SARA MUFAZ

SUBJECT: MEDIA PHYSCOLOGY

1815138

INTRODUCTION
Early media studies focused on the use of mass media in propaganda and
persuasion. However, journalists and researchers soon looked to behavioral
sciences to help figure out the effect of mass media and communications on
society. Scholars have developed many different approaches and theories to
figure this out. You can refer to these theories as you research and consider the
media’s effect on culture.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

Practitioners of the uses and gratifications theory study the ways the public

consumes media. This theory states that consumers use the media to satisfy
specific needs or desires. For example, you may enjoy watching a show
like Dancing With the Stars while simultaneously tweeting about it on Twitter
with your friends. Many people use the Internet to seek out entertainment, to
find information, to communicate with like-minded individuals, or to pursue self-
expression. Each of these uses gratifies a particular need, and the needs
determine the way in which media is used. By examining factors of different
groups’ media choices, researchers can determine the motivations behind media
use (Papacharissi, 2009).

THEORIES
Features of Hypodermic Needle Theory
 Humans are believed to act uniformly to their stimuli and
instincts.
 Media injects or inserts messages into the people’s brain as
propaganda and manipulation like that by a bullet or syringe.
 Messages have their own intention and are sent to get desired
outcomes.
 The effect of messages is supposed to be encompassing,
strong, immediate and dangerous.
 Messages are supposed to create public opinion and change
behavior of the audiences.
 Mass of people is made to think in a similar way by the media.
 The audience is always thought to be vulnerable and passive.
 Examples of Hypodermic Needle Theory
 “Panic broadcast” was when radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ play
“War of the Worlds” was being broadcasted as radio drama in 1938
as a Halloween episode which was directed by Orson Welles. The
play was presented as news bulletins. Citizens understood the play
as people of other planet attacking a place in New Jersey. A large
group of population believed the broadcast and the message of alien
invasion caused a mass panic to millions of people.
 Similarly, in Second World War, the German leaders used movie
industry to show their power in the world and unify the people for war
in 1940s. Later, U.S. also used their own movie industry to create
negative image of the Germans and portray them as evil. They
 justified their actions to their own people with the help of media.
News is often bias and exaggerating too.

EFFECT THEORIES

Bobo Doll Experiment

Aim
Bandura (1961) conducted a controlled experiment study to investigate if
social behaviors (i.e., aggression) can be acquired by observation and
imitation.

Results
• Children who observed the aggressive model made far more
imitative aggressive responses than those who were in the non-
aggressive or control groups.
• There was more partial and non-imitative aggression among those
children who had observed aggressive behavior, although the
difference for non-imitative aggression was small.
• The girls in the aggressive model condition also showed more
physical aggressive responses if the model was male, but more
verbal aggressive responses if the model was female. However, the
exception to this general pattern was the observation of how often
they punched Bobo, and in this case the effects of gender were
reversed.
• Boys were more likely to imitate same-sex models than girls. The
evidence for girls imitating same-sex models is not strong.

Pavlov's Dogs

Like many great scientific advances, Pavlovian conditioning (aka classical

conditioning) was discovered accidentally.
During the 1890s, Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov was researching
salivation in dogs in response to being fed. He inserted a small test tube
into the cheek of each dog to measure saliva when the dogs were fed (with
a powder made from meat).

Pavlovian Conditioning
Pavlov (1902) started from the idea that there are some things that a dog
does not need to learn. For example, dogs don’t learn to salivate whenever
they see food. This reflex is ‘hard-wired’ into the dog.
In behaviorist terms, food is an unconditioned stimulus and salivation is an
unconditioned response. (i.e., a stimulus-response connection that required
no learning).
Unconditioned Stimulus (Food) > Unconditioned Response (Salivate)
In his experiment, Pavlov used a metronome as his neutral stimulus. By
itself the metronome did not elecit a response from the dogs.
Neutral Stimulus (Metronome) > No Conditioned Response
Next, Pavlov began the conditioning procedure, whereby the clicking
metronome was introduced just before he gave food to his dogs. After a
number of repeats (trials) of this procedure he presented the metronome on
its own.

So the dog had learned an association between the metronome and the
food and a new behavior had been learned. Because this response was
learned (or conditioned), it is called a conditioned response (and also
known as a Pavlovian response). The neutral stimulus has become a
conditioned stimulus

CONCLUSION
Pavlov found that for associations to be made, the two stimuli had to be
presented close together in time (such as a bell). He called this the law of
temporal contiguity. If the time between the conditioned stimulus (bell) and
unconditioned stimulus (food) is too great, then learning will not occur.
Pavlov and his studies of classical conditioning have become famous since
his early work between 1890-1930. Classical conditioning is "classical" in
that it is the first systematic study of basic laws of learning / conditioning.
RECEPTION THEORIES

David Morley’s Study of

the Nationwide Audience (1980)

Professor David Morley is a sociologist who specializes in the sociology of the

television audience. He is currently Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths'
College in the University of London. His studies of the former television
programme Nationwide arose from research which was conducted at the Centre
for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham
between 1975 and 1979. Nationwide was a popular news/current affairs
magazine programme which had a regular early evening slot on weekdays from
6.00 to 7.00 pm on BBC1. It followed the main national news from London and
included human interest stories from 'the regions' as well as a 'down-to-earth'
look at the major events of the day. It was broadcast throughout the UK
(including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), though from its general stance
one might have been forgiven for assuming that it was broadcast only within
England. Michael Barratt was the regular presenter of the programme at the time.

Three Positions

Morley outlined three hypothetical positions (adapted from Frank Parkin)

which the reader of a programme might occupy (1983, pp. 109-10; see also
1981b, p. 51 and 1992, p. 89):

o Dominant (or 'hegemonic') reading: The reader shares the

programme's 'code' (its meaning system of values, attitudes, beliefs
and assumptions) and fully accepts the programme's 'preferred
reading' (a reading which may not have been the result of any
conscious intention on the part of the programme makers).
o Negotiated reading: The reader partly shares the programme's code
and broadly accepts the preferred reading, but modifies it in a way
which reflects their position and interests.
o Oppositional ('counter-hegemonic') reading: The reader does not
share the programme's code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing
to bear an alternative frame of interpretation.

Conclusions
o Morley insists that he does not take a social determinist position in
which individual 'decodings' of TV programmes are reduced to a
direct consequence of social class position. 'It is always a question of
how social position, as it is articulated through particular discourses,
produces specific kinds of readings or decodings. These readings can
then be seen to be patterned by the way in which the structure of
access to different discourses is determined by social position'