Mass Comm 600, Introduction to Communication Science

Last updated 01/13/04

Definition of "theory" No investigation without theory: "Theories arise because facts cannot speak for themselves."

An assumption or group of related assumptions (constructs, i.e. empirical generalizations)

• explaining an empirical phenomena
• predicting similar phenomena

Also characterized by (Berger and Chaffee)

• Clarity
• Parsimony
• Prolificy
• Testability/Falsifiability (probably applies only to middle-range and micro theories)
• Internal consistency
• Heuristic value
• Organizing power
• Often predict relation between two variables (constructs)
• Are not true/false but valid or useful in explaining/predicting. Falsifying once does not disprove.

Definition of paradigm (DeFleur/Ball-Rokeach) Comprises basic assumptions (postulates) about the

• nature of society
• nature of the human individual, and
• the relation between the two

Nature of postulates

• Postulates provide a starting point for more specific theories
• Not open to testing themselves but are givens

May apply to broader orientations such as:

• cognitive orientation, including information processing, attitude change, dissonance, etc. (psychology)
• social conflict theory (Marx)
• functionalism (Merton)
• symbolic interactionism (Meade)
• evoloution (Darwin)

A Typology for Understanding Media Effects and Classifying Theories (Katz)

• Short-term persuasive effects, such as publicity campaigns, single media events, etc.
• Long-term "hegomonic effects," such as the ways media influence our perception of accepted reality
• Functional effects, such the roles media perform in the social and political structure and the impact they hoave on that structure
• Technologically determined effects, such as how characteristics of the media influence all of the above

• Key Introductory Concepts

Transmission (message centered/information processing) vs. ritual model (exchange, participation, reality creation; Carey)

One-way models stress:

• Transmission
• 
  Stimulus/Response
  Interpretation

Two-way models stress:

• Understanding
• Exchange
• Sharing
• Creating relationships

Levels of analysis (Chaffee and Berger)

• Intrapersonal
• Interpersonal
• Network
• Macrosocial

Mass Society Model of Sociology:

• Causes:
•  
  • Industrialization
  • Urbanization
  • Modernization
  • Bureaucratization
• Characteristics:
•  
  • Social differentiation (division of labor)
  • Formal control (law, police) increases
  • Informal control (social mores, standards) decreases
  • Conflict increases because of differentiation
  • Open and easy interpersonal communication across groups decreases
  • Mass media communication increases

Classification of theories

• Macro (flow theories)
• Micro (persuasion)
• Middle range (agenda setting)

Basic Models Lasswell's ('30s) famous question: "Who says what to whom through what medium and to what effect?" stress a model that is:

• linear
• one-way
• transmission oriented model

Shannon and Weaver Model; cybernetics (1949)

• Encoding/decoding
• Transmission
• Noise
• Entropy
• Redundancy
• Schramm
• Two-way flow
• Field of Experience

Schramm's contributions in three models:

• Frames of reference or fields of experience
• Two-way nature of communication
• Encoding/decoding may be simultaneous and in same source/receiver

Whetmore's cone model:

• Congruent with "Social Construction of Reality" (Berger and Luckman; Searle)
• Congruent with Carey's "ritual model"

Powerful Effects:
The one-step flow theory (direct, powerful, immediate effects) Major sources

• Apparent power of Madison Avenue to spread new products
• Power of newspapers to whip up sentiment
• Dominance of Pavlovian and behaviorist psychology
• Payne Fund Studies of the movies found big effects attitudes, behavior, daydreaming, ideals, emotions

Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" studied in "The Invasion From Mars" by Hadley Cantril)

• Based mostly on in-depth interviews
• Important in our understanding of selective influence
• Findings, overshadowed by the overall hysteria, were that those not "fooled":
•  
  • Checked internal evidence for sci-fi
  • Checked external evidence
  • Were not as religious as some fooled

Weaker Effects:
The two-step flow theory (indirect, weak, delayed effects) The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld, 1940, Erie Co. Ohio west of Cleveland, but in media market)

• Used panel study to assess effects with re-interviews
• Found that social categories very important in determining vote (Catholics, blue collar, business)
• Found that interest a good predictor of voting
• Found three complex media effects
•  
  • Reinforcement
  • Conversion
  • Activation

Personal Influence (Katz and Lazarsfeld, 1945, book 1953, Decatur Illinois)

• Rediscovery of primary group and reference group
• Discovery of opinion leaders
•  
  • Greater education
  • Greater prestige
  • Greater income
  • More gregarious
  • Heavy media use
• Studies areas of influence in
•  
  • Marketing
  • Fashion
  • Public affairs
  • Entertainment

Weaker Effects:
Psychologists such as Hovland and the Yale Group) Selective perception (limited effects because of selectivity and inattention), propounded by a variety of psychologists

• Selective exposure
• Selective interpretation
• Selective retention
• Selective change

Discovery of individual difference by psychologists found limited persuasive effects of messages

• Ss not highly generalizable
• Measured mainly short-term, immediate effects
• Used experimental settings with homogeneous subjects

Various balance and dissonance theories (Heider, Festinger, Osgood, Newcomb) found:

• Individuals will selectively screen out information to avoid dissonance
• Consonant messages have better chance of getting through
• Groups in conflict communicate more to reduce conflict and promote consonance

Hovland found little conversion in study of propaganda and U.S. solderis

• Manipulated arguments (messages) systematically
• Manipulated sources (credibility/attractiveness) systematically
• Looked at receivers, measuring "individual differences" that made people more or less susceptible to persuasion, but found few straighforward, unambiguous relations with personality
• Never found generally "persuasible" personality type

Klapper, in The Effects of Mass Communication (1960) summarizes weak effects models:

• Mass communication not a necessary and sufficient cause for audience effects but acts as a "nexus of mediating factors and influences"
• These mediating factors act as "contributing agents" not "sole causes" to reinforce "existing conditions"

Contributions of weak (limited) effects models

• Better than magic bullet/mass society theory
• Gave priority to empirical observation rather than speculation

Limitations of weak (limited) effects models

• Insists on obstinate audience (Raymond Bauer)
• Maintains linear, cause -and-effect paradigm concentrating on
•  
  • attitude effects
  • opinion effects
  • cognitive effects
• Ignores ritual elements of communication
• Ignores large social/historical effects on trends
• Uses comparatively crude methods of assessing effects, searching for:
•  
  • Direct persuasion
  • Immediate effects
• May have turned social researchers away from media, divorcing, say, public opinion study from media

The Return to Powerful Effects Moderate Effects: Cultivation theory (Gerbner's Cultural Indicators Project)

• Exposure to the same messages "cultivates" the same world view, particularly perceptions of a "mean world"
• Compares heavy v. light TV users, where heavy users significantly overestimate the amount and type of violence in society
• Assumes action will be consonant with perception
• Emphasizes anti-social effects
• Often does not control for other variables
• Ignores understanding that effects of TV may be specific by genre
• Measurements of violence often suspect
• A hegemonic theory attempting to draw proof from an immediate-effects method

Moderate Effects: Agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, Chapel Hill, 1972, study of 1968 election)

• Media tell audience not what to think (attitude change)
• Tell audience what to think about (cognitive function)
• Sequence of influence:
•  
  • Awareness (slighted by earlier researchers, media)
  • Information (slighted by earlier researchers, media)
  • Attitude formation (interpersonal/social psychological)
  • Behavior change (interpersonal)

Moderate Effects: Information processing critique of selectivity and inattention as result of dissonance (Entman)

• Salience (interest, importance, prominence) most important criterion for assessing new information
• Information then processed through shemata (scripts, frames), which organize thinking (party identification, ideological categories)

More Powerful Effects: Framing and Priming

Framing conceptualized by Iyengar, Entman and others, based on Goffman, who:

• Introduced framing in his study of con artists as a means we make sense of life based on
• Social cues (lifting of curtain in theater) and
• Frames (a specific set of expectations used to make sense of a social situation) which are
• learned like learning to play piano.
• Children, for example, are good observers but poor interpreters
• Includes concept of downshifting and upshifting (as in fight with friend; dating behavior vs. date rape)

Takes more sophisticated look at media effects than agenda setting, arguing that they determine not just what to think about it but also how, if not what

Framing: Cognitive devices for organizing and setting context in which things understood (frame drug problem as war)

• Related to schemata, or the a priori categories of thought that Kant said were necessary to organize interpret sense data, in response to Hume.
• Drawing on reception theory (negotiated meaning, oppositional readings), may think of the production of meaning as the interaction between:

Types of frames:

• Media frames
• Audience frames

Scheufele (1999) uses the following typology:

                                          Dependent                      Independent

Media                                 Tuchman (78)                    Entman (93)

Individual (audience?)        Iyengar (87, 89, 91)         Snow et a.l. (86)

Priming: Setting context in which things judged (raise issue of economy, then introduce politician)

Helps explain The "real biases" of the news media (related to sociological studies of news production

Iyengar finds two types of frames in covering social problems

• Thematic coverage tends to locate problem in society
• Episodic coverage tends to hold individual responsible

News production research finds (Baran and Davis, 1994, generalizing from Fishman, Gans, Gitlin, Tuchman and others)

• Personalized news invites stereotyping, fantasy, anecdotalism
• Dramatized news biased toward supporting status quo
• Fragmented news producing "balance" that defies interpretation by citing conflicting authorities rathering than providing deeper perspective
• Normalized news

(For example, news media cite elite sources and authorities to prove everything is in control after disaster or disruption, always assuring audience that something as awful as Iran-Cotnra or S&L is minor and under control.)

• Marginalization of protest groups

Cognitive Revolution in Communication Science (Beniger)

• Shift in dependent variable from attitude (affect) to cognition (means of perceiving and organizing "reality")
• Shift in independent variable from persuasive communication messages to less direct processes such as:
•  
  • Framing
  • Social construction of reality
• Refocusing of interest from simple change to the structuration of cognitions and meanings (stability as important as change)
• Draws from:
•  
  • Cognitive science
  • Cognitive and info-processing models in social psychology
  • Discourse analysis in the humanities, dealing with narrative structures and metaphors such as:

• • Election as horserace
  • Sports metaphors for political movement such as swings, turns, shifts, movements forward and back
  • Saddam Hussein as New Hitler

 

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