Mass Comm 600, Introduction to Communication Science, Study Outline II

A Continuation of Moderate Effects

Last updated 01/13/04

MODERATE EFFECTS: Uses and gratifications (Katz, Gurevitch, Haas, Blumler, 1974, and others)

  • Katz' response to Berelson that communication research is a dead field, Katz arguing that study of persuasion, not mass communication, is exhausted.
  • May be viewed as a spinoff of the concept of audience selectivity, leading to ethnographic study of meaning as opposed to flow (diffusion), negotiation with text and decoding (Liebes and Katz) to form meaning within a cultural context
  • Relies heavily on functionalism of Robert Merton, a colleague of Lasersfeld. Functionalism usually argues that whatever exists performs a useful role; tends to emphasize balancing of effects
  • Lasswell (Who, What, Whom) anticipated Uses and Gratification by a functionalism that defined three functions that were at odds with Lasswell's linear model:
  •  
    • Surveillance
    • Correlation
    • Cultural transmission
    • Entertainment (Charles R. Wright adds)

Principles of U&G

  • Looks at consumer first, not media message
  • Explores experience with the media
  • Views audience as active and selective, selecting and using media rather than being pasively acted upon
  • Assumes no direct relation between messages and effects
  • Postulates that audience puts messages to use (cross-cultural effects of Dallas)

Process (Katz/McQuail)

  • Social and psychological forces produce
  • Needs that generate
  • Expectations of
  • Mass media and other sources that lead to
  • Selective (differential) patters of exposure resulting in
  • Need gratifications and
  • Other (unintended) consequences)

Typologies:

Blumler

  • Surveillance (cognitive ordering of environment)
  • Curiosity (need to know)
  • Diversion or escape
  • Personal identity (a real contribution anticipated by Blumer in Payne Fund Studies)

McQuail

  • Information
  • Personal identity
  • Integration and social interaction
  • Entertainment (poorly understood)

Bryant and Zillman find mood-specific choice of program content

Zillman predicts program choice based on

  • Conflict between protagonists
  • Valuation of the conflict
  • Experience of enjoyment or anger at success or failure of protagonists

Expectancy value theory (Palmgreen based on Fishbein)

  • Expectation (gratifications sought)>
  • Media Use>
  • Evaluation after event (perceived gratifications obtained
  • GS=sum(b e) belief about what media can provide x evaluation of its content, which becomes an attitude toward media genres and programs

Expectancy value toward news thus found to relate to how much news is used to gratify certain media needs

Criticism of U&G

  • Generally an approach, not a theory
  • Atheoretical
  • Slippery definitions (particularly needs which are not easily separated from gratifications)
  • Lacks coherence
  • Mentalistic (assumes we know and will tell in surveys)
  • Based on structuralist-functionalist sociology that sees the structure as a meeting of a need that, however, the structure may have created (whatever is meets a need and is therefore right)
  • Uses don't necessarily determine effects
  • Much media use is habit

McQuail reformulates

  • Social and psychological dispositions influence
  • general habits of media use (habit) and
  • beliefs and expectations about the benefits offered by media
  • specific acts of media chouce followed by
  • assessments of the value of the experience and, maybe,
  • application of benefits to other experience

More Powerful Effects: Dependency (DeFleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1974)

  • Media effects greatest when dependency on media is greatest, particularly:
  • A person has a continuing, ongoing need for information (individual, stock broker, etc.)
  • During times of crisis or great social change (group)

Tested by B-R, Rokeach and Grube, The Great American Values Test (1984), based on a control city and a treatment city in rural Washington, shown program on PBS about social values. Attitudinal measures and well as solicitation to contribute to U. of Wash. women's athletic program. Found:

Found three dependency factors (based on U&G)

  • Social Understanding
  • Self Understanding
  • Orientation/play (including something to do, to talk about, to buy)

Scored each respondent on total dependency (high/low)

Found that dependency predicted watching the program (better than general measures of total TV time)

MODERATE EFFECTS: Diffusion.

  • Can be seen as another offshoot of the two-step flow model
  • Stressing the flow of information rather than its meaning, as in uses and gratification.
  • Communication researchers here unite with agricultural researchers as students of networking.
  • Follows bell-shaped curve:
  •  
    • Innovators (networks)
    • Early adoptors (specialized media)
    • Early majority (mass media awareness)
    • Late majority (mass media informativeness)
    • Laggards (mass media reinforcememnt)
    • Non-adoptors

STRONGER EFFECTS: Spiral of Silence (Noelle-Neumann, 1976)

Based on

  • Fear of isolation from the majority
  • "Pluralistic ignorance" encouraged by the
  • Fact that mass media may not represent public opinion accurately because of:
  • Overemphasis on sensational
  • Overrepresentation of minority viewpoints in name of balance
  • Erroneous believe that one is in a minority leads to silence, then conversion

Criticism

  • Evidence for silence in U.S. mixed
  • Evidence for conversion is rare
  • Only Noelle-Neumann tends to find it

In one study, national v. local opinion considered (Salwin, et al., JQ 71, 282)

  • Perception of local climate had little effect on speaking out about "official English" where an issue
  • National opinion distribution and perceived media coverage did seem to have some effect

PUBLIC OPINION (Price)

Public, mass, crowd

Categories of publics

  • Mass public
  • Interested public
  • Attentive public
  • Active public
  • Elites (or C. Wright Mills' power elites)

Definitions of :

  • attitude
  • belief
  • opinion
  • value

Processes of opinion formation (Zaller)

  • Receive
  • Accept or reject
  • Sample

MODERATE EFFECTS: Persuasion theory (the study of the change of attitudes)

Basic definition of attitude: An enduring positive or negative predisposition toward an idea or object acting as a intervening variable or catalyst to the reception of and response to messages

Measures (imperfect, for neither get at directly)

  • Self-report
  • Behavior

Key Ideas of findings of Hovland Group at Army and Yale

  • Information and message based
  • Studies components of persuasion
  • Source
  •  
    • Credible better than non-credible (usually)
    • Attractive better than non-attractive (usually)
  • Message
  •  
    • Two-sided usually better
    • One-sided only if never exposed to other side
  • Environment
  •  
    • Moderate distraction best
  • Inoculation
  • Sleeper and decay effects

Key Ideas of Fishbein's TRA

  • Attitude a complex of often conflicting beliefs
  • Best way of knowing what someone will do is to know what he/she intends to do
  •  
    • Intention = sum (attitude * subjective norm)
  • attitude = subjective belief about the outcome of a behavior
  •  
    • A = sum ( beliefs about and objective x evaluation of importance of those beliefs)
  • subjective norm = subjective belief about what others want
  •  
    • SN = sum (beliefs about what others expect you to do X evaluation of the importance of those beliefs)

Key Ideas of Cacioppo and Petty ELM

  • Central route: Good argument that favors thoughtful processing of argument, leading to internalization
  • Peripheral route: Favors affective or reflexive behavior by conditioning or imitation but not deep change
  • Helps explain sleeper effect
  • Helps explain decay
  • Poor argument by attractive or credible source

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