Assessment of Debates on Media Effects

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Assessment of Debates on Media Effects

A long history lies behind question about how communication affects or

influences people. Greeks developed sophisticated hypothesis about how

to impress listeners through the spoken word and Aristotle was

concerned with theorizing the art of speaking. Even nowadays in

face-to-face conversations each of us mobilizes theories about how to

influence our listeners. For instance, we wish to make others

understand how we feel or what we think. Today, mass communication

studies have developed as a discipline with a focus on television and

newspapers and, to a lesser extent, cinema and radio. Thanks to mass

communication technologies a programme can now be viewed globally, so

that questions about effects have thus become more complex.

The origin of modern media studies is usually located in 1930s Germany

associated with work by scholars such as Adorno, Marcuse and

Horkheimer. Their theories were developed in response to Germany’s

descent into fascism. This work, collectively known as ‘The Frankfurt

School’, theorized that social disintegration left people vulnerable

to propaganda. This School promoted a ‘hypodermic model’ of media

effects whereby messages were directly absorbed into the minds of the

people. Many other theories and approaches to the media have developed

since then; but nowadays, as we will see, this model is discredited.

More recently studies have revealed the diverse ways in which

different people may respond to the same programme. Theses researchers

highlight the fact that the messages ‘decoded’ by audiences are not

necessarily those intended by the programme producers. How we res...

... middle of paper ...

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to be seen like that’.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barker, M. and Petley, J. (2001) ‘Introduction: from bad research to

good – a guide for the perplexed’ in III Effects: The Media/Violence

Debate. London: Routledge, pp.1-26.

Cumberbatch, G. ‘Effects’ and Kitzinger, J. ‘Impacts and influences’

in Briggs, A. and Cobley, P. (eds) (2002) The Media: An Introduction

(Second Edition) London: Longman.

Gauntlett, D. (1998) ‘Ten things wrong with the effects model’ in

Dickinson, R. et al (eds) Approaches to Audiences: A Reader, London:

Arnold, pp.120-130.

Grossberg, L. et al (1998)‘Media and Behaviour’ and ‘Debates Over

Media Effects’ in MediaMaking: Mass Media in a Popular Culture, pp.

277-235.

Turow, J (1999) ‘Mass Media Issues’ in Media Today: An Introduction to

Mass Communication, Houghton Mifflin: Boston, MA.

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