show, What type of
movies do you like?

11.  People’s Choice
study
▪ Selective perception
▪ When people with different
attitudes interpret the same
messages differently
 Selective retention
▪ When people with different
views remember the same
event differently

12. ▪ Opinion leaders
▪ Certain well-informed members of families and neighborhoods
▪ Two-step flow
▪ Process where media effects travel through opinion leaders
▪ From radio and print to the opinion leaders and from them to the less
active sections of the population.

13.  Television and violence
▪ National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence
▪ Found that
▪ Desensitization
 Effect of long-term exposure to mass-media violence.
 Prevented onlookers from helping victims of crimes

14.  Powerful effects model,
 Media will have an immediate & potent influence on audiences.
(Youth acting out scenes after violent movie)
 Minimal effects model
 Media will have little influence on behavior.
▪ People not changing voting behavior

15.  Researchers today accept
▪ Mixed effects model,
▪ Sometimes media will have
 Powerful effects,
 Minimal effects,
▪ Sometimes
 A mixture of both.
 The mixed-effects model makes the
most sense.

16. ▪ Bullet theory
▪ Media effects flowed directly from media to individual.
▪ Multi-step flow,
▪ Effects travel from high to lower level opinion leaders then to us.
 Politicians to community leaders to clergy to public
▪ There is no simple answer to
how media affects behavior.
▪ The best answer usually is “It depends.”

17.  Social Science Perspectives
 Social learning theory, aka modeling theory,
 Social modeling is an important part of socialization,
▪ Where expectations, norms, and values of society are learned
▪ What is an example of being “cool”?
▪ How did you learn what “cool is”?

18.  Diffusion of innovations theory
▪ Five types of people have different levels of willingness to accept new
ideas from the media:
1. Innovators tend to be politically liberal extroverts who are venturesome
and eager to try new ideas.
2. Early adopters make quick but informed choices.

19.  Diffusion of innovations theory
 Five types of people have different levels of willingness to
accept new ideas from the media:1. -
2. -
3. Early majority makes careful, deliberate decisions.
4. Late majority tends to be skeptical.
5. Laggards tend to be conservative, traditional & resistant to change.

20.  George Gerbner’s cultivation theory
▪ States media use will “cultivate” a particular view of the world within users.
 Agenda-setting,
▪ Not telling people what to think, but what to think about
▪ Is the main effect of media.
Homicide report

21.  Cumulative effects theory
▪ Media messages are driven home through redundancy
 Uses and gratification theory
▪ Based on how consumers choose & use media to meet their own needs.