Hi and welcome back to our Communication Theory Course. This is week five and this week, we are focusing at Mass Communication and Media Effects. Now, as you know a little bit of persuasion from the previous lecture, we can see how media and mass communication in general shapes our attitudes and how does it influence us. But first, let's clarify what is mass communication. Well, it all started with newspapers, and with the printed press invention, we got the possibility to spread the news across the community, across the society. So, many people can be affected and basically, first of all, they can get the information from the same source. So now, let's focus on the way how media is affecting us. In the very beginning, we would align the early theories of mass media and communication. This is three of them: the hypodermic needle model, Two-Step flow, and the Gatekeeping. Hypodermic needle theory or another name for this theory is magic bullet theory, was the first attempt to explain how the mass media affects the audience, and these effects appear to be direct, immediate, and very powerful as it all ended up in the behavior change, as our population, after receiving this message, we change the attitude or change the behavior pattern. So, how does this magic bullet or this hypodermic needle work? Well, first of all, it all goes in accordance with the fast race and popularization of radio and TV. With a widespread, more and more of people got the same message. So, effect finally became mass and we can speak about this same effect at the same audience rather than bypassing information through different people, through different sources, and through different media. Well, the audience is passive and heterogeneous. This is what scholars found out in accordance with the research and it was quite surprising for them. Well, basically, we all think that humans and individuals, in general, they have some sort of thinking and they would go and critically get through this information. Still, one of the major assumptions of the hypodermic needle theory, which was based on empirical research, is that this audience is passive and heterogeneous. The emergence of persuasion industries such as PR and advertising somehow actually changed the whole market and the whole sphere of the relations between people. And finally, scholars and professionals, PR practitioners, advertising practitioners, they've been counting on this, in fact. They've been trying to track how the message is influencing. Well, it was a very first and very surprising effect on the audience and there was quite a new phenomena. So, many people got influenced. And this monopolization of the mass media during Second World War in Germany showed very surprising result. How the whole population, the whole country in general, got under the same idea which was, after all, appealing as very wrong and very destructive for the society. So anyway, this was the case and it was a very important question for the scholars as well as for the practitioners. So, how does it work and how does it affect the audience? As a very good example, we can see in the 1930's, during the radio broadcast of the words, it was performed like very real news broadcasts. So, as you might remember, recalling to this experience, people actually decided that there were some aliens around and they started to run away. There was another illustration on how media can affect big, very large, enormous audiences in a very brief and direct way. So, this demonstrates this hypodermic needle theory as the people consumed information and they really believe that this was happening. So, if we want to summarize here, the audience is heterogeneous and the audience would react to the idea which is mediated through the media channel in the very same way. So basically, it led PR practitioners and scholars to understanding of this very high, very rich media effect. So the next theory you want to take a look at, is Two-Step flow theory. It was first introduced by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet in the book of People Choices, which is a 1944 study focused on decision-making of the voters during the Presidential Campaign. As scholars expected to find down this immediate media effect on voting intentions, their expectations were dramatically broken. Respondents they talked to, mostly replied and recalled to the experience of discussions with their personal contacts, rather than getting information or recalling this information from the radio and newspapers. Later on, Lazarsfeld and Katz developed the Two-Step flow theory. Basically, it stands for information from the media moving in two distinct stages. In the first place, opinion leaders receive the information and then opinion leaders pass this information. So basically, we try to get away from the direct and immediate effect. It's not just media and the consumer. We got another role, another person, another institution of an opinion leaders. So, who are these opinion leaders? Well, first of all, these are people who pay close attention to mass media and they do have professional competence so they can interpret news and they can provide their own personified and very maybe interesting, maybe not very interesting. But anyway, it would be their own interpretation of what is happening. Second of all, these opinion leaders are influential and they have quite wide media coverage. So, how do we trust people? We trust them because they have some sort of competence in the field we're interested in. And in this case, we would consider them as opinion leaders and we'll get information from them. These opinion leaders at the same time, must be very similar to those who they try to influence. We will discuss this a little bit later when we move on with our media effects series but a little bit of disclosure from the very end of the lecture. Yeah, we do tend to consume information from those with whom we agree the most. So, yes. Opinion leaders are similar to those they influence. Opinion leaders as we can summarize here, they interpret messages as we have already discussed in the very introduction. The message which is sent is usually not the one we actually receive. So, let us imagine the situation. A mom, very good, very nice mom is watching a TV program and in this TV program it have some content which says some particular toys which are sold in the toy store may cause aggressive behavior from the child. So, she gets this information and then interpret it as she gets her son and they go together shopping for a little bit of toys. And finally, her son would call for this toy and he would say, "I really want it." How would mom change his behavior and how she would interpret this news? She might probably say that, it wouldn't be the case if she says that this toy won't cause you having an aggressive behavior and you will end up socially, not very inclusive. She would say that, "I'm sorry this toy might be a little bit dangerous for you. Maybe it will cause you some allergies or something else." So basically, at this example, we can see how the information gets into Two-Steps and the opinion leader, in this case, is mom. She has all the power and authority to tell new information for her son, and her son must be, most likely, looking at her and behaving like her as their relatives. So, the theory that refines the ability to predict the influence of media messages and it does provide an explanation on why certain theories failed. Well, it's recalled to this magic bullet or a hypodermic needle theory. Still, it was criticized after all. Many theories got criticized. First of all, this is the significant proportion of the population do not rely on opinion leaders, or these opinion leaders might vary, or you have this ability of critical thinking and you preferred to go through the information yourself and provide the analysis. So, the critics overall, were that on this theory cannot describe all the cases. Well, this is sort of criticism which many theories do get. The last theory of the early theories of media effects would be the Gatekeeping. It was first introduced by Kurt Lewin, the social psychologist and he was the one and the first one, who coined the Gatekeeping term and the noun 'gatekeeper', which basically stands for the one who is responsible for the decision-making process. First, it was widely used in psychology and then moved to the communication field with the with the research of David Manning White of the University of Iowa and he was the one who conducted the first research, it was empirical research which proved the Gatekeeping theory is existing. So, it was in 1949 and Manning asked a newspaper editor. Let's call him Mr. Gates, to keep the copy of all the information of all the news which came to his office from different places, from the different news sources during one week, and this editor, he agreed. He agreed to provide an explanation and show the materials. So, when this color compared, what kind of information, what sort of information was finally published on the contrary with the whole bunch of information, which was received, he decides and he summarized that the selection and the decision which was made, was very selective and it was very influential. So, what do we refer to the Gatekeeping? Gatekeeping is the process through each information is filtered for the dissemination. The gatekeeper, it can be person or can be a social institution, decides what information would be communicated to others and what should not really. This Gatekeeping process does have social, cultural, ethical, and political influence as it sets the agenda, as it sets all the information which we will finally consume as the community, as a society. There can be few levels of the Gatekeeping. Level number one is the level of individuals. Their decisions are usually personal and they rely on their own ethical background, their preferences and what they think is important for the communication within this field of the information. So, they decide what shall they communicate. So, this is the level of individuals. The next level is organization and procedures. It exists within the environment of social institutions. Usually, that would affect the Gatekeeping process. So, the decisions in the company or when it's not directly regulated by one person, they usually made in accordance with pre-established and somehow generalized sets of practices. So, this level of organizations and procedures is something summarized and something which goes over and over in the same way. So, some patents which exists in certain organization. The next level is the level of the social institutions themselves. So events, a variety of degree that they are culturally available as used items. Some of the terms for the agenda might not be applicable to the sudden agenda or to the certain institutions. So, the decision is made on this level. And the last level would be recalled and referred to the communities and societies, as culture and cultural matters, indicators of social significance, which include political and political indicators. They might influence the selection of decisions and these decisions would finally affect the extent to which different parts of our reality are covered and how they are covered. Later on, this theory would be developed as the Gatekeeping, as just this very basic process outlined another influential person or another influential institution but we can call this an element of the whole communicative system. So, during this overview, we have an image of the evolution of communication theories in media effects in the very, very beginning. First, we started with the direct influence as the magic bullet goes and it affects the audience in the same way. Then, we have opinion leaders who appear and opinion leaders disseminate information. So, we got another pod, another element of the communicative system of this process, of information transferring. And now, we have gatekeepers as well. So, we got another additional, it can be fourth, if I am not mistaken here, the fourth element. So, we have the sender and we have the receiver. In the very middle, we do have the gatekeeper who kind of sorts all of the information which comes and can further pass it to the opinion later. Well, if we combine two theories, we can think about merging opinion later and the gatekeeper, that this would be a very strong individual who would have a very big influence on those who are affected by the media. So now, let's move on to more sophisticated theories of media effects.
