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172 Section 3 From Limited-Effects to Critical Cultural Theories: Ferment in the Field THE HOVLAND-LAZARSFELD LEGACY SUMMARY The wealth of empirically based knowledge generated by persuasion and information-flow research and—possibly more important—the often conflicting, inconclusive, and situationally specific research questions they inspired have occupied many communication researchers for decades. Together with the survey research findings produced by Lazarsfeld, this work challenged and ultimately undermined mass society theory and notions about the power of propaganda. Gerry Miller and Michael Burgoon acknowledged the powerful initial influence of this research when they commented regarding the Hovland work, “The classic volumes of the ‘Yale Group’ …were accorded a seminal status comparable to that conferred on the Book of Genesis by devoted followers of the Judeo-Christian religious faith” (1978, p. 29). Similar remarks could have been made about the landmark study of information flow conducted by DeFleur and Larsen. This body of work deserves recognition but not reverence. For its time, it was thorough, sophisticated, and groundbreaking—but it did not yield a definitive explanation of the role or power of media. With Lazarsfeld’s research, Hovland’s work spawned literally thousands of research efforts on and dozens of intellectual refinements of the process of mass communication. But now, more than half a century later, we have only begun to put this work into perspective and understand its limitations as well as its considerable merits. The beam cast by this research is narrow; it fails to provide us with a broad understanding of media as it often highlights trivial properties. Thus its contribution to our overall understanding of the role of mass media in the society at large was to some extent misleading. To the extent that we relied upon limited-effects notions about media power, we made crucial errors in understanding media. The 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast ushered in the limited-effects perspective. Development of this perspective was led by Paul Lazarsfeld and Carl Hovland and benefited from the refinement of empirical research methods, the failure of the mass society and propaganda thinkers to offer empirical evidence for their views, the commercial nature of the new research methods and their support by both government and business, and the spread of these methods to a wide variety of academic disciplines. Lazarsfeld championed the inductive approach to theory construction and employed it in his 1940 voter studies and other research to develop the idea of a two-step flow of media influence. With other research of the time, this helped develop the outlines of the limited-effects perspective: Media rarely have direct effects; media influence travels from media, through opinion leaders, to opinion followers; group commitments protect people from media influence; and when effects do occur, they are modest and isolated. Hovland and other psychologists offered support for this limited-effects view. Using controlled variation, they demonstrated that numerous individual differences and group affiliations limited media’s power to change attitudes. This led logically to the development of dissonance theory, the idea that people work consciously and unconsciously to limit the influence of messages running counter to their preexisting attitudes and beliefs. This dissonance reduction operated through selectivity in exposure (attention), retention, and perception. The work of Lazarsfeld and Hovland inspired other limited-effects thinking. Information-flow Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
theory studied media’s effectiveness in transmitting information to mass audiences. Klapper’s phenomenistic, or reinforcement, theory provided a powerful argument for media as reinforcers of the status quo, unable to have powerful effects. Elite pluralism, forcefully argued by Key and forcefully challenged by Mills, also offered a benign perspective on media influence: As most people were not interested or intelligent enough to use media to form meaningful political attitudes, this ineffectiveness of media actually served the U.S. social system by giving it its stability. As long as those who were more involved in or better at political discourse could get the information they needed, all Americans would be served. Critical Thinking Questions 1. Are you typically an opinion leader or an opinion follower? Are there specific topics on which you are one or the other? Identify an issue (movies, music, sports, fashion, domestic politics) on which you can identify another whose opinion you usually seek. How well does that person fit the description of opinion leaders embodied in two-step flow? Has membership in a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter altered your role as an opinion leader or follower or that of any of your friends? How? 2. Klapper’s phenomenistic theory argues that media’s greatest power rests in their ability to reinforce existing attitudes and values. At the time, this was evidence that media had limited effects—they were limited to Key Terms limited-effects perspective inductive middle-range theory gatekeepers opinion leaders opinion followers two-step flow theory indirect-effects theory limited-effects theory controlled variation individual differences social categories cognitive consistency Chapter 6 The Rise of Limited-Effects Theory 173 Together, these middle-range theories came to define the limited-effects perspective and shared these assumptions: Empirical research can be used to generate useful theory; the role of media in society is limited; sometimes media can be dysfunctional for some types of individuals; and the U.S. social and political system is stable and fair. But the limited-effects perspective has its drawbacks: Both surveys and experiments have serious methodological limitations; these limitations consistently produced research findings that underestimated media’s influence; and “effects” were defined as only those that were immediate and observable, ignoring other, possibly more important effects. reinforcement. But more contemporary thinking (as you’ll read in later chapters) sees reinforcement as anything but a limited effect. Can you anticipate some of the arguments in support of this view? 3. Does the recent trend toward partisan media outlets herald a new era of minimal media effects? If so, what are the consequences? Are we becoming a nation in which we no longer share common media but rely increasingly on media tailored to appeal to people who think and act like ourselves? What about your own media use? What is your opinion of media outlets such as The Daily Show or Fox News or MSNBC that cater to specific audiences? cognitive dissonance selective processes selective exposure selective retention selective perception information-flow theory source-dominated theory phenomenistic theory reinforcement theory elite pluralism spurious effects Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
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Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. Al
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1959 C. Wright Mills’s The Sociol
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From the Wadsworth Series in Mass C
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This is an electronic version of th
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To Sidney Kraus His words and actio
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x Contents CHAPTER 2 FOUR ERAS OF M
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xii Contents Limitations of the Exp
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xiv Contents Development of Recepti
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xviii Preface Many if not all of th
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xx Preface THE USE OF HISTORY In th
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xxii Preface about these issues. We
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xxiv Preface their refinement in he
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4 Section 1 Introduction to Mass Co
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CHAPTER 2 convergence The erasure o
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SECTION 2 42 THE ERA OF MASS SOCIET
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46 Section 2 The Era of Mass Societ
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CHAPTER 5 96 NORMATIVE THEORIES OF
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100 Section 2 The Era of Mass Socie
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222 Section 3 From Limited-Effects
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SECTION 4 238 CONTEMPORARY MASS COM
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240 Section 4 Contemporary Mass Com
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CHAPTER 10 278 MEDIA AND SOCIETY: T
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REFERENCES Adbusters. (2002). “Th
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366 References Century, April 17. (
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368 References Argument about New M
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370 References Gerbner, G., L. Gros
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372 References 1942-1943. New York:
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374 References Lasswell, H. D. (192
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376 References Miller, K. (2005). C
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378 References Preiss, R. W. (2007)
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380 References Smillie, D. (2009).
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382 References query Human capacity
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384 Index children, focus on functi
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386 Index I ice-age analogy, 342 Id
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388 Index media and culture theorie
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390 Index sensemaking, decoding and
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392 Index theory, understanding and
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