Media Effects

Readings References

1. Valkenburg, P.M., Peter, J., & Walther, J.B. (2016). Media effects: Theory and research.
Annual review of psychology, 67, 315 -338

2. Thorson, K., & Wells, C.. (2016). Curated flows: A framework for mapping media exposure
in the digital age. Communication Theory, 26(3), 309-328

Wang Ting (Tiffany) - 107461009

Thao Tran - 107461015
Sarah Ngai Su Yin - 107461013
Media Effects: Theory and Research

- Meta-Analyses
- Five Features of Media Effects Theories
- Media Effects in Newer Media Environment
Media Effects: A case of Chandler and Joey
Key components
• Trends in theories of media effects (since 1920s till recent years)
• Five features of media effects theories
• Media effects in newer media environment
• Theories of computer-mediated communication: transactional
feature of communication
 Mass
Communication

Media
Effects
Anyone?
Dissemination of information within a culture
 Mass Mass self-
Communication communication

• Reach large audiences via mass media • Reach large audiences via
mass media
• Uniform consumption and impacts
• Self-selected and
• Focus on media reception and individualized
generation processes
• Focus on effects of media
generation on senders
Meta-analyses on media effects
• Most important media effects theories?
• Research on media effects start from 1920s and become most
prominent around 1980s.
• Many meta-analyses have been conducted on media effects
• The article listed 20 meta-analyses in the past 20 years.
• Criteria of selection: broad plenitude of media effects that were
investigated
Meta-analyses on media effects
• Founding of meta-analyses:

Small to moderate effect Severe effect sizes in small

sizes in group-level subgroup or certain individuals
Five features of media effects
• Strong individual differences when it comes to analyses of media
effects
• Due to 5 features of media effects theories:
• Selectivity of media use
• Media properties as predictors
• Indirectivity
• Conditional
• Transactional
• Micro-level media effects theory (need definition) (11 most well-cited theories):

✓ Two-step flow
Unidirectional linear
✓ Agenda setting
relationship between media
✓ Priming
and certain outcomes
✓ Framing
✓ Cultivation
✓ Knowledge gap Interaction between media
✓ Limited Capacity Model factors
✓ Social Cognitive and non-media factors
✓ Uses-and-Gratification
✓ Reinforcing Spiral
✓ Elaboration Likelihood Model

• Macro-level media effects theory (need definition) (ask class if anyone know?)
 Micro-level media effects theory
• “Microlevel media-effects theories base their inferences on observations of the
individual media user”
• (Valkenburg & Peter, 2013)
• Looks at the effects on certain individual consumer of mass communication
• Some well cited individual-level media-effects theories are:

• Social Cognitive Theory

• Neoassociationist Model and other accounts of Media Priming
• Selective Exposure Theory
• Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing
• Orientations-Stimulus Orientations-Response (O-S-O-R) Model
• Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Uses-and-Gratifications Theory
• Microlevel variants of Cultivation Theory
 Macro-level media effects theory
• Effects from the media on entire communities. Functionalism, like the
mass society theories, examines impact on large groups and on
people who make up those large groups.
 Valkenburg & Peter (2013a)

Conditional Transactional Selectivity of Media effects

Indirect
media effects media effects Media as mediators
• Social Cognitive • Social Cognitive • Social Cognitive • Social Cognitive • Social Cognitive
Theory Theory Theory Theory Theory
• Uses‐and‐Gratificatio • Reinforcing Spiral • Reinforcing Spiral • Reinforcing Spiral • Elaboration Likelihood
ns Model Model Model Model
• Reinforcing Spiral • Two‐Step Flow • Elaboration Likelihood • Cultivation Theory
Model • Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Elaboration Likelihood Model • Uses-and-
Model Gratification
Feature 1: Selectivity of Media Use
• People select media as a result of certain social needs or beliefs (Katz &
Lazarsfeld 1955)
• 2 propositions:
• (a): People only attend to messages that can potentially attract their attention
• (b): Only those selected messages has the potential to influence them
(Klapper 1960, Lazarsfled et al 1948)

Power of media to change attitudes and behaviors are

limited

Media users Select media Media effects

“Don’t like Iphone”
“Don’t like Iphone”
Feature 1: Selectivity of Media Use
Theoretical perspectives
Methodological
Similarities Differences
Consequences
- Individuals select Media users AWARE of Use self-reports to
Uses-and- media their selection motives observe media use
Gratifications - Satisfy their needs behavior
- Psychological and
Media users are NOT Use unconstructive
social factors as
Selective guidelines
AWARE (fully) of their observational methods
selection motives
Exposure - Media use =
precursor
There’s also:
Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura 2009), Conditional Model of Political Communication Effects
(McLeod et al 2009), Reinforcing Spiral Model (Slater 2007), Differential Susceptibility to Media
Effects Model (Valkenburg & Peter 2013)
Feature 1: Selectivity of Media Use
Three factors influence selective media use
• Dispositional
• Developmental
• Social Context
Dispositional
• Disposition ranges from distal & stable to proximal & transient
factors
Distal Proximal

Temperament, personality, gender Beliefs, motivations, moods

Stable Transient
• Proximal factors are more complex, and under specific conditions,
people might seek content that is inconsistent with their beliefs,
moods or attitudes
Developmental
• People choose media content that is MODERATELY discrepant to
their age-related experience
 Social context
• Influence of social context on micro, meso and macro level
• Social influence can occur:
• Deliberately and overtly: e.g limited choices of channel, parents restriction
• Covertly: stems from the needs to identify with certain values/norms of specific
social groups. People might select media content to develop their social
identities
Feature 2: Media Properties as Predictors
• 3 types of media properties that can predict media effects:
• Modality (visual, audiovisual, text)
• Content (type of character, argument, violence)
• Structural properties (pace, special effects)
Modality
• “Media affect individuals and society not by the content delivered,
but primarily by their modalities” (Marshall McLuhan, 1964)

But
• Media comparison studies failed to produce results to support the
importance of modalities when it comes to learning
• Content and structural properties are proved to be more important
Content properties
• Little studies and NO one overarching theory of content properties
that both trigger selective exposure or predict media affects
• No comprehensive theory on how content properties guide selective
exposure
• Some theories explained how content properties may enhance media
effects:
• Social Cognitive Theory
• Priming Theory
• Transportation Theory
• Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Elaboration Likelihood Model
Content properties
• Social Cognitive Theory:
• “…Media depiction of rewarded behavior and attractive media characters
enhance the likelihood of media effects”
• Let’s watch these gangs of mean girls! So mean yet so cool?
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Dxk-lNkwjk
Structural properties
• Special effects, visual practices etc. can trigger our
immediate and automatic response Goals & experiences

Transient Sustained attention

attention
Feature 3: Media Effects are
Indirect
• Media effects are INDIRECT

Media use Intervening Media

outcomes Variables

• Three types:
❖Pre-media use variables Media use Media
outcomes Cognitive,emotional,physiological processes

Post-
❖ Media use exposure
Media
outcomes variables
Post-
exposure
variables
 ❖Pre-media use variables Media use Media
outcomes
• Pre-media use variables include: development, dispositions, social-
context factors
Gender

Media outcome:
Watch Soap Opera Identity-related: Naming her
child after one of the main
character
 Cognitive,emotional,physiological processes
Media use
Media outcomes
•Elaboration Likelihood Model: if message is of high level of attention (central
route), then the media effects will be more enduring
•Example: Dove Men+ Care Reaction of real life fathers-to-be in the first
moment they find out they are going to be a dad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0-5HORRXU0
 Central Root: Dove Men+ Care
In this interactive ad, the message producer identified a high need for love & connection as a trait of
their customers, and used it for your messaging
The Receiver will:
• Get the sense of connection as the ads show a caring side is a big part of masculanity
• Feel more related to the product (since it breaks the stereotype and highlights the way that care
makes a man stronger)
• Align with the bran’s grooming products specifically designed for men (Men+ Care)
 Post-
exposure
variables
❖ Media use Post-
exposure
variables
• Political & Health Communication Campaigns
• Agenda Setting Theory (McComb & Shaw 1972): the Media
selectively chooses what public focuses on based on subsequent
political beliefs and attitudes
Media’s
Reality
Agenda

Public
Perception
of Reality
China-US Trade
Deficit
Feature 4: Media Effects are
Conditional
Media Effects are Conditional
• Individual-differences and social-context can enhance or reduce
media effects
• Conditional media effects theories:
• Uses and Gratifications
• Reinforcing Spiral Model
• Conditional Model of Political Communication Effects
• Elaboration Likelihood Model
• Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model
3 Factors
• Three factors influence selective media use ALSO influence how the
media content is processed

?
• Dispositional
• Developmental
• Social context
Disposition
• Interpretation of media content depends partly on dispositional
factors (gender, class, race, emotion)
• Example: brand name that got lost-in-translation: Darlie, Blue Bird
• Much studies were conducted focus on cognitive processing but not
on emotional processing

Does this Mac looks bigger to you?

Development
Young children Young Adult Middle & Older Adult

• Lack knowledge and • Invest more cognitive • Invest more cognitive

experience to process effort in processing effort in processing
new information negative stimuli positive stimuli
• Invest less cognitive
effort during media
use
Social Context
• Audience will be more susceptible to media message if these
message converge with the values and norms in their social
environment setting
• Cultivation Theory & Resonance: if audience experience something in
the media that is similar to their social environment, it will enhance
their likelihood of media effects
• Let’s look at another example on cars….
Feature 5: Media Effects are
Transactional
Media Effects are Transactional
• Media users can only be influenced by the media they:
• Selectively use
• Selectively interpret
• Transactional theories elaborate that by selectively exposing
themselves to media, they also shape their own media effects
• Transactional models explain how & why this occurs
Transactional theories

First assumption Second assumption Third assumption

• Producers and • Producers and • The transactions are

receivers of media receivers of media both
content exchange info content can change as • Interpersonal
via communication a result of media (producers vs.
technologies (radio, content they receivers)
TV, Internet) produce/receive • Intrapersonal
(feature 1,4) (within the cognitive
and affective
systems of
producers &
receivers)
Transactional model
Some thoughts
• All theories are all linked together
• Uses and gratifications + cultivation: a person watches TV to be informed,
especially if the program might get their opinions reinforced
• Uses and gratifications + hypodermic needle model: We are learning from a
program and they are effecting us (e.g: makes us more violent)
• Uses and gratifications + Two-step flow / Reception theory: Social interaction
while watching a movie together at a cinema/ attend a book launch

Combine these Understand how the media affecting us

theories How we react to mass media
 “A process in which human data
interaction occurs through one or more
networked telecommunication systems.”

Computer
CMC interaction occurs through various types
Mediated of networking technology and software:
Communication
(CMC)
Theories

CMC technology saves time and money in IT organizations

by facilitating the use of all communication formats.
 Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) Theories

Social Presence Theory (Short et al., 1976)

● Where focuses are heavily injected on the amount

of cues that are expressed via a social platform

Media Richness Theory (Daft & Lengel, 1986)

● Where focuses on its ability to reproduce

information sent, and to evaluate communications
medium

Lack of Social Context Cues Hypothesis (Sproull &

Kiesler, 1986)

● Where it affects the human behaviours in media

context, resulting to unclear interactions
Curated Flows: A Framework for
Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital
Age

- Curated Flows
- Five Sets of Curating Actors
- Research Questions Generated by the Curated Flows Framework
- Measuring Exposure to Flows: Comments on Method
Central questions in the field of communication

In the past →
• What factors determine the sorts of messages to which citizens are
exposed, and whether they learn about the public world?

In the digital media environment→

• Recent theoretical work has paid attention to different sets of factors
defining of content flow.
ARGUMENT
• A. the power of the individual to design her own information
environment, characterized as the “Daily Me”.
• B. increased capacities for data-driven message targeting by strategic
actors, leading to a “one-step flow” of information.
• C. the shaping of content delivery by computer algorithms of
organizations like Google and Facebook, a “filter bubble”
• D. a revival of the two-step flow proposition through the social
sharing of messages across digital media networks.
No dominant pattern of content flows these
days
• Competing Patterns
→individual interests, social networks, and the infrastructures of digital
communication
→Curated flows: the idea that the fundamental action of our media
environment is curation
→Curation: the production, selection, filtering, annotation, or framing
of content.
The reason for developing the curated flows
• Bridging media effects research and approaches to understanding the
new media environment in terms of networks.
Transforming media, society, and research tool
Technology change & social and economics change

• The fragmentation and proliferation of media

→Cable TV to multi-platform, multi-device, global digital networks

• Social and economics change lead to citizens’ increasing detachment

from traditional groups.
→ These changes made many aspects of individuals’ media repertoires
more accessible to researchers.
Opening questions
• What sorts of communicators make up an individual’s personal
network?

• How do they choose what they pass along to readers or contacts?

CURATED FLOWS
Curation: To curate is to select and organize, to filter abundance into a
collection of manageable size, one that in its smaller shape fulfills an
informational or strategic need more efficiently than the buzzing flow
of all available options.
Example:
• In the past → news editorial staff.
• Today → presidential campaigns, interests groups, bloggers,
algorithms, Facebook friends, and others.
CURATED FLOWS
Flows: We adopted this word because the term resonates with the
fluidity of the contemporary media environment.

• The curated flows framework pushes us to ask what kinds of content

are more likely in an individual’s egocentric communication network
given the interests and logics of the curators whose choices are most
prominent.
Five sets of curating actors.
A. Journalistic Curation
B. Strategic Curation
C. Personal Curation
D. Social Curation
E. Algorithm Curation

• The categories are thus starting points grounded in existing literature

concerned with content flows over digital media.
JOURNALISTIC CURATION
• Rather than emphasizing the negating role of such processes - the
keeping out of what is beyond the gates - the curation metaphor
focuses on the way content is promoted - highlighting and drawing
out what is most valuable from an otherwise unmanageable flood of
messages.

• News flows are typically seen as containing sufficient diversity to

keep a citizen abreast of events of which she would not otherwise be
aware.
JOURNALISTIC CURATION
• Select, filter and package the
information to the audience.
STRATEGIC CURATION
• Combining new communication technologies with data-mining
techniques, recent campaigns have use direct messaging at such
levels the Bennett and Manheim(2006) proclaimed the emergence of
a “one step flow.”
• Curation performed by strategic communicators are more likely to be
conducted with incentives associated with commercial media logic.
• Such a concern also highlights the possibility of the spread of
misinformation(Nyhan, 2010).
STRATEGIC CURATION
• Use social media to help the election

• Want to get some benefits from the

audience
PERSONAL CURATION
• It enhances individuals’ abilities to shape their own experiences of
information to their liking.

• The user’s act of personal curation serves to open up a flow of

content curated by strategic communicators.
PERSONAL CURATION
• Select the media they
prefer and build up their
media environment
SOCIAL CURATION
• A further form of curation is performed by the human social network-
friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances- to which an individual is
connected.
SOCIAL CURATION
• Information shared by the
acquaintances
ALGORITHM CURATION
• “Filter bubble”(Pariser, 2011) describes how search engines such as Google
provide different responses to identical search queries depending on data
they possess about the individual conducting the search.

• Many fear that algorithmic curation will tend to amplify trends toward
information homogeneity at the level of the individual(Pariser, 2011).

• It’s also possible to design systems that promote exposure to diverse

content.
ALGORITHM CURATION
• Use data mining technology

• Collect the user’s data and

provide the content after
analyzing the data
Research questions
• Which curation processes are most significant in citizens’ media
experiences?
• What is the degree of variation among curating actors within each
category? On what factors do the logics of curation depend?
• Are different curations treated differentially by receivers?

• →Answering the questions above will be complicated.

Measuring exposure to flows: comments on method

• Facebook offers information about an individual and her media experiences.

• Four types of indicators
• Facebook’s designations of types of entities (individual friends, public figures, pages,
etc.),
• types of relationships with in Facebook(“friends,”“likes”)
• our own coding, both by hand and automated, of public entities and links
• a self-report survey of the respondent’s behaviors and attitudes

• At this point, it remains challenging to detect algorithmic curation reliably,

an important limitation for studies of this type.
Reference
• Valkenburg, P. M. and Peter, J. (2013), The Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model. J
Commun, 63: 221-243
• Michael, C. and Gregory S. M. (Writer), & Michael, C. (Director). (1996). The One Where Ross and
Rachel...You Know [Episode 15, Season 2]. In Michael, L. (Executive Producer), FRIENDS, NBC.
• https://qz.com/898780/china-has-stolen-3-4-million-american-jobs-since-2001/
• https://www.epi.org/press/the-growing-trade-deficit-with-china-cost-3-4-million-u-s-jobs-
between-2001-and-2015/
• https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/americas-china-trade-deficit-has-become-security-
problem-15169
• https://www.epi.org/publication/the-trade-deficit-is-responsible-for-manufacturing-job-loss/
• https://carnegieendowment.org/2017/04/23/trump-s-unnecessary-trade-war-with-china-pub-
68752
• https://www.ft.com/content/3b49cd2a-10ad-11e7-b030-768954394623
• http://chinaplus.cri.cn/opinion/opedblog/23/20180926/188437.html