Media Effects

Valmora Gogo, University College Bedër, Albania
valmoragogo@gmail.com

Media effects can be referred to as the deliberative and nondeliberative short- and long-term within-person changes in cognitions, emotions, attitudes, beliefs, physiology, and behavior that result from media use.

McQuail and Deuze pointed out that we should give due weight to the fact that the effects are determined at least as much by the receiver as by the sender; the media are rarely likely to be the only necessary or sufficient cause of an effect; their relative contribution is hard to assess; and it makes little sense to speak of ‘the media’ as if they were one thing rather than the carriers of an enormously diverse set of messages, images, and ideas that in turn are shaped by the affordances of particular technologies.

Four distinct ways of making sense of media effects can be found and traced as influential across media and mass communication scholarship: from ‘all-powerful’ to ‘limited’ via ‘negotiated’ to ‘complex reciprocal’ effects.

Challenges for researching Media Effects remains in measuring the extent to which people encounter specific media messages and a recognition that media effects are conditional, based on someone’s level of susceptibility to using and responding to certain media.

Media effects theories include Agenda-Settings Theory by McCombs & Shaw in 1972, Cultivation Theory by Gerbner in 1973, Hypodermic Needle Theory by Lasswell in 1927, Two Step Flow Theory by Lazarsfeld et al. in 1948, Framing by Bateson in 1972, Priming Theory by Iyengar et al. in 1982, Uses and Gratification Theory by Blummer & Katz in 1974, Spiral of Silence Theory by Noelle-Neumann in 1974, etc.

Keywords: media effects, media use, media effects theories

References:
Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2008). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication. Journal of Communication, 58(4), 707–731. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00410.x
McQuail, D., & Deuze, M. (2020). McQuail’s media & mass communication theory (7th ed.). SAGE.
Potter, W. J., & Riddle, K. (2007). A content analysis of the media effects literature. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 84(1), 90-104. https://doi.org/10.1177/107769900708400107
Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2013). The differential susceptibility to media effects model. Journal of Communication, 63(2), 221–243. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12024