Media Effects, Models of

Historical Models of Media Effects

Models are simplified representations of some aspect of reality. Models of media effects focus on explanations of the impact of mass communication. Different models provide different explanations and emphases for how the mass media affect the audience. The history of the study of media effects is typically viewed as a series of models that differ in the relative power they ascribe, respectively, to the media and to the audience. Each phase of research presented a model that dominated thinking and research to explain how media effects occurred.

The first phase relied heavily on sociological and psychological paradigms of the early 20th century through the late 1930s. Early research on media effects was based on sociological views of the mass society that saw the audience as normless and socially isolated and on psychological research that focused on stimulus-response. According to the “magic bullet” or “hypodermic needle” models of media effects, mass media messages were seen as powerful stimuli that could directly and quickly evoke predictable responses from passive and socially isolated audience members. Harold Lasswell's 1927 research on the properties of propaganda falls squarely within this model, as does Robert Merton's research on the overwhelming audience response to American singer Kate Smith's appeals in a World War II war bond drive. This model, characterized as a direct effects model of media effects, viewed the audience as helpless to resist the well-crafted messages of powerful sources.

The second phase of media effects research emerged from evidence that media's power was often limited. Although news reports characterized the audience response to the radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds as widespread and profound, researchers [Page 514]found that only a portion of the audience was really frightened by the fictional tale of invaders from outer space. Studies showed that a variety of audience characteristics either magnified or diminished the likelihood of fear. Other notable research programs provided other evidence that media effects were not as direct as originally thought. The Erie County (Ohio) voting study found that in a presidential election, personal contact could be more influential than media messages. World War II studies found that soldiers' resistance to filmed persuasion was limited by personal factors and experiences. Research of the era supported a limited-effects model of media effects. This model held that people were powerful and able to resist media messages. Instead of studying the effects of powerful sources, this model focused on the power of the audience. Important concepts in this model are selective exposure, selective attention, and selective recall. In general, people were seen as selecting media messages according to their own interests and attitudes. If they encountered messages contrary to their preexisting attitudes, selective perception and recall would limit the impact of those messages. According to the limited-effects model, reinforcement was the most common outcome of media effects. In 1960, Joseph Klapper summarized the limited-effects model as asserting that mass communication affects media consumers through interconnected mediating factors and influences rather than serving as a necessary and sufficient direct cause of specific effects.

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