Media Effects

Introduction to Media Effects

On 20 April 1999 two pupils of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado – Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris – walked into their school armed with guns, knives and bombs. They wandered the corridors shooting and killing. By the end of the day they were both dead, along with twelve students and one teacher. Almost as soon as the massacre was over debates started raging as to why they had carried it out. While investigations were carried out into the boys’ backgrounds and families, their actions were quickly linked to the music of the rock star Marilyn Manson, who cancelled his scheduled performance in Columbine in respect to the dead. It was discovered that Klebold and Harris had acquired much of the information about how to construct their weapons from the internet. While many experts argue that such violence is a consequence of a multitude of factors, many aspects of the debate quickly focused on the media.

Introduction to Media Effects

  • Historical Context: Media often gets scrutinized after societal tragedies, like Columbine.

  • Media Influence Debate: No effect vs Full/sole effect

  • Philosophers like Aristotle to modern theorists have questioned media’s impact.

Historical Timeline: Media Effects Debate

  • 335 BC: Aristotle warns about poetry’s influence

  • 1798: Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads are seen as corrupting literature

  • 1993: James Bulger murder in UK sparks debates on ‘video nasties’

  • 1999: Columbine school shooting leads to scrutiny of violent media

Gauntlett’s Ten Criticisms of Media Effects

  1. Backward Causation: Criminologists, in their professional attempts to explain crime and violence, consistently turn for explanations not to the mass media but to social factors such as poverty, unemployment, housing, and the behaviour of family and peers

  2. Children as ‘Inadequate’: Research have shown that children can talk intelligently and indeed cynically about the mass media

  3. Conservative Bias: Who tells the story? Acts of violence, such as those committed by Beavis and Butt-Head in their eponymous MTV series, can be interpreted as rationally resistant reactions to an oppressive world

Gauntlett’s Ten Criticisms of Media Effects

  1. Poor Definitions: Taken for granted the definitions of media material: such as ‘antisocial’ and ‘prosocial’ programming
  2. Artificial Study Conditions
  3. Misapplied Methods

Gauntlett’s Ten Criticisms of Media Effects

  1. Selective Criticism of Violence: how about daily violence news on TV?
  2. Assumed Superiority to ‘Masses’: Are the masses always right?
  3. No Attempt to Understand Meanings: The effects model necessarily rests on a base of reductive assumptions and unjustified stereotypes regarding media content.
  4. Lacks Theoretical Foundation

Methodological Issues in Media Effects Research

  • Artificial Conditions: Most studies occur in labs, which do not replicate real-life media usage.

  • Correlation vs. Causation: Confusing correlation with causation, e.g., violent people liking violent films.

  • Example: Bandura’s Bobo Doll experiment - a lab-based study on aggression

Alternate Perspectives on Media Effects

  • Children’s Media Literacy: Studies show children can critically interpret media and aren’t passive.

  • Complex Influence Factors: Media influence is non-linear, shaped by personal and social contexts.

Concluding Reflections

  • Questioning Assumptions: Reflect on how regulation and censorship assumptions affect media research.

  • Future of Media Effects Research: Explore new methods like participatory studies

  • Discussion: How might creative or participatory research methods change our view on media influence?

Emre Toros - Media Theory & Methods - Week 6