The Empiricist Tradition/Approach (as first proposed by Prof. Halloran) brings together researches & studies onto the effects of mass media. This approach is concerned in find out as much evidence as possible about media audiences, e.g. people, age, gender, social status, occupation, leisure, etc.
Berelson & Steiner in 1964 concluded that people tend to see & hear communications/media content that are favourable or ‘congenial [related] to their predispositions [willingness].’
The Knowledge Gap Approach tells us that people with higher socioeconomic status tend to have better ability to acquire information from the media and lower socio-economic status people – based on their educational level, have little/no knowledge about public affairs issues, are disconnected from news events and important new discoveries, and usually aren’t concerned about their lack of knowledge. Educational attainment & financial factors (part of social situation) contribute to their media engagement. Since they have less or no knowledge about the ‘serious’ media content, they are less likely to be influenced.
The Uses & Gratifications Theory explains the uses and functions of media for individuals, groups, and society in general. Their objectives in developing this theory are to explain how individuals use mass communication to gratify their needs; discover primary reason for individuals’ media use; identify the positive and the negative consequences of individual media use.
Ien Ang (1990) criticised this approach. He noticed that it starts from the view that the media are always functional to people & may offer justification for the way media are currently organised.’ It only focuses on individuals’ gratification. Therefore, this theory seems to exclude the ideology & hegemony.
The Functionalist’s view with regards to Uses & Gratifications seeks to explain social institutions in terms of their ‘cohesiveness’ [closeness] within an interconnected social system. This gives us a hint that this theory considers the social situation of the public.
The Dependency Theory (proposed by Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur in 1976) reinforces the Uses & Gratifications Theory. It says that there is a relationship among audiences, media and the larger social system. Like uses-and-gratifications theory, it assumes that society depends on media information to meet certain needs and achieve certain goals. But we don’t equally depend on all media. This is because of the presence of our dependency in our social stability. When social change and conflict are high, established institutions, beliefs, and practices are challenged are forcing you to reevaluate and make new choices. This clearly suggests that it takes into consideration the social position of the audience in its society.
The Medium Theory suggests that it is the ‘symbolic environment of any communicative act.’ Media impact individuals and society. McLuhan’s thesis (or the medium theory) is that people adapt to their environment through a ‘certain balance or ratio of the senses, and the primary medium of the age brings out a particular sense ratio, thereby affecting perception.’
This theory partly takes into account social situation of the public since it sees the public to be adaptive to the media content based on their senses and diverse views.
The Spiral of Silence Approach by Neumann (1974) definitely takes into consideration the social situation of the public. It suggests that when individuals’ view in the society is in the minority, they tend to be ‘silent’ & follow the majority’s views instead, due to fear of isolation. Their position in the society, therefore, holds back their ‘right’ to be self-influenced, & not by the media.
There are also different types of media effects which should be considered as well such as imitation, sensitisation, de-sensitisation, catharticism & disinhibition.
Imitation is self-explanatory. Audience, especially children (a dimension of social situation) tries to copy what they see in the media. This could be because the fact that children have low media literacy – as suggested by David Buckingham (1993b). This informs us that age can affect the way media can influence us.
A laboratory study by Bandura, Ross & Ross explains this effect. They chose children to participate on watching 1 of the 3 TV sequences. ‘Bobo’ dolls have been used. In each sequence, an inflatable doll was subjected to violent attacks. The attacker was either rewarded, punished or not rewarded/punished. After seeing the violent act where the attacker was rewarded, the children copied the same behaviour. This shows imitation when they know there is no harm in doing it. However, children didn’t tend to copy the attack when the attacker was punished.
The children imitated the attacker attacking the ‘bobo’ doll without being punished. This suggests that media violence can influence audience especially if they have low media literacy. Feminism may argue that the media treatment of women is because such behaviour is portrayed as ‘normal’ on the screen. This particularly happens when deviant behaviour is punished in films/programmes, etc.
Also, the children’s behaviour could partly be explained by the sensitisation effect, which says that it makes you less likely to become more violent once you’ve seen the violence in the media (in this case, the stimulus programme).
Disinhibition is when an audience likes watching violent content from the media since s/he cannot do it in real life. The punishment received by the attacker on the stimulus made the children further disinhibited because if they attack the ‘bobo’ dolls, they would assume that they would get punished.
Bandura’s experiment was done in a laboratory. This means that his experiment has a low-ecological validity or artificially done. This is because it is not very related to real life/day-to-day basis.
His experiment was single-blinded. This is because the participants have not been told what the aim of the experiment is.
Bandura’s experiment is biased in some way because he only used children to be the participants. He didn’t take into account other age groups.
Another experiment by Liebert & Baron, into the effects of TV violence on 136 boys & girls, supports Bandura’s findings. Half of the participants watched a violent TV sequence & the other half watched an exciting sports sequence. They were then taken into a room where there is a box with HURT & HELP buttons. They were told that there is another child playing in another room – turning a wheel. If they press HURT, it would make the wheel hot. IF they press HELP, the wheel would be easier to turn. They have found out that children who watched the violent sequence were more likely to hurt the child.
This was a single-blind experiment since the participants were not told about the aims of the experiment. This is a good way of testing participants to avoid participant reactivity (participants being conscious on how they are going to react).
The sample size used was fairly decent. However, the findings would not represent the whole population since they have not considered other age groups (they have only used children). In this experiment, they haven’t considered the social situation of the audience/participants since they haven’t used other age groups. They also didn’t consider the children’s social class to determine whether one’s social situation influences participant’s behaviour after being exposed to violent media content.
In addition, they haven’t made a distinctiona between the girls’ behaviour from the boys’. This means that they haven’t considered the gender (a social situation) of the participants.
The children might have been desensitised since they are /already have been exposed to violence/disturbing images which made half of the participants become unfeeling to the child. In this one, Liebert & Baron haven’t made an account whether their participants came from a social background where violent images are available.
The children’s behaviour could also be explained by the cathartic effect. Children found an outlet for releasing their emotions by pressing the HURT button to hurt the child.
By referring to Bandura’s experiment, the children may also have found an outlet to release their emotions through the ‘bobo dolls’, which could be explained again by catharticism.
William Belson measured the effects of long-term exposure to TV violence on adolescent boys in London. He obtained information from the boys at different times & under different conditions. He interviewed them at home with their parents & individually (away from their homes). He concluded that a high exposure to TV violence increases the degree to which boys engage in serious violence. This is because these boys see violence as a ‘legitimate problem-solving device’. Again, this is suggested by the cathartic effect.
Belson’s study was continuous since he made a long-term study which is quite similar to longitudinal study. This is a more reliable way of studying the long-term effects of violence to their behaviours since one can continuously monitor them.
However, interviewing them is not really a good way to find out reasons why they behave in that way. This could be because of the heavy reliance to memory recall. This is not accurate, therefore can affect the reliability of their answers & would affect the findings.
Also, the boys could have possibly lied because they might not want to answer some questions truthfully, especially if their parents are around. This is called social desirability bias.
Dennis Hewitt (1982) points out Belson’s results actually show 3 types of viewers: the light, moderate or heavy exposures to violence. Belson’s findings reveal that boys who watch moderate violence were most prone to it themselves.
Himmelweit (1958), however, discovered that the effects of media content may vary accordingly to the presence of other socializing forces in the audience’s life. These could be because of the absence of role models to imitate, children whose parents spend little time with them (therefore they are not supervised) & not encouraged to read educational books.
In relation to Belson’s findings, the boys’ poor childhood experience with their parents could be an explanation on their behaviour. Lack of parental supervision from childhood may be a big factor.
The Interpretive Model believes that the audience has the ability to ‘filter’ the media content. They select, ignore, react to, forget & reinterpret according to their own viewpoint. Their viewpoint is highly influenced by their surrounding environment. They might read one text/view a scene in relation to other people’s views (intertextuality). This is proposed by Fiske in 1988. He suggests that social situation of the audience can shape an individual’s viewpoints and perceptions.
Postmodernists may argue that we need to see the audience as people interacting with the media in specific social situations, and these are: the hegemonic code/preferred reading – encoded by media professionals; professional code – interprets messages according to the culture of the professional group to which the viewer belongs; negotiated code – modifies but don’t totally reject the preferred reading; oppositional code- viewer understands the message but rejects it. These are called the hypothetical positions used by David Morley in his textual analysis research.
A study by a sociologist, David Morley of the ‘Nationwide’ audience in 1980 aimed to find out whether individuals would interpret messages/text from a stimulus (Nationwide Programme) based on their socio-cultural belongingness.
He used male & female participants from different social classes namely, upper middle class, lower middle class & working class. He divided them into 29 small groups (2 – 13 people) from different social, cultural & educational backgrounds.
He theorised that individual readings will be formed by ‘shared cultural formations & practices.’
His findings are as follows:
Looking closely to the table above, apprentices, trade union officials & shop stewards belong to a same class. However, their reading codes are different.
This is because they are situated at different institutions. The institution they belong to might have different perceptions & ways of coding messages from the other institution.
The Black FE students group didn’t share the programme’s cultural assumptions & found it hard to make sense of it. This is the opposite of the Private Management Trainees.
This tells us that ethnicity might also play a part on how we interpret/code messages in the media. Unfamiliar scenes/situations/episodes/texts from the media might block our understanding of what the programme really talks about.
The apprentices (aged 17 – 29 years) commented that they don’t know the political view of the programme & it should be aimed at audience 40 years old and above.
This tells us that age can affect media comprehension since there is not enough exposure to politics. Their social situation doesn’t acknowledge the importance of political views. Therefore, they found it hard to comprehend but tend to agree with the media content.
Overall, his research tells us that the social position produces specific kinds of readings or ‘decodings’. There are also different ‘discourses’ (knowledge, prejudices, resistances, etc.) which is determined by social position.
Also, the meaning of text is socially constructed according to discourse & social situation.
Perhaps Mass-Culture may affect the ways in which we construct opinions based on our cultural viewpoints. Our cultural influence may dictate how the texts should be read. This is learnt through the process of socialisation. Again, the social situation of the audience, which is their cultural belongingness, is taken into account. Moreover, the mass-culture suggests that we are influenced by the media content based on the following approaches: the conservative right; radical left; pluralism.
The conservative right states that the society is seen as divided between the ‘elite’ & the mass of the population. This is passed down between generations. With reference to the Marxist’s view, capitalism pollutes that culture & replaces it with a ‘plastic commodity culture’ (mass culture). Working class is said to be ‘alienated’.
The Radical Left approach believes that the capitalist system has made the class ‘soul-less & one-dimensional.’ The families are replaced by the state & big businesses which makes the working class passive, ‘uncritical & unthinking.’
Marcuse would say that:
“The hypnotic power of the media deprives us of the capacity for critical thought which is essential if we are to change the world.”
Pluralism would argue that they reject the view that there is ‘mass-culture’ at all. It believes that working class had a ‘true’ culture that has now been ‘subverted’ (corrupted).
From the different experiments/studies/researches supported by theories & approaches, the audience’s position in the society can have a great impact on their understanding of the media content. The social position brought by every individual affects them on how they are likely to react if given a stimulus. It can also alter the way they interpret media. Whether it is violence or pro-social behaviour, our socially constructed viewpoints would still prevail.
In the case of the Eminem impersonator, Christopher Duncan, his social belongingness (coming from a poor background & area) & low media literacy led him to imitate Eminem. Although Jonathan Laidhaw, prosecuting said: ‘There is no sensible explanation for what he did.’ , Christopher’s social position & people surrounding him (gangs, etc.) might answer this ‘brutal killing’ of Jagdip Najran. Authorities, however, have suggested that he had a personality disorder (another dimension of social situation) that made him act anti-socially.
“Members of a given sub-culture will tend to share a cultural orientation towards decoding messages in particular ways. Their individual ‘readings’ of messages will be framed by shared cultural formations and practices.”
Morley, David (1981b, p. 51).