These two theories are arguable in favour as they both suite the social situation of both audiences. But the one theory that favours more is the two step flow model as the mass media provides information and values which then flow to the ‘opinion leaders’ who shape the views then to the audience that act upon the information in a variety of ways.
There is also the view that the media affects us through a small build up of ideas and values over the time. This theory is known as cultural effect theory; this theory assumes that the media does have an important effect on the audience (these effects are not as immediate as the hypodermic syringe model) this effect theory can be seen as a slow, steady and long term builds up ideas and attitudes. Cultural effect theory assumes if similar images, ideas and interpretations are broadcast over periods of time, then they may well affect the way we see and understand the world. This theory is takes into account the social situation of the audience as researchers attempt to examine the effects and influences of the mass media on the attitudes and behaviour.
S. Cohen’s theory on rebellion ‘folk devils and moral panic’ 1964 this study was about mod’s and the rockers, in 1964 rivalry fights between mod’s and rockers caught the national newspapers, picked up and the whole story blown out of proportion and exaggerated the problem because there was no news that day. This polarized the audience. In this particular incident the media done three things exaggerated, prediction and symbolization.
Mass media is always closely linked to the influence of violence. Critics argue that it is the media that has the most influential implications over people. There have been many studies on violence and the media; if we look at Medved’s study we could argue that if we listen to certain music we are becoming desensitised and there are lots of popular music, which contains such language. This study is back up the several ways in which people can react to violent media. They are; imitation: imitating what we see on t.v. Sensitisation: people that are shocked by what the see on t.v but do not behave in a violent manner. Desensitisation: exposure to sex and violence making audience feeling very casual and unfeeling about it. Cathartic: watching violence and sex that provides an outlet for peoples energy enabling them to release strong emotions. Disinhibtion: our natural instincts are curved our inhibitions stop us from
Rachel Namuddu
doing this through the media we are able to watch things that we would like to do
and get out of our system. One study that backed up this point comes for Bandura, Ross and Ross and their lab experiment they found that all children that are exposed to violence are influenced apart from those that are not exposed to the violence form the mass media. Main criticism to these sort of experiments are that they are not taking into account the social situation of the audience therefore are not prone to say that all children exposed to violence are going to act in a violent manner. Also it is a generalisation and cannot be made on such a small group of children. Another criticism of this particular type of study is natural behaviour cannot be recreated in artificial conditions and aggression on a rubber doll is not the same as aggression towards a human.
L.D Eron conducted a longitudinal study. He interviewed a group of eight-year-old boys and ten years later he interviewed a group of eighteen year olds and found the following connection; a link between early preference for violent media and later on aggression but no link between early aggressions and later preference for t.v violence. He also said that is a shortage of aggressive girls because there are few aggressive women on t.v. Eron believes the media affects everyone’s behaviour. This study faced many criticism one being that different boys used for the study and by 8 years a lot of children have seen a lot of media and also criticised the way violence was defined.
Eysenck made a clinical case study in a youth detention centre. He interviewed boys and showed them clips of media whilst monitoring their heart, pulse and sweat rate. And found that these rates raised as they watched different types of media. He thinks the media is defiantly having effects on society. His main criticism was those labs studies are criticised because you cant recreate natural behaviour in artificial conditions; they were all young offenders not representatives of people in general.
In mass media social situation is not always taken into account when explain the influence of the media. In some cases there is not enough implications as to which social situation the theory fits into thus making it a weak study as to define why the mass media does have influence on its audience. But on a whole sociological explanation do aim to find out the extent to which the media affects it audience.
