Media effects can be psychological, social, cultural, or political depending on the perspective. Parents are concerned about the effects of excessive media consumption on their children's behavior and attitudes. Effects can be short or long term, superficial or profound. Influences and effects are complex phenomena that depend on individual personality and social/cultural context. The interaction between media and audiences is extremely complex given the variety of media, content, and social environments. The only safe conclusion is that some kinds of media communication have some kinds of effects on some kinds of people under some conditions.

1. Effectof Mass Media
Media effects mean different things to different people. A psychologist, for
example, has
‗psychological‘ effects in mind when talking about media effects; the
sociologist, the social effects, the anthropologist, the cultural effects, the
political scientist the political effects and so on. Parents too are concerned about
the amount of time their children spend with television, music, comics, and
films, and the effects this might have on their children‘s behavior and attitudes.
Effects are of various types and various gradations too. They may be short term,
medium terms are long term; they may be deep or profound, or transient or
superficial as in caseof fashions, mannerisms, and life styles. Then there are
influences of a passing nature or a more permanent nature.
Can influences be termed as effects? How are ‗influences‘, ‗effects‘ distinct from
‗impacts‘, or are they mere synonyms for the same social phenomenon. Few
media sociologists have subjected the inadequacy of everyday language to
understand the complexity of media effects to any kind of critical scrutiny.
Social scientists and media professionals rarely consider the infinite variety of
uses the different media and the different programmes are put to, in different
contexts. In most cases, the use of term ‗effect‘ is misleading becauseit suggests
that the media ‗do something‘ to people, as though people are inorganic
creatures, who do not bring their own personalities to play in the communication
process. Italso implies that the media are active, audiences are unresponsive if
not passive. These assumptions about media and audiences have their origin in
Aristotelian linear models of communication where persuasion is seen as the
primary goal of all communications.
The truth is that we have little precise knowledge or proven data about
media effects since they invariably take place in combination with whole lot
of social, economic and cultural variables. Do
effects relate to change, however slight, in attitude and behavior? Perhaps. The
extent of change depends on the variations in the desires and inclinations of
individual members of an audience, and in the way they as individuals and as
members of different social and cultural groups respond to various types of
stimuli from the mass media. It has to be noted, moreover, that people can be
influenced without paying attention and without changing at all, that there is often
no relationship between what a personlearned, knew or recalled on the one hand
and what he did or how he felt on the other! It follows therefore that one can learn

2. things without believing them, believe things without doing them, and do things
without learning or believing them!
Interaction, Not Effects
The ‗interaction‘ (a much more accurate term than ‗effects‘) between media and
human beings is an
extremely complex phenomenon. It becomes even more complex when we realize
that there are a great variety of media offering numerous programme genres, and
also the fact that there are a whole variety of people and group listening, viewing,
reading in a countless number of socio-cultural environments. Perhaps, the only
safe conclusion on effects (or interactions) of the media is that arrived at by
Bernard Berelson several years ago: ―Some kinds of communication on some
kind of issues, brought to the attention of some kinds of people under some kinds
of conditions have some kinds of effects.‖
Determinants of Media Influence Attitude
One conception is that an attitude is how positive or negative, favorable or
unfavorable, or pro or con a person feels toward an object. This definition views
attitude as a feeling or an evaluative reaction to objects.
A second definition represents the thoughts of Allport, who views attitudes as
learned predispositions to respond to an 'object or class of objects in a
consistently favorable or unfavorable way. This definition is slightly more
complicated than the first because It incorporates the notion of readiness to
respond toward an object.
A third definition of attitude popularized by cognitively‖ oriented social-
psychologists are: a enduring organization of motivational, emotional,
perceptual, and cognitive process with respect to some aspect of the individual's
world. This views attitudes as being made up of three components: (1) the
cognitive, or knowledge, component, (2) the affective, or emotional,
component, and (3) the cognitive, or
_behavioral-tendency, component. Attitudes have several important
characteristics or properties; namely, they (1) have an object; (2) have direction,
intensity, and degree; (3) have structure; and, (4) are learned.
Attitudes serve four major functions for the individual: (1) the adjustment
function, (2) the ego- defensive function, (3) the value-expressive function, and
(4) the knowledge function. Ultimately, these functions serve people's need to
protect and enhance the image they hold of themselves. In more general terms,
these functions are the motivational bases which shape and reinforce positive

3. attitudes toward goal objects perceived as need-satisfying, and/or negative
attitudes toward other objects perceived as punishing or. Threatening.
Various concepts have been offered to explain how motives exert their
directional influences on audiences. Earlier views held that inborn instincts
beyond the individual‘ s control provided the direction for behavior. Later
it was stressed that basic needs (hunger, thirst, and the like) impelled
people toward action.
Functions
of
Motives
Defining basic strivings- Motives influence audiences to develop and
identify their basic strivings. They serve to guide behavior in a general
way across a wide variety of decisions and activities.
Identifying goal objectives.
Influencing choice criteria- Motives also guide audiences in developing
criteria for evaluating media and programmes.
.
Short-Term Memory To a large extent, short-term memory can be viewed as
the workspace for information processing. That is, it is a portion of memory
activated to temporarily, store and process information in order to interpret it
and comprehend its meaning. This is accomplished by combining incoming
information with other information (past experiences, knowledge, and the like)
stored in long term memory.
Although the duration of this memory register is considerably longer than the of
sensory memory, it still is very brief, lasting less than one minute. In addition,
the {capacity of short-term memory is quite limited. Approximately seven items
or groupings of items are all that can be sorted at anyone time.
Material residing in short-term memory does not bear a one-to-one
correspondence with the real world. Instead, the process of coding is used to
organize, information into a more easily handled and remembered format. The
primary method of this coding is termed chunking, which can be defined as the
method of assembling information into a type of organized unit having a more
understandable.
Long-Term Memory This memory system can be thought of as the relatively
permanent storehouse for information that has undergone sufficient processing.
Material can be maintained in long-term memory for as little as a few minutes to
as long as many years. In addition, this system has the capacity to store an almost
unlimited amount of information. A predominant key to coding material for
storage in long- term memory is meaningfulness; the personalunderstanding an
individual can derive from the information. That is, through elaborative rehearsal
the individual uses his existing knowledge to

4. interpret incoming information and codeit in a way that is consistent with
his existing cognitive structure (knowledge base).
References-
1. De Fleur, Melvin and Dennis, Everette; Understanding Mass Communication;
(1988); 3rd edition; Houghton Mifflin Co.
2. Narula, Uma; Mass Communication theory and practice; (1994); Haranand
3. Andal; Communication theories and model