Resonance Theory

The term resonance theory has been used in different ways by two well-known communication scholars. [Page 714]Both George Gerbner and Tony Schwartz have used the word resonance to refer to a process by which a mass media message is received, interpreted, or affected by a person's real-world experiences. However, Gerbner believed resonance happens by accident, whereas Schwartz believes it can be used by a communicator on purpose, in order to persuade.

Gerbner used the term resonance to describe one of two processes involved in his theory of media cultivation. That theory contends attitude change is a gradual and cumulative process as a person is exposed over time to many media messages. His research found that heavy television viewers began to believe their real world was like the fictional world presented on the TV screen. Gerbner said he found evidence that heavy TV viewers believed their world was just as violent as the world of the television crime program. His studies and those of his colleagues describe two processes leading to media cultivation. The first, called mainstreaming, contends different people exposed to the same media messages will be similarly cultivated by those messages. The second, called resonance, refers to what happens when a person's real-life environment really does resemble what they see on television. Gerbner said he found evidence that in a high-crime area of a city there was a strong fear of victimization because television viewers received a double dose of crime messages. The crime seen on television “resonated” with the crime all around the viewers in their neighborhood.

Schwartz seems to agree with Gerbner when he writes that patterned electronic information provides the basis for how people perceive their world. He takes this notion one step further, arguing that shared TV exposure over time creates a common reservoir of media experiences in the brain. When a persuasive message taps into the shared experiences of a receiver, it brings forward a meaning in the listener or viewer. Schwartz believes resonance has always been a part of communication, but by virtue of a shared electronic media environment, stimuli in radio and television messages evoke material stored in the brain. In this way, the audience is put to work by the message sender, investing itself in the message and becoming part of the communication process. This process is almost instantaneous. A successful message, writes Schwartz, “strikes a responsive chord” using the resonance principle, whereby the brain of a listener or viewer actually creates the intended perception or behavior. This can have a powerful persuasion effect, as illustrated by Schwartz's most famous political spot, “Daisy Girl.” Created by Schwartz for the Lyndon B. Johnson presidential campaign, it evoked feelings of fear in viewers who saw a little girl picking petals off of a flower, but then heard a countdown from mission control preceding images of a nuclear bomb explosion. Although Johnson's opponent, Barry Goldwater, never appeared in the spot and was never mentioned, he was placed there by viewers who feared nuclear proliferation under his administration.

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