UOFL Media Effects Questions

Chapters 1 (pp. 1-5) and 2 (pp. 16-34) of the Media Effects textbook offer a broad overview of media effects theories and historical trends in media effects research. Choose one theory and explain it both within the context of the era in which it was developed and of the theories that preceded and/or followed it. For example, you might to choose to discuss the two-step theory by explaining what it is, who developed it, what other media were available when it was developed, what social/scientific beliefs about media effects prevailed in that era, how the theory was applied, what applicability it has in the current era, etc.

Media Effects
Now in its fourth edition, Media Effects again features essays from some of the finest scholars
in the field and serves as a comprehensive reference volume for scholars, teachers, and students.
This edition contains both new and updated content that reflects our media-saturated environments, including chapters on social media, video games, mobile communication, and virtual
technologies. In recognition of the multitude of research trajectories within media effects, this
edition also includes new chapters on narratives, positive media, the self and identity, media
selection, and cross-cultural media effects. As scholarship in media effects continues to evolve
and expand, Media Effects serves as a benchmark of theory and research for the current and
future generations of scholars.
The book is ideal for scholars and for undergraduate and graduate courses in media effects,
media psychology, media theory, psychology, sociology, political science, and related disciplines.
Mary Beth Oliver is the Bellisario Professor of Media Studies in the Bellisario College of Communications at Pennsylvania State University, USA, where she also serves as Co-Director of the
Media Effects Research Laboratory.
Arthur A. Raney is the James E. Kirk Professor of Communication in the College of Communication and Information at Florida State University, USA.
Jennings Bryant is CIS Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Alabama, USA.
Routledge Communication Series
Jennings Bryant/Dolf Zillmann, Series Editors
Selected titles include:
Balancing the Secrets of Private Disclosures
Edited by Sandra Petronio
The Business of Sports
Off the Field, in the Office, on the News, 3rd Edition
Mark Conrad
Advertising and Public Relations Law, 3rd Edition
Carmen Maye, Roy L. Moore, and Erik L. Collins
Applied Organizational Communication
Theory and Practice in a Global Environment, 4th Edition
Thomas E. Harris and Mark D. Nelson
Public Relations and Social Theory
Key Figures, Concepts and Developments, 2nd Edition
Edited by Øyvind Ihlen and Magnus Fredriksson
Family Communication, 3rd Edition
Chris Segrin and Jeanne Flora
Advertising Theory, 2nd Edition
Shelley Rodgers and Esther Thorson
An Integrated Approach to Communication Theory and Research, 3rd Edition
Edited by Don W. Stacks, Michael B. Salwen, and Kristen C. Eichhorn
Analyzing Media Messages
Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research, 4th Edition
Daniel Riffe, Stephen Lacy, Brendan R. Watson, and Frederick Fico
The Media Handbook
A Complete Guide to Advertising Media Selection, Planning, Research, and Buying
Helen Katz
Media Effects
Advances in Theory and Research, 4th Edition
Edited by Mary Beth Oliver, Arthur A. Raney, and Jennings Bryant
For a full list of titles please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Communication-Series/bookseries/RCS.
Media Effects
Advances in Theory and Research
Fourth Edition
Edited by Mary Beth Oliver
Arthur A. Raney
Jennings Bryant
Fourth edition published 2020
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Mary Beth Oliver, Arthur A. Raney, and Jennings Bryant to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
With the exception of Chapter 16, no part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
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Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
First edition published by McGraw-Hill 2002
Third edition published by Routledge 2008
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Oliver, Mary Beth, editor. | Raney, Arthur A., editor. | Bryant, Jennings, editor.
Title: Media effects / edited by Mary Beth Oliver, Arthur A. Raney, and
Jennings Bryant.
Description: Fourth edition. | New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Series: Routledge communication series | “First edition published by McGraw-Hill 2002.
Third edition published by Routledge 2008.” | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019009967| ISBN 9781138590182 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781138590229 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429491146 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Mass media–United States–Psychological aspects. | Mass media–Social
aspects–United States. | Mass media–Political aspects–United States. |
Mass media–United States–Influence.
Classification: LCC HN90.M3 M415 2019 | DDC 302.23–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019009967
ISBN: 978-1-138-59018-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-59022-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-49114-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Minion Pro
by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
For John and Dad, with all my love.
—MBO
For my beloved Laura.
—AAR
For Phyllis Dunker Bryant
Bennett Bryant Levine
Sara Elizabeth Levine
—JB
Contents
Foreword
ix
1. A History of Media Effects Research Traditions
Peter Vorderer, David W. Park, and Sarah Lutz
1
2. Media Effects Theories: An Overview
Patti M. Valkenburg and Mary Beth Oliver
16
3. The World of News and Politics
Yariv Tsfati and Nathan Walter
36
4. News Framing Theory and Research
David Tewksbury and Dietram A. Scheufele
51
5. Cultivation Theory, Media, Stories, Processes, and Reality
Rick Busselle and Jan Van den Bulck
69
6. Media Priming and Accessibility
David R. Ewoldsen and Nancy Rhodes
83
7. Social Cognitive Theory
Marina Krcmar
100
8. Currents in the Study of Persuasion
James Price Dillard
115
9. Narrative Effects
Melanie Green, Helena Bilandzic, Kaitlin Fitzgerald, and Elaine Paravati
130
10. Media Choice and Selective Exposure
Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, Axel Westerwick, and Daniel J. Sude
146
11. Media and Emotion
Robin L. Nabi
163
vii
viii • Contents
12. Media, Identity, and the Self
Jonathan Cohen, Markus Appel, and Michael D. Slater
13. Media Psychophysiology and Neuroscience: Bringing Brain Science into Media
Processes and Effects Research
Paul D. Bolls, René Weber, Annie Lang, and Robert F. Potter
179
195
14. Media Violence and Aggression
Jessica Taylor Piotrowski and Karin M. Fikkers
211
15. Media and Sexuality
Paul J. Wright
227
16. Media Stereotypes: Content, Effects, and Theory
Travis L. Dixon
243
17. Eudaimonia as Media Effect
Arthur A. Raney, Mary Beth Oliver, and Anne Bartsch
258
18. Advertising Effects and Advertising Effectiveness
Louisa Ha
275
19. Educational Media for Children
Amy B. Jordan and Sarah E. Vaala
290
20. Media Effects and Health
Jessica G. Myrick
308
21. Entertainment and Enjoyment as Media Effect
Arthur A. Raney and Jennings Bryant
324
22. Video Games
Christoph Klimmt and Daniel Possler
342
23. Psychological Effects of Interactive Media Technologies: A Human–Computer
Interaction (HCI) Perspective
S. Shyam Sundar and Jeeyun Oh
357
24. Social Media
Jesse Fox and Bree McEwan
373
25. Effects of Mobile Communication: Revolutions in an Evolving Field
Scott W. Campbell and Rich Ling
389
26. Virtual Reality in Media Effects
Sriram Kalyanaraman and Jeremy Bailenson
404
27. Cross-Cultural Media Effects Research
Jinhee Kim and Kimin Eom
419
Index
435
Foreword
When the third edition of Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research was published in 2009,
the media landscape was quite different than it is today. Then, only about 37% of U.S. adults
reported using any form of social media. As of this writing, that number is 70% or more (Pew
Research Center, 2018). In 2009, only 38% of teens reported sending texts on a daily basis (Lenhart,
2009); recent research now reports that teens, on average, spend approximately two hours texting
each day (Twenge, Martin, & Spitzberg, 2018). Media-related words and phrases that were uncommon or even unknown at the time—fake news, chatterbots, Alexa, cyber hacking—are now part of
our daily vocabulary. Over this same period, video rental stores have been shuttered, newspaper
reading has plummeted, and movie attendance has been on the decline. With these changes in
mind, it was obvious that the time had come for an update to Media Effects.
Just as the media landscape has shifted, media theories have continued to evolve in an
attempt to keep pace. However, changes in media technologies do not necessarily imply that
foundational theories are now irrelevant. People continue to get news, people still love stories,
and people still experience strong emotions when consuming media that provide them with
thrills, romance, and laughter. Alas, media also continue to perpetuate stereotypes, to glorify
unsavory behaviors, and to encourage unhealthy habits. In short, media use, media effects, and
the theories that explain them are relevant to human desires and gratifications—something that
is likely remarkably stable over time. However, the affordances of media technologies are
undoubtedly different than ten years ago, causing us to rethink, re-examine, and broaden our
existing theories, while at the same time developing new ones that are unique to emerging
media forms.
This new edition of Media Effects represents a host of changes that reflect not only shifts in
the media landscape, but also changes in the wealth and number of scholars examining questions of media influence. Perhaps one of the most notable changes is in terms of editorship,
with Art Raney now on board. His talents as an editor and his insights as a scholar are
undoubtedly reflected throughout this volume.
We have also included a host of new chapters and authors. In response to younger scholars’
and students’ calls for greater historical and theoretical context, we begin the volume with chapters that provide a bird’s-eye view of the discipline and of the theories that are prominent.
ix
x • Foreword
Given the vast array of media choices provided by streaming video and seemingly limitless
internet sites, we have also included a new chapter on media selection. The importance of
media in providing role models, allowing for self-presentation, and allowing for self-exploration
prompted us to include a new chapter on the role of media and identity. This edition also explicitly recognizes the importance of stories in a new chapter on narratives. New to this edition
are also two chapters pertinent to technological changes: one on social media specifically, and
one on virtual reality. We also thought it important to recognize that, historically, the majority
of research in media effects has been dominated by scholars (and participants) in the U.S. As
a result, we now include an important new chapter on cross-cultural media effects, and we feature a larger proportion of non-U.S. authors from throughout the world. Finally, with an eye
toward optimism about how people use and respond to media, this edition now also features
a chapter on meaningful (eudaimonic) media.
Of course, with all of these changes and additions in mind, we are happy to include a wide
array of new authors who represent the evolution of our field. We are also deeply grateful to
the authors who readily agreed to take on the task of overviewing foundational theories and
topics with a recognition of their value and importance in our shifting world of media.
Together, these authors represent some of the most insightful, productive, and talented
researchers in the discipline. We, therefore, now enthusiastically hand this volume over to our
readers, and we thank them in advance for their role in furthering our understanding of media
effects.
References
Lenhart, A. (2009). Teens and mobile phones over the last five years: Pew internet looks back. Washington DC:
Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Pew Research Center. (2018). Social media fact sheet. Retrieved from www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/socialmedia/
Twenge, J. M., Martin, G. N., & Spitzberg, B. H. (2018). Trends in U.S. adolescents’ media use, 1976–2016:
The rise of digital media, the decline of TV, and the (near) demise of print. Psychology of Popular Media
Culture. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/ppm0000203.
1
A History of Media Effects Research Traditions
Peter Vorderer, David W. Park, and Sarah Lutz
Media effects research has been both praised and criticized for its role in a discipline called
communication, communication studies, or even communication science. In fact, despite the
rapid growth of the field and its seemingly constant differentiation, numerous influential volumes have been dedicated exclusively to media effects over the past 60 some years (e.g., Bryant
& Oliver, 2009; Bryant & Zillmann, 1986; Nabi & Oliver, 2009; Perse, 2001; Schramm, 1954;
Sparks, 2002). As much as the shaping of communication studies as a field was an outcome of
media effects research, communication studies was of course not its only patron. Other and
older disciplines like sociology, political science, or psychology also played important roles in
the early theorizing and testing of hypotheses about the effects media technologies and messages
may have on their users, and they still do.
In this chapter, initially we will focus on what communication originally meant across academia. Building on this, we will be able to differentiate between a few disciplinary traditions in
communication studies and point to what may now be called the two official narratives of the
history of media effects research. We will highlight the most important historical phases in
communication research and will refer briefly to the often lamented (and sometimes also
demanded) dichotomy between the social science and the humanities approach as it is manifested in our field. We will then refer to media effects in a more narrow sense, picking up on
how its history has often been described and systematized along the lines of strong, weak, moderate, and negotiated effects. In order to summarize the most important theories of media
effects research, we will refer to Kepplinger’s (2008) distinction between what he called learning
theories and cognitive theories, and, subsequently, reconstruct the history of these theories and
models by deriving them from their underlying epistemology. We will close this section by
pointing to more recent theoretical developments, which are characterized by an attempt to
differentiate and to integrate various components of the media-effects process. The final section
will then lead us to the question of whether media effects still exist in today’s media-saturated
world, and, if so, what sort of effects remain in a world of ubiquitous media use. This, in turn,
will bring us back to the roots of the field, in which communication was conceived as something significantly broader than what today is often meant when we talk about the uses and
effects of media.
1
2 • Peter Vorderer et al.
Five Models of Communication (and Then Four More)
Communication studies does not belong solely to scholars who identify with the field of communication. Even in the mid- to late-1900s, numerous and disparate intellectual traditions laid
some claim to the study of communication, and the study of media effects must take its place
within this broad spectrum of inquiry. In his pursuit of an inclusive means by which to sort
out the tangle of ideas that have been applied to questions of communication, Peters (1999)
took an historical perspective. More specifically, he turned to the 1920s, where he found an
abundance of perspectives on communication that remain with us today. The first of these—
and one that is particularly relevant to the study of media effects—is the understanding of communication as “something like the dispersion of persuasive symbols in order to manage mass
opinion” (Peters, 1999, p. 11). In this understanding, communication was put into the context
of other elements of modernity, including urbanization, industrialization, and rationalization.
From such figures as Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays, and Harold Lasswell came the idea
that communication could be “conceived of as the power to bind a far-flung populace together
for good or ill” (Peters, 1999, p. 12). This idea itself has proven quite powerful and undergirds
much of the thinking concerning media effects today.
Though it is of particular importance for an understanding of media effects, this was by no
means the only way communication was understood in the early 20th century. A second school
of thought took communication to be “the means to purge semantic dissonance and thereby open
a path to more rational social relations” (Peters, 1999, p. 12). The idea here, shared by Charles
Kay Ogden and Ivor Armstrong Richards, is that communication breakdown on the macro- and
micro-scales could be avoided through a careful consideration of how language comes to carry
significance, an embrace of close semantic analysis that would “provide a medium of communication for the needs of modern scientific men and women” (Peters, 1999, p. 13).
This could be contrasted with a third model from the 1920s, which took communication to
be an “insurmountable barrier” (Peters, 1999, p. 14). These barrier thinkers gave us a vision of
communication in which language, gesture, and images all conspire to reinforce a condition of
solipsism, where the pretense of mutuality and connection merely masks a situation wherein
individuals simply seal themselves off or are sealed off by a system of communication. Peters
(1999) traced this model of communication to Thomas Stearns Eliot and Franz Kafka, whose
evocations of individuals walled off from others by language remain a potent poetic lodestar.
There are two more models that depart from the idea of communication as a mental process,
or as a way to share an accurate depiction of the world. One of these Peters (1999) traced to
philosophers Martin Heidegger and John Dewey. Heidegger saw communication not as the
authentic connection between people but as “the constitution of relationships, the revelation of
otherness, or the breaking of the shells that encase the self” and not as “the sharing of private
mental property” (pp. 16–17). John Dewey offered a different kind of end-around to the problem of communication. Peters (1999) described Dewey as having conceived of communication
“as pragmatic making-do in community life,” and as “taking part in a collective world” (p. 18).
Though he shared with Heidegger a turn away from conceiving of communication as authentic
shared signification, Dewey gave us a more upbeat take with his focus on how communication
can become a tool to solve shared problems.
A final model of communication that Peters (1999) extracted from the 1920s comes from
Emmanuel Levinas. Peters (1999) described Levinas as having given us an understanding of
communication “as a caress” (p. 20). From this standpoint, the failures of communication we
A History of Media Effects • 3
find in all of these models is not something to mourn. Peters (1999) gave us a Levinas who
argued that the:
failure of communication … allows precisely for the bursting open of pity, generosity, and
love. Such failure invites us to find ways to discover others besides knowing. Communication
breakdown is thus a salutary check on the hubris of the ego.
(p. 21)
Here communication’s necessary incompleteness was treasured for how it sustains the other. To
seek a pure fusion of individuals or of cultures would be to seek the end of difference itself.
If this list of varied models of communication were not enough, Peters (2008) later developed
another list of ways to consider communication, focused this time on four models of communication that emerged after World War II. One of these is cybernetics, a school of thought whose
origins Peters (2008) connected to a “postwar fascination with communication, information,
systems, probability, noise, redundancy, entropy, interference, breakdown, feedback, homeostasis,
and so on” (p. 151). A second post-World War II school of thought was found in psychiatric
understandings of communication, with its emphasis on therapeutics, unhitched from the traditional psychiatric interpersonal dyad and connected more broadly to groups, organizations, and
societies. A third model of communication from the mid-20th century came to us largely from
the humanities, especially as literary scholars began to collaborate with anthropologists. This
school of thought, which could broadly be called cultural studies, emphasized the symbolic nature
of media texts and how they fit into broader cultural and societal patterns.
Alongside these three other post-World War II models—cybernetics, psychiatry, and cultural
studies—Peters (2008) outlined the emergence of what he calls the “social psychology of media
effects” model (p. 149). This model of communication, which is the focus of much of this
volume, traced its intellectual lineage to sociology, a field that would itself largely abandon the
focus on communication (Pooley & Katz, 2008). The social psychology of media effects model
would find broad purchase in newly founded communication departments in the U.S. and
beyond. The model’s focus on how media messages and processes could in some way be connected causally to particular cognitive, attitudinal, or behavioral changes—or reinforce the
status quo—became a taken-for-granted starting point of much communication research for
decades to follow.
History of Communication Study
Two Short Stories about the History of Communication Studies
Why go over all of these models of communication as a prelude to a discussion of media
effects? In part because it is important to remember that media effects is only one of many
different ways to consider mass communication or the media. The field of communication’s
analysis of its own past was for a long time the stuff of textbook syntheses of the history of
communication study. These assessments were often built on historiographically thin claims.
Simonson and Park (2015) described “two entwined stories” (p. 4) that have turned up very
frequently in the field’s memory of its own past, in textbooks and beyond. The first of these,
which came largely from Paul Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz, made pre-World War II mass communication scholarship out to be caught up in the belief that the media had a “hypodermic” effect
4 • Peter Vorderer et al.
on people, thus positioning post-World War II scholarship, with its multivariate approaches
and imagery of indirect effects, relatively sophisticated and reassuring compared to its ostensibly
more gullible and alarmist predecessors (Lubken, 2008). The second story Simonson and Park
(2015) found at the heart of much recollection of the history of communication study is the
idea of the field’s “four founders.” This second idea, which proposed that Paul Lazarsfeld,
Harold Lasswell, Kurt Lewin, and Carl Hovland were the proper founders of the study of communication, was, like much of the “hypodermic” theory, a story that claimed a certain disciplinary legitimacy for communication study. What it lacked in accuracy, the four founders story
possessed in function. Simonson and Park (2015) described both stories as “legitimating myths”
(p. 4), fitted to the field’s needs but largely inaccurate. Pooley (2008) has described histories like
this as being “airbrushed and Whiggish” (p. 1); these stories tell us little about what actually has
transpired in the world of communication inquiry. Consider the broad swaths of communication inquiry that Peters (1999) identified at work in the 1920s and post-World War II. These
two intertwined stories about the history of communication turn their attention away from
almost all of these trajectories in thought about communication. A proper understanding of
media effects must be connected to a better-informed and more inclusive history of communication study.
Four (or Five) Historical Phases in the Study of Communication
Although communication departments are a relatively recent phenomenon, the study of communication goes back very far indeed. The Greco-Latin tradition of communication study
installed the idea of speech as a distinct arena of inquiry to be called “rhetoric.” Rhetorical
scholars still invigorate this tradition today. In the last two centuries, interest in communication
per se has intensified, and even rhetoric has been brought under the rubric of communication
study, at least in the United States.
In the late 19th through the early 20th centuries, communication widely came to be conceived in
social thought in the U.S. and Europe as the means by which societies come into being. Much of
the scholarly interest in communication at this time was connected to a fascination with the role
played by the newspaper. American journalism education, with its practical orientation, bumped
into the broader social meaning of the newspaper. The German Zeitungswissenschaft—“newspaper
science”—took the study of newspapers and their world to be scientific in nature. This interest in
how communication operated across societies was reinvigorated by technological and other changes
in the early 20th century. Movies and radio stirred the scholarly imagination of the time, as did the
newly invented worlds of public relations and advertising. The development of survey methods in
the early 20th century provided a tool that seemed quite promising for developing a scientific measure of entire societies (Simonson & Park, 2015).
During and after World War II, the widespread use of propaganda and other means of influence
via the mass media sparked tremendous interest in communication. In the United States, enterprising scholars founded communication programs, institutes, and departments. Many of these new
communication programs carried pre-existing speech or journalism programs along with them,
often using names like “speech communication” or “journalism and mass communication” to signal
a hybridized approach. The academic study of communication moved quickly, if fitfully, and with
distinct regional differences, across the world. UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization) was closely involved in research projects involving mass communication
around the world. A distinct school of communication study emerged in Canada, where political
A History of Media Effects • 5
economist Harold Innis established a framework for understanding the societal meaning of media
of communication. His better-known colleague in the Explorations Group, Marshall McLuhan,
adopted some of Innis’s ideas for his own jazzy take on how media can shape individuals and societies. The decades immediately after World War II found communication study spreading globally,
refracted through different nations’ cultural traditions and political orders. The result was a field of
study that could be fit to a dizzying array of pragmatic applications, critical questions, historical
perspectives, and political interests (Simonson & Park, 2015).
Opposition to a number of mainstream ideas in the field of communication arose in the late
1960s and 1970s. New ideas invigorated communication study, while also calling into question
some of communication study’s most treasured and unspoken precepts. Feminist approaches to
communication, Marxist theory, and postcolonialism informed scholars who elaborated upon
how the social scientific tradition in communication missed out on some of the definitive conflicts at work in the world. Much of this was of course fueled by the political awakenings of
1968 and their aftermaths. In 1983, the Journal of Communication’s special issue titled “Ferment
in the Field” registered the interest of a panoply of scholars who hoped to see communication
move beyond the administrative work of determining when communication was and was not
effective (Simonson & Park, 2015).
Since the end of the Cold War, internet-enabled media have adjusted both the domain of
communication study as well as how communication study has come to be organized. This is
to say that the usual suspects—newspaper, television, radio, and movies—have all found themselves transformed anew in the digital age. At the same time, the means by which scholars
approach communication has changed as well. Communication study has grown markedly
more international in scope, while undergraduate and graduate programs continue to grow in
size. New subfields of communication study have come into being, including social media, big
data, and artificial intelligence. It remains difficult to determine whether communication is, as
some would have it, a social science, or whether it is an agglomeration of multidisciplinary
approaches (Simonson & Park, 2015). It would appear that growth and internationalization
have not settled questions concerning the field’s disciplinary or methodological identity.
The Dichotomy between the Social Sciences and the Humanities Approaches
No doubt the second half of the 20th century was communication studies’ time to develop and
establish itself as an academic discipline among others. Although several sources of intellectual
inquiry had been blossoming in various corners of academia, the dichotomization between the
humanities and the social sciences helped to fit communication studies to the multifarious questions that pertain to communication.
Whereas the humanities started in early 19th-century Europe to deal “with historically
oriented studies of texts and artifacts,” an alternative approach emerged only “a century later
with experimental psychology and the social sciences” (Craig, 2006, p. 677). It therefore is no
surprise that the institutionalization of the field occurred not only in different corners of academia with different names (e.g., in English: communication, communication studies, communication science, journalism, speech communication, rhetoric, media studies, media science; or
in German: Zeitungswissenschaft, Publizistik(wissenschaft), Medienwissenschaft, Kommunikationswissenschaft, to name just a few) but also in line with different levels of analysis (micro-, meso-,
macro-), with different methodological goals (“understanding” versus “explanation”), with different theoretical and methodological orientations, with different objectives, and with sometimes
6 • Peter Vorderer et al.
(if not often) incompatible visions and values. Craig (1999) described a comprehensive model
of the field, in which he identified no fewer than seven distinct traditions: rhetoric, semiotics,
cybernetics, phenomenology, social psychology, socio-cultural theory, and critical theory.
Even if a more narrow view on the field is taken, for example, by focusing only on the audience
—as in “audience research”—it seemed to be meaningful if not necessary to distinguish between
different traditions that apply divergent theoretical, meta-theoretical, and methodological positions.
An interesting example of this is Jensen and Rosengren’s (1990) attempt to systematize audience
research along five sub-areas: effects studies, uses and gratifications, literary criticism, cultural studies, and reception analysis. On the background of these systematizations it is only understandable
that many communication scholars have rather adopted and referred to the simplifying dichotomous model (between “communication studies” and “media studies,” or between “a social science
tradition” and “a humanistic tradition” respectively) than Craig’s (1999) or Jensen and Rosengren’s
(1990) certainly more differentiated models when it came to pointing to the diversity of the field
(e.g., Vorderer & Groeben, 1992). Lang (2013) drew the line between mass communication and
interpersonal communication and concluded that these two research programs “at least over the
last 50 years, do indeed represent different disciplines” (p. 12). She explained this by pointing to the
fact that mass communication research (and more specifically, media effects research as its dominant paradigm) has been remarkably unsuccessful and almost obsessed with its narrow focus on
effects, which in this tradition are seen “as an agent of change, external to people and their immediate social environments” (Lang, 2013, p. 14). Building on this perspective, Lang explained the development from critical and cultural approaches within communication (see above) towards a new
discipline that might be called communication and culture (e.g., Miller, 2009) as “a direct response
to the failure of the dominant paradigm” (Lang, 2013, p. 16).
A Psychological Turn in Media Effects?
Following Lang’s (2013) argument, it was approximately 1980 when “the dominant paradigm
[was] one of effects,” (p. 17) with its then-prevailing perspective that media effects are usually
weak at most—and with a good part of the discipline having left the mainstream to make up
their own program in communication and culture—that a new approach was developed. The
new approach focused on psychological—more precisely, on cognitive—processes of individuals
who are exposed to media content. Lang (2013) identified Byron Reeves and Esther Thorson as
the most important patrons of this emerging perspective, as they claimed as early as 1986 that
we need to begin to study “processes that are covert and that these questions require close
examination of relevant psychological studies” (Reeves, Thorson, & Schleuder, 1986, p. 251).
This is exactly what Lang and her collaborators successfully did over the ensuing decades
(e.g., Lang, 2000, 2006) but certainly they were not alone.
Following the so-called “cognitive turn” in psychology, which focused on information processing
and thereby succeeded what still remained of the behavioristic perspective in psychology, media psychology tried to establish itself as a research program somewhere between psychology and communication studies. Harris published the first of several editions of his well-received Cognitive Psychology of
Mass Communication in 1994. Bryant and Ewoldsen started a new journal Media Psychology in 1999.
Yet, a full decade earlier, Winterhoff-Spurk, Groebel, and Vitouch edited Medienpsychologie, likewise
a journal dedicated to psychological research on the uses and effects of media. But as this journal
published only papers written in German until 2008, when it was relaunched as the Journal of Media
Psychology, its output remained almost completely unnoticed within the English-speaking world.
A History of Media Effects • 7
Something similar happened to a number of textbooks on media psychology that, from the late 1980s
on, were also published only in German (Batinic & Appel, 2008; Groebel & Winterhoff-Spurk, 1989;
Kagelmann, 1982; Krämer, Schwan, Unz & Suckfüll, 2016; Mangold, Vorderer, & Bente, 2004; Six,
Gleich, & Gimmler, 2007; Trepte & Reinecke, 2013; Winterhoff-Spurk, 2004). These publications
reveal that this new perspective called media psychology covered all sorts of media-related cognitions,
effects, and behaviors, but it was not, as Lang (2013) suggested, united in applying an evolutionary
foundation to its reasoning (although this evolutionary perspective was particularly important in the
U.S.). What the texts did agree upon was an understanding of media effects as something much more
complex than previously assumed and the conviction that media effects (as one possible outcome of
using the media) can only be understood and studied when the entire process of exposure to media
(with a preceding motivation, with the [often unaware although] functional selection of specific content, with the cognitive processing and making sense of this content) is taken into account (Vorderer,
2008). Nevertheless, it would be an exaggeration to claim that media psychological research in total
represents media effects research after the 1980s, although it has certainly been a big part of it.
A Short (Official) History of Media Effects Research: Strong, Weak, Moderate,
Negotiated Effects
To backtrack slightly, many communication scholars seem to have agreed on the notion that
the historic development of media effects research within the past 60-some years may be divided into a few more or less distinct phases, whose number and time boundaries vary by
author. The most common classification differentiates between four phases.
Beginning in World War I and up to the end of the 1930s, many assumed that some if not all
media outlets had almost unlimited power to change their users’ attitudes, habits, and behavior.
This period is therefore often called the phase of strong (Esser, 2008) or all-powerful media effects
(McQuail, 2010); it is the period associated with the “hypodermic” theory mentioned previously.
The media were considered to be almighty for two main reasons: First, society was then understood
as an entity of fragmented individuals whose only source of information was the media (Esser,
2008). Second, the individual was then seen as weak, receptive of influences from outside, and therefore inherently susceptible to manipulation (McQuail, 2010). This could be illustrated by examples
of “successful” propaganda used during World War I, typically described “in the language of stimulus-response” (Lasswell, 1927, p. 630). This stimulus-response model reflected the then contemporary psychological (and more precisely, the behavioristic) understanding of how human learning
works: Media effects happen to a generally passive receiver who is more or less defenseless against
messages (or messengers) that usually achieve their intended goal, and this goal is a change of attitude or even of behavior.
These conceptions of the individual and of society changed to some extent at the beginning
of the 1940s, which, for some scholars, marked the beginning of the second (“weak effects”)
phase that lasted until the end of the 1960s (Esser, 2008). However, the term “weak” did not
imply that the media would not have any impact on its users at all. More precisely, it referred
to the fact that there was no direct link between the media (content) and the users’ response.
At the individual level, psychological factors such as prior attitudes were taken into account as
intervening instances, symbolizing a change toward an understanding of him or her as an
“active user” (McQuail, 2010). This led to an extension of the classical stimulus-response model
by adding the organism as an important interface between the stimulus and the response (to
become the so-called S-O-R model). This model was used, for example, in Klapper’s (1960)
8 • Peter Vorderer et al.
limited effects theory, according to which media can merely confirm prior beliefs but not cause
an attitude change. Moreover, such intervening variables did not always have to be on the individual level only, as in the case with prior beliefs or attitudes. They were also conceived of existing at the social level, for example in the two-step flow model of communication (Lazarsfeld,
Berelson & Gaudet, 1944). This model took into account that individuals also interact within
groups, which necessarily suggests a weaker direct effect of media messages.
By the end of the 1970s, after a rather long period of assuming those weak effects, strong
media effects were rediscovered by focusing on cognitive (instead of behavioral) and long-term
effects (McQuail, 2010) in the context of some more narrowly defined research programs. Cultivation research (Gerbner & Gross, 1976), agenda-setting research (McCombs & Shaw, 1972),
and the spiral of silence theory (Noelle-Neumann, 1974) are prominent examples of this phase.
Particularly Noelle-Neumann’s article of 1973 indicates in its very title the ambition of the
scholars at that time: “Return to the Concept of Powerful Mass Media” (Noelle-Neumann,
1973). Of course, the media were not considered to be as powerful and strong as they were in
the first phase, but certainly stronger than in the second, which is why this period is often
referred to as the “moderate effect phase” (Esser, 2008).
According to many authors, the fourth and final phase of media effects history, which continues
to this day, began in the late 1970s. Since then, many scholars in the field refer to “negotiated” or
“transactional” media effects, which, according to McQuail (2010), can be described as follows:
Media present an image of social reality but compete with other opinion-forming sources such as
personal experiences or the social environment. These other sources can create resistance to the
media’s influence on the individual. However, the user is seen to be free to decide whether or not to
adopt the views offered by the media. Instead of a direct transfer of meaning, users negotiate
between what is offered by the media and what he or she is inclined to believe. This approach differs
significantly from the previous ones, as it allows both the media and the users to be powerful.
Naturally, this classification of media effects research into more or less distinct phases has been
controversial (e.g., Kepplinger, 2008). Esser (2008), for example, pointed out that this historical
systematization of media having “all-powerful” to “limited” to “rediscovered powerful” to “negotiated” effects may ignore findings that did not sufficiently fit into this classification. Klapper
(1960), a representative of the second phase, already had described factors that caused media to
have strong effects on its users, but compared to his findings on weak effects these considerations
never received as much attention. In truth, studies reporting rather strong or rather weak effects
can be found in any period of time (Esser, 2008). The question therefore remains whether this
description of media effects research history as a step-by-step development is merely a convenient
narrative that only represents the perspectives of some leading scholars at the time and disregards
the complexities of the actual development. Or, in Lang’s (2013) provocative words: Is this merely
“history written by the victorious” (p. 12)? Perhaps this is a history of media effects every bit as
“airbrushed and Whiggish” as Pooley (2008, p. 1) identified at work elsewhere in the history of
communication study.
Theories of Media Effects
Given that there is more than one way to tell the history of media effects research, it seems only
plausible that there are also different ways to categorize the various theories and theoretical
models that have been developed and applied along the way. In the interest of limited space here,
we will pick only two such ways: one from a systematic and more traditional communication
A History of Media Effects • 9
studies perspective, and another from a more historical one. We do recognize that most of these
theories mentioned therein remain within what Peters (2008) called the “social psychology of
media effects” model (p. 149) and what Valkenburg and Peter (2013) described as “microlevel
media-effects theories” (p. 222). We can be brief because this volume contains and outlines most
of the currently influential theories and models that equip a great part of past and current media
effects research.
The Communication Studies Perspective: Learning Theories versus Cognitive Theories?
Within communication studies, theories on the effects of media sometimes have been categorized into learning theories versus cognitive theories (e.g., Kepplinger, 2008). From the first perspective, learning is understood as an interplay of stimuli and response, in which stimuli are
seen as causes, and responses are understood as effects. One typical example of this perspective
is the (early) theory of observational learning (Bandura, 1965, 1977), a precursor of what Bandura (2009) later called social-cognitive theory of mass communication (see Chapter 7 in this
volume). According to the rather behavioristic reasoning in this theory, individuals observe patterns of behavior represented in the media (stimuli) and perform them afterwards (response)
under certain conditions. These conditions were conceived particularly in terms of various
forms of reinforcement for the newly learned behavior. The fact that media serve as one, if not
the most important, source of information for various audiences is also reflected in McCombs
and Shaw’s (1972; also see Chapter 3 in this volume) agenda-setting approach. Even in cultivation research (Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Morgan, Shanahan & Signorelli, 2009; also see Chapter 5
in this volume), the direct influence that frequent media use may have on the perception of
reality was of central importance and therefore systematically studied. Any inconsistency
between an individual’s beliefs or attitudes with the information provided by media was interpreted as a learning deficit, which indicates a lack of media effects (Kepplinger, 2008).
In contrast to this learning theory perspective, cognitive theories interpret this discrepancy as
a result of different ways of information processing. Thus, opinions and beliefs of users are not
merely copies of media presentations (Kepplinger, 2008). Following schema theory, Graber (1988)
reported that users’ beliefs are based on cognitive structures in their long-term memory (so-called
schemas), which structure the way information is understood, interpreted, and, in short, processed.
Priming theory (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldsen & Carpentier, 2009; Chapter 6 in this volume)
follows this approach, assuming that media content activates parts of an individual’s semantic network, which leads to a more intense processing of similar information. In conclusion,
cognitive theories aim to understand how users process the information presented in media.
The difference between what Kepplinger (2008) called learning theories and cognitive theories has much to do with the implicit understanding of the media user that scholars have implied
when developing their respective theories. This implicit understanding (or epistemology) has
naturally changed over time. It therefore seems to be necessary to take into account when these
theories have been developed, explicated, and applied in order to structure this scholarly field.
The Historical Perspective: Theories According to Their Underlying Epistemologies
As early as in the 1980s, Drinkmann and Groeben (1989) systematized the then-extant psychological research on the effects that persuasive texts may have on their readers by means of
a meta-analysis. In preparation of this meta-analysis, they categorized the various theories and
10 • Peter Vorderer et al.
theoretical models developed by media effects scholars along the way. More precisely, they used
the (often only implicit) epistemology underlying these theories, that is, the respective authors’
assumptions about (a) the direction of causality (i.e., who or what within the process of persuasion is agent, what is object) and (b) what is the assumed (cognitive) activity of the user. Using
these two dimensions, they systematized the history of media effects research by distinguishing
four different models: (a) determined, passive users; (b) selective-reactive users; (c) reductivemodifying users; and (d) active-elaborative users. The first model—that of a determined, passive
user—is represented in studies that explain media effects by principles of reinforcement such as
the so-called message-learning approach, in which the media user is conceived as being passive
and the causal direction is assumed to go from the text to the representation of it by the user.
In comparison, the understanding of a reader as (b) a selective-reactive user can be found in
the so-called “judgmental approach,” where the causality is still from the text to the reader but
the activity of the user is characterized by selection and rejection of content. Whether some
content will be selected or rejected mainly depends on how the content relates to the user’s
existing attitudes. Here, for example, a user’s ego-involvement with a specific domain of knowledge matters as it determines the relevance a topic has on him or her, which will lead to
a greater latitude of rejection.
Much of the empirical work in media effects has been conducted with the assumption of (c)
a reductive-modifying user, where the causality goes from the user to the representation of the
content and where the user is seen as someone who can actually modify the content. An
example would be Heider’s (1946, 1958) balance theory, which postulated a need to balance the
various relations between others in service of the much-preferred homeostasis in one’s perception. In this perspective, the impact of a text itself is relatively weak as it first and foremost
needs to fit into the cognitive system of a user and depends much on the previous experiences
of the user. As the most recent and progressive model, Drinkmann and Groeben (1989) identified the (d) active-elaborative user, in which he or she does not “receive” information from
a text but interacts with his or her environment and processes information by integrating them
into the prevailing cognitive structure.
Information Processing Instead of Media Effects?
Although Drinkmann and Groeben’s (1989) systematization was explicated in the late 1980s,
much of the theoretical developments in the past 30 years have seen an inclusion of affects and
moods, in addition to cognitive processes (e.g., the mood-management theory of KnoblochWesterwick, 2006 and Zillmann, 1988, in which entertainment experiences are seen as effects of
exposure to media; see Bryant & Vorderer, 2006). Most interesting and promising in this context, however, have been theoretical models—like the elaboration-likelihood model (ELM; Petty
& Cacioppo, 1986; Petty, Cacioppo, Strathman & Priester, 2005; see also Chapter 8 in this
volume)—rather than single theories. What has been unique about the ELM is the fact that it
has successfully integrated various cognitive and motivational processes and mechanisms that,
in times past, have been identified by media effects scholars as leading to attitude change. ELM
scholars have done this by defining the specific conditions on which the user’s cognitive activity
(“elaboration” in their terms) depends and postulating the particular kind of effect these conditions might have on the user (for an application and extension of this theory in the area of
entertainment research, see Bartsch & Schneider, 2014). Even more inclusive than the ELM is
the so-called differential susceptibility to media effects model by Valkenburg and Peter (2013)
A History of Media Effects • 11
that, while also focusing on micro-level media effects, distinguishes between users’ dispositional,
developmental, and social susceptibility to media and claims that three differentiable response
states—cognitive, emotional, and excitative—mediate the effects of media.
What these theoretical advances indicate, we believe, is this: In the background of the fact
that media effects research has been a dominant paradigm in communication studies, and the
fact that the effect sizes found for many dependent measures have been rather small, many
scholars have tried to overcome this disappointing situation by either differentiating, specifying,
and subsequently integrating the various relations between causes and effects in media use even
further (with the ELM being a prominent example of this) or by proposing an alternative paradigm altogether (Lang, 2013; Lang & Ewoldsen, 2010).
Are There Still Media Effects in a Permanently Online, Permanently Connected World?
Media effects research grew within the discipline of communication to become not only one of
its main areas of inquiry but also one of its largest fields of empirical study. Given the amount
of attention that has been dedicated to this particular research domain, the outcome might be
regarded as rather modest in terms of its identified and validated effects (Lang, 2013). But it
nonetheless has always been a field where new ideas, assumptions, theories, and models have
been conceived and tested. This, we believe, is even more impressive if we consider the fact that
the object of study has always been changing. From the effects of listening to the radio or those
of reading a newspaper, to watching a commercial or a movie on TV, to entertainment programs on any kind of device, to playing video games on a console or a PC or to communicate
in social media, the uses and effects of media have been not only described but most often also
explained by media effects theories.
However, some of the facts this scholarship has long taken for granted have also changed most
recently: users accessing a media outlet that carries a certain content within a specific format,
with the user starting the process of exposure at one point in time and ending it at some later
point. The results of most media effects research describe changes in the thinking, feeling, or
behavior of individuals that would not have occurred if the individuals had not been exposed to
media. This is what has changed significantly within only the past few years. Media outlets and
their message systems are now available everywhere, and exposure can happen anytime, with
implications for both mass and (mediated) interpersonal communication. Because of the ubiquitous availability of smartphones and other carry-on devices such as tablets or smartwatches,
today’s media users are permanently online and permanently connected (Vorderer, Hefner, Reinecke & Klimmt, 2018). As a result, media use and media effects may now materialize everywhere,
anytime, and with respect to any sort of content. Access to the internet today is similar to what
access to reading glasses has meant to many nearsighted readers: something that is (almost)
always available and is (often enough) sufficiently powerful to change our perceptions and understandings of others and the world. It can, and often does, change our thinking, believing, feeling
and behavior, and therefore it is commensurate with what we used to call “media effects,”
although we are unable to identify a single source of influence. Today, for instance, we would
most likely not—as many media effects scholars have in the past—argue that a televised debate is
the most important (let alone, the only major) factor influencing the outcome of a national election. Rather, we would assume that no single source of information taken alone would have
a strong enough effect to make such a difference. However, we do not yet exactly know how the
diversity and multiplicity of sources users can interact with today make them think, feel, or act
12 • Peter Vorderer et al.
differently. We have only begun to map the cognitive structures behind mobile media use in
search for the “permanently online and permanently connected mind” (Klimmt, Hefner, Reinecke, Rieger & Vorderer, 2018). From this point of view, we are only at the beginning of media
effects research in our always-on environment.
Independent from these technological developments, it is striking to note that macro-level
media effects have largely been put out of focus in communication studies, at least within the
social psychology of media effects model. Interestingly and, maybe regrettably, this has happened at a time that sociologists describe as most significant in terms of fundamental societal
changes, like technological acceleration and higher rates of cultural innovation (e.g., Rosa,
2005), and during which changes in media use certainly play an important role. Take, for
example, the effects that reading texts and listening to audio files posted on the internet in
American English may have on the proficiency of understanding and speaking English by nonnative speakers of this language. Today, many students are presumably more often exposed to
the English language on the internet than to formal language instruction they receive at school.
Exposure to certain cultural content (be that “mainstream” content or highly specialized depictions of certain events) through the internet might also lead to culturally specific effects that
have not yet been studied. To put it more provocatively, the reflection of media effects on
a social level (e.g., Reckwitz, 2017) remains by and large outside of communication studies.
Much of what cultural sociology has done in the past years, however, is focused on what these
changes in the macro-structure of modern societies mean for the well-being or the “good life”
of the individual (e.g., Rosa & Henning, 2018; Vorderer, 2016). It is noteworthy that communication studies has mainly ignored this so far.
Finally, there is the old outlook that the integration of different traditions in our field is
more promising than their juxtaposition. We do not want to argue here for a melting of all the
different meta-theoretical and methodological approaches within communication studies. But
maybe psychologically driven micro-theory development can benefit from sociologically
oriented macro-theory approaches, the social-science perspective from the humanistic, and vice
versa. It looks as if media users today cannot and should not be regarded anymore as isolated
(either active or passive) individuals, who live outside of or independent from social structures
and networks, who are either completely dependent from available media content or (hyper-)
active and fully aware of what to do with this new abundance of offerings. All of these assumptions and perspectives in media effects research have at some point been helpful heuristics in
order to structure the field, possibly even by putting it, for some time, into different silos
(Vorderer & Weinmann, 2016). However, now that the field and the questions that it raises
have grown well beyond the traditional boundaries, it might be time to also find explanations
by crossing such well-known boundaries of our field.
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2
Media Effects Theories1
An Overview
Patti M. Valkenburg and Mary Beth Oliver
Theories and research on the effects of media emerged under the umbrella concept mass communication. This term arose during the 1920s as a result of the new opportunities to reach audiences
via the mass media (McQuail, 2010). In early mass communication theories, mass not only refered
to the “massness” of the audience that media could reach but also to homogeneous media use and
homogeneous media effects, notions that are increasingly challenged in the contemporary media
landscape (Valkenburg, Peter & Walther, 2016). In the past two decades, media use has become
progressively individualized, and, with the introduction of Web 2.0, decidedly more personalized.
It is no surprise, therefore, that media effects theories have undergone important adjustments in
the past decades. And it is also no surprise that the mass has turned increasingly obsolete in contemporary media effects theories (Chaffee & Metzger, 2001).
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview of the most important media effects theories that have been coined in the past decades and to chart changes in these theories. We start
by providing a definition of a media effects theory and explaining the differences between
media effects theories and models. In the second section, we discuss the results of several bibliometric studies that have tried to point out the most prominent media effects theories in central
communication journals, and, based on these studies we identify “evergreen” and upcoming
theories. In the third section, we discuss the communalities between contemporary media effects
theories along three potential characteristics of such theories: selectivity, transactionality, and
conditionality. We end with a discussion of the future of media effects research, with a special
focus on the necessity of the merger between media effects and computer-mediated communication theories.
What Is a Media Effects Theory?
As Potter (2011) rightly observes in his review of the media effects literature, few scholars have
attempted to provide a formal definition of a media effect. We can add to this observation that
even fewer scholars have formulated a definition of a media effects theory. Without such
16
Media Effects Theories • 17
a definition, it is difficult to assess which theories qualify as media effects theories and which do
not. But to be able to document well-cited media effects theories that have been developed over the
years, we first and foremost need a definition of a media effects theory. We define such a theory as
one that attempts to explain the uses and effects of media on individuals, groups, or societies as
a whole. To be labeled a media effects theory, a theory at least needs to conceptualize media use (or
exposure to specific mediated messages or stories) and the potential changes that this media use can
bring about in individuals, groups, or societies (i.e., the media effect). We define media use broadly
as the intended or incidental use of media channels (e.g., telephone, email), devices (e.g., smartphone, game console), content/messages (e.g., games, narratives, advertising, news), or all types of
platforms, tools, or apps (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Uber). Media effects are the deliberate and
non-deliberate short and long-term individual or collective changes in cognitions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior that result from media use (Valkenburg et al., 2016).
Some media effects theories that fit within this definition have previously been labeled as
media effects models, oftentimes (but not always) because they are accompanied by a pictorial
model to explain the processes or relationships between media use, media outcomes, and other
relevant concepts, such as individual differences or social-context variables (e.g., the Elaboration
Likelihood Model, Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; the Reinforcing Spiral Model; Slater, 2007). In other
scholarly publications, the labels theory and model are used interchangeably. For example, in
the previous edition of this book, some authors referred to the agenda setting model (Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2009, p. 21), whereas others referred to agenda setting theory (McCombs &
Reynolds, 2009, p. 13). Although there are many conceptions about the differences between theories and models within and beyond the communication discipline, these conceptions do not
seem to be helpful in distinguishing media effects theories from models. In fact, all media effects
models that will be discussed in this chapter fit within our definition of media effects theories.
Therefore, although we will use the original labels of existing models/theories (e.g., the Elaboration Likelihood Model versus cultivation theory), we will use these labels without distinction.
Prominent Media Effects Theories
In the past 20 years, five bibliometric studies have tried to single out the most prominent media
effects theories in scholarly communication work (Bryant & Miron, 2004; Chung, Barnett, Kim
& Lackaff, 2013; Kamhawi & Weaver, 2003; Potter, 2012; Walter, Cody & Ball-Rokeach, 2018).
These bibliometric studies have content-analyzed a varying number of communication journals
to document, within a certain time frame, which theories are most often cited in these journals.
For example, Bryant and Miron (2004) analyzed one issue per year from three communication
journals (Journal of Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly) from 1956 to 2000, Chung et al. (2013) analyzed all
issues from four communication journals from 2000 to 2009 (Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Human Communication Research, and Communication Monographs), and
Walter et al. (2018) analyzed all issues from one communication journal (Journal of Communication) from 1951 to 2016.
The bibliometric studies all focused on the prevalence of mass communication theories rather
than media effects theories specifically. Although both types of theories are sometimes used
interchangeably, the focus of mass communication theories is decidedly broader than that of
media effects theories. Generally, mass communication theories do not only conceptualize the
effects of mass communication, but also its production, consumption, and distribution, as well
18 • Patti M. Valkenburg and Mary Beth Oliver
as the (changes in) policies surrounding mass communication. For example, in Bryant and
Miron’s (2004) analysis, mass communication was defined as “any scholarship that examined
processes, effects, production, distribution, or consumption of media messages” (p. 663). In addition, whereas mass communication theories have traditionally embraced both postpositivist and
critical or cultural approaches (Chaffee & Metzger, 2001), media effects theories are primarily
associated with postpositivist approaches. Postpositivists derive their quantitative research
methods from those developed in the physical sciences, but they do recognize that humans and
human behavior are not as constant and homogeneous as elements in the physical world
(Baran & Davis, 2010). Indeed, most chapters in this book rely on theories or discuss research
that stem from postpositivist approaches.
Some bibliometric studies did not only analyze (mass) communication theories, but all theories, including those that originated in cognate disciplines. For example, Bryant and Miron
identified 604 theories in their analyzed journals, including theories such as feminist theory,
attribution theory, and Marxism. Likewise, Potter (2012) found 144 different theories from
within and beyond the communication discipline, including theories like the availability heuristic, cognitive dissonance, and self-perception (see also Potter & Riddle, 2007; Walter et al.,
2018). According to Potter, these theories all described “some aspect of the media effects phenomenon” (p. 69). However, although all these theories may be helpful to explain media effects,
in themselves they cannot be considered media effects theories as defined in this chapter. As
discussed, a media effects theory at least needs to conceptualize media use and the individual or
collective changes that this media use brings about.
Despite the fact that the bibliometric studies used different classifications of communication
theories and analyzed different communication journals, together they provide an indispensable
picture of the use and development of media effects theories in the past decades. Because media
effects theories did play such a dominant role in all bibliometric studies (Chung et al., 2013),
we were able to reanalyze the results of these studies with an exclusive focus on the media
effects theories that they identified. For example, of the 144 theories that Potter (2012) identified, about one-fifth qualify as media effects theories according to our definition.
Table 2.1 lists the media effects theories that have been identified as most prevalent in the
bibliometric studies. In ranking these theories, we opted to include the 1956–2000 period
reported by Bryant and Miron (2004) and the most recent years (2010–2016) from Walter
et al.’s (2018) study so as to provide a picture of changes and trends within the discipline. However, in listing these theories, it is important to note that their ranking should be understood in
general terms rather than as necessarily representing stark or significant differences. First, some
of the theories listed were “tied” in terms of their frequencies. For example, in Bryant and
Miron’s (2004) analysis, agenda setting and uses and gratifications had 61 citations each, and
medium dependency and linear theory had 16 citations each; in Kamhawi and Weaver’s (2003)
analysis, priming and knowledge gap theory were mentioned in fewer than 1.5% of the articles
sampled. Second, even when theories differed in terms of their prevalence, some of these differences are so small as to warrant caution in their interpretation. For example, in Chung et al.’s
(2013) analysis, cultivation theory was associated with 68 mentions, and agenda setting was
associated with 65 mentions. Finally, in some analyses, different theories were sometimes
grouped together with similar theories in a common category, thereby increasing their prominence in the rankings. For example, in Walter et al.’s (2018) study, the “narrative theory” was
employed to refer to articles that employed theories or concepts such as transportation, entertainment education, and character identification.
Media Effects Theories • 19
Table 2.1 Prominent Media Effect Theories Listed in Five Bibliometric Studies to Document
Communication Theories
Study
Bryant and
Miron (2004)
Kamhawi and Potter (2012)
Weaver (2003)
Chung et al.
(2013)
Walter et al.
(2018)
Period
Journals (n)
1956–2000
3 comm. journals
1980–1999
10 comm.
journals
Articles (n)
Top theories
1,806
1. Agenda setting
(tied)
2000–2009
4 comm.
journals
2010–2016
1 comm. journal
1,156
1. Framing
theory
294
1. Framing
theory
1. Uses and
gratifications
(tied)
2. Cultivation
theory
3. Social learning
theory
889
1. Information
processing
models (e.g.,
limited
capacity
model)
2. Uses and
gratifications
1993–2005
13 comm.
journals; 3 other
journals
8,855
1. Cultivation
theory
2. Third-person
effect
2. Priming
theory
3. Cultivation
theory
4. Agenda
setting
3. Agenda
setting
4. Uses and
gratifications
3. Cultivation
theory
4. Agenda
setting
4. Diffusion of
innovations
theory
5. Diffusion of
innovations
theory
5. Priming
theory
5. Elaboration
Likelihood
Model
5. McLuhan’s
medium theory
6. Framing
theory
6. Third-person
effect
6. Medium
dependency
(tied)
6. Linear theory
(tied)
7. Medium
dependency
theory
8. Priming
theory (tied)
6. Limited
capacity
model
7. Framing
theory
2. (Narrative)
entertainment
theories
3. Agenda
setting
4. Selective
exposure
theory
5. Dual
processing
models (e.g.,
ELM)
6. Priming
theory
7. Laswell’s
communication
model
8. Knowledge
gap (tied)
8. Social
cognitive
theory
9. Elaboration
Likelihood
Model
7. Social
cognitive
theory
8. Diffusions of
innovations
theory
9. Theory of
reasoned
action
7. Uses and
gratifications
8. Social
cognitive
theory
9. Mood
management
theory/Hostile
media effect
20 • Patti M. Valkenburg and Mary Beth Oliver
Table 2.2 Prominent Media Effects Theories and Their Google Citations
Author(s)
Theory/Model
Citations Description
Lazarsfeld et al.
(1948)
Two-step flow
theory
9,783
Rogers (1962)
Diffusion of
innovations
94,813
Gerbner, 1969
Cultivation theory
574
Tichenor et al.
(1970)
Knowledge gap
theory
2,049
McCombs and
Shaw (1972)
Katz et al. (1973)/
Rosengren (1974)
Noelle-Neumann
(1974)
Agenda setting
theory
Uses and
gratifications theory
Spiral of silence
theory
10,181
Ball-Rokeach and
DeFleur (1976)
Media system
dependency theory
1,173
Bandura (1977,
2009)
47,049/
3,878
Berkowitz (1984)
Social learning/
social cognitive
theory
Priming theory
Davison (1983)
Third-person effect
1,875
Petty and
Cacioppo (1986)
Elaboration
Likelihood Model
9,089
Entman (1993)/
Scheufele (1999)
Framing/
Framing as a theory
of media effects
11,965/
3,816
Lang, Dhillon and Limited capacity
model
Dong (1995)/
Lang, (2000)
2,277/
719
1,696
875
279/
1,522
Argues that media effects are indirect rather than
direct and established through the personal influence
of opinion leaders.
Explains how, why, and at what rate new ideas and
technology spread among participants in a social
system.
Argues that the more time people spend ‘living’ in the
television world, the more likely they are to believe
the social reality portrayed on television.
Discusses how mass media can increase the gap in
knowledge between those of higher and lower
socioeconomic status.
Describes how news media can influence the salience
of topics on the public agenda.
Attempts to understand why and how people actively
seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs.
Discusses people’s tendency to remain silent when
their views differ from the majority view. Media
contribute to the development of majority views.
Argues that the more a person depends on media to
meet needs, the more important media will be in
a person’s life, and the more effects media will have.
Analyzes the mechanisms through which symbolic
communication through mass media influences
human thought, affect, and behavior.
Argues that media can activate cognitions and related
affect/behaviors stored in human memory.
Predicts that people tend to believe that media
messages have a greater effect on others than on
themselves.
Explains how mediated stimuli are processed (via
either the central or peripheral route), and how this
processing influences attitude formation or change.
Discusses how the media draw attention to certain
topics and place them within a field of meaning (i.e.,
frame), which in turn influences audience
perceptions.
Analyzes how people’s limited capacity for
information processing affects their memory of, and
engagement with, mediated messages.
Media Effects Theories • 21
Evergreen Media Effects Theories
As Table 2.1 reveals, six media effects theories have held up fairly well over the past decades,
and so they can rightly be named “evergreen theories.” These theories showed up as top-cited
theories in both the earliest bibliometric study (time frame 1956–2000; Bryant & Miron, 2004),
and in two to four bibliometric studies that covered subsequent periods: cultivation theory
(Gerbner, 1969), agenda setting theory (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), diffusion of innovations
theory (Rogers, 1962), uses and gratifications theory (Katz, Blumler & Gurevitch, 1973; Rosengren, 1974), social learning/social cognitive theory (1986), and media system dependency theory
(Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976).
Other theories that were identified as well-cited theories in the bibliometric studies are twostep flow theory (Lazarsfeld, Berelson & Gaudet, 1948), knowledge gap theory (Tichenor, Donohue & Olien, 1970), spiral of silence theory (Noelle-Neumann, 1974), priming theory (Berkowitz,
1984), third-person effects (Davison, 1983), the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo,
1986), framing theory (Entman, 1993), and the limited capacity model (Lang, 2000). Table 2.2
gives a short description of the well-cited media effects theories identified in the bibliometric
studies, listed according to the dates in which they were originally coined.
Changes in the Prominence of Theories over Time
When comparing the results of the five bibliometric studies summarized in Table 2.1, some theories appear to have lost their appeal over the years. One such theory is Lasswell’s (1948) model
of communication that was listed as one of the top-cited theories in Bryant and Miron’s (2004)
analysis but lost that status in the more recent bibliometric studies. The same holds for other
classic, linear media effects models, such as Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) mathematical model
of communication. Another theory that was present in Bryant and Miron, but which lost its
influence after the 1970s, is McLuhan’s medium (or sense-extension) theory (McLuhan, 1964).
By means of his aphorism, “the medium is the message,” McLuhan theorized that media exert
their influence primarily by their modalities (e.g., text, aural, audiovisual) and not so much by
the content they deliver. His theory probably lost its appeal among media effects researchers
because research inspired by his theory often failed to produce convincing results (Clark, 2012;
Valkenburg et al., 2016). Although no one can deny that modality is an essential feature of
media and technologies (Sundar & Limperos, 2013), media effects are often a result of
a combination of features, among which content plays a prominent role. It is probably no surprise that “Content is King” is still one of the more popular adages in modern marketing.
Another change over time suggested by the bibliometric studies is the “cognitive turn” in
media effects theories coined in the 1980s and 1990s. This increased attention to internal cognitive processes of media users is at least in part a result of the cognitive revolution in psychology
that started in the 1950s in reaction to behaviorism (Gardner, 1985). Behaviorism (or stimulusresponse theory) is a learning theory that argues that all human behaviors are involuntary
responses to rewarding and punishing stimuli in the environment. What happens in the mind
during exposure to these stimuli is a “black box” and is irrelevant to study.
In the 1980s and 1990s, several media effects theories have tried to open the black box
between media use and media outcomes (e.g., priming theory, Berkowitz, 1984; the limited capacity model, Lang et al., 1995; the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). At
the time, scholars started to acknowledge that in order to validly assess whether (or not) media
22 • Patti M. Valkenburg and Mary Beth Oliver
can influence individuals, they need to know why and how this happens. This new generation
of theories acknowledged that media effects are indirect (rather than direct). More specifically,
they argued that the cognitive mental states of the viewer act as a mediating (or intervening)
variable between media use and media outcomes. Indeed, these new theories recognized that
the mental states of the media user play a crucial role in explaining media effects.
In the same period, some classic media effects theories were adjusted to better acknowledge cognitions in the media effects process, sometimes by the author him or herself and sometimes by others.
For example, in Bryant and Miron’s bibliometric study, Bandura’s theory was still named social learning theory (Bandura, 1977). This early version of his theory had its roots in behaviorism, which is
evident, for example, from its unconditional emphasis on rewarding and punishing stimuli to realize
behavioral change. In the 1980s, Bandura modified his theory and renamed it social cognitive theory
to better describe how internal cognitive processes can increase or decrease learning (Bandura, 1986).
In addition, although cultivation theory is an all-time favorite and its name is still current, over the
past few decades researchers have proposed numerous adaptations to the theory to better understand
how, why, and when cultivation effects occur. For example, Shrum (1995) has argued for the integration of cultivation theory in a cognitive information processing framework. According to Potter
(2014), the adaptations of cultivation theory are so numerous and extensive that its original set of
propositions may have gotten glossed over. Indeed, there appears to be only minimal overlap between
the macro-level, sociological cultivation theory that Gerbner (1969) proposed and the more recent
micro-level, psychological interpretations of the same theory (Ewoldsen, 2017; Potter, 2014).
Upcoming Media Effects Theories
Although highly informative, together the five bibliometric studies either do not (Bryant &
Miron, 2004; Kamhawi & Weaver, 2003; Potter, 2012) or only partly cover the past decade of
media effects research (Chung et al., 2013; Walter et al., 2018). The most recent study by
Walter et al. (2018) does cover publications that appeared up to 2016. But due to their study’s
broader scope, they only focused on research papers and omitted theoretical papers from their
analysis, whereas these latter papers typically are the ones in which new media effects theories
are coined. Given the rapid changes in media technologies in the past decade, it is highly relevant to investigate whether this recent period has witnessed an upsurge in novel or adjusted
media effects theories. After all, as media technologies change, “new theories may be needed
with which to understand the communication dynamics that these technologies involve” (Walther, Van Der Heide, Hamel & Shulman, 2009, p. 230).
To identify upcoming media effects theories, we conducted an additional bibliometric analysis, in which we included the same 14 communication journals as the most extensive earlier
analysis did (Potter, 2012; see Potter & Riddle, 2007). To capture theories and research that are
particularly relevant to newer communication technologies, we included an additional communication journal: the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. To identify highly cited
articles in these 15 journals, we used the “highly cited paper” option provided by the citation
indexing service Web of Science (WoS). Highly cited papers in WoS reflect articles in the last
ten years that were ranked in the top 1% within the same field of research (e.g., communication) and published in the same year (Clarivate Analytics, 2017). An advantage of this analysis
is that, within the designated ten-year period, older and recent papers are treated equally.
Whereas in regular citation analyses older papers typically outperform more recent ones, the
algorithm of WoS controls for this “seniority bias.”
Media Effects Theories • 23
Our analysis yielded 93 highly cited papers in these 15 journals.2 Of these papers, about half
involved media effects papers, which underscores the relevance of media effects research in the
communication discipline. Most of these effects papers were empirical papers that used one or
more existing theories to guide their research. However, a small percentage (about 10%) either
introduced a new media effects theory or extended one or more existing theories. Some of these
theoretical papers focused on media use in general (e.g., the reinforcing spiral model, Slater,
2007; the Differential Susceptibility Model of Media Effects, Valkenburg & Peter, 2013). Others
dealt with specific types of media use, such as exposure to news (e.g., framing theory, Entman,
2007; the communication mediation model, Shah et al., 2017), persuasive messages (e.g., the
model of psychological reactance to persuasive messages, Rains, 2013), or communication technology (extensions of spiral of silence theory and two-step flow theory, Neubaum & Krämer,
2017; the uses and gratifications theory 2.0, Sundar & Limperos, 2013).
A first noticeable trend revealed by the highly cited media effects papers is the emergence of
theories that attempt to explain the uses and effects of media entertainment (for a similar observation, see Walter et al., 2018; Table 2.1). Some of these theories try to better understand this
type of media use by focusing on cognitive and emotional processing. They try to explain, for
example, why and how exposure to narrative entertainment leads to less resistance than traditional persuasive messages (the entertainment overcoming resistance model, Moyer-Gusé, 2008;
Moyer-Gusé & Nabi, 2010). Other theories have tried to better understand the concept of
enjoyment in response to media entertainment (Tamborini, Bowman, Eden, Grizzard & Organ,
2010), or the “eudaimonic gratifications” (i.e., media-related experiences associated with contemplation and meaningfulness) that people experience in response to thought-provoking and
poignant entertainment (Oliver & Bartsch, 2010; Oliver & Raney, 2011).
Another trend that can be inferred from the highly cited media effect studies is that the traditional gap between media effects and CMC (Computer-Mediated-Communication) studies seems
to have narrowed somewhat in the past years. Traditionally, “media effects research” and “CMC
research” were part of two subdisciplines of communication science that developed in separation
and rarely interacted with each other. Media effects research was part of the mass communication
subdiscipline, whereas CMC research belonged to the interpersonal communication subdiscipline.
Over time, many authors have argued for bridging the gap between these two subdisciplines, oftentimes without much success (for a review see Walther & Valkenburg, 2017).
However, the significant changes in media use in the past decade seemingly have been an
important impetus for the merger between media effects and CMC theories. After all, whereas
previously “media use” referred only to a handful of mass media such as newspapers, radio,
film, and television, the current definition of media use, including the one in this chapter, also
includes an array of media technologies that stimulate give-and-take interactions of individuals
or groups with technologies (e.g., games) or other individuals (e.g., social media) and that traditionally belonged to “the realm” of CMC theories and research.
In fact, several CMC studies in our collection of highly cited papers did investigate “media
effects” that fall within our definition of such effects. For example, Walther, Van der Heide,
Kim, Westerman and Tong (2008) found that CMC users’ perceptions of an individual’s online
profile are affected by the posts of friends who may have posted on the profile. We consider
such a scenario as an example of a media effect. Namely, people (i.e., the receivers) look at
online profiles (i.e., media use), and the messages or posts that they see (i.e., the messages)
affect their perceptions (i.e., the media effect). Similarly, Tong, Van Der Heide, Langwell and
Walther (2008) investigated how exposure to the number of friends listed on online profiles
24 • Patti M. Valkenburg and Mary Beth Oliver
(i.e., media use) influenced observers’ perceptions of these profiles (i.e., the media effect). Their
study showed that this system-produced information significantly influenced the cognitions and
attitudes of the receivers of these messages.
Core Features of Contemporary Media Effects Theories
The previous section revealed several changes in media effects theories over the past decades,
such as the cognitive turn in these theories as of the 1980s and 1990s, the emphasis on media
entertainment and emotional media processing, and the gradual integration of media effects
and CMC research. Generally, the more recent theories appear to be more comprehensive than
earlier ones. For example, they more often recognize the interaction between media factors
(media use, media processing) and non-media factors (e.g., dispositional, situational, and social
context factors), and they better acknowledge that media effects are indirect rather than direct.
In the next sections, we discuss how contemporary media effects theories differ from the earlier
ones. We focus on three related core features of these theories: selectivity, transactionality, and
conditionality.
Selectivity Paradigm
Selectivity is one of the oldest paradigms in communication. Already in the 1940s, Lazarsfeld et al.
(1948) discovered that individuals predominantly select media messages that serve their needs,
goals, and beliefs. These early ideas have been further conceptualized into two theories: the uses and
gratifications (Katz et al., 1973; Rosengren, 1974) and selective exposure theory (KnoblochWesterwick, 2014). Both theories are generally based on three propositions: (1) individuals only
attend to a limited number of messages out of the miscellany of messages that can potentially attract
their attention; (2) media use is a result of dispositional (e.g., needs, personality), situational
(e.g., mood), or social-context factors (e.g., the norms that prevail in the social environment);
and (3) only those messages they select have the potential to influence them (Klapper, 1960).
This influence of media use is named “obtained gratifications” in uses and gratifications theory
and “media effects” in selective exposure theory.
Early empirical research guided by uses and gratifications and selective exposure theory usually investigated only the first part of the media effects process. This research typically conceptualized media use as the outcome, whereas the consequences or “effects” of this media use were
typically ignored. Therefore, these early theories do not fit within our definition of media effects
theories. In the past decade, however, the selectivity paradigm has progressively become an integrated part of media effects theories, including the reinforcing spiral model (Slater, 2007); the
SESAM model (Knobloch-Westerwick, 2014; see Chapter 10 in this volume) and the Differential
Susceptibility to Media Effect…