DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA 469 Early Media Research Methods 474 Research on Media Effects 483 Cultural Approaches to Media Research 488 Media Research and Democracy Media Effects and Cultural Approaches to Research In 1966, NBC showed the Rod Serling made-for-television thriller The Doomsday Flight, the first movie to depict an airplane hijacking. In the story, a man plants a bomb and tries to extract ransom money from an airline. In the days following the telecast, the nation's major airlines reported a dramatic rise in anonymous bomb threats, some of them classified as teenage pranks. The network agreed not to run the film again. In 1985, the popular heavy-metal band Judas Priest made headlines when two Nevada teenagers shot themselves after listening to the group's allegedly subliminal suicidal message on their 1978 Stained Class album. One teen died instantly; the other lived for three more years, in constant pain from severe facial injuries. The teenagers' parents lost a civil product liability suit against the British metal band and CBS Records. DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA 467 MEDIA EFFECTS In 1995, an eighteen-year-old woman and her boyfriend went on a killing spree in Louisiana after reportedly watching Oliver Stone's 1994 film Natural Born Killers more than twenty times. The family of one of the victims filed a lawsuit against Stone and Time Warner, charging that the film—starring Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson as a demented, celebrity-craving young couple on a murderous rampage-irresponsibly incited real-life violence. Part of the family's case was based on a 1996 interview in which Stone said: "The most pacifist people in the world said they came out of this movie and wanted to kill somebody." Stone and Time Warner argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed on the grounds of free speech, and the case was finally thrown out in ?001 There was no evidence, according to the judge, that Stone had intended to incite violence. In 1999, two heavily armed students wearing trench coats attacked Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. They planted as many as fifty bombs and murdered twelve fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves. In the wake of this tragedy, many people blamed the mass media, speculating that the killers had immersed themselves in the dark lyrics of shock rocker Marilyn Manson and were desensitized to violence by "first-person shooter" video games such as Doom. Still others looked to the influence of films like The Basketball Diaries, in which a drug-using, trench-coated teenager iplayed by Leonardo DiCaprio) imagines shooting a teacher and his classmates. In April 2007, a student massacred thirty-two people on the Virginia Tech campus before killing himself. Gunman Seung-Hui Cho was mentally disturbed and praised "martyrs like Eric and Dylan," the infamous Columbine killers. Cho's rampage included a twist: during the attack, he sent a package of letters, videos, and photos of himself to NBC News. The images and ramblings of his "multimedia manifesto" became a major part of the news story (as did ethical questions about the news media broadcasting clips of his videos) while the country tried to make sense of the tragedy. Each of these events has renewed longstanding cultural debates over the suggestive power of music, visual imagery, and screen violence. Since the emergence of popular music, movies, television, and video games as influential mass media, the relationship between make-believe stories and real-life :i n'tallufi itdb Oi'dW,! ci y <3cti Qt;&! Oi attention. Concerns have been raised not only by parents, teachers, and politicians but also by several generations of mass communication researchers. .. the relationship between make-believe stories and real-life imitation has drawn a great dea! of attention.' A AS THESE TRAGIC TALES OF VIOLENCE ILLUSTRATE, manv believe that media have a powerful effect on individuals and society. This belief has led media researchers to focus most of their efforts on two types of research: media effects research and cultural studies research. Media effects research attempts to understand, explain, and predict the effects of mass media on individuals and society. The main goal of this type of research is to uncover whether or not there is a connection between aggressive behavior and violence in the media, particularly in children and teens. In the late 1960s, government leaders-reacting to the social upheavals of that decade-first set aside $1 million to examine this potential connection. Since that rime, thousands of studies have told us what most teachers and parents believe instinctively: Violent scenes on television and in movies stimulate aggressive behavior in children and teens-especially young boys. The other major area of mass media research is cultural studies. This research approach focuses on how people make meaning, apprehend reality, articulate values, and order experience through their use of cultural symbols. Cultural studies scholars also examine the way status quo groups in society, particularly corporate and political elites, use media to circulate their messages and sustain their interests. This research has attempted to make daily cultural experience the focus of media studies, keying on the subtle intersections among mass communication, history, politics, and economics. In this chapter, we examine the evolution of media research over time. After looking at early research efforts, we focus on the two major strains of media research, investigating the strengths and limitations of each. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of how media research interacts with democratic ideals. Early Media Research Methods In the early days of the United States, philosophical and historical writings tried to explain the nature of news and print media. For instance, the French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, noted differences between French and American newspapers in the early 1830s: In France the space allotted to commercial advertisements is very limited, and... the essential part of the journal is the discussion of the politics of the day. In America three quarters of the enormous sheet are filled with advertisements and the remainder is frequently occupied by political intelligence or trivial anecdotes; it is only from time to time that one finds a corner devoted to the passionate discussions like those which the journalists of France every day give to their readers.' During most of the nineteenth century, media analysis was based on moral and political arguments, as noted in the de Tocqueville quote above.2 More scientific approaches to mass media research did not begin to develop until the late 1920s and 1930s. In 1920, Walter Lippmann's Liberty and the News called on journalists to operate more like scientific researchers in gathering and analyzing factual material. Lippmann's next book, Public Opinion (1922), was the first to apply the principles of psychology to journalism. Considered by many academics to be "the founding book in American media studies,"3 it led to an expanded understanding of the effects of the media, emphasizing data collection and numerical measurement. According to media historian Daniel Czitrom, by the 1930s "The pictures inside the heads of these human beings, the pictures of themselves, of others, of their needs, purposes, and relationships, are their public opinions." WALTER LIPPMANN, PUBLIC OPINION, 1922 468 DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION ANDTHE MASS MEDIA DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA 469 MEDIA EFFECTS "an aggressively empirical spirit, stressing new and increasingly sophisticated research techniques, characterized the study of modern communication in America."4 Czitrom traces four trends between 1930 and 1960 that contributed to the rise of modern media research: propaganda analysis, public opinion research, social psychology studies, and marketing research. Propaganda Analysis EFFECTS OF PROPAGANDA One of the earliest forms of U.S. mass communication research—propaganda analysis—was prominent during the twentieth century's two world wars. Researchers studied the impact of war posters and other government information campaigns to determine how audiences could be persuaded through stirring media messages about patriotism and duty. After World War I, some media researchers began studying how governments used propaganda to advance the war effort. They found that, during the war, governments routinely relied on propaganda divisions to spread "information" to the public. Though propaganda was considered a positive force for mobilizing public opinion during the war, researchers after the war labeled propaganda negatively, calling it "partisan appeal based on half-truths and devious manipulation of communication channels."5 Harold Lasswell's important 1927 study Propaganda Technique in the World War focused on propaganda in the media, defining propaganda as "the control of opinion by significant symbols, . . . by stones, rumors, reports, pictures and other forms of social communication."6 Propaganda analysis thus became a major early focus of mass media research. Public Opinion Research Researchers soon went beyond the study of war propaganda and began to focus on more general concerns about how the mass media filtered information and shaped public attitudes. In the face of growing media influence, Walter Lippmann distrusted the public's ability to function as knowledgeable citizens as well as journalism's ability to help the public separate truth from lies. In promoting the place of the expert in modern life, Lippmann celebrated the social scientist as part of a new expert class that could best make "unseen facts intelligible to those who have to make decisions."7 Today, social scientists conduct public opinion research or citizen surveys; these have become especially influential during political elections. On the upside, public opinion research on diverse populations has provided insights into citizen behavior and social differences, especially during election periods or following major national events. For example, in 2008, the level of enthusiasm for voting in national elections was higher among Democrats than among Republicans. Polls showed that more than 50 percent of Democrats were enthusiastic about voting versus about 30 percent for Republicans, a reverse of the Republican voter excitement leading up to the 1994 election in which Republicans gained control of Congress. On the downside, journalism has become increasingly dependent on polls, particularly for political insight. Some critics argue that this heavy reliance on measured public opinion has begun to adversely affect the active political involvement of American citizens. Many people do not vote because they have seen or read poll projections and have decided that their votes would not make a difference. Furthermore, some critics of incessant polling argue that the public is just passively responding to surveys that mainly measure opinions on topics of interest to business, government, academics, and the mainstream news media. A final problem is the pervasive use of unreliable pseudo-polls, typically call-in, online, or person-in-the-street polls that the news media use to address a "question of the day." The National Council of Public Opinion Polls notes that "unscientific pseudo-polls are widespread and sometimes entertaining, if always quite meaningless," and discourages news media from conducting them.8 Social Psychology Studies While opinion polls measure public attitudes, social psychology studies measure the behavior and cognition of individuals. The most influential early social psychology study, the Payne Fund Studies, encompassed a series of thirteen research projects conducted by social psychologists between 1929 and 1932. Named after the private philanthropic organization that funded the research, the Payne Fund Studies were a response to a growing national concern about the effects of motion pictures, which had become a particularly popular pastime for young people in the 1920s. These studies, which were later used by some politicians to attack the movie industry, linked frequent movie attendance to juvenile delinquency, promiscuity, and other antisocial behaviors, arguing that movies took "emotional possession" of young filmgoers.& In one of the Payne studies, for example, children and teenagers were wired with "electrodes" and "galvanometers," mechanisms that detected any heightened response via the subject's skin. The researchers interpreted changes in the skin as evidence of emotional arousal. In retrospect, the findings hardly seem surprising: The youngest subjects in the group had the SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS OFMEDIA Concerns about film violence are not new. This 1930 movie, Little Caesar, follows the career of gangster Rico Bandello (played by Edward G. Robinson, shown], who kills his way to the top of the crime establishment and gets the girl as well. The Motion Picture Production Code, which was established a few years after this movie's release, reined in sexual themes and profane language, set restrictions on film violence, and attempted to prevent audiences from sympathizing with bad guys like Rico. "Motion pictures are not understood by the present generation of adults. They are new; they make an enormous appeal to children; and they present ideas and situations which parents may not like." MOTION PICTURES AND THE SOCIAL ATTITUDES OF CHILDREN: A PAYNE FUND STUDY, 1933 470 DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION ANDTHE MASSMEDIA 471 MEDIA EFFECTS FIGURE 15.1 TV PARENTAL GUIDELINES The TV industry continues to study its self-imposed rating categories, promising to fine-tune them to ensure that the government keeps its distance. These standards are one example of a policy that was shaped in part by media research. Since the 1960s, research has attempted to demonstrate links between violent TV images and increased levels of aggression among children and adolescents. Source: TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board, http/f www.tvguide/ines org, 7/10/06. The following categories apply to programs designed solely for children: Y Y7 All Children. This program is designed to be appropriate for all children. Directed to Older Children. This program is designed/or children age 7 and above. Y7 FV Note: For those programs where fantasy violence may be more intense or more combative than other programs in this category, such programs will be designated TV-Y7-FV. The following categories apply to programs designed for the entire audience: PG General Audience. Most parents would find this program suitable for all ages. Parental Guidance Suggested. This program contains material that parents may find unsuitable for younger children. 14 MA Parents Strongly Cautioned. This program contains some material that many parents would find unsuitable for children under 14 years of age. Mature Audiences Only. This program is specifically designed to be viewed by adults and therefore may be unsuitable _for children under 17. 14 IPLSV i For programs rated TV-PG, TV-14, and TV-MA, labels are included : to provide more information about contents, where appropriate: L — coarse language S — sexual situations V — violence strongest reaction to violent or tragic movie scenes, while the teenage subjects reacted most strongly to scenes with romantic and sexual content. The researchers concluded that films could be dangerous for young children and might foster sexual promiscuity among teenagers. The conclusions of this and other Payne Fund Studies contributed to the establishment of the film industry's production code, which tamed movie content from the 1930s through the 1950s (see Chapter 16). As forerunners of today's TV violence and aggression research, the Payne Fund Studies became the model for media research. (See Figure 15.1 for one example of a contemporary policy that has developed from media research. Also see "Examining Ethics: What to Do about Television Violence?" on the opposite page for more on the problems inherent in tackling violence on television.) Marketing Research A fourth influential area of early media research, marketing research, developed when advertisers and product companies began conducting surveys on consumer buying habits in the 1920s. The emergence of commercial radio led to the first ratings systems that measured how many people were listening on a given night. By the 1930s, radio networks, advertisers, large stations, and advertising agencies all subscribed to ratings services. However, compared with print media, whose circulation departments kept careful track of customers' names and addresses, radio listeners were more difficult to trace. This problem precipitated the development of increasingly sophisticated marketing research methods to determine consumer preferences and media use, such as direct-mail diaries, television meters, phone surveys, telemarketing, and eventually Internet tracking. In many instances, product companies looking for participation in their surveys paid consumers nominal amounts of money to take part in these studies. XAMINING 411 ■ I What to Do about Television Violence? —7 — he debate over violent television orogramming is almost as old as ^ television, with the first congressional hearings on the matter occurring in 1952. More than a half-century later, the debate continues. In 2007, the FCC released a lengthy report, "Violent Television Programming and Its Impact on Children," and recommended action to address violent programming. The commission agreed with research that suggests "exposure to violence in the media can increase aggressive behavior in children, at least in the short term." Yet as the report tried to make programming, it only raised more questions about what to do. The FCC cited several troubling statistics: B An average American household has the television set turned on eight hours, eleven minutes, daily. ■ Children watch on average between two and four hours of television every day. n Depending on their age. one- to two-thirds of children have televisions in their bedrooms. EFFECTS OFTVVIOLENCE The show 24 is often used as an example of violent programming on television. ■ By the time most children begin the first grade, they will have spent the equivalent of three schooi years in front of the television set. ■ By the time the average child is eighteen years old; he or she will have watched more than ten thousand hours of television. ■ By age eighteen, an American child will have seen upwards of fifteen thousand simulated murders and about two hundred thousand acts of violence on television.1 The report also identified a number of prime-time broadcast shows with violent rnntpnt inrliiHinn nf CO'jrSe 2A, CS! and WIA/E Smackdown but also, and less obviously, Grey's Anatomy, Law& Order, and Desperate Housewives. But dealing with television violence has been persistently confounded by several problems. First is the problem of defining violent content, at least in a ■ way that could be used in government policies. Courts have struck down vague definitions that call for regulating excessive violence, noting that many classic stories from the Bible, Greek mythology, and fairy tales are filled with gruesome violence. A second problem is determining which television programming to regulate. Most proposals include prime-time programming, but what about news, sports, commercials, and promotional announcements? And how should regulations treat cable and satellite television providers, who aren't subject to the same level of FCC oversight as broadcasters? Third is the issue of free speech. Courts have ruled that the First Amendment protects depictions of violence and violent speech. Although broadcasters have less First Amendment protection than other mass'media and are subject to daytime restrictions on indecent contenttoprotect children (see "The FCC RegulatesBroadeasting" on pages 515-516), it's not clear that similar rules could be-applied to violent-content. As FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein stated in the report, "I do not even like my kids watching a cartoon of an anvil falling on the coyote's head, but I do not think any court would let us ban it." Fourth, although a majority of Ameri- television, nearly ail parties have fallen short in using existing tools to deal with it. The FCC charged that broadcast networks are inconsistent in how they voluntarily rate and label programs for violent content, and often "underlabe!" programs with less restrictive ratings to increase advertiser incentives. Although the ratings have been around since 1997, many parents don't understand -them: One in five parents has never heard of the ratings system, and only 8 percent can correctly identify the categories. Moreover, the V-chip, which has been built into television sets since 2000 to enable parents to block violent programming, is rarely used. Finally, for all of the research suggesting that TV violence causes violent behavior, there are still significant questions that such effects even exist. Although the FCC sided with effects researchers, the report also noted that controlled laboratory environments and experimental measures of aggression (e.g.. hitting dolls, "killing" characters in video games) can't be generalized to the real world and that there is—at least as yet—no demonstrable correlation between media violence and crime statistics. A MEDIA EFFECTS "Research is formalized curiosity, it is poking and prying with a purpose." ZORANEALE HURSTON, WRITER EFFECTS OF MASS MEDIA Early media researchers were concerned about Adolf Hitler's use of national radio to control information and indoctrinate the German people throughout the 1930s. Germany's wartime international broadcasts, however, were considered failures. Trying to undermine morale using broadcasts aimed at Allied soldiers and British citizens, Germany hired British defector Willi am Joyce ("Lord Haw Haw") and Ohioan Mildred Giliars ("Axis Sally"). Because so many media messages competed with Nazi propaganda in democratic countries, these radio traitors had little impact. Research on Media Effects As concern about public opinion, propaganda, and the impact of the media merged with the growth of journalism and mass communication departments in colleges and universities, media researchers looked more and more to behavioral science as the basis of their research. Between 1930 and 1970, "Who says what to whom with what effect?" became the key question "defining the scope and problems of American communications research."10 In addressing this question specifically, media effects researchers asked follow-up questions such as this: If children watch a lot of TV cartoons (stimulus or cause), will this repeated act influence their behavior toward their peers (response or effect)? For most of the twentieth century, media researchers and news reporters used different methods to answer similar sets of questions-who, what, when, and where-about our daily experiences. Early Explanations of Media Effects A major goal of scientific research is to develop theories or laws that can consistently explain or predict human behavior. The varied impacts of the mass media and the diverse ways in which people make popular culture, however, tend to defv predictable rules. Historical, economic, and political factors influence media industries, making it difficult to develop systematic theories that explain communication. Researchers developed a number of small theories, or models, that help explain individual behavior rather than the impact of the media on large populations. But before these small theories began to emerge in the 1970s, mass media research followed several other models. Developing between the 1930s and the 1970s, these major approaches included the hypodermic-needle, minimal-effects, and uses and gratifications models. The Hypodermic-Needle Model One of the earliest media theories attributed powerful effects to the mass media. A number of intellectuals and academics were fearful of the influence and popularity of film and radio in the 1920s and 1930s. Some social psychologists and sociologists who arrived in the United States after fleeing Germany and Nazism in the 1930s had watched Hitler use radio, film, and print media as propaganda tools. They worried that the popular media in America also had a strong hold over vulnerable audiences. This concept of powerful media affecting weak audiences has been labeled the hypodermic-needle model, sometimes also called the magic bullet theory or the direct effects model. It suggests that the media shoot their potent effects directly into unsuspecting victims. One of the earliest challenges to this theory involved a study of Orson Welles's legendary October 30,1938, radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, which presented H. G. Wells' Martian invasion novel in the form of a news report and frightened millions of listeners who didn't realize it was fictional (see Chapter 4). In a 1940 book-length study of the broadcast, The Invasion from Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic, radio researcher Hadley Cantril argued that contrary to expectations according to the hypodermic-needle model, not all listeners thought the radio program was a real news report. Instead, Cantril, after conducting personal interviews and a nationwide survey of listeners and analyzing newspaper reports and listener mail to CBS Radio and the FCC, noted that although some did believe it to be real (mosdy those who missed the disclaimer at the beginning of the broadcast), the majority reacted out of collective panic, not out of a gullible belief in anything transmitted through the media. Although the hypodermic-needle model over the years has been disproved by social scientists, many people still attribute direct effects to the mass media, particularly in the case of children. The Minimal-Effects Model Cantril's research helped to lay the groundwork for the nunimal-effects model, or limited model. With the rise of empirical research techniques, social scientists began discovering and demon-..uaiing mat media aione cannot cause people to change their attitudes and behaviors. Based on tighdy controlled experiments and surveys, researchers argued that people generally engage in selective exposure and selective retention with regard to the media. That is, people expose themselves to the media messages that are most familiar to them, and they retain the messages that confirm the values and attitudes they already hold. Minimal effects researchers have argued that in most cases mass media reinforce existing behaviors and attitudes rather than change them. The findings from the first comprehensive study of children and television-by Wilbur Schramm, Jack Lyle, and Edwin Parker in the late 1950s-best capture the minimal-effects theory: For some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For other children under the same conditions, or for the same children under other conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, undermost conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial." In addition, Joseph Klapper's important 1960 research study, The Effects of Mass Communication, found that the mass media only influenced individuals who did not already hold strong views on an issue and that the media had a greater impact on poor and uneducated audiences. Solidifying the minimal-effects argument, Klapper concluded that strong media effects occur largely at an individual level and do not appear to have large-scale, measurable, and direct effects on society as a whole.'2 The minimal-effects theory furthered the study of the relationship between the media and human behavior, but it still assumed that audiences were passive and were acted upon by the media. Schramm, Lyle, and Parker suggested that there were problems with the position they had taken on effects: In a sense the term "effect" is misleading because it suggests that television "does something" to children. The connotation is that television is the actor, the children are acted upon. Children are thus made to seem relatively inert; television, relatively active. Children are sitting victims; television bites them. Nothingcan be further from the fact. It is the children who are most active in this relationship. It is they who use television, rather than television that uses them.12 "Theories abound, examples multiply, but convincing facts that specific media content is reliably associated with particular effects have proved quite elusive." GUYCUMBERBATCH, A MEASURE OF UNCERTAINTY; 1989 "If we're a nation possessed of a murderous imagination, we didn't start the bloodletting. Look at Shakespeare, colossus of the Western canon. His plays are written in blood." SCOT LEHIGH, BOSTON GLOBE. 2000 474 DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA 475 MEDIA EFFECTS USESAND GRATIFICATIONS In 1952, audience members at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood donned 3-D glasses for the opening night screening of Bwana Dew/, the first full-length color 3-D film. The uses and gratifications model of research investigates the appeal of mass media, such as going out to the movies. Indeed, as the authors observed, numerous studies have concluded that viewers-especially young children-are often actively engaged in using media. The Uses and Gratifications Model A response to the minimal-effects theory, the uses and gratifications model was proposed to contest the notion of a passive media audience. Under this model, researchers-usually using in-depth interviews to supplement survey questionnaires-studied the ways in which people used the media to satisfy various emotional or intellectual needs. Instead of asking, "What effects do the media have on us?" researchers asked, "Why do we use the media?" Asking the why question enabled media researchers to develop inventories cataloguing how people employed the media to fulfill their needs. For example, researchers noted that some individuals used the media to see authority figures elevated or toppled, to seek a sense of community and connectedness, to fulfill a need for drama and stories, and to confirm moral or spiritual values,14 Although the uses and gratifications model addressed the functions of the mass media for individuals, it did not address important questions related to the impact of the media on society. Once researchers had accumulated substantial inventories of the uses and functions of media, they often did not move in new directions. Consequendy, uses and gratifications never became a dominant or enduring theory in media research. Conducting Media Effects Research Media research generally comes from the private or public sector-each type with distinguishing features. Private research, sometimes called proprietary research, is generally conducted for a business, a corporation, or even a political campaign. It is usually applied research in the sense that the information it uncovers typically addresses some real-life problem or need. Public research, on the other hand, usually takes place in academic and government settings. It involves information that is often more theoretical than applied; it tries to clarify, explain, or predict the effects of mass media rather than to address a consumer problem. Most media research today focuses on the effects of the media in such areas as learning, attitudes, aggression, and voting habits. This research employs the scientific method, a blueprint long used by scientists and scholars to study phenomena in systematic stages. These steps in the scientific method include: 1. identifying the research problem 2. reviewing existing research and theories related to the problem 3. developing working hypotheses or predictions about what the study might find 4. determining an appropriate method or research design 5. collecting information or relevant data 6. analyzing results to see if the hypotheses have been verified 7. interpreting the implications of the study to determine whether they explain or predict the problem The scientific method relies on objectivity (eliminating bias and judgments on the part of researchers); reliability (getting the same answers or outcomes from a study or measure during repeated testing); and validity (demonstradng that a study actually measures what it claims to measure). In scientific studies, researchers pose one or more hypotheses: tentative general statements that predict the influence of an independent variable on a dependent variable. For example, a researcher might hypothesize that frequent TV viewing among adolescents (independent variable) causes poor academic performance (dependent variable). Or, another researcher might hypothesize that playing first-person-shooter video games (independent variable) is associated with aggression in children (dependent variable). Broadly speaking, the methods for studying media effects on audiences have taken two forms-experiments and survey research. To supplement these approaches, researchers also use content analysis to count and document specific messages that circulate in mass media. Experiments Like all studies that use the scientific method, experiments in media research isolate some aspect of content; suggest a hypothesis; and manipulate variables to discover a particular medium's impact on attitude, emotion, or behavior. To test whether a hypothesis is true, researchers expose an experimentalgroup-the group under study-to a selected media program or text. To ensure valid results, researchers also use a control group, which serves as a basis for comparison; this group is not exposed to the selected media content. Subjects are picked for each group through random assignment, which simply means that each subject has an equal chance of being placed in either group. Random assignment ensures that the independent variables researchers want to control are distributed to both groups in the same way. For instance, to test the effects of violent films on pre-adolescent boys, a research study might take a group of ten-year-olds and randomly assign them to two groups. Researchers expose the experimental group to a violent action movie that the control group does not see. Later, both groups are exposed to a staged fight between two other boys so that the researchers can observe how each group responds to an actual physical confrontation. Researchers then determine whether or not there is a statistically measurable difference between the two groups' responses to the fight. For example, perhaps the control subjects tried to break up the fight but the experimental subjects did not. Because the groups were randomly selected and the only measurable difference between them was the viewing of the movie, researchers may conclude that under these conditions the violent film caused a different behavior. (See the "Bobo doll" experiment photos on page 480.) When experiments carefully account for independent variables through random assignment, they generally work well to substantiate direct cause-effect hypotheses. Such research takes place both in laboratory settings and in field settings, where people can be observed using the media in their everyday environments. In field experiments, however, it is more difficult for researchers to control variables. In lab settings, researchers have more control, but other problems may occur. For example, when subjects are removed from the environments in which they regularly use the media, they may act differently-often with fewer inhibitions-than they would in their everyday surroundings. Experiments have other limitations as well. One, they are not generalizable to a larger population; they cannot tell us whether cause-effect results can be duplicated outside of the laboratory. Two, most academic experiments today are performed on college students, who are convenient subjects for research but are not representative of the general public. Finally, while most experiments are fairly good at predicting short-term media effects undet controlled conditions, they do not predict how subjects will behave months or years later in the real world. 476 DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA 477 MEDIA EFFECTS "Writing survey questions and gathering data are easy; writing good questions and collecting useful data are not." MICHAEL SINGLETARY, MASS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH, 1994 Survey Research In the simplest terms, survey research is collecting and measuring data taken from a group of respondents. Using random sampling techniques that give each potential subject an equal chance to be included in the survey, this research method draws on much larger populations than those used in experimental studies. Surveys maybe conducted through direct mail, personal interviews, telephone calls, e-mail, and Web sites, enabling survey researchers to accumulate large amounts of information by surveying diverse cross sections of people. These data help to examine demographic factors such as educational background, income level, race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, and political affiliations, along with questions directly related to the survey topic. Two other benefits of surveys are that they are usually generalizable to the larger society and that they enable researchers to investigate populations in long-term studies. For example, survey research can measure subjects when they are ten, twenty, and thirty years old to track changes in how frequently they watch television and what kinds of programs they prefer at different ages. In addition, large government and academic survey databases are now widely available and contribute to the development of more long-range or longitudinal studies, which make it possible for social scientists to compare new studies with those conducted years earlier. Like experiments, surveys have several drawbacks. First, survey investigators cannot account for all the variables that might affect media use; therefore, they cannot show cause-effect relationships. Survey research can, however, reveal correlations—or associations-between two variables. For example, a random questionnaire survey of ten-year-old boys might demonstrate that a correlation exists between aseressive behavior and watching violent TV programs. Such a correlation, however, does not explain what is the cause and what is the effect-that is, do violent TV programs cause aggression or are more aggressive ten-year-old boys simply drawn to violent television? Second, the validity of survey questions is a chronic problem for survey practitioners. Surveys are only as good as the wording of their questions and the answer choices they present. For example, as NPR reported recently, "[I]f you ask people whether they support or oppose the death penalty for murderers, about two-thirds of Americans say they support it. If you ask whether people prefer that murderers get the death penalty or life in prison without parole, then you get a 50-50 split."15 Content Analysis Over the years, researchers recognized that experiments and surveys focused on general topics (violence) while ignoring the effects of specific media messages (gun violence, fist fights, etc.). As a corrective, researchers developed a method known as content analysis to study these messages. Such analysis is a systematic method of coding and measuring media content. Although content analysis was first used during World War II for radio, more recent studies have focused on television and film. Probably the most influential content analysis studies have been conducted by George Gerbner and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania. Since the late 1960s, they have coded and counted acts of violence on network television. Combined with surveys, these annual "violence profiles" have shown that heavy watchers of television, ranging from children to retired Americans, tend to overestimate the amount of violence that exists in the actual world.16 The limits of content analysis, however, have been well documented. First, this technique does not measure the effects of the messages on audiences nor explain how those messages are presented. For example, a content analysis sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation that examined more than eleven hundred television shows found that 70 percent featured sexual content.17 But the study doesn't explain how viewers interpreted the content or the context of the messages. (See "Media Literacy and the Critical Process: Counting Sexual Scenes on TV" on the opposite page.) Media Literacy and the Critical Process 1DESCRIPTION. Central to any study using content analysis is developing a worldng definition of terms. For the Kaiser study, "sex is denned as any depiction of sexual activity, sexually suggestive behavior, or talk about sexuality or sexual activity." What would you include or not include in a definition of sexual content? 2ANALYSIS. The study analyzed a sample of more than eleven hundred programs, covering a range of television genres but excluding daily newscasts, children's shows, and sporting events. The main sample included shows from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, an ate, LifeLime, TNT, USA Network, and HBO. The sample also included daytime soap operas, one of the genres with the highest percentage of sexual content. Do these genres represent the viewing environment of twelve- to seventeen-year-olds, the age group of greatest concern to the researchers? In reviewing the study online, what are the significant patterns that emerged? 3INTERPRETATION. Do jokes about a newlywed couple's sexual encounters (Scrubs), bedroom banter between a married couple (According to Jim), depictions of flirting (House), scenes of intimate touching (CSI; New Counting Sexual Scenes on TV Every few years since 1999, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit private foundation dedicated to "providing information and analysis on health care issues to policymakers, the media, the health care community, and the general public," releases a major study of sexual content on television. In 2005, the foundation released Sex on TV4 and reported that the number of sexual scenes on television had nearly doubled since 1998.1 But what does "sexual content" actually mean, and what do the study's results suggest to policymakers? To address these questions, we will use the critical process to analyze the study. York), dramatic discussions about sexually transmitted diseases (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit), a comment about oral sex (The View), and implied (Boston tions of sexual intercourse all have the same impact and meaning? This study treats them all as sex scenes. Do you think viewers would interpret these scenes the same way? How would audience studies-focusing on how people actually use and interpret this television content-help to clarify the interpretation of die content analysis? 4EVALUATION. The Sex on TV4 study notes that over the past decade "fewer teens are having sex, and more of those who are having intercourse are using protection-and the teen pregnancy rate is going down as a result." Does this admission undermine tiie study's concerns that "the amount of sexual content on television continues to increase" and it "may be contributing to perceptions about peer norms regarding doing it'} and safer sex practices"? How is it that sexual content, as measured by this study, is increasing on television, while teen sexual behavior is declining and becoming mote safe? 5ENGAGEMENT. This series of studies has had a big impact on the way policymakers understand media effects. There's bipartisan support in Congress to fund more studies that would analyze media effects on the health and development of children. How would you undertake this idnd of study? To make an informed recommendation, critically read the studies for yourself at www.kfr.org/entmedia/index.cfm. Second, problems of definition occur in content analysis. For instance, in the case of coding and counting acts of violence, how do researchers distinguish slapstick cartoon aggression from the violent murders or rapes in an evening police drama? Critics point out that such varied depictions may have diverse and subde effects on viewers that are not differentiated by content analysis. Finally, critics point out that as content analysis grew to be a primary tool in media research, it sometimes pushed to the sidelines other ways of thinking about television and media content. Broad questions concerning the media as a popular art form, as a measure of culture, as a democratic influence, or as a force for social control are difficult to address through strict 478 DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION AND THE MASS MEDIA 479 MEDIA EFFECTS SOCIAL LEARNING THEORIES These photos document the "Bobo doll" experiments conducted by Albert Bandura and his colleagues at Stanford University in the early 1960s. Seventy-two children from the Stanford University Nursery School were divided into experimental and control groups. The "aggressive condition" experimental group subjects watched an adult in the room sit on, kick, and hit the Bobo doll with hands and a wooden mallet while saying suchthingsas"Sockhimin the nose," "Throw him in the air," and"Pow."(ln later versions of the experiment, children watched filmed versions of the adult with the Bobo doll.) Afterward, in a separate room filled with toys, the children in the "aggressive condition" group liL-alw thon tha other children to imitate the adult model's behavior toward the Bobo doll measurement techniques. Critics of content analysis, in fact, have objected to the kind of social science that reduces culture to acts of counting. Such criticism has addressed the tendency by some researchers to favor measurement accuracy over intellectual discipline and inquiry.1" Contemporary Media Effects Theories By the 1960s, the first departments of mass communication began graduating Ph.D.-level researchers schooled in experiment and survey research techniques, as well as content analysis. These researchers began documenting consistent patterns in mass communication and developing new theories. Four of the most influential contemporary theories that help explain media effects are social learning theory, agenda-setting, the cultivation effect, and the spiral of silence. Social Learning Theory Some of the most well-known studies that suggest a link between the mass media and behavior are the "Bobo doll" experiments, conducted on children by psychologist Albert Bandura and his colleagues at Stanford University in the 1960s. Bandura concluded that the experiments demonstrated a link between violent media programs, such as those on television, and aggressive behavior. Bandura developed social learning theory as a four-step process: attention (the subject must attend to the media and witness the aggressive behavior), retention (the subject must retain the memory for later retrieval), motor reproduction (the subject must be able to physically imitate the behavior), and motivation (there must be a social reward or reinforcement to encourage modeling of the behavior). Supporters of social learning theory often cite real-life imitations of media aggression (see the beginning of the chapter) as evidence of social learning theory at work. Yet critics note that many studies conclude just the opposite-that there is no link between media content and aggression. For example, millions of people have watched episodes of CSI and The Sopranos without subsequently exhibiting aggressive behavior. As critics point out, social learning theory simply makes television, film, and other media scapegoats for larger social problems relating to violence. Others suggest that experiencing media depictions of aggression can actually help viewers let off steam peacefully through a catharsis effect. 480 DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION ANDTHE MASS MEDIA ;-iyencia-£>etting A key phenomenon posited by contemporary media effects researchers is agenda-setting: the idea that when the mass media focus their attention on particular events or issues, they determine-that is, set the agenda for-the major topics of discussion for individuals and society. Essentially, agenda-setting researchers have argued that the mass media do not so much tell us what to think as what to think about. Traceable to Walter Lippmann's notion in the early 1920s that the media "create pictures in our heads," the first investigations into agenda-setting began in the 1970s.'3 Over the years, agenda-setting research has demonstrated that the more stories the news media do on a particular subject, the more importance audiences attach to that subject. For instance, when the media seriously began to cover ecology issues after the first Earth Day in 1970, a much higher percentage of the population began listing the environment as a primary social concern in surveys. When Jaws became a blockbuster in 1975, the news media started featuring more shark attack stories; even landlocked people in the Midwest began ranking sharks as a major problem, despite the rarity of such incidents worldwide. More recently, the extensive news media coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in fall 2005 sparked a corresponding increase in public concern about preparedness for natural disasters. Today, however, even with the affected areas far from rebuilt, as the national news coverage has dropped, so has much of the public interest in the region's recovery. The Cultivation Effect Another mass media phenomenon-tile cultivation effect-suggests that heavy viewing of television leads individuals to perceive the world in ways that are consistent with television portrayals. This area of media effects research has pushed researchers past a focus on how the media affects individual behavior and toward a focus on larger ideas about the impact on perception. The major research in this area grew from the TV violence profiles of George Gerbner and his colleagues, who attempted to make broad generalizations about the impact of televised violence. The cultivation effect suggests that the more time individuals spend viewing television and absorbing its viewpoints, the more likely their views of social reality will be "cultivated" by AGENDA-SETTING A consquence of agenda-setting theory is that the stories that don't get attention from the mass media don't make it onto the public and political agendas. Each year Doctors Without Borders compiles a list of the most underreported humanitarian crises, in 2007, the list included the long-standing civil war in Colombia, where over 3.8 million people have been displaced. DEMOCRATIC EXPRESSION ANDTHE MASS MEDIA 481 MEDIA EFFECTS "Many studies currently published in mainstream communication journals seem filled with sophisticated treatments of tfiv i