20th Century Media Effects Research

1. 2 0 T H C E N T U R Y M E D I A
E F F E C T S R E S E A R C H
C H . 1 7 P R O C E S S E S A N D M O D E L S O F M E D I A E F F E C T S

2. C H . 1 8 P R O C E S S A N D M O D E L S O F M E D I A
E F F E C T S
• McQuail Point 1
• McQuail Point 2

3. T W E N T I E T H
C E N T U R Y
M E D I A E F F E C T S
R E S E A R C H
M C D O N A L D , D . G .
2 0 0 4

4. D A N I E L M C D O N A L D
A U T H O R
•Concentrated on social aspects of the audience, includ
P S Y C H O L O G I C A L A N D S O C I A L
A S P E C T S O F M A S S
C O M M U N I C A T I O N , I N T R A -
A U D I E N C E E F F E C T S . D R .
M C D O N A L D I S D I R E C T O R O F T H E
S C H O O L O F C O M M U N I C A T I O N .
Professor and Director, Ohio State University

5. G I T L E N ' S Q U E S T I O N
• Scholars have long tried to classify media effects,
• Authors draw historical picture of media effects in the
21st century in the united states
• Mass media can affect knowledge, attitudes, opinions
and behavior of individuals
• Effects can be long lasting or short in nature as quick
reactions Content can lead to an effect

6. P I O N E E R
P H A S E
• Field of social psychology was emerging at the crossroads between
sociology and psychology
• A few pioneering psychologists, sociologists and social psychologists
wrote about the impact that new media were having on audiences and
on society
• This effect is based on the idea that the media provide an interaction
with symbols or signs rather than with the objects or people those signs
or symbols represent.
• Several other researchers at the time were concerned with the effects of
motion pictures primary concentrated on the effects of children.

7. Motion Pictures
and
Radio Networks

8. • Motion Picture Research Council set out to determine what effect
motion pictures had on children.
• They obtained a grant from the Payne Fund - an organization that
has a history of interest in children and media.
• Payne study found that children and adults to learn from motion
pictures - they could often remember what they learned.
Documented effects like the ‘sleeper effect’
• Demostranted that high levels of movie attendance were
associated with declining morals, delinquent behavior, lower
intelligence and a number of other factors, the researchers faced a
question:
T H E P A Y N E F U N D
S T U D I E S

9. Hovland et al.’s (1949) were attempting to uncover
general principles related to the construction of
messages.
Specifically, on gauging the effects of media programs on
soldiers knowledge, opinions and attitudes.
Paul Lazarfeld - role of mass communications in modern
society in the late 1930’s - role of media and personal
decision making Lazarfeld’s methods and conclusions
were very different from Hovland
W O R L D W A R I I - C O M M A N D E F F E C T S
R E S E A R C H

10. 1950’s brought PhD’s in communication led to many more studies of media effects during the 1950s
mmunications research. The sea change in communication research. The effects of mass communication, d
959) suggested that the audience was not a passive recipient of communication but an active, selective pa
960s cognitive psychology began to provide raw material for advances in mass communication effects res
gan to abandon the question of whether media had effects to attempt to specify the mechanism by which t
during the late 1980s and 1990s provided additional clues to the nature of the relationships and the bound
a effects research - issues of communication and reality and further exploration of the black box, or how a

11. Agree or disagree?
“The truly revolutionary significance of
modern mass communication is…the ability
to form historically new bases for collective
thought and action quickly, continuously
and pervasively across the previous
boundaries of time, space and status.”

12. After the Furgeson
events from last evening,
do you think media
effects contributed to the
events?

13. Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shaprio
•Government relations of news media ownership
•Quantitative and qualitative look at media slant
through keywords and phrases
•Proposed new index of idealogical slant in news
coverage
W H A T D R I V E S M E D I A
S L A N T ?

14. S L A N T I N D E X
• Slant index measures the frequency with which
newspapers use language that would tend to
sway readers to the right or to the let on political
issues
• Focused on newspapers news content and not
opinion
• Zip code level data on newspaper circulation

15. Methods
• Computed the total number of times that each
phrase appeared in newspaper headlines and
article text in the ProQuest Newstand database
from 2000 to 2005
pld = placement democrat plr = placement reublican

17. Findings
•Variation in slant across newspapers is strongly
related to the political makeup of their potential
readers and thus to our estimated profit-maximizing
•Approach to measuring slant requires data on the
frequency with which individual members of
Congress use particular phrases
•we find much less evidence for a role of newspaper
owners in determining slant.

18. Findings
•We wish to stress three important caveats,
however. First, our measure of slant is a broad
aggregate that includes coverage of many
different topics over a reasonably long window
of time. finding that ownership is not an
important driver of content diver- sity does not
imply that the market produces the optimal
level of diversity.

19. Question
Do you feel that your local newspaper is slanted
toward a particular political affiliation?