Media Effects Cont. Flashcards
Five features of media effects theories
- Selectivity of media use
- Media properties as predictors
- Media effects are indirect
- Media effects are conditional
- Media effects are transacional
Selectivity of media use
-People only attend to a limited number of messages that can potentially attract their attention
-people don’t choose media at random and is thus subject to selection/cognitive bias
-influenced by family, peer group, and subculture
-cognitive dissonace
-Only these messages they select have the potential to influence them
-Today choice is more important than exposure
Selective exposure: fragmented audience - changes in news sources
homogenous and centrist vs partisan
-Previously, news orgs were sufficiently homogenous and standardized to represent an “information commons.”
-New media have now transformed the supply of information by becoming more partisan
Selective exposure: fragmented audience - changes in audiences
byproduct vs algorithms
-previously people were exposed to the news as a simple byproduct of their loyalty to the medium (hard to select partisan information in old media)
-Now algorithms largely determine what we see, informed by our prior behaviors and those of people similar to our user profile
Example of studying fragmented audiences
Doing a study to examine why people feel depressed about Trump’s actions as president. What new sources are they watching?
*information filter and bubbles
-information bubbles: intellectual isolation, typically with ideology, that results from only paying attention to particular media (e.g. your candidate is the best theirs is the worst)
-information filter (you sometimes get info about the opposing candidate but its frames it within the views of aligning party)
Selective media use example (with effect)
Depressed individual listens to sad music, which worsens their depression
Media Properties as Predictors meaning
Certain media qualities act as predictors for how we act
Three types of media properties that may influence media effects
- Modality
- Content properties
- Structural properties
Modality
-the mode of communication (e.g. text, auditory, visual, audiovisual) may impact the resonanse of a message
e.g. Kennedy v Nixon debate
Structrual Properties
-such as special effects, space, visual surprises, peculiar sounds
e.g. evolution of news broadcasting from black and white to now containing many graphics - has lead to ‘arms race’ between different new sources trying to see who can command more people’s attention – this is an evolved response
*Content Properties
-such as violence, fear, type of character
-Our nervous system is most engaged when characters we’ve bonded with are in danger
-e.g Jaws movie Study (used galvanic skin response as proxy for emotion engagement) found that people sweat more when a character they’ve bonded with is in danger
*Media Effects are Indirect example
E.g. adolescent girls on Instagram
-On certain conditions can be harmful but with other conditions can provide a sense of belonging
-Other factors that may determine whether or not social media is harmful
-Hypodermic needle to say social media causes insecurity in young girls
E.g. study looked at how perceived healthy weight vs actually healthy weight can influence how a women feel about their body after viewing #fitspiration posts on instagram
Media Effects are Indirect
the influence of media use on outcomes of media use works via its influence on one or more intervening variables
Three types of indirect effects
- Media use
- Cognitive, emotional, and physiological processes that occur during and shortly after exposure act as mediators
- Post exposure variables (e.g. beliefs and attitudes) can be mediators of other post-exposure variables (e.g. political and health behavior)
*Cognitive, emotional, and physiological processes that occur during and shortly after exposure act as mediators
e.g. violent or sexually explicit content
Post exposure variables (e.g. beliefs and attitudes) can be mediators of other post-exposure variables (e.g. political and health behavior)
E.g. “wait in the truck” music video
Present very traditional roles of women (needing protection) and men (protectors)
Your context (e.g, if you’re a man or woman) might determine how you respond or view the message (es empower or derivative)
Media effects are conditional
dispositional, developmental, and social context factors have a role in the media effects process
they influence the way in which media content is processed
e.g. Canadian anti-smoking campaign, America Ferrera’s speech in Barbie and how Prof. Jones viewed it versus his wife
Conditional effects meaning
the impact of the media depends on other factors
Media Effects are Transactional
Transactional theories assume reciprocal causal relationships between:
-characteristics of the media users
-their selective media uses
-factors in their environment
-outcomes of media
Media Effects are Transactional: Producers and Receivers
Producers and receivers are connected through communication technologies and engage transactions
Producers and receivers influence each other and both can change as a result
Two types of transaction in media effects
- Interpersonal: between media producers and recievers
- Intrapersonal: within the cognitive and affective systems of the producers or receivers (e.g guiding selective exposure)
Media Effects are Transactional Example
E.g. the ways songs have been used on tiktok has changed the way songs are produced
Songs include more hooks that can be used which encourage people to find the song on streaming - this increasing profits
Transactionality Paradigm
Certain dispositions of media users can cause their selective media use, which can in turn cause certain outcomes , which can then further cause selective media use
e.g. adolescents’ aggressiveness may stimulate their use of violent media, which, in turn, may increase their aggressiveness, which may then further stimulate their violent media use.
Difference between indirect and conditional media effects
-Indirect effects occur when media influence doesn’t immediately change attitudes or behaviors but does so by altering INTERMEDIATE PROCESSES
e.g. E.g. exposure to violent media might not make someone immediately aggressive; instead it might change the way they interpret social cues or normalize aggression over time which then leads to aggressive behavior
-Conditional effects mean that the impact of media depends on other factors—like an individual’s personality, current mood, or social environment.
E.g. the same violent media content might increase aggression in one person (perhaps someone already predisposed to aggressive responses) but have little or no effect on another person whose temperament or context buffers them from such influence.
