C H A P T E R T H R E E

The Analysis Strategy

This chapter lays out the analysis strategy used in the next six chapters. We begin with presenting 14 analytical dimensions that are used to examine media effects theories. These 14 analytical dimensions are arranged in four groupings: (1) Original conceptualization of the theory, (2) Components of the theory, (3) Empirical test- ing of the claims made by the theory, and (4) Theory development over time. See Table 3.1 for a summary of these analytical dimensions. The final section in this chapter explains how the analytical dimensions will be used.

Original Conceptualization of the Theory

The first task in this analysis strategy is to determine the nature of each of the six the- ories when they were first introduced. This step entails examining each theory along five analytical dimensions: (1) Conceptual foundation, (2) Authors’ introduction of the theory, (3) Conceptualization of the idea of media, (4) Conceptualization of the idea of media effect, and (5) Conceptualization of the idea of media influence.

Conceptual Foundation

This analytical dimension refers to the way the creators of a theory analyzed the existing scholarly literatures to position their theory as building on particular ideas

(Continued)

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Table 3.1. Summary of Analytical Dimensions 1. Conceptual Foundation

When the author(s) introduced their theory, how did they provide a foundation for it? * To what extent did they rely on a critical analysis of scholarly literatures? * To what extent did they rely on patterns in the empirical literatures?

2. Theory Introduction What reason did authors provide for introducing this particular system of explanation?

* Did they point out gaps or problems in the media effects literature? * Did they show how their system of explanation could fill in the gaps and

ameliorate the problems? 3. Conceptualization of Media

How did the authors define media and set the boundaries of what media meant in their theory?

* Type of definition for media (ostensive, formal, etc.) * Constraints by channel, vehicle, genre, or message

4. Conceptualization of media effect How did the authors define and set the perimeter of their particular effect?

* Constraints by target (individual, groups, macro, or several?) * Constraints by time (immediate, long term, or both?) * Constraints by type (cognitive, attitudinal, belief, affect, physiology, behavior?) * Constraints by valence (positive, negative, or both?) * Constraints by intentionality (intentional, unintentional, or both?)

5. Conceptualization of Media Influence How did the authors link media influence with the effect(s)?

* Effect is primarily acquiring something new * Effect is primarily triggering or activating something in the target * Effect is primarily altering something existing in the target * Effect is primarily reinforcing something existing in the target

6. Key Concepts What were the most important concepts in the theory when it was introduced?

* How was each concept defined? 7. Core Propositions

What was the core set of explanatory statements when the theory was introduced? * How was the process of influence articulated? * How complex was the structure of the process of influence (contingent factors and

intervening factors)? * How complex was the relationship (nonlinear, asymmetrical, thresholds, etc.)?

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Table 3.1. Continued 8. Foundational Assumptions

What were the expressed and unexpressed assumptions underlying the authors’ system of explanation?

* What was the conceptualization of “audience?” (mechanistic, interpretive) * What were the methodological assumptions? (sampling, measurement, etc.)

9. Stimulating Scholarly Attention To what extent has the theory stimulated scholarship?

* Empirical tests * Conceptual publications, such as reviews and critiques

10. Major Lines of Research What are the significant lines of programmatic research that have been conducted to test the claims of the theory?

11. Empirical Validity To what extent has the empirical literature found support for theory’s claims? * Degree of support for claims made by propositions * Degree of support for conceptualizations, such as definitions of concepts * Degree of support for assumptions made by the theory

12. Conceptual Development What changes have theoreticians made to the theory of a conceptual nature? * Altering definitions of existing concepts * Adding new concepts * Altering propositions * Adding new propositions * Altering axioms

13. Methodological Development What changes in methodological guidance have theoreticians made over time? * Sampling * Measurement * Data analysis

14. Current Challenges What are the major challenges to the theory at this time? * As stimulated by patterns of findings from empirical research * As stimulated by changes in the focal phenomenon

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and thus extending the progression of explaining media effects in some way. That is, we identify how theory creators established a conceptual foundation for their system of explanation by acknowledging that particular ideas from scholarly liter- atures influenced them in the creation of their theory.

Authors’ Introduction of the Theory

When authors introduce a theory into a scholarly literature, they have an obliga- tion to justify how their theory can extend knowledge about the phenomenon that their theory is designed to explain. That is, theoreticians need to show how their system of explanation builds from solid ideas already in the literature and pro- gresses to fill a gap or to overcome some faulty elements exhibited in an existing theory or theories. Therefore, the introduction of a theory requires a critical analy- sis of the scholarly literature in order to highlight foundational ideas as well as to identify gaps and to reveal faulty elements in existing explanations.

Conceptualization of Media

This analytical dimension refers to how theoreticians define the media. This dimen- sion is important because it generates information that can be used in determining the scope of the theoreticians’ system of explanation. Are the theoreticians regard- ing media effects in a narrow reductionistic way, such as limiting their theory to only one technological channel, one genre of content, or one particular message? Or are the theoreticians attempting to explain all media?

This analytical dimension is also important because it generates information that can be used to make judgments about precision. Analyses along this dimen- sion will reveal how deeply the theoreticians have thought about the ideas that are most important to their theory and how carefully they have been in transmitting meaning to readers about how they conceptualize the media. Sometimes theoreti- cians will provide a formal definition of media, but more typically they will define the media ostensively by naming channels, vehicles, genres, or particular messages. While ostensive definitions at first appear clear because they name concrete ele- ments, ostensive definitions are fuzzy from a scholarly perspective because they fail to provide classification rules. To illustrate, when theoreticians talk about media effects in terms of television’s influence, readers cannot know if the theoreticians mean the large screen sitting in a person’s home or also include moving images on computer screens and mobile devices; programming offered at fixed times or video on demand; or programming from broadcasters, cable providers, or amateurs. In

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scholarly settings, formal definitions are superior to ostensive definitions because they present classification rules that reduce ambiguity of meaning.

Conceptualization of Media Effect

The most important concept in a media effects theory is the presumed effect. There are many possible effects as a broad definition will indicate (Potter, 2011): 

Media influenced effects are those things that occur as a result—either in part or in whole—from media influence. They can occur immediately during exposure to a media message or they can take a long time to occur over the course of many expo- sures. They can last for a few seconds or an entire lifetime. They can show up clearly as a change but they can also reinforce existing patterns, in which case the effect appears as no change. They can affect individual people, or all people in the form of the public. They can also affect institutions and society.

Notice that this definition lays out four dimensions for an analysis: targets, time, change or reinforcement, and type of effect. All four of these dimensions will be used in analyzing media effects theories.

Targets. Who or what is conceptualized as experiencing the effect? Is it indi- viduals? If so, is it all individuals or only certain types? Or is it some kind of aggre- gate of people (such as groups or the public), or is it an aggregate that transcends people (such as institutions, society, culture)?

Time. Does the theory regard the media-influenced effect as occurring during an exposure to a particular message or as taking a longer time to manifest itself ? Also, is the effect short lived or does it last a long time?

Change or reinforcement. Most theories attempt to explain some sort of change, which is conceptualized as a difference of something in targets after an exposure compared to before the exposure. Some theories explain media influence as rein- forcement of some preexisting condition in targets.

In order to avoid the trap of equating nonchange with reinforcement, con- sider that media effects have three properties—intensity, direction, and weight. For example, think of a typical measure of attitudes using a Likert scale. If a person has attitude X and this attitude is found to be unchanged (same intensity and direction) over time despite the person being exposed repeatedly to media mes- sages, this is often interpreted to be a reinforcement-type effect, because there is an implied change in the weightiness of the attitude. While the attitude itself does not change intensity or direction over time, it becomes more weighty—through reinforcement it becomes harder to change. With attitudes, the direction refers to

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whether a person has a positive or negative attitude about something; the inten- sity refers to how strong the attitude is; and the weight refers to how fixed the attitude is.

In order to distinguish a reinforcement effect from a prediction of nonchange, reinforcement is defined as an effect where the direction and intensity remain unchanged while the weight increases. If all three properties remain the same, then this is evidence for nonchange.

Type of effect. There are six possible types of effects on individuals (Potter, 2011). These six differ in terms of the part of the person affected or the character of the experience of the effect within an individual. These six are cognition, belief, attitude, affect, physiology, and behavior. All individual-level media effects studies examine how the media exert an influence on one or more of these six types. For examples, see Table 3.2. Table 3.2. Media Effects Template: Individual Unit Effects

Media Influence Functions Type of Effect Acquiring Triggering Altering Reinforcing

Cognition Memorize Message Element

Recall Information

Change Memory Structure

Strengthen Skills Construction

of a Pattern Reinforce Connections

Belief Accept a Belief Recall Belief Change Belief Strengthen Generalization

Construction of a Belief

Attitude Accept Attitude Recall Attitude

Change Attitude

Strengthen Evaluation

Construction of a New Attitude

Reinforce Attitudes Affect Learn Emo

Information Recall Emo Change Emo

Sensitivity Strengthen Emo

Connection Physiology Mood Change Reinforce Mood Automatic

Response Reinforce Reactions

Behavior Learn Behaviors Recall of Behavior Behavioral Change

Reinforce Habits

Imitation of Behavior

Performance of Novel Behavior

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A cognitive media effect occurs when media exposure influences a person’s mental processes or the product of those mental processes. The most easy to doc- ument cognitive effect is the acquisition of factual information from media mes- sages, such as from books, newspapers, television news stories, and informational websites. The human mind can absorb information from media messages through the process of memorization. However, the human mind can do far more than memorize; it can transform information into knowledge. This transformation of information can take the form of inferring patterns across media messages. The human mind can also group media messages in different ways to create new mean- ings. It can generalize beyond media messages to generate principles about real life. The media have been found to trigger all of these mental activities, so this category of cognitive effects on individuals is very large.

Beliefs have been defined as cognitions about the probability that an object or event is associated with a given attribute (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). Simply stated, a belief is faith that something is real or is true. The media continually create and shape our beliefs by showing us more of the world than we are able to see directly for ourselves. None of us have ever met George Washington, but we all believe he existed and was one of the founders of the United States as a country, because we have read about him in history books and websites and seen films about him. Each of us holds beliefs about the existence of a great many things we have never seen directly in our real lives; many of these beliefs have come from media messages.

Attitudes are judgments about something. For example, people see a character in a film and make judgments about that character’s attractiveness, hero status, likeability, etc. When the media also present stories about people, events, issues, and products in the real world, these stories often trigger the need for us to make our own judgments about controversial issues, political candidates, advertised products, etc.

Affect refers to the feelings that people experience. This includes emotions and moods. The media can trigger emotions, especially fear, lust, and laughter. The media also provide people with lots of opportunities to manage their moods, such that when we are feeling stressed with all the problems in our real lives, we can chill by listening to music, forget our problems by watching videos, or lose our- selves in the experience of playing games on the Internet.

A physiological effect is an automatic bodily response. The body response can be either purely automatic (such as pupil dilation, blood pressure, galvanic skin response) or quasi-automatic (heart rate, sexual responses). For example, when people watch an action/adventure movie, their heart rate and blood pressure typ- ically increase. Their muscles tense and their palms sweat as they experience a fight-or-flight reaction that has been hard-wired into the brains of all humans.

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Threats trigger attention, and the body prepares itself to fight a predator or to flee. This automatic fight-or-flight effect has enabled the human race to survive for thousands of years.

Behaviors are typically defined as the overt actions of an individual (Albarracin, Zanna, Johnson, & Kumkale, 2005). Media effects researchers have conducted a lot of studies where they observe people’s media exposure behaviors to see which media they use and how they use those media. Researchers also expose people to particular media messages, then observe their subsequent behaviors for things like acting aggressively, buying advertised products, and debating political issues.

It is important to make a clear distinction among these six types in order to achieve a high level of precision in the analysis. In the empirical literature of media effects, there are many examples of terms being used as synonyms in some instances and not in others, which leads to confusion. In this book, the above six categories are presented as being distinct from one another. Terms like opinions are largely avoided, but when used refer to attitudes. The term “perception” is not a synonym for attitudes or beliefs but instead means a description by humans of what comes in through the five human senses. And behavior requires actual action, not a self-report of past actions, which are either cognitions (memories of vivid occurrences) or beliefs (claims for past behavioral patterns or intentions for possi- ble actions people may take in the future).

Valence. This refers to whether the media effect is considered good or bad, which suggests several questions. Does the theory focus only on negative effects or does it also include positive effects? Who gets to decide what is positive and what is negative?

Intentionality. Does the theory focus only on intentional effects or does it include unintentional ones? Does it treat intentionality from the perspective of the sender (media industries) or the receivers (audiences)?

Conceptualization of Media Influence

How do the media exert their influence? There are four possible functions of influence that media can exert: triggering, acquiring, altering, and reinforcing (see Potter, 2009, 2011 for detail on the development of these four categories). These four are functions in the sense that they refer to distinct actions that influence and shape the character of an effect differently across the timing, type, valence, and intentionality of the media effect.

Triggering function. The triggering function is an immediate-type effect. While a person is exposed to the media, certain things in a message can immedi- ately stimulate something in the individual. The triggering function is applicable

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for all six categories of effects. A media message could activate the recall of pre- viously learned information, the activation of an existing attitude or belief, an emotion, a physiological reaction, or a previously learned behavioral sequence. For example, people who watch horror movies have all kinds of emotions, physiologi- cal patterns, and behaviors triggered during the exposure.

The media can also trigger a process that sets a person off on a sequence involving many steps. For example, when people read some news coverage about a political candidate that they have never heard about before, they have no existing attitude about that candidate. During exposure to this news coverage, people can take the information from the news story and compare it to their standard for political candidates and create an attitude. This is different than simple acquisition, because the person is not memorizing someone else’s attitude presented in the media but is instead going through a construction process in the creation of his/ her own attitude; in this case the media message element of a new piece of infor- mation triggered in the person the construction of a new attitude.

The media can also trigger a reconstruction process. A media message might present information that does not conform to a person’s existing knowledge struc- ture, so the person must do something to incorporate the new information into his/her existing knowledge structure. For example, let’s say that Mark has a very favorable attitude about a particular breakfast cereal but then is exposed to a media message that presents facts about the breakfast cereal using contaminated ingre- dients. This new information is likely to trigger a reevaluation of his previously positive attitude.

Acquiring function. The acquiring function includes those effects where people pay attention to certain elements in media messages and remember those elements. Every media message is composed of elements, such as facts, images, sounds, the depiction of a sequence of events. During exposures to these messages, individu- als acquire and retain some of these elements. During a media exposure a person could pay attention to certain elements in a message and keep those elements in his/her memory. This is an immediate effect because the element is committed to memory during the exposure to the message. This memory might last a few seconds or many years, but it is not how long the memory lasts that determines whether the effect is an immediate one or not—it is when the effect first occurs.

The acquiring function is applicable to all types of effects except for physi- ology where media messages have no power to create a physiological element in an individual. People can also acquire beliefs, attitudes, affective information, and behavioral sequences in the same manner through the use of the skill of memo- rization. With all of these types of effects, the media are creating something in a person’s mind that was not there before the exposure. It is possible to argue that

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all of these effects are essentially cognitive, because they all require the use of the cognitive skill of memorization and the retention of information in the individual’s memory. And that is a valid point. However, while the processes and the skills used may be the same across categories, the nature of what is retained is very different. Thus the function remains the same (acquiring), but the effect itself is different and requires different categories of cognition, belief, attitude, and behavior.

Altering function. During an exposure, the media can alter something that is already present in the individual. The altering function works with all types of effects. Media messages can alter a person’s knowledge structures with the addi- tion of new facts. A belief can be altered when the media present a fact reveal- ing that an individual’s existing belief was faulty. The media can alter individuals’ standards for use in constructing attitudes. Individuals who continually expose themselves to arousing elements in stories of horror and violence will have their natural fight–flight response worn down. By shifting content, the media can alter a person’s mood. And when individuals continually play interactive games, this practice serves to improve their hand–eye coordination and reduce reaction times to stimuli.

The alteration can show up immediately (i.e., during an exposure or imme- diately after the exposure to the media message) or it can take a long time to show up. The alteration can be temporary (i.e., disappear after a few seconds) or it can last a long time. Most of the research on long-term media effects is based on assumptions of long-term media influence as a gradual shaping process. This is a kind of a drip-drip-drip process of message after message slowly altering our knowledge structures. Greenberg (1988) reminds us that there are also “drench” influences. He says that not all media messages have the same impact and that not all characters in media stories are equally influential on our beliefs and attitudes. Some portrayals stand out because they “are deviant, are intense, and thus are more important viewing experiences” (p. 98).

Reinforcing function. Through repeated exposures, the media gradually and continually add greater weight to something already existing in a person, thus making that something more permanent and harder to change. The reinforcement function is applicable to all six types of effects. When the media continually pres- ent the same people in the news over and over, individuals’ knowledge structures about those people become more rigid and less likely to be open to change later. When the media present the same beliefs and attitudes, individuals’ comfort levels with those beliefs and attitudes become so strong that they are not able to change those beliefs or attitudes. When the media present the same kinds of messages every week or every day, individuals’ behavioral patterns of exposure become more fixed and harder to change.

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Original Components

The essential components of any theory are its key concepts, core propositions, and foundational assumptions. Thus we use an analytical dimension on each of these three when examining the content of the media effects theories when they were introduced.

Key Concepts

All media effects theories feature at least two key concepts. One of these is the effect and the other is the media influence. The effect concept is easy to identify because typically a theory derives its name from it (e.g., agenda setting, cultivation, third person). The media influence can be broad (all media exposures) or very spe- cific (e.g., pop-up ads on informational websites). The simplest form of a media effects theory is to use these two concepts in one proposition and express the rela- tionship between these two as simple and direct.

When we look beyond these two essential concepts (the effect and the influ- encer), we can identify other concepts that can be categorized as being either con- tingent or intervening. Some theories make claims that their primary relationship (media leading to some effect) is contingent in some way, such as applying only to a certain kind of person or situation. Some theories also feature additional con- cepts as intervening factors between the media and the effect. An intervening con- cept identifies a condition that makes the primary relationship (media leading to some effect) indirect such that the intervening concept changes the simple direct relationship by amplifying it, reducing it, blocking it, or reversing it.

Core Propositions

The core propositions convey the essence of the theory’s system of explanation. Each proposition expresses a relationship between two or more concepts. The set of propositions is the system of explanation.

Foundational Assumptions

Foundational assumptions are the beliefs held by a theory’s creators that underlie the system of explanation. These beliefs are typically assumed rather than articu- lated, which makes them often difficult to identify. Typically the assumptions that theoreticians make are taken for granted by both the theoreticians and other schol- ars. Thus scholars feel no need to address them in their work because they believe that all their readers hold the same assumptions.

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Some foundational assumptions are deep-seated beliefs that can be metaphys- ical such as ontological beliefs (i.e., assumptions about the nature of the phenom- enon itself ) or epistemological beliefs (i.e., assumptions about human capacity to perceive phenomena and to make sense of them). These assumptions are typically about change and determinism.

Assumptions about change. There are three prevalent views on change in sci- ence: unilinear, recursive progression, and dialectical. Unilinear change is a belief that things evolve from a lessor state to a more highly developed one. This is seen in Darwin’s theory of evolution. This perspective was held by Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Wundt, and Piaget. For example, Comte felt that the progress of civi- lization resulted from the instinctive tendency of the human race to perfect itself.

Recursive progression views change as occurring in repeating cycles. For example, deciduous trees go through seasonal cycles where they sprout leaves in the spring and shed their leaves every autumn. They repeat this cycle year after year. For example, Max Weber revealed a belief about a recursive progression to soci- ety in his sociological theory when he claimed that society oscillates with social changes as a consequence of historical periods of growth and decline. The underly- ing feeling is a developmental one, but a development that is achieved by rotating through cycles not by a straight, linear progression.

Dialectical change arises from the conflict produced by opposing forces where those forces are acting in different directions. If one of those forces wins out, then change occurs only in the direction that the winning force produces. But when the two forces continue in opposition, the change is an oscillation between the two directions in order to accommodate both.

Assumptions about determinism. Hypotheses can be posed with an underlying assumption of determinism, meaning A  determines B or A  always leads to or causes B.  In contrast, an hypothesis can reflect a probabilistic expectation (i.e., B will follow A most of the time or almost always, or with 60 % probability, and so on). In social sciences, hypotheses almost always are expressed simply in state- ments that appear to state a deterministic relationship; however, these statements are typically tested with probabilistic statistical analyses.

Other assumptions are developed by theoreticians through experience in design- ing many res