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30 Section 1 Introduction to Mass Communication Theory limited-effects theory View of media as reinforcing existing social trends and strengthening rather than threatening the status quo administrative theories Media theories used to guide practical decisions for various organizations administrative research Research that examines audiences to interpret consumer attitudes and behaviors; the use of empirical research to guide practical administrative decisions successful social research center, the Bureau for Applied Social Research at Columbia University. Lazarsfeld provides a classic example of a transitional figure in theory development—someone well grounded in past theory but also innovative enough to consider other concepts and methods for evaluating new ideas. Though quite familiar with and very sympathetic to mass society notions (Lazarsfeld, 1941), Lazarsfeld was committed to the use of empirical social research methods in order to establish the validity of theory. He argued that it wasn’t enough to merely speculate about the influence of media on society. Instead, he advocated the conduct of carefully designed, elaborate surveys and even field experiments in which he would be able to observe media influence and measure its magnitude. It was not enough to assume that political propaganda is powerful—hard evidence was needed to prove the existence of such effects (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet, 1944). Lazarsfeld’s most famous research efforts, the “American Voter Studies,” actually began as an attempt to document the media’s power during election campaigns, yet they eventually raised more questions about the influence of media than they answered. As we shall see, this is a common outcome of empirical social research when it is used to assess the role of media. By the mid-1950s, Lazarsfeld’s work and that of other empirical media researchers had generated an enormous amount of data (by precomputer standards). Interpretation of these data led Lazarsfeld and his colleagues to conclude that media were not nearly as powerful as had been feared or hoped. Instead, these researchers found that people had numerous ways of resisting media influence, and their attitudes were shaped by many competing factors, such as family, friends, and religious community. Rather than serving as a disruptive social force, media more often seemed to reinforce existing social trends and strengthen rather than threaten the status quo. They found little evidence to support the worst fears of mass society theorists. Though Lazarsfeld and others never labeled this theory, it is now referred to as limited-effects theory. Today, as you’ll see in Chapters 6 and 7, the limited-effects theory encompasses numerous smaller media theories. This set of theories views media as playing a limited, somewhat minimal role in the lives of individuals and the larger society. They are still widely used in guiding research, even though their shortcomings are recognized. They are especially useful in explaining the short-term influence of routine media usage by various types of audiences. Several of these theories are referred to as administrative theories because they are used to guide practical decisions for various organizations. For example, these theories can guide research by television advertisers as they develop and evaluate campaign strategies to boost sales. And as you might imagine, the research generated by administrative theories is called administrative research. You can get a better idea of exactly what administrative as used here means in the box entitled “Administrative versus Critical Research: The Example of Prescription Drug Advertising.” Throughout the 1950s, limited-effects notions about media continued to gain acceptance within academia. These notions dominated the new field of mass communication research as it was developing in the 1950s and 1960s. Several important clashes occurred between their adherents and those who supported mass society ideas (Bauer and Bauer, 1960). This is hardly surprising, since the rise of 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.
THINKING about THEORY Communism across Eastern Europe seemed to provide ample evidence that media could be used as powerful tools to meld more and more masses of individuals into an ever more powerful totalitarian state. How could the United States expect to win the Cold War unless it could somehow find a way to use mass media to confront and overcome the Soviets? Paul Lazarsfeld may well be one of social science’s seminal thinkers, and his work did much to cement the limited-effects perspective in American mass communication theory, but seven decades ago he warned that overreliance on administrative research was dangerously short-sighted. He drew a distinction between administrative research—focused on mass communication’s immediate, observable influence— and what he called critical research—asking important questions about what kind of culture results from our media use. In 1941, well before media like the Internet, cell phones that let you play interactive videogames with people on another continent, and 24-hour cable news networks, he wrote: Today we live in an environment where skyscrapers shoot up and elevateds [commuter trains] disappear overnight; where news comes like shock every few hours; where continually new news programs keep us from ever finding out details of previous news; and where nature is something we drive past in our cars, perceiving a few quickly changing flashes which turn the majesty of a mountain range into the impression of a motion picture. Might it not be that we do not build up experiences the way it was possible decades ago? (1941, p. 12) You’ll see elsewhere in this chapter (somewhat briefly) and in subsequent chapters (in greater detail) that despite the demands of the limited-effects perspective and its reliance on administrative research, many mass communication researchers eventually answered Lazarsfeld’s call. We can see this conflict between administrative and critical research in the contemporary controversy surrounding direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs. Market researchers, for example, conduct administrative research based on administrative theory to discover better and more Chapter 2 Four Eras of Mass Communication Theory 31 ADMINISTRATIVE VERSUS CRITICAL RESEARCH: THE EXAMPLE OF PRESCRIPTION DRUG ADVERTISING efficient ways to match products and consumers. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that. But what Lazarsfeld did consider wrong, and what he warned his colleagues in the research community against, was stopping there, thinking that there weren’t other, equally if not more important questions to which they could turn their attention and skill. The United States and New Zealand are the only nations in the world that permit DTCA. That alone, argue its critics, is enough to generate at least one obvious critical question: What is it about American culture that makes permissible here a practice that all but one of the remainder of the world’s countries forbids? Nonetheless, significant amounts of administrative research have been conducted on DTCA ever since it was made legal in the early 1980s. Researchers studied how to best present important technical and medical information in a short television or radio commercial or on a magazine or newspaper page. How did doctors feel about dealing with betterinformed patients? Were patients indeed better informed? Industry research indicated that consumers, as they became more aware of the existence of and options available to them for troublesome medical conditions, made better patients. DTCA-informed patients can “detect medical problems, seek treatments, and ask physicians questions” that they, the harried physicians, might not offer them on their own initiatives (Richardson and Luchsinger, 2005, p. 102). A six-year study of public reaction to DTCA by Prevention and Men’s Health magazines (2003) showed that one-third of consumers talked to their doctors about ailments and treatments as a result of DTCA, with 29 million people doing so for the first time during that span. Consumers did not “demand” the advertised drugs, but rather they used the DTCA-provided information as the basis of inquiry and conversation. Another study, conducted by the Food and Drug (Continued) 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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1959 C. Wright Mills’s The Sociol
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Page 12 and 13: x Contents CHAPTER 2 FOUR ERAS OF M
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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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SECTION 3 132 FROM LIMITED-EFFECTS
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134 Section 3 From Limited-Effects
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CHAPTER 7 OVERVIEW 174 MOVING BEYON
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SECTION 4 238 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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