Theory in which the media could "inject" audiences with a message that would immediately, powerfully, and uniformly cause them to adopt a new idea or attitude, like using a hypodermic needle and syringe to inject a substance into the body.

    

     The "bullet" image is that if the message hit the target, it would have a substantial effect, akin to a shot from a weapon hitting its target.

 

     Bullet concept attributed to Wilbur Schramm and Hypodermic expression attributed to David Berlo. (pg 100-101)

     Theory in which Lasswell identified three prominent media roles:

 

1) surveillance of the environment, which discloses threats and opportunities affecting the community and its components

 

2) correlation of various parts of society in responding to that environment

 

3) transmission of cultural heritage from one generation to the next (pg 103-105)

     Two Step Flow: Theory in which information is gathered and analyzed by opinion leaders who pass on the information and opinions from the media to others in their social circles Reinforcement: mass communication is in general more likely to reinforce the existing opinions of its audience than it is to change such opinions (pg 111-112)

     Theory that considers the way individual human beings react to their surroundings and others around them. Most of people's reading and reacting to the world around them comes through symbolic communication - the study of how the self and social environment mutually define and shape each other through symbolic communication. This theory is the basis for the social construction of reality theory. (pg 112-114)

     Theory stemming from libertarianism, an absence of restraint on the media and imposition of as few restraints as possible on other parts of society as well. Rooted in the idea that personal liberty entails various related social and political freedoms including:

 

1) social mobility

 

2) self-determination (democratic representative government)

 

3)free and open economic systems

 

4) free expression in which all voices could be heard, resulting in a market-place of ideas among which people can choose what they wish to believe.

 

Jefferson coined these notions "certain inalienable rights," summarized as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (pg 12 114-116)

PAST

mass communication was generally viewed as one-way form of communication

 

PRESENT

now, mass communication is examined with the understanding that the audiences interact with media (pg 123)

     Theory in which people use the media to be gratified in the following 5 ways:

 

1) cognitive needs (watching the local news to find tomorrow's weather forecast)

 

2) strengthening aesthetic, pleasurable, or emotional experience (a fan preordering Harry Potter)

 

3) strengthening credibility, confidence, stability and status (someone watches Oprah and feels better about life or a student reads trade journals to feel more prepared for a job interview)

 

4) strengthen contact with family/friends (watching Grey's Anatomy with you best buds)

 

5) escapism and tension release (unwinding at the end of the day by watching The Daily Show) (pg 124-127)

     Theory in which the idea that the more a person depends on having needs gratified by media use, the more important the media's role will be in the person's life, and therefore, the more influence those media will have. (pg 127-130)

     Perception comes from personal experiences; automatic, attention, self-reflexive perceptual channels (pg 131) Selection process - people view media that they most agree/identify with:

 

1) selective exposure: conservative student watches FOX news while a liberal student reads NY Times

 

2) selective retention: a student who's brother is in Iraq remembers locations in Iraq well and forgets details of Israeli/Palestinian news; likewise someone with a relative in Israel forgets Iraq details but remembers Israeli/Palestinian details

 

3) selective perception: a student from a rural area perceives a new Wal-Mart as bringing more goods/lower prices; someone from an urban area sees the new Wal-Mart as the exploitation of low wage workers and a threat to mom and pop shops (pg 130-132)

     Theory in which individuals try to interpret new information based on pre-existing assumptions about the way the world is organized. It is another theory to explain how/why people filter media messages. Example: Student knows not to study The Colbert Report for a current events project because the professor probably doesn't deem the show scholarly (pg 132-135)

     Theory directed mainly at people's level of absorption of news coverage; claims that people are overwhelmed by too much information, so they use schemas and processing mechanisms to pull out the information they are most interested in. Example: Dolly is a college student and views the following news headlines:

 

A) Earthquake in China

B) Senate scandal

C) Price of luxury cars up 30%

D) College Textbook Taxes Eliminated

 

     Dolly is most likely to choose story D because it is most relevant to her. (pg 135-136)

     Theory in which an individual who is exposed to mass media messages belives the messages have a greater impact on others than on himself (pg 137-138)

     AKA social cognitive theory. Theory in which people learn how to behave based on watching what others do. (Bobo Dolls experiment) Includes the following concepts:

 

1) observation - individuals learn how to do something they have never done before after seeing it in the media

 

2) inhibition: seeing the negative consequences of behavior in the media can teach people not to engage in such behaviors

 

3) disinhibition: people are not afraid of some things because they have seen them being dealt with in the media (pg 141-142)

     Theory in which there are 2 routes through which info is processed that can lead to attitudes being changed

 

1) central route: info is actively processed and the individual evaluates it in a rational manner (attitudes formed via central route last longer and are more resistant to change)

 

2) peripheral route: the receiver does not actively process the info in a cognitive sense, but instead relies on peripheral cues, such as the style of the message, credibility of the source, his/her own mood, etc (pg 144-146)

     Theory in which the media's capability, through repeated news coverage, of raising the importance of an issue in the public's mind. Media tells us not what to think, but what to think about. (pg 150-155)

     A third component of the agenda-setting theory, which is "the central organizing idea for news content that supplies a context and suggests what the issue is through the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration" (pg 152)

     Theory based largely after observing heavy-TV viewing audiences which found that people who watched a lot of TV think the world is a mean, cruel place. (pg 164-167)

     Close to agenda setting, claims that the process of selection (bias/ethics) suggests that there are people who have the function to let news "out" and keep some news "in"

1) War of the World's: radio event in 1938 in which 1 million people were frightened or disturbed by the "news"; people being powerfully and uniformly affected by a message from the mass media

 

2) Adolf Hitler's ability to persuade Germans to go along with the Holocaust through his radio speeches