The document criticizes the "effects model" approach to studying media influence. It argues that this approach: 1) Starts by assuming media is to blame for social issues rather than studying actual behaviors. 2) Treats children as passive victims unable to think critically about media rather than consider their abilities. 3) Supports conservative ideologies by blaming popular culture rather than social inequalities for problems.

2. 1. The effects model tackles social problems
‘backwards’
If researchers are concerned about the causes of problematic behaviour,
such as violence, it seems obvious that they should study people who
engage in these activities, and try to ascertain the roots of their behaviour.
Media effects researchers, however, have typically started at the wrong end
of this question: informed only by speculation (and often, it seems, a grimly
unsympathetic attitude to youth culture.), they start with the idea that the
media is to blame, and then try to make links back to the world of actual
violence.
This approach to a social problem is, in a literal sense, backwards. To
understand violent people, we should study violent people.
But in the uncommon cases where researchers have sought to identify links
between screen violence and real life violence by interviewing actual violent
individuals (e.g Hagell and Newburn, 1994), they have found no such
connection.

3. 2. The effects model treats children as
inadequate.
The media effects studies position children exclusively as potential ‘victims’
of the mass media, and (rather cruelly) allow young people no opportunity to
express their critical abilities, intelligence or free will.
Hundreds of shallow quantities studies, usually conducted by ‘psychologists’
have often been little more that traps for the subjects and ironically allow no
scope for developing psychological insights.
More generous research methods, which are willing to listen to children,
have shown that they can talk intelligently and indeed cynically about the
mass media (Buckingham, 1993, 1996), and that children as young as 7 can
make thoughtful, critical and ‘media literate’ video productions themselves.

4. 3. Assumptions within the effects model are
characterised by barley-concealed conservative
ideology
Media effects studies support conservative and right-wing ideologies, even if
that is not necessarily the conscious intention of the people producing them.
The studies typically suggest that social problems are not rooted in the
organisation of society, and inequalities, but are actually the evil magic
products of popular culture.
Their conception of screen violence as a meaningless but measurable ‘thing’
also helps those who want to blame modern media instead 0f considering
the serious social causes of violence. The researchers categorisations of
‘anti-social’ behaviour often reveal that they are worried about the
challenges to the status quo.
The tendency to patronise and devalue children and young people, by
assuming that they have no competencies worth considering, also fits with
these illiberal trends.

5. 4. The effects model inadequately defines its
own objects of study
Media effects studies usually extremely undiscriminating about how they
identify worrying bits of media content, or subsequent behaviour by viewers.
An act of ‘violence’, for example, might be smashing cages to free some
trapped animals, or using force to disable a nuclear missile.
It might be kicking a chair in frustration, or a horrible murder. In many
studies, ‘verbal aggression’ is included within the categories of aggression,
which means the studies which are interpreted by most people as being
about physical violence may actually be more about the use of swear words.
Once processed by effects research, any of these depiction's or actions
simply emerge as a ‘level of aggression’ but without a more selective and
discriminating way of compiling these numbers, the results can be deceptive
and virtually meaningless.

6. 5. The effects model is often based on
artificial studies
Careful sociological studies of media influences require large amounts of
time and money, and so they are heavily outnumbered by simpler studies
which often put there subjects into artificial, contrived situations, laboratory
and field experiments involve compelling participants to watch a particular
programme or set of programmers, and – just as artificially – observing them
in a particular setting afterwards.
Here, behaviour of the children towards an inanimate object is often taken
(artificially) to represent how they would behave towards a real person.
Furthermore, this all rests on the artificial belief that children’s behaviour
will not vary even though they know that they are being manipulated, tested
and/or observed.

7. 6. The effects model is often based on
studies with misapplied methodology
The studies which do not use the experimental method, and so may not be
guilty of the flaws described in the previous point, nevertheless often fall
down by applying a methodological procedure incorrectly, or by drawing
inappropriate conclusions from particular methods. Meaningless
comparisons are made, glaring inconsistencies are overcooked, and
sometimes methods which are unable to demonstrate any casual links are
treated as if they have found them.
This reckless abuse of research procedures seems to be acceptable when
people are pinning blame on ‘media effects’.

8. 7. The effects model is selective in its
criticisms od media depictions of violence
The ideological motive behind effects studies may mean that some media
representations are criticised, whilst others are strangely exempt.
Violence in news and factual programmes, for example, which is often
presented suddenly and without much context, id not seen as a worry,
whereas violence in popular drams and movies is of great concern.
This again suggests that researchers are more interested in blaming an
aspect of popular culture for social problems, than they are in making a
coherent and thoughtful argument.

9. 8. The effects model assumes superiority to
the masses
Researchers always assume that media effects happen to other people.
Ironically, surveys show that almost everybody feels this way: whilst varying
percentages of the population say they are concerned about media effects,
almost nobody ever says that they have been affected themselves.
Sometimes the researchers excuse their approach by saying that they are
mature adults whereas their concerns lie with the children.

10. 9. The effects model make no attempt to
understand meanings of the media
As hinted above, the media effects model rests on simplistic assumptions
about media content. Controversial material, such as a scene containing
violence, is not treated as part of a relationship between characters, but is
seen as a ‘thing’ cynically inserted by media producers.
The meanings of the action, and understanding s of a character motivation
held by the audience, are of no interest in effects research, because media
content is just a set of media content, the media effects model will always
assume that its sole meaning is ‘hey kids! Here’s some stuff that you might
like to copy!’ but qualitative studies have unsurprisingly given support to
view that media audiences routinely arrive at their own, often quite varied
and unpredictable, interpretations of everyday media texts.

11. 10. The effects model is not grounded in
theory
The media effects model would make much more sense if it suggested a
coherent theory which could explain why people might become motivated to
copy actions seen in the media. But no decent explanation is offered. Sometimes
the idea that violence is ‘glamourized’ is mooted and can seem relevant, but
effects researchers tend to suggest that children must be protected from the
most violent media depictions, which are usually the least ‘glamorous’
depictions. The violence used by dashing spies in ‘family’ films, say, usually look
more attractive, but attracts little criticism. The model just isn’t subtle or well -
thought-out enough to cope with these things.
This lack of theory has led to the proliferation of ill-considered ideas outlined
above- that the media (rather than people) should be the unproblematic
starting-point for research; that children will be unable to ‘cope’ with the media;
that categories such as ‘antisocial behaviour’ are clear and self -evident; that a
veneer of ‘science’ is more important than developing methods which might
actually show us something; that screen fictions are of concern, whilst news
pictures are not; that researchers have unique capacity to observe and classify
social behaviour and its meanings, but that those researchers need not attend to
the various possible meanings which media content may have for the audience.
Each of these substantial problems has been able to develop because there is no
one with a decent theory to keep them on the straight and narrow.