Political Effects of Mass Communications Flashcards
Political communications triangle
- McNair
Political actors / Organizations
Citizens / Audience
Journalists / Media
* see interaction in notes
Media effects: the hypodermic needle
- Early 20th century
- strong and immediate effects
- associated with totalitarianism
E.g school shootings are an effect of violent computer games (however, not that simple)
Limited media effects
‘Minimal effects theory’
- 1950’s
Media has limited effects on its audience:
1. people are selective in their media (active audience theory)
2. beliefs & attitudes are based on social and environmental factors
3. pre-existing experiences & knowledge limits effects by the media
Limited media effects
‘Two-step flow model’
- 1950 Lazarfeld
- less direct effect from the media
- media effect/influence is filtered through opinion leaders
- model posits that people are more likely to be influenced by social groups and influential people than by mass media directly
- the power of the media is reinforcement
Media effects: active audience
Cultural studies: semiotic understanding of media effects
- audience are not passive receivers on the media but actively engage in interpreting their messages
- audience chooses the media to consume: escape, leisure
- audience select what they want to interpret based on individual needs/interest
Active audience: Dominant / oppositional
Cultural approach: semiotic understanding of media effects
- everybody decodes differently
- dominant vs. oppositional
E.g a conservative ideology in the news media
Republicans - dominant decoding
Democrats - oppositional decoding
Media effects: cultivation theory
- end of 20th century
- media affects peoples perception of reality E.g someone who watches a lot of crime takes crime in the world more seriously in politics
- specific to long-term exposure
- focuses on nuanced ‘gradual’ effects rather than immediate
- criticised for oversimplifying / ignoring the environmental and external factors
Current state of media effects
- platform power
- alternative/ partisan news platforms
- fringe platforms (niched audience promoting alternative and controversial views), memes
Measuring media effects and public opinion:
- Focus groups
(Micro level)
- common before a survey to test survey Q’s
- in depth
- why people think the way they do
- what are people’s values: thereafter shape campaigns to respond to values of groups (4-8 people)
Measuring media effects and public opinion:
- Experiments
(Micro approach)
- ‘more rare’
- problem: they’re artificial
- controlled
- less context
- lab based
- expensive (fewer participants?)
Measuring media effects and public opinion:
- Surveys / polls
- questionnaire off representing samples of citizens
Measuring media effects and public opinion:
- Measuring voting data
- analysing actual voting data
- analyse voting behaviour (combined with polls data): looking at the motives behind voting for a candidate
Effects of Political advertising
Mainly reinforces political attitudes opposed to changing opinion
Effects of the press
Weak long-term effects, targets certain groups
E.g bad frames can have the opposite effect on audience
Effects of television
More informative rather than persuasive
Agenda setting (+ priming)
Agenda setting:
- The media doesn’t tell people what to think, but what to think about - Cohen
- process of determining what issues/events get attention in the media
- based on the idea that media shapes public opinion by prioritising certain issues, shaping public discourse (through framing)
- setting agenda: salience, not persuasion often unnoticed by audience
- selection criteria: news values, editorial policy, inter-media agenda setting (one media source influences another)
- agenda setting devices: headlines, images, placements E.g page #
Agenda setting (+ priming)
(Priming)
- an extension of agenda-setting “2nd part”
- exposure to certain media influences the way people think about/respond to subsequent media content or event
- ethical questions regarding media manipulation in shaping public opinion/promoting agendas
regarding E.g political matters
Agenda setting (+ priming)
- Scheufele & Tewksbury summary:
”By making some issues more salient in people’s mind (agenda setting), mass media can also shape the considerations that people take into account when making judgments about political candidates or issues (priming)”
Framing
- organises an experience: E.g emphasising or omitting certain aspects of an issue
- can have multiple frames, one primary
- framing vs. frame - framing is the use of frames
- positive or negative
framing (journalists, politicians) frames (media and communications)
Agenda setting (+priming)
Framing
Key theories in media effects
Agenda setting (+priming):
Accessibility-based model
Framing:
Interpretation-based model
Difference between framing and agenda-setting
Agenda setting:
- medias ability to influence what people think about by selecting certain topics and giving them more coverage than others
Framing:
- the way that information is presented or contextualized to influence how people perceive and interpret it
MAIN IDEA: framing focuses on meaning, not accessibility
Salience
the more media exposure given to a topic influences the public salience of that topic: repeated exposure is what deems issues important
How the media sets the agenda /
intermedia agenda
Setting agenda: news values, editorial policy, intermedia agenda setting
Agenda-setting DEVICES: headlines, images, placement
Intermedia agenda: the media influencing other media in their content agenda-setting
