The document summarizes research on media effects models including the limited effects model, agenda-setting theory, priming, and framing. It defines these concepts and compares their variables and mechanisms. The limited effects model dominated for 25 years but was limited. Agenda-setting, priming, and framing have effects at different levels from accessibility to applicability. Framing may go beyond agenda-setting in its mechanisms.

1. Qingjiang “Q. J.” Yao
Department of Communication, Lamar University
EXPLICATING MEDIA EFFECTS, AND TOWARD
AN INTEGRATIVE MODEL OF AGENDA-
SETTING , PRIMING, AND FRAMING

2. DOES MASS MEDIA HAVE INFLUENCE ON
AUDIENCE?
• The courts have struck down bans on
violent video games for children
• Media sociologists tend to use other factors
to explain media influences
• Paradigm of media effects research has
shifted back and forth

3. THE LIMITED EFFECTS MODEL
• Dominated media research
for about 25 years
• Based on two studies of
presidential elections of
1940 and 1946
• Well documented in Klapper
(1960)
• Main holdings:
• Mass communications only have
influence through other
mediating factors
• Direct media effects occur when
mediating factors are inoperative
• The effects are mostly
reinforcement
• Effects are moderated by
communication characteristics
and existing public opinion

4. WHY LAZARSFELD FIND LIMITED MEDIA
EFFECTS?
• Didn’t totally rule out effects of
media not in study
• Looking for effects only at the
level of behavioral intention
• Missing the offset effects

5. A DEFINITION OF MEDIA EFFECTS
• What are the media
• Can we separate real-world
indicator effects from media
effects?
• What are the effects

6. In 1914, on an island, the
Englishmen and the
Frenchmen were still
friends with the Germans
six weeks after the
breakout of WWI
Wanting to be the future emperor, Yuan persuaded his
father to become an emperor, and fabricated a copy of
this newspaper, full of such persuasion, for his father.

7. Media
effects:
all
responses
from the
audience
as results
of being
exposed to
the sum of
the media
contents

8. Adopted from McQuails (2010)
Possible
Media
Effects

9. Adopted from Austin & Pinkleton (2015)
Hierarchical
Media
Effects

10. Adopted from Rogers (2003)

11. AGENDA-SETTING, PRIMING, AND FRAMING:
EFFECTS AT DIFFERENT LEVELS
• Agenda-Setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1972; McCombs &
Reynolds, 2002, 2009):
• Objects or attributes important on the media agenda are
perceived as important by the public.
• Variables:
• Media agenda: media time or space devoted to the
object or attribute
• Public agenda: degree of importance the public attributes
to the object or attribute

12. • Priming (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Roskos-Ewolden, Roskos-
Ewolden, & Carpentier, 2002; Sheafer & Weimann, 2005):
• Issues important on the media agenda will be primed in the
public’s mind and taken by the public as a criteria to
evaluate a politician's overall performance.
• A temporal extension of agenda-setting.
• Variables:
• IV: media exposure
• DV: weighting of the issue in public’s evaluation of the
politician.
• A election study and psychological priming studies
extend the DV to behaviors

13. Adopted from McCombs & Reynolds (2002)

14. • Framing Effects (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981; Iyengar,
1991; Entman, 1993, Druckman, 2001)
• Media framing of an issue leads the public to frame
the issue in the same way
• Variables:
• Media framing: potential problem definitions (e.g.,
thematic v. episodic, gain v. lose, etc.),
explanations, evaluations, and recommendations
• Audience framing: media frame-related
recognitions or decisions

15. Adopted from Scheufele (1999)

16. • Second-level agenda-setting and framing effects:
• Agenda-setting researchers believe framing effects are effects of
second level agenda setting (McCombs & Shaw, 1993, McCombs
2005)
• Framing researchers believe framing goes beyond agenda-setting
(Pan & Kosicki, 1993) and they have different mechanisms
(Sheufele, 2000; Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2009):
• Agenda-setting: accessibility
• Framing: applicability
Study Craft & Wanta, 2003: Edy & Meirick, 2007
IV Number of stories on each
subtopic: air traffic safety,
War frame: the dead in 911 = casualties
Perpetrators = enemies
Crime frame: the dead in 911 = victims,
perpetrators = criminals
DV Public rank of each subtopic as a
concern
War frame: perpetrators should be killed
in battlefield
Crime frame: perpetrators should be tried
in court.