188AS Sociology for AQAjournalists reporting the war another stilland people reading about and watchingthe war from the comfort of their livingroom had yet another.In other words, the Gulf War (as, byextension, is everything presented by themedia) was experienced as multiple realities,all of which are real and, of course, noneof which are real, since they are simplyrepresentations of reality from differentviewpoints. Thus, the reality of the warcant be found in any one of the things Ihave just noted since they were all, intheir different ways, real experiences they are all equally valid narrativeaccounts of the war. In this respect,Baudrillard uses the term hyperreality toexpress how different narrative accountssit side by side, interweave and conict inan ever-changing pattern ofrepresentation built upon representationuntil they form a reality in themselves something that is more real than realitysince, in the case of the Gulf War, forexample (or any event you care to name the Crusades, the Second World War,the death of Princess Diana . . .) ourknowledge of what happened simplyderives from a range of differentrepresentations from which we pick-and-choose to suit our own particularprejudices or beliefs. Baudrillard calls thissimulacra (or representations that referto other representations) in basicterms, simulations that are themselves thereality they depict. What this means, Iwould argue, is that to talk about mediarepresentations as distortions ormisrepresentations of some hidden orobscured reality (or deep structures aspost-modernists like to term them) is,from a postmodern perspective, to missthe point entirely; The media dontsimply mediate the message; the media to coin a phrase are the message.In this and the previous sections we haveexamined a range of ideas surrounding themedia, from the signicance of thedistinction between ownership and control,through ideas about media ideologies andthe various ways social groups arerepresented. In the nal section we canbring these ideas together by examiningpossible media effects; how audiences areinuenced or not as the case may be bythe media.The media andtheir audiencesIntroduction In this nal section we are going to look atdifferent explanations of the relationshipbetween the mass media and theiraudiences, largely in terms of what are calledMedia Effects; that is, a selection oftheories that seek to identify how and inwhat ways the media affect our behaviour. Although there is a certain chronology toEffects theories one that reects changingacademic developments and fashions (as ageneral rule, theories that argue the mediadirectly affects audiences precede theoriesthat take a more critical look at audiencebehaviour) the approach here will be toconsider various theories in terms of threecategories of effect.Direct: These are sometimes calledmediacentric or transmission theories189The mass mediabecause they focus on the role of themedia as having a strong (usuallynegative) and direct inuence onaudiences. Limited: These are sometimes calledaudiocentric or diffusion theories becausethey focus on the various ways audiencesuse the media to satisfy their ownparticular needs. For these theories, themass media has few, if any, direct effects.Indirect: Theories in this category, whilearguing for a range of media effects, seesthese as slow and cumulative, rather thanquick and direct.There are two main reasons for using thistype of categorisation.Persistence: Theories that have beenchallenged or disproved do notnecessarily just fade away they maywell reform, evolve and reappear at a laterpoint in a different form. A simpletheoretical timeline may not capturethese relationships and changes veryconvincingly.Common sense: Although academicsociologists may decide a particular theoryis redundant, this doesnt mean mediacommentators or their audiences feel thesame way. Common sense ideas aboutmedia effects often persist, regardless ofthe efforts of media sociologists to debunkthem. In addition, we often nd verysimple and simplistic theories ofmedia effects persist precisely becausethey represent a way of making theincomprehensible understandable tothose not schooled in the darker arts ofmedia theory.WARM UP: FEELING THE FORCE? This short exercise is designed to start youthinking about your own beliefs (positiveand negative) about how the media affectsaudiences.In small groups discuss/identify three or fourexamples of possible positive and negativeeffects situations, for example, where youthink the media inuences people in someway. These can be from your ownexperience or from what you have seen, reador heard in the media.Positiveeffects?Negative effects?Entertainmentfor the lonelyDoes itfrighten/panic somepeople?Once you have done this, share your ideaswith the rest of the class and, for each of theeffects identied, discuss whether you thinkthey: Affect everyone equally (and if not, whynot?) Affect an audience directly or indirectly.One of the things this exercise will havedemonstrated is the signicance of Currensargument (Media and Power, 2002) that:The conviction . . . the media are importantagencies of inuence is broadly correct.However, the ways in which the media exertinuence are complex and contingent. Wecan translate this idea into a relativelysimple statement: We know the media affectpeople, but the crucial questions are how and in what ways are audiencesinuenced? We can begin to explore thesequestions by examining a range of MediaEffects theories.190AS Sociology for AQADirect MediaEffectsPreparing theground One of if not the oldest form of Effectstheory is based on the idea of a relativelysimple, direct and effective relationshipbetween the media (as producers andtransmitters of messages) and their audience(who both receive and act on suchmessages). This theory has two basic forms.Hypodermic syringe (or magic bullet)models: At its most basic, this theorysuggests the media transmit messages(ideas, information, beliefs and so forth)that are then picked-up and acted uponby the audience (receivers). Mediamessages, therefore, are a bit like a druginjected into the body that is theaudience. relationship. The media (cause) doessomething and the audience reacts(effect) in some way.Immediacy: For the media to be acause of audience behaviour there hasto be some sort of immediate audiencereaction (otherwise we could not besure the media was the cause ofchanges in peoples behaviour).Audience: The consumers of mediamessages are passive receivers (asopposed to active interpreters an ideawe will develop in relation to othereffects theories) of media messages.The reason for this is found in the ideaof mass society. As weve seen in anearlier section, this argues people aresocially isolated; in other words, theyhave few, if any, strong links to socialnetworks (family, friends, communitiesand so forth) that provide alternativesources of information andinterpretation. In this situation,therefore, audiences are receptive towhatever the media transmits becausethey depend on it for information. A second form of this type of theory is a:Transmission model: Developedoriginally by Shannon and Weaver (Themathematical theory of communication,1949) this suggests a slightly moresophisticated form of relationshipbetween the media and their audience, ina couple of ways.This theory, as you might expect,presupposes a number of things.Effects are direct and measurable wecan see the effect of messages on anaudience in terms of a cause and effectMessageMedia AudienceThe Hypodermic Model191The mass mediaSenders: It splits the transmissionprocess into two parts; the informationsource (which can be anything agovernment announcement, forexample) and the transmission source (atelevision report of the announcement,for example).Receivers: Although media messagescan be directly sent to a receiver (suchas an audience watching a newsbroadcast), its possible for people whoare not watching the broadcast to alsoreceive the message (or at least, a formof the message) through theirinteraction with people who did watchit (in other words, people may pass onmessages to those who haventpersonally experienced them).This theory also introduces theconcept of:Noise or interference which can beanything that distracts an audience.For example, when watching a newsbroadcast, someone may leave theroom to make a cup of tea, therebymissing some part of the message.As we will see in a moment, thisvariation on the basic direct effectstheory paved the way for a more-criticalunderstanding of how the media relates toits audience. However, before we look atsuch theories, we can identify somecriticisms of this general transmissionmodel (to give it a critical kicking, as wesay in the trade).Note: If you wanted to classify this type oftheory in terms of sociological perspectives,the closest t (at least for the earliest typesof transmission theories) would be the NewRight (later versions, focusing on ideas likeglobalisation and new types of mass societytheory, can, however, be associated withNew Left/Marxist perspectives).Digging deeper As David Gauntlett (10 Things Wrongwith the Effects Model , 1998) has argued,there are problems with transmissiontheories we can summarise in the followingterms:Audience: As we have seen, originalversions of this theory treated audiencesas uncritical, gullible, individuals easilyinuenced and led by whatever they read,saw or heard in the media. One particular piece of evidence oftencited to support this idea (and the theoryitself ) is Orson Welles infamous War ofthe Worlds broadcast (1938), a radio playcleverly designed to simulate a Martianattack using the news broadcastingtechniques of the time. The receivedwisdom here is that many Americansbelieved they were hearing about a realinvasion and panicked in a variety ofways; the evidence for this mass hysteriais, however, actually quite thin. From an audience of around 6 millionpeople, some people clearly did feelunsettled by what they heard (a policestation in the area of the supposedinvasion answered around 50 calls fromworried residents), but accounts of peopleeeing to the hills have been grosslyexaggerated over the years. Theremarkable thing about this story is not somuch people believed what they werehearing, but that the behaviour of the vastmajority of listeners was not inuenced orchanged in any appreciable way.192AS Sociology for AQAArticial conditions: Most research intotransmission effects has taken place underconditions (in a laboratory for example)that inadequately represent the realsituations in which people use the media.Bandura, Ross and Rosss Bo-Bo dollexperiment (Transmission of aggressionthrough imitation of aggressive models,1961), for example, is frequently cited asevidence that watching violent TVprogrammes produces violent behaviourin children (although I suspect that ifanyone was selectively fed a diet ofviolence they might want to take outtheir frustration by bashing a large plasticBo-Bo doll over the head for a fewminutes). One of the (many) weaknessesof the study was that the children in thestudy were rated for violence by adultassessors, which beg questions about theobjectivity of the research.Belsons study (Television Violence and theAdolescent Boy, 1978) is also cited asevidence that prolonged exposure toviolence in the media produces violentbehaviour (in young males). Hagell andNewburn (Young Offenders and theMedia, 1994), on the other hand, founda general lack of interest in television(violent or otherwise) among youngoffenders (they had, presumably, betterthings to do with their time or perhapswatching televised violence has apacifying effect on peoples behaviour) which raises questions about:Immunity: If the media have direct andimmediate effects, why are some (most?)people immune to these effects? Thisapplies equally to media researchers(Frank Longford, for example, was acelebrated anti-pornography campaignerin the 1960s and 1970s who visitednumerous strip clubs and viewed hardcorepornography without seemingly beingaffected by his experiences) and toaudiences the vast majority of listenersto the War of the Worlds broadcast, forexample, were unaffected by it. In thesame way, people seem able to viewviolent media content without necessarilyimitating the violence they see depicted.You might be forgiven, at this point, forthinking that transmission models wouldnally be laid to rest. However, they tendto resurface from time to time, usually ina slightly different or amended form:Transmission theories are dead they justrefuse to accept this fact.Cumulation theory, for example, suggestsmedia effects can be cumulative, ratherthan immediate. Thus, prolongedexposure to violent lms or computergames, for example, can result in bothchanged behaviour and, in the case ofviolence, desensitisation (in other words,the more you are exposed to violentimages, the less likely they are tostimulate you, so you seek outincreasingly violent material notice thedrug/addiction theme still running here).193The mass mediaEventually, you become so desensitised toviolence you are less likely to be moved,shocked or appalled by real violence. Thebasic idea behind this version is closelyrelated to a signicant change inTransmission theories, namely: Vulnerable audiences: Rather thaneveryone being at risk, the focussometimes moves to the idea someaudiences are more likely than others tobe affected by the media an obviousvulnerable category being children. Thisfollows from their lack of socialexperience and, of course, their tendencyto copy behaviour around them. Actualevidence for effects tends to be anecdotal the media claim, rather than prove, arelationship between, for example,violent behaviour and violent play. Researchers such as David Buckingham(Moving Images, 1996) and DavidGauntlett (Moving Experiences, 1995)have demonstrated how even very youngchildren have a quite sophisticated levelof media literacy they understand moreabout the media and how it works thanadults give them credit for (they are ableto distinguish between ctional andfactual representations of violence, forexample).Guy Cumberbatch (LegislatingMythology, 1994) also warns againstmisleading, partial and slipshod effectsresearch. Responding in 1983 tonewspaper headlines such as Half ofchildren see lm nasties (The Daily Mail),his research showed 68% of the 11-year-olds he studied claimed to have seenwhat, at the time, were consideredexceptionally violent lms (so-calledvideo nasties a moral panic that arosearound the time Video CassetteRecorders (VCRs) were becomingcommon in the home). As Cumberbatchnotes, moral panics about detrimentalmedia effects often occur at times oftechnological change (as is currently thecase with computer games). By the way, iftwo-thirds of 11 year-olds seems a lot,the key point to remember here is thesechildren were admitting to viewing lms(Blood on the teeth of the vampire!) thatdidnt actually exist . . .Academic arguments: Anderson et al, intheir review of effects research (TheInuence of Media Violence on Youth,2003) argue: Research on violenttelevision and lms, video games andmusic reveals unequivocal evidencemedia violence increases the likelihood ofaggressive and violent behaviour in bothimmediate and long term contexts.Cumberbatch (Ofce of Film andLiterature Classication Conference,2003), however, rejected this claim in lessthan attering terms when he argued: Ifthis analysis was a car, the door would falloff in your hand and the thing wouldcollapse half way up the street.Limited MediaEffectsPreparing theground Alternative ways of theorising media effectsdeveloped in the 1950s partly as a reactionto the relatively crude behaviourist (monkeysee, monkey do) notions of direct effecttheorists and partly as a development of suchTwo-Step Flow ModelMediaPrimary Group members194AS Sociology for AQAtheories. We can examine a couple of thesemodels by way of illustrating how theyargued for a greater understanding of therole of audiences in the effects equation.Diffusion theories focus on the waymedia messages spread throughout anaudience and are based on the idea of atrickle-down effect. In other words, althoughmessages may originate in the media, theyare received by an audience in a couple ofdifferent ways.Directly by personally viewing a newsbroadcast, for example.Indirectly through social interactionwith people who received the messagedirectly, through other media sourcesreporting the original message or, indeed,a combination of the two.In other words, diffusion theories reect aform of Chinese Whispers, whereby anoriginal message is continually relayedthroughout an audience and, at each stage ofthe retelling, the message may be subtlychanged or reinterpreted think, forexample, about how gossip is relayedthrough a population.A classic version of this theory is Katzand Lazarelds (Personal Inuence, 1955)Two-Step Flow theory, where they arguedmessages owed from the media to opinionformers (people who directly received amessage, were interested enough to want torelay it to others and inuential enough forothers to take the message on board).In this respect, the majority of anaudience received the original message in aform mediated through inuential people inthe primary groups to which they belonged(family or friends, for example). The keyelement in this type of theory, therefore, wasan audiences involvement in primary groupswhere media messages were discussed or, asKatz and Lazareld put it, a recognition ofthe importance of informal, interpersonalrelations.This version of diffusion theory,therefore, has three main elements.Primary social groups are a moresignicant inuence than the media.Interpersonal sources of information aresignicant inuences on how peoplereceive and respond to media messages.Limited direct effects: Any changes inpeoples behaviour are likely to resultfrom the way media messages areinterpreted, discussed and reinterpretedwithin primary groups, rather than fromany direct media inuence. As JosephKlapper (The Effects of MassCommunication, 1960) put it: Masscommunication ordinarily does not serveas a necessary and sufcient cause ofaudience effects, but rather functionsamong and through a nexus [network] ofmediating factors and inuences suchas, various types of selective:perception: we notice some messagesbut not othersOpinion Formers195The mass mediaexposure: we choose what to watchand read, consistent with our beliefsexpression: we listen to what peopleimportant to us thinkretention: we remember the importantthings, consistent with our beliefs.We can see these ideas in relation tohow, for example, in recent years the UKmedia has transmitted messages about thepossible dangers of mobile phone use(New Mobile Phone Danger: DailyExpress, 2000); despite the possibledangers, the use of such phones hasntdeclined, let alone stopped. One reasonfor this might be a general audienceconsensus/belief such warnings are eitheruntrue or exaggerated. Another way of looking at this (andKlappers ideas about audience selection) isthrough Leon Festingers concepts (ATheory of Cognitive Dissonance, 1957) of:Cognitive assonance: In basic terms, if amessage ts with our personal and social(primary group) beliefs we are more likelyto consider it favourably.Cognitive dissonance involves thereverse idea. If the message doesnt twith what we want to hear then werespond by dismissing it, doubting it,ignoring it and so forth.Both these ideas t neatly with Two-StepFlow theory since opinion formers within agroup are likely to be seen in terms of theassonance of their message. A second type of theory related to theabove which takes the idea of a separationbetween the media and their audiences evenfurther is uses and gratications. Thistheory is interesting because it reverses theway weve been looking at the relationshipbetween the mass media and their audiencesfor most of this chapter. It suggests audiencespick-and-choose both media and messages in other words, they use the media tosatisfy their individual and group needs(gratications). Thus, rather than askingwhat the media does to people, the theorylooks at how different people, in differentsituations, use the media for their own ends.Blumler et al (The Television Audience,1972), for example, suggest there are fourbasic primary uses for the media:Entertainment media used as adiversion from the problems of everydaylife, for example. Alternatively, peoplemay seek entertainment for its own sake(or, indeed, for a 1001 different reasons).Social solidarity: In societies where themedia is part of everyday life, it can beused as the basis for social interaction(talking about the latest events in a soapopera, discussing the news or arguingabout who you think will be evicted fromreality TV programmes like Big Brother).A shared knowledge of the media givespeople common ground about which totalk (much like we often use the weatheras a topic of conversation), which gives itan integrating function we can feel part ofa social group (solidarity) on the basis ofour common interests andpreoccupations. Even in the virtual worldof Internet chatrooms and message boards(where people may not physically knoweach other), like-minded people candiscuss things that are important to them. Severin and Tankard (Uses of MassMedia, 1997) found the most frequentusers of the media were those who werelonely and/or socially isolated, which196AS Sociology for AQAsuggests for many people the media are animportant source of companionship.Identity: We use the media in differentways to create or maintain a sense of whowe are. This may involve reading lifestylemagazines (such as Hello or Homes andGardens), using the media as role andstyle models or, as is increasingly the case,seeking help from magazines and manualsabout personal behaviour and problems(through self-help books such as MiltonCudneys ever-popular Self-DefeatingBehaviors (sic), 1993).Surveillance: In a complex world, themedia provides us with news andinformation about that world. We mayuse it to keep in touch with what ishappening, for reassurance, personaleducation and the like.In terms of this theory, the media are:powerless, considered in terms of theirability to directly inuence or changebehaviourneutral, in the sense of not really havingany direct affect on attitudesunimportant as far as researchers areconcerned, since the object of study is theactive audience rather than the mediaitself.We can also note a further theoreticalvariation on diffusion models, namelyReinforcement Theory, which focuses onthe social context of media use. In otherwords, the way the media may affect us isdependent on the social groups andinteraction therein to which we belong. Klapper (1960), for example, arguedpeoples beliefs were related to the socialgroups to which they were attached (primarygroups being the most signicant) and oneGrowing it yourself: uses and gratications Using the following table as a template, apply Blumler et als ideas to your understanding ofmedia use, on both a personal level and in terms of the way you think others may use themedia to satisfy certain personal and social needsPrimary Uses How I use the media How others may use themediaEntertainment MTV Keeping up to datewith my favourite musicRelaxationSocial solidarityIdentity Reading The Guardianreects their view of societySurveillance Im going to Florida arethere any hurricanesimminent?197important role of a secondary group such asthe media was to reinforce eitherpositively or negatively the beliefs we havealready formed. This, therefore, suggests amedia effect of sorts. Finally, limited effects approaches areneatly summed up by Bernard Berelsons(The Peoples Choice, 1948) wonderfullyimprecise argument that: Some kinds ofcommunication on some kinds of issues,brought to the attention of some kinds ofpeople under some kinds of conditions havesome kinds of effects and you cant bemore denite than that.Digging deeperTheories of limited media effects provided awelcome antidote to the kind of simple anddirect media effects that characterised (andstill characterise, perhaps) Transmissionmodels. We can, for example, see this veryclearly if we consider the relationshipbetween the media and violent behaviour.Transmission models have been implicitlycriticised, methodologically, by diffusionapproaches for assuming what they should betesting. For example, simply because weoften nd people who behave violentlyenjoy violent forms of media doesnt meanone (the media) causes the other an ideacalled the stepping-stone theory, (one usedextensively in discussions of deviance andillegal drug use, for example), which arguesviolent people consume violent media andthen commit acts of violence as the thrillthey get from the former escalates into thelatter.An alternative interpretation here is, thatfor certain audiences, violent behaviour issomething they enjoy (whether it be real orimaginary violence). If this is the case itshardly surprising to nd a correlationbetween the two areas; if I like ghting withpeople in the street, for example, I probablyalso like to read violent material, watchviolent lms and listen to aggressive music in other words, whereas the two may gotogether (people who like gardeningprobably read gardening magazines andwatch gardening programmes), we canteasily (if at all) disentangle one from theother. In other words, which comes rst? DoI watch violent lms because I like violence or does watching violence make meviolent?However, limited effects models do havesome major problems we need to consider.Tautology: If a theory is tautologous itcontains its own proof in other words, itinvolves a circular argument; it cannot bedisproven because it cannot beobjectively tested. Uses andgratications, for example, draws onfunctionalist ideas (the media performscertain functions for both society and theindividual) and suffers from a similarproblem. With Functionalism, thetautology comes from the idea everythingin society exists for a purpose if itexists, it is functional because if it wasntfunctional it wouldnt exist.In the previous exercise, it should havebeen easy to identify a range of peoplesuses and gratications; the problem,however, is that being able to do thisdoesnt test the theory. For this theory tobe true, you merely have to identify someuses that some people at some time getfrom the media. Thus, if I use the mediato gratify my needs, such needs explainwhy and how I use the media but itdoesnt explain where my needs comeThe mass media198AS Sociology for AQAfrom in the rst place. In other words, wehave no way of knowing if the mediacreate or simply reect my needs.Choice: For an audience to be active interms of their media use, they have to beable to choose between different mediaoptions. For example, if I dont like theliberal politics of The Guardian I canchoose the Daily Telegraph as a newspapercloser to my views. In some ways, the twoare very different (one is anti-hunting,the other pro; one is anti-Europe, theother isnt and so forth). While we shouldnt overlook theimportance of these differences, in otherways the two newspapers are similar and,in this sense, my choices are limited bythe range of media available. Both, forexample, promote similar economic ideasabout capitalism; both give morecredence and space to the views ofemployer organisations and the ideas ofthe rich and powerful.When I read each paper I am subjected toadvertising and while the adverts may bedifferent, their function is the same; topersuade me to part with some of themassive amount of money Im being paidfor writing this book (I wish). This ideaof consumption (I shop, therefore I am)can be related to issues of:Identity: Diffusion models, apart fromseeing active audiences, suggest the mediais, at best, a neutral medium (it has few, ifany, effects) and, at worst, completelyineffective in its ability to inuence. Suchmodels, therefore, separate the audiencefrom the medium, in the sense I maychoose to watch television and may havethe choice of many different channels.Within those channels a range ofdifferent types of programming (such aslm, drama and quiz shows) are available,within each type (or genre) I can choose,for example, romantic comedy as opposedto horror lms and so on, almost adinnitum. In other words, I chose themedia that t my sense of identity(because they satisfy my needs). However, the obvious point to note hereis the media cannot simply reect themassive diversity of individual needs thissituation implies at some point myneeds cannot be ideally satised and Imay have to settle for whatever the mediais offering. In other words, my behaviouris changed subtly to be sure, butchanged none the less. What thissuggests, therefore, is the:Relationship between audience andmedium is more complex thandiffusion models suggest.Cultural factors always intervene inthe relationship. At its most blatant, ifa newspaper doesnt exactly meet my(political and ideological) needs, Ihave to settle for the closest tbetween my needs and whats on offer;at its most subtle, it suggests the media(consciously or unconsciously)introduces small behavioural changesto their audience. Thus, in relation tosomething like the Two-Step Flowtheory we could note the importanceof a cultural factor such as:Authority: In some situations, we look tothe media to lead our behaviour to tellus not only what is happening but, mostimportantly perhaps, how we shouldthink about and interpret the signicanceof whatever is happening. A furthercultural factor at work here is diffusion199The mass mediamodels assume audiences have an almostunlimited range of information available,so that all sides and all possibleinterpretations are covered but this isnot necessarily the case. Leaving aside your personal feelings aboutviolent youths, paedophiles and illegalimmigrants, they, for example, have no-one putting across their side of the storyin the mainstream media. In suchsituations its not beyond the bounds ofreason to question how ineffective themedia actually are (which, spookilyenough, is what were going to do next).Indirect MediaEffectsPreparing theground It is tempting to see the next group oftheories (gathered for convenience aroundthe label cultural effects) as some sort ofmiddle ground between the direct effectsand limited effects theories we havepreviously examined. This, however, wouldbe a mistake because cultural effects theoriesview the media as a very powerful inuencein society. Although we have already metthe main ideas associated with such theories when we examined hegemonic theories ofmedia and ideology we can apply them toan understanding of media effects by notinghow these theories see the media as acultural (or ideological) institution. Inother words, its primary role is to promote and police cultural values, or, as Newbold(Approaches to Cultural Hegemony withinCultural Studies, 1995) puts it: Culturaleffects theory suggests the media isembedded in the relations that constitute aparticular society, working both to produceand reect powerful interests and socialstructures. From this (neo-Marxist) perspective,therefore, were looking at the media as anagency of social control and, in this particularrespect, how the control of ideas the waypeople think about the world can be usedto inuence behaviour. However, asNewbold suggests, we are not thinking hereabout direct control, in the sense of forcingpeople (consciously or unconsciously) tobehave in certain ways; rather, the mediaacts at the institutional (large group) level ofculture, not at the level of individual beliefs.In other words, the media exercises socialcontrol through its actions as a socialisingagency, advising and guiding audiences and,by so doing, exercising a hegemonic role. Wecan, for example, see this idea in terms ofGeorge Gerbners ideas (CommunicationsTechnology and Social Policy, 1973)concerning Cultivation Theory, whichargues television cultivates distinctiveattitudes in its audience, rather than directlyinuencing their behaviour. As DanielChandler (Cultivation Theory, 1995) putsit: Heavy watching of television is seen ascultivating attitudes which are moreconsistent with the world of televisionprogrammes than with the everyday world.Watching television may induce a generalmindset about violence in the world, quiteapart from any effects it might have ininducing violent behaviour.The key idea here, therefore, is induce ageneral mindset; the hegemonic role of themedia creates a situation in which some beliefsare subtly encouraged and others discouragedand, as it establishes this role, its effects are:200AS Sociology for AQASlow: Attitudes and behaviour dontchange overnight. Rather, media effectshave to be measured in terms of a slowdrip of change; in other words, small,gradual and long-term effects that are:Cumulative, in the sense the mediaestablishes and builds on the general ideasbeing propagated. It uses a number ofstandard techniques to achieve acumulative effect the consistentpromotion of some ideas and not others,the marginalisation of dissenting viewsand voices, the repetition of certain ideasuntil they assume a common sense ortaken-for-granted status.Directional, in the sense of being limitedto particular inuences. Only very rarelycan the media directly change peoplesbeliefs or behaviour; rather, it operates onthe level of leading people in certaindirections or ways of thinking. Gerbner et al (Living with Television,1986) draw a parallel between television andreligion in terms of its basic culturalfunctions: the continual repetition ofpatterns (myths, ideologies, facts,relationships, etc.) which serve to dene theworld and legitimize the social order. Perhaps the most inuential culturaleffects theory in recent years has been theEncoding/Decoding model developed by,among others, Stuart Hall (Encoding/Decoding, 1980). This involves what issometimes called a reception theory and isbased on the idea media messages always havea range of possible meanings andinterpretations some intended by the sender(a newspaper owner or the author, forexample) and others read into the message bythe audience. For example, even a very simplemedia text (such as an advert) will involve:Encoding: The originator of a messagehas a point they want to get across to theaudience. The main point of an advert,for example, might be the simple messageBuy this product (it is more complicatedthan this in reality not all adverts, forexample, are designed just to sellproducts, but we can keep it simple forour illustrative purpose).Decoding: The audience viewing theadvert will interpret (decode) its messagein a variety of ways, depending on suchfactors as their social background, thecontext in which the advert is seen andso forth. Thus, how an audience receivesand understands even a very simplemessage will depend on a potentiallyhuge range of factors. For example, if Iam not in the habit of buying cheapdeodorant, I am unlikely to be veryreceptive to such an advert. On theother hand, if I see the advert when Imthinking about a cheap Christmaspresent for a relation I dont particularlylike, I may be receptive. The key ideahere, therefore, is:Relative autonomy: In one sense, I amquite free (autonomous) to interpret amedia text in whatever way I choose,depending to some extent on a range offactors (can I afford to buy whats beingadvertised? Do I really need the product?On the other, Im being bombarded withmessages that may, in somecircumstances, be difcult to resist.For this model, therefore, media messageshave a number of possible effects, dependingto some extent on the message itself (howcleverly its constructed, for example) and toother extents on things like my personalcultural background and situation (I may201want to buy the Porsche 911 Ive seenadvertised but since I cant afford it, Iwont). Hall suggests at least three mainways a media message can be read by anaudience.Hegemonic: The audience shares theassumptions and interpretations of theauthor and reads the message in the wayit was intended. Buying a Porsche 911, forexample, is something I need to dobecause I can afford it and it will send amessage to others about my social status(ironically, of course, I cant actuallycontrol what that message may be).Negotiated: For this type of reading theaudience will broadly share the authorsviews, but may modify theirinterpretation in the light of their ownparticular feelings, beliefs or abilities. Forexample, although I know a Porsche isdesirable and would love to own one Ill settle for a car that is better suited to my nancial and family circumstances.Oppositional: As someone concernedabout the environment, I believe cars aregenerally not to be encouraged. I wouldcertainly not buy a Porsche because ituses too much petrol and pollutes theenvironment.In terms of the above, therefore, we can lookat three basic forms of cultural effect.Agenda setting: As we have noted in aprevious section, the media, according toMcCombs and Shaw (The agenda-setting function of mass media, 1972)identify and select the ideas people areencouraged to think about. An obvious and over-simplied example here mightbe sports reporting. A casual glancethrough most daily newspapers suggestsfootball is the most important sport inthis country the column inches devotedto reports of matches, boardroomintrigues, managerial sackings and thelike far outweighs the attention given toother sports throughout the year. In thisrespect, while newspapers are unlikely tomake you change the team you support,they are setting the agenda for what peopletalk about. If this is true for sport, then itmay also be true for areas such as politicsand economics. Discussion point:more than wordscan sayWe can illustrate the above ideas bythinking about the following:Imagine you owned a Porsche 911. Listsome of the things you want it to say toother people about you.Reverse the gaze and imagine you seesomeone driving a Porsche 911. List someof the things you think it says about thisperson.The mass media202AS Sociology for AQAAs Severin and Tankard (1997) argue,the media have the power to put certainissues in the public sphere DenisMcQuail (Mass Communication Theory:An Introduction, 1994), for example,noted a clear relationship between theorder of importance attached to issues bythe media and the signicance given tothose issues by politicians and the public.However, as McCombs and Estrada(The news media and the pictures in ourheads, 1997) note, being told what tothink about doesnt guarantee the mediatell us how and what to think about it, oreven what to do about it. A furtherprocess, according to cultural effectstheorists comes into play here, namely:Framing: In this respect, issues and storiesare framed in ways that suggest toaudiences how they should be interpreted.In other words, as we have seen earlier,issues are framed in terms of preferredreadings and dominant interpretations audiences are, therefore primed tounderstand issues (hence this idea issometimes called priming theory) in termsof what Simon and Xenos (MediaFraming and Effective PublicDeliberation, 2000) call elite discourses in other words, in terms of the waymedia owners and journalists want theiraudiences to understand an issue. In The Battle for Public Opinion, 1983,Lang and Lang found framing worked byusing language an audience couldunderstand; in other words, by simplifyingissues the media could effectively frameevents and set the agenda for theirdiscussion. A more recent example mightbe the way something like terrorism isreduced to simple ideas, language andsolutions. The phrase MuslimFundamentalist used repeatedly in thecontext of terrorism is a priming phraseused by some media to lead theiraudience to the conclusion the two areinextricably connected. This, in turn,leads us to consider a further culturaleffect.Myth making: George Gerbner(Reclaiming Our Cultural Mythology,1994) argues the media have grown sopowerful and pervasive in modern(global) societies they create mythicalrealities for those audiences who immersethemselves in media content. In otherwords, the heavier your mediaconsumption (whether it be watchingtelevision, reading newspapers or surngthe Internet) the more likely you are tobe drawn into a fantasy world of themedias creation.For example, we are aware mediareporting of crime and violence is farmore exaggerated than its actualoccurrence in our society. Gerbner(1994) argues, heavy television viewers(watching more than three hours per day)are drawn into a distorted concept ofreality. As he notes: Most of theviolence we have on television is what Icall happy violence. Its swift, itsthrilling, its cool, its effective, itspainless, and it always leads to a happyending because you have to deliver theaudience to the next commercial in areceptive mood.Such exposure, he argues, leads to thedevelopment of mean world syndrome the belief, in short, the world is a harsherand meaner place than it is in realitybecause programming reinforces the203The mass mediaworst fears, apprehensions and paranoiaof people.Digging deeper On the face of things, cultural effectstheories seem to represent a signicant stepforward in understanding media effects.However, they do have both methodologicaland conceptual problems. Methodologicalproblems relate to the idea of proving ordisproving cultural effects arguments and wecan note a couple of such problems.Measurement: Although these theoriessuggest the media does have some form ofsocialising/social control effect, the mainproblem is how to measure such effects. Ifthey are, by denition, slow, cumulative,indirect and long term, it means that, atbest, they will be extremely difcult toidentify and track and, at worst, it will beall but impossible to disentangle specicmedia effects from a wide range of otherpossible causes. In other words, how is itpossible to say with any degree ofcertainty that attitude or behaviouralchanges are the result of media asopposed to some other effects? Cultivation theories also involve someclear problems of measurement andinterpretation. For example, the ideaheavy television viewers are more opento media influence begs a number ofquestions: How many hours do youneed to watch to be a heavy viewer?How does a researcher decide this figureand, perhaps more significantly, howdoes the social context of viewing(alone, with family etc.) impact on suchideas?In addition, problems of proof relate to:Tautology: Just as diffusion models haveproblems with proof, so to do culturaleffects models. The basic problem hererelates to the identication and trackingof effects we have just noted; whatexactly is a media effect? Just aboutanything can be advanced as evidence ofthe basic theory. If, for example, we aresomehow able to identify an effect, thisproves the theory (it demonstrates, forexample, the medias hegemonic role); onthe other hand, an inability to identifyeffects doesnt disprove the validity of thetheory since we could argue oppositionalreadings of media messages explain whythere are no effects.Conceptual problems, on the other hand,relate to the ideas used within culturaleffects theories. For example:Preferred readings: This idea, althoughapparently straightforward, is fraught withproblems. John Corner (Textuality,Communication and Power, 1983) forexample, argues it is difcult to discoverwhich if any reading is a dominantone in a situation where, as culturaltheorists admit, there are many possiblereadings. In addition, Kathy Myers(Understanding Advertisers, 1983)argues it would be in the interests ofadvertisers to create a range of preferredreadings for their product to appeal to aswide an audience as possible on a range ofdifferent levels. In such situations itdoesnt make much sense to somehowrestrict the advert to a single, preferred,reading that can be rejected (or opposed)by the people you are trying to inuence.A further problem is that in order toidentify a preferred reading we204AS Sociology for AQApresumably either have to research anaudience to discover their understandingof a media text or trust to our own medialiteracy as researchers. In the rstinstance, as Justin Wren-Lewis (TheEncoding/Decoding Model, 1983) argues,does the possibility an audience willinterpret a certain message as the oneintended by the author necessarily meanthis is the preferred reading? Apart fromthe problem of author intention that isdiscussed in more detail below, we cantsimply assume, as I have noted, there is asingle dominant reading, nor can weassume the reading identied andunderstood by the majority of anaudience is actually the preferred reading they may, for example, simply havelatched on to a reading they prefer.In the second instance we arrive at ageneral problem of:Semiological analysis: Cultural effectstheories depend on this type of analysis(the basics of which we have covered inthe Research Methods chapter) becausethey argue a media text has a number ofpossible interpretations. However, asShaun Moores (Interpreting Audiences:The Ethnography of Media Consumption,1993) notes, one problem for a researcheris a form of imposition effect; that is, ifwe are sure a preferred reading exists thereis the possibility that, by trying to identifyit, we simply impose our reading of thetext on both the author and the audience.Essentialising the reader: A nal problem,related to the above ideas, is one noted byRob Stam (Film Theory, 2000) when heargues cultural effects theorists tend toresolve the problem of semiologicalanalysis by giving primary importance tothe audience in anyinterpretation/decoding. However, thelogic of such an argument, Stam suggests,is we assume audiences have essentialcharacteristics (they can be relativelyeasily grouped as oppositional readers for example) when the reality is they mayhold contradictory, illogical andfragmented levels of understanding. Inother words, asking the audience may notbe a very fruitful way of establishing effects not least because it begs the questionabout media effects in the rst place: doesan audience interpret a message because ofits unique cultural characteristics or,conversely, because it has been shown howto interpret the message by the media?The last word(s) To complete this section we can note a coupleof further dimensions to the general debatesurrounding media effects. The rst of these wecan call ethnographic analyses of audiences: Interms of this general model, the debate hasmoved on in a couple of ways: rstly, awayfroman analysis of the media to a culturalanalysis of audiences and the various ways theyinteract with different media. Secondly,analysis has moved away fromthe idea of massaudiences their actions and reactions to aninterest in audiences differentiated by generalcategories like age, gender and ethnicity aswell as by more individualised categories suchas cultural and technological competence. Insome ways this epistemological shift (a change inthe way sociologists think about howtogenerate reliable and valid knowledge aboutthe way audiences use the media) reects apostmodern-tinged concern with the nature ofpersonal and social identities, an importantcomponent of which in the twenty-rst205The mass mediacentury is howwe understand and useavailable media technologies.To get a avour for these approaches(which, as the term ethnography suggests,involves the researcher immersingthemselves in the cultural behaviour of thepeople they are studying observing,questioning and participating in thatbehaviour, for example), we can note threebasic strands to this general approach.Social space: This particular strand focuseson the way the media is integrated intodifferent spaces especially, but notexclusively, the private space of the home. Inthis respect, understanding howaudiencesuse the media involves examining howdomestic spaces are structured fromrelatively simple issues such as who useswhat media in what contexts for whatpurposes, to more complex issues aboutcontrol and ownership of technology (whocontrols the TVremote in your family?)and howmedia use ts into the general owof domestic behaviour.Cultural competence: This strand focuseson understanding how audiences bringdifferent levels of media literacy andcompetence to their use of the media attheir disposal. An obvious example here isthe Internet and debates over the extent towhich children should or should not besupervised (through both parental andsoftware controls). How people use themedia and what they take from it willdepend to varying extents on theirfamiliarity with that media; this extendsfrom things like understanding theconventions of lms, through theexpectations we have for different media,to the ability to master differenttechnologies. To use a simple example,although I consider myself media literate (Ican spot a conventional code at 20 paces . ..), the joy of text remains a mystery to me I have no idea how to send or receivetext messages. This, in a sense, make memedia illiterate and leads to a further focus:Technology: This model focuses on howwe engage with technology the mediahardware and the software that increasinglysurrounds us. Forty years ago Britishaudiences had to cope with television(black and white with two channels, bothof which shut down around midnight anddaytime TV was but a glint in someadvertising executives eye) and radio four stations, all government controlled.Now, I amsurrounded by technology 200television channels (the majority of whichI watch for about 10 seconds as I continuemy fruitless search for somethinginteresting), a digital radio Ive no idea howto tune, a computer that can streamlms tomy desktop, access to hundreds of radiostations around the world, email, messageboards, chatrooms, web blogs and a mobilephone I dont know how to answer.Interesting as these ideas (and my inabilityto keep pace with technological change) are,a second dimension to the debate revolvesaround a theoretical approach tounderstanding media and audiences. Thistype of approach suggests the type oftheories we have examined here (fromtransmission though diffusion to culturaleffects and ethnographies) have beenlooking for the wrong things in the wrongplaces in the wrong ways (and you cant getmore wrong than that). Conventional effectstheories, for example, assume a separationbetween the media and the audience,albeit in different ways; transmission theories206AS Sociology for AQAassume the media is dominant, diffusiontheories the audience dominates and culturaltheories suggest the media dominates insome areas, audiences in others.Postmodern approaches, however, focuson the concept of meaning. The majority ofconventional media effects theories assume,to varying degrees, a separation between themedia and the audience, such that onesends out some sort of information that mayor may not be received by audiences indifferent ways. However, if we consider thework of someone like Janet Staiger (PerverseSpectators: The Practices of Film Reception,2000), she reworks reception theory to argue,for example, immanent meaning (the ideathe meaning of something like a lm or anews broadcast is xed and unchanging) isnot a useful concept. Audiences, in effect,are perverse spectators in that they use mediain their own way and for whatever purpose.Activated meanings are created throughthe various ways an audience interacts withthe media. In other words, the meaning ofsomething like a soap opera is effectivelycreated and expressed in numerous ways bywhatever a viewer brings to their consumptionand enjoyment or otherwise of theprogramme. The signicance of this idea, ofcourse, is that the meaning of EastEnderschanges each and every time it is viewed,making it impossible to quantify any formofmedia effect in any meaningful way. Anyeffect is changed each time it is identied.This idea holds true for both the present the meaning of a media text is changedimmediately it is consumed and, mostobviously, the past (lms, for example, thatwere once considered shocking are nowmore likely to elicit laughter than fear).Audience as mediaPerhaps the most radical way ofunderstanding audience and media is tothink about the changing face of mediatechnology and use. If we think, for example,about new mass media (such as weblogs), thecircle is completed by the idea the audiencebecomes, at one and the same time, both theproducer and consumer of media texts. Inother words, the audience is the media andthe media is the audience the two areinterchangeable and indistinguishable sincethe one is a reection of the other.This idea (still in its earliest days sinceaccess to and understanding of new mediatechnologies is still in its infancy and is shotthrough with debates about media literacies,competencies and the uneven spread oftechnological development) is noteworthybecause it suggests a different direction formedia research and effects theories. It takesthe idea of the death of the author(although an author may have some ideaabout how they would like an audience toreceive and understand their text, each readereffectively interprets the text in terms of theirown ideas, beliefs and so forth) to newextremes of interpretation since it becomestechnologically possible to be both authorand audience at one and the same time.Growing it yourself:author and audienceThe message board you can nd atwww.sixthform.info/forum can be used toexplore the above ideas eitherindividually or as a class.As you use it, think about how you areperforming the dual roles of both audienceand mass medium.