Effects Models

Key Theory 1: The hypodermic syringe

There have been a number of theories over the years about how exactly the media work on the mass audience. Perhaps the most simple to understand is the hypodermic syringe. This has been very popular down the years with many people who fear the effects of the media.

According to the theory the media is like a syringe which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience who as a powerless mass have little choice but to be influenced- in other words, you watch something violent, you may go and do something violent, you see a woman washing up on T.V. and you will want to do the same yourself if you are a woman and if you are a man you will expect women to do the washing up for you.

This theory has been particularly popular when people have been considering violence in films. There have been films such as Straw Dogsand The Evil Dead which have been banned partly because of a belief that they might encourage people to copy the crimes within them but on the other hand no-one has ever really claimed that every-one will be affected by these texts in the same way. Many people have therefore seen the theory as simplistic because it doesn't take any account of people's individuality and yet it is still very popular in society particularly for politicians looking for reasons why society has become more violent which can't be blamed on them. A good example of this is Dumblane- there has never been a real suggestion that Thomas Hamilton watched a lot of violent films but a kind of woolly thinking has allowed newspapers and MPs to link his dreadful crime to video violence.

Another interesting example of the theory in action is the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Before every one of his murders, he watched a clip from his favourite film in order to get himself excited. This is the kind of fact that might seem toi prove the hypodermic syringe theory but the film was Star Wars and no-one has ever suggested that that should be banned- clearly the film meant very different things to him to what it means for us.

Key Theory 2: The Culmination Theory

Because of the difficulty of proving the effects of individual media texts on their audience a more refined version of the theory has been created called the culmination mode. According to this, while any one media text does not have too much effect, years and years of watching more violence will make you less sensitive to violence, years and years of watching women being mistreated in soaps will make you less bothered about it in real life.

One difficulty with both of these ways of looking at the media is that they are very difficult to prove either way. Many people have a general sense that the media do affect our behaviour and advertisers certainly justify their fees by working on this assumption, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to actually prove how much effect if any a text might have on an audience. In fact researchers have spent enormous amounts of time and effort trying to prove the validity of the culmination theory with no success- this of course does not mean that there is no truth in it as an idea.

Key Theory 3: The two step flow

A theory that springs from this idea is called the two step flow. The idea of this is that whatever our experience of the media we will be likely to discuss it with others and if we respect their opinion, the chances are that we will be more likely to be affected by it. (The theory calls these people opinion leaders.)

Key Theory 4: Uses and Gratifications

This is probably the most important theory for you to know. According to uses and gratification theory, we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. In other words, when we encounter a media text, it is not just some kind of mindless entertainment- we are expecting to get something from it: some kind of gratification.

But what does this actually mean? What kinds of gratification can we be getting? Researchers have found quite a few, but there are four main ones:

1. Information- we want to find out about society and the world- we want to satisfy our curiosity. This would fit the news and documentaries which both give us a sense that we are learning about the world.
2. Personal Identity- we may watch the television in order to look for models for our behaviour. So, for example, we may identify with characters that we see in a soap. The characters help us to decide what feel about ourselves and if we agree with their actions and they succeed we feel better about ourselves- think of the warm feeling you get when you favourite character triumphs at the end of a programme.
3. Integration and Social Interaction- we use the media in order to find out more about the circumstances of other people. Watching a show helps us to empathise and sympathise with the lives of others so that we may even end up thinking of the characters in programme as friends even though we might feel a bit sad admitting it! At the same time television may help us to get on with our real friends as we are able to talk about the media with them.
4. Entertainment- sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.
   

You can probably recognise yourself in some of these descriptions and not surprisingly uses and gratification theory has become quite popular amongst media critics. It is important to remember with this theory that it is likely that with any media text you enjoy, you will be getting a number of Gratifications from it and not just one

However, despite this popularity amongst critics, there have also been criticisms made of some features of the theory. First of all, it ignores the fact that we do not always have complete choice as to what we receive from the media. Think, for example, about your family who may end up having to listen to the same music as you sometimes. Similarly, you don't have that much choice about the posters that you see on your way to college however objectionable you may find some of them.

A second problem relates to this last example. The poster that you see on a billboard, may be extremely sexist. However, you clearly cannot choose a different poster that you want to see that you might find more pleasant. If you think about it, this problem also affects us in our other encounters with the media- we are generally having to choose the media that we consume from what is available. This undermines the idea of uses and gratifications- we may not all have the same potential to use and enjoy the media products that we want. in society there are in fact plenty of minorities who feel that the media does not provide for them the texts that they want to use.

One of the difficulties of assessing uses and gratifications like this is that people won't often be aware of the real uses of a text in their lives- how many people would admit for example that they watched a certain program because they were lonely even if that were the truth.