Exam preparation materials

Chapter 4 • How Does the Media Effects Process Work?

A boy sits in front of two large monitors playing a game on them. He wears headphones and uses the keyboard in front of him with his left hand.

The media can affect us in many ways, and we’re often unaware of it. It’s important to keep in mind how the media influence us and how we can control that influence.

iStock.com/mikkelwilliam

Key Idea: When we understand how the media affect us, we can be more proactive in controlling those effects rather than being limited to a reactive stance in which we can only complain about negative effects after they have already occurred.

· Media Effects Are Constantly Occurring

o Manifested Effects and Process Effects

o Baseline Effects and Fluctuation Effects

· Factors Influencing Media Effects

o Baseline Factors

§ Demographics

§ Developmental Maturities

§ Cognitive Abilities

§ Personal Locus

§ Knowledge Structures

§ Sociological Factors

§ Media Exposure Habits

o Fluctuation Factors

§ Content of the Messages

§ Context of Portrayals

§ Cognitive Complexity of Content

§ Motivations

§ States

§ Degree of Identification

o Process of Influence

· Thinking about Blame

· Becoming More Media Literate

· Summary

· Further Reading

· Keeping Up to Date

· Exercises

Two boys watch the movie The Deer Hunter, a film in which American prisoners during the Vietnam War are forced by their captors to play Russian roulette. Russian roulette is a game in which one chamber in a revolver contains a bullet while the other chambers are empty. Each player in the game takes a turn pointing the gun at his head and pulling the trigger. If he is lucky and the chamber is empty, the gun does not fire and the player is saved. If he is unlucky, the chamber contains the bullet, which is then fired into his brain, killing him instantly.

Several days after watching this movie, the boys are playing in their parents’ bedroom and find a revolver under the bed. They decide to play Russian roulette. Eventually, the gun fires, killing one of the boys.

The tragic incident described above actually happened. When it was covered by the press, it stimulated debate about who was to blame. Some critics blamed the parents for not watching their children more carefully. Some critics blamed lax gun laws that allowed parents to have a gun in their house. Some blamed The Deer Hunter for teaching viewers about the game of Russian roulette. And some critics blamed the media in general for constantly presenting so much violence. What this anecdote illustrates is that when something horrible occurs, the public typically takes a reactive perspective; that is, when something happens that generates concern, the public typically reacts to the event with critics debating where blame should be placed. While this reactive perspective is better than no perspective, still better would be a proactive one in which the public becomes concerned earlier about potential risks—in this case, risks of harmful actions triggered by media portrayals—and takes steps to reduce the probability of negative occurrences.

When it comes to media effects, the media literacy perspective is much more oriented toward proactively dealing with potential risks through education than waiting until negative effects occur and assessing blame when it is too late to take steps to prevent the problem from getting to a point where people are seriously harmed. Learning how to be proactive will give you greater control over the process leading up to a negative effect. Also, it will allow you to position yourself better to achieve positive effects while you are avoiding negative ones.

To help you develop a more proactive perspective on mass media effects, this chapter will emphasize four ideas. First, it will show that media effects are not rare or isolated; instead, many different effects are constantly occurring. Second, it will illuminate the nature of the factors that shape those effects. Third, it will help you develop a broader perspective on blame. And fourth, it will show you that you can control the effects process in your own life.

MEDIA EFFECTS ARE CONSTANTLY OCCURRING

A lot of people think about media effects categorically—either an effect occurs or it does not. Instead, it is better to think of media effects in terms of probability. That is, if we could assess that the probability of a negative effect occurring is high, then we could proactively take steps to reduce that probability and thus prevent the negative effect from harming people. And if we could assess that the probability of a positive effect occurring is low, then we could better estimate how much work needs to be done to increase the probability to 100% so that the positive effect actually occurs. For example, think about what you do when you prepare for an exam in a course. You do not show up for the exam unprepared and then try to find blame when you find out that you did not do very well; instead, you try to estimate how much you need to prepare by assessing where your level of knowledge is at the beginning and then guessing how much knowledge you will need to do well on the exam—you are using probabilities in a proactive perspective. Have you ever approached media effects in the same way?

The more you understand about how the media exert their influence, the better you can help yourself avoid the negative effects and increase the occurrence of positive effects. In this section, I will show you the big picture about how the media exert their influence on all of us by showing you two distinctions. First, I make a distinction between manifested effects and process effects. Second, I show you the distinction between baselines and fluctuations.

Manifested Effects and Process Effects

There are media effects that we can easily observe; these are the manifested effects. But there are also other things going on in our minds and bodies as a consequence of media influence. The media are constantly in a process of influencing how we think, feel, and act, whether we manifest these things or not. Let’s call these other effects process effects because we are always in a process of being influenced by mass media messages. Just because we do not see an outward manifestation of these things does not mean that the media are without influence. If we limit our attention to only the manifested effects, we will greatly underestimate the degree of influence the media exert on us.

To illustrate the distinction between manifested and process effects, let’s return to the example at the beginning of this chapter. While the boys watched The Deer Hunter, they were being influenced by the messages presented there. They felt excitement over the danger of the characters playing Russian roulette. They made a judgment that Russian roulette was a cool game to play. There may have been no outward manifestation of these changes in emotions and attitudes, but this does not mean that the boys were not influenced by the media message of The Deer Hunter. It was not until the boys discovered a revolver and started playing Russian roulette that there was a manifestation. If a parent had realized there were process effects occurring and did something to reduce those process effects, the boys could have been prevented from proceeding to manifest such a horrible effect.

The public and media critics are fixated on manifested effects. However, if we are to regard media influence from a media literacy perspective, we need to think more in terms of process effects. The more we understand about process effects, the more we can control media influence. Let’s examine this in more detail by moving on to consider two kinds of process effects: baseline and fluctuation.

Baseline Effects and Fluctuation Effects

To illustrate the important difference between baseline effects and fluctuation effects, look at Figure 4.1. The axes in those figures represent time (the horizontal axis) and the degree of risk of experiencing an effect (the vertical axis). The baseline represents our typical degree of risk that continues over time (see A in Figure 4.1). Every once in a while, something will happen to temporarily change that risk level. Notice that in B, there is a sudden spike and then a rapid return to the baseline; this illustrates a fluctuation effect. The fluctuation is usually temporary; after a brief period of time, the risk level returns to the baseline.

These six graphs show the baseline and fluctuation effects over time with occasional spikes in each graph that shows the temporary change in the risk level. Description

Figure 4.1 Baseline and Fluctuation Effects

Now, let’s add in the idea of a manifestation level. Think of the manifestation level as similar to a water level. Imagine yourself watching the surface of a lake, when suddenly a fish breaks through the surface and then dives back underwater. Until you see that fish break through the surface, you are not sure if there are any fish in the lake. Just because you do not see them does not mean there are no fish—as well as turtles, eels, plankton, and even a Loch Ness monster—swimming around underwater. Observing what happens occasionally above the water level does not tell you much about all the processes that are constantly taking place under the water. The same is true with media effects. There are many process effects (baseline effects and fluctuation effects) constantly occurring under the manifestation level (see C in Figure 4.1), so we are prevented from observing them directly. Every once in a while, a fluctuation effect will increase enough to break through the manifestation level (see D).

When we talk about media effects, we typically only mean fluctuation effects that break through the manifestation level; that is, those changes in behavior or knowledge that we can observe (see D in Figure 4.1). For example, while watching television, we notice that we are going to the kitchen to get a bag of potato chips to eat after watching a commercial for that product. Or we watch a news program covering a campaign and notice that our attitude toward one of the candidates has changed. These are examples of effects we can observe; they have clearly manifested themselves. But if we limit ourselves to considering only fluctuations that have broken through to the manifestation level, we ignore the opportunity to learn about a great deal of effects activity that takes place underneath the manifestation level—these are the process effects.

When considering process effects, it is important to think in terms of baselines. As I said above, the baseline is the typical level of risk for an effect. It is fairly stable over time, but it can gradually increase or gradually decrease. Baselines are shaped by long-term conditioning. Some people are conditioned in such a way that their baseline is very close to the manifestation level (see E in Figure 4.1), so it does not take much of a fluctuation effect to spike above the manifestation level. In contrast, other people have been conditioned in such a way that their baseline is very far away from the manifestation level, so it is unlikely that any one media exposure will generate a large enough fluctuation to spike above the manifestation level so it can be observed (see F).

Compare & Contrast Baseline Effects and Fluctuation Effects

Compare: Baseline effects and fluctuation effects are the same in the following ways:

· Both refer to patterns of effects from media exposures.

· Both can be explained by combinations of factors of influence.

Contrast: Baseline effects and fluctuation effects are different in the following ways:

· Baseline effects indicate long-term influence patterns whereas fluctuation effects indicate immediate effects.

· Baseline effects indicate how close a person typically is to a manifestation level for an effect being observed whereas fluctuation effects indicate how strong an influence is on triggering a temporary movement off a baseline.

FACTORS INFLUENCING MEDIA EFFECTS

Every day, our baselines are being shaped by factors from the media and factors in our own lives. Some of those factors increase the likelihood of a particular effect being manifested while other factors decrease that likelihood (see the arrows in Figure 4.2). If there are more factors that increase the likelihood of manifestation, then the baseline will gradually ascend to higher levels of risk, but if the factors that decrease the likelihood are more powerful over time, then the baseline will gradually descend. Notice that in Figure 4.2, there are more upward arrows than downward arrows; this indicates that there are more influences that serve to increase the likelihood of manifestation compared to the influences that push the likelihood lower; as a result, over time, the baseline gradually increases.

This graph shows an upward-sloping baseline over time, with six arrows pointing to it at even intervals from below and two arrows pointing to it from above. The arrows from above are between the second and third, and the fifth and six arrows below.

Figure 4.2 Factors Influencing the Baseline

What are the factors that influence the media effects process? Media scholars have produced a huge research literature that has identified hundreds of such factors. In this section, I will highlight a small set of those factors that are generally regarded as the most influential. First, I will show you seven factors that have been found as most influential in shaping baselines. Second, I will show you six factors that have the strongest influence on triggering fluctuations.

Baseline Factors

Baselines are most affected by a person’s characteristics that remain relatively stable over time. This is not to say that they never change; these factors can change over time, but that change is typically gradual and take years—not minutes—to show change.

Demographics

In the early days of media effects research, it was a popular practice for scholars to test demographic variables (especially biological sex, ethnicity, age, household income, and educational level) as predictors of media effects. These demographic attributes of individuals were generally found to be useful in explaining differences in exposure patterns. For example, young children were found to prefer certain kinds of media and particular content that was different from what adults preferred. Also, people living in households with lower income and educational levels were found to prefer certain kinds of media and particular content that was different from people living in households with higher levels of income. The reasoning was that different exposure patterns would predict differences in effects, and this is what the research typically found (Berelson & Steiner, 1964).

Over time, the value of using demographic indicators to predict patterns of media exposure and media effects has eroded with the proliferation of media and content choices. For example, there is no longer a dominant pattern of media exposure practices that is common among all females and that differs substantially from a dominant pattern of media exposure practices that is common among all males. Researchers shifted away from testing the ability of attribute variables such as demographics to predict media effects and moved toward testing the ability of active variables (Jeffres, 1997). For example, researchers moved away from testing the attribute-type variable of chronological age and instead tested the active-type variable of developmental maturity. Likewise, other attribute-type variables such as sex, ethnicity, income, and education were replaced by active-type variables such as cognitive abilities, personal locus, knowledge structures, sociological factors, and media exposure habits, which were found to be much better predictors of media effects.

Developmental Maturities

We mature cognitively, emotionally, and morally as we age. When we are very young, our minds, emotions, and moral reasoning are beginning to develop and thus have a lower ceiling of capacity than when these are more fully developed. As we mature in these areas, we are able to process more information and to apply more sophisticated skills well. This gives us the capacity to move our baselines closer to the manifestation level for the effects we want to experience and away from the manifestation level for effects we want to avoid.

As children mature, they expand their cognitive abilities. That is, they are less influenced by a single, salient feature of a message and can process many more elements in a message, which allows them to understand context more fully; they are not limited to concrete thinking but get better at making inferences accurately; they are more sophisticated in making distinctions between fantasy and reality; and perhaps most importantly, they can think about thinking itself—that is, they can engage in meta-thinking—which helps them monitor their media exposures and the potential effects those exposures have on them (Wilson & Drogos, 2009). Thus, as children age, they are more capable of staying in a self-reflexive exposure state where they can process media messages and learn from them. This makes it possible for them to exert greater control over the shape of their baselines as well as over fluctuations from those baselines.

As for emotional reactions, people at lower levels of maturity are limited in their capacity to control their emotions and behavior. Smith and Wilson (2002) found that fear reactions from news are affected by age. Older children are more likely to comprehend news stories, and this leads them to be more frightened by the reported happenings. Also, emotional reactions to violent action/adventure films are influenced by humor, but there is a gender difference. For example, research has found that females find that wisecracking heroes add to their emotional distress, whereas male viewers find that wisecracking heroes reduce their distress a bit (King, 2000).

Cognitive Abilities

The developmental maturities suggest potentialities; that is, at a given age, there are limits to what people can understand and how they go about reasoning. But developmental potentialities are not the same as actual abilities; that is, not everyone who has the same potential exhibits the same level of cognitive abilities, such as IQ and the seven skills of media literacy.

The seven women who star in the show, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills are seen posing for photographs in front of a backdrop with various logos seen in rows on it.

Is it real? Viewers without actual experience as a Beverly Hills housewife may find it hard to judge the accuracy of media portrayals on the reality series The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

David Livingston/Getty Images

Personal Locus

Recall from Chapter 2 that the personal locus is the combination of an individual’s goals and drives for media exposures. This may be the most important factor influencing a person’s baseline because it interacts so strongly with the other baseline factors discussed in this section. Furthermore, it determines the seventh factor, which is a person’s media exposure habits. When a personal locus is strong, the person has the drive energy to make the most of their maturities, skills, knowledge structures, sociological factors, and lifestyle.

People who have a strong personal locus have more awareness of the effects process, so they have constructed their baselines to conform to their personal goals. This means that there are particular effects they want to achieve with the help of the media; for these effects, they have constructed a baseline fairly close to the manifestation level so that a single exposure to the proper media message can achieve the effect. People with a strong personal locus are also aware that there are some effects that they do not want to manifest within themselves, so they construct baselines for those effects far from the manifestation level. To illustrate, let’s say that Jane and Phyllis both have a strong need to make friends. Jane is acutely aware of this need and uses the media to satisfy her need for friendship. She joins Facebook and actively searches for friends. She texts her new friends to find out more about their interests and consciously gravitates to those people with whom she shares the most interests. Over time, Jane has used the media to grow her circle of friends, and with her continued interactions, she builds more meaningful friendships both on Facebook and in the real world. In contrast, Phyllis feels lonely, so she gravitates toward television series, where she can identify with certain kinds of characters. Over time, she gets pulled more into the world of those fictional characters where she feels part of their lives. However, since these media experiences are not interactive, Phyllis is only observing others and not building her friendship skills; when she meets a person in real life, it is very difficult for her to interact in a friendly manner and her friendships are not manifested.

Knowledge Structures

People who have accumulated a large amount of knowledge learn the most from media, provided that the information is well organized in their minds. When people have a well-developed knowledge structure on a particular topic, they are better able to acquire more information quickly, assess its credibility, and incorporate that new information more effectively as they develop an even more elaborate and useful knowledge structure.

With many topics, we have no choice but to rely primarily on the media as a source of information. This is what makes the media so powerful as a socializing influence—we cannot check out the media information by comparing it to information from other sources, such as real-life experiences. For example, almost no one knows what it feels like to be a professional athlete. Sports interview shows and websites can give us some insights about what the life of a professional athlete might be like, but very few people have an opportunity to check those insights out for themselves. This is true for almost all content of news; viewers have no real-world experience about being a political leader, a celebrity coming out of rehab, or a crime scene investigator. The same is true for so-called reality programming; viewers have no real-world experience about being a Beverly Hills housewife, 16 and pregnant, or singing their way to becoming an American idol. And this is certainly true for fictional programming; viewers have no real-world experience about being a vampire, a superhero, or even a surgeon, a lawyer, or a police officer. Because viewers do not have an opportunity to check out these things in their real lives, it is impossible for them to make valid judgments about how accurate these media portrayals are. When people are asked if television entertainment is credible and a reasonable representation of the way people live, most people say yes. As you increase your amount of viewing, your perceptions of the reality of television entertainment programs increase. You are more likely to believe that the real world is like the television world. This is especially true among children and those who have the least amount of variety of real-world experiences.

Sociological Factors

The degree of socialization is related to the amount of influence the media will have. People who have been consistently socialized with particular values for a long period of time will have a relatively stable baseline; that is, the baseline will be very resistant to change. It is unlikely that the media will be able to exert a strong enough influence to cause a fluctuation, especially one big enough to break through the manifestation level. For example, if a person is a senior citizen and has been exposed consistently to anti-aggression values all her life from parents, friends, educational institutions, church, and so on, she has a baseline far away from a behavioral fluctuation of aggression. She could watch an entire evening of highly aggressive media messages and not move anywhere near the level of manifesting aggressive behavior herself. If, on the other hand, another person has been taught to fight back by his parents, been taught that only the strong survive, and been shown by his friends that the only way to get respect is to fight, he has a baseline fairly close to a manifestation level for aggression, and it would take very little media influence to push him above that manifestation level.

We learn norms by observing other people in real life and through the media. The media present many characters who communicate a great deal of social information to viewers. These messages are especially influential on the socialization of children because young people have less experience in real life to counterbalance the media portrayals. In addition, many adults have very limited real-world information to counterbalance media portrayals, so they too are susceptible to media influence. For example, people who have never served in government, never become active in a political party, and never attended a political rally depend on the media to provide them with all their information about how the political system works and the qualities of the candidates running for office. These people with highly limited political experience have no way to check the media portrayals against the real world, so they must accept the stories the media present as accurate.

Media Exposure Habits

Each of us has a set of media exposure habits that focuses our attention on certain media and on certain types of messages presented by those media. For example, some people like to surf the internet and go to all kinds of sites indiscriminately. In this case, they are exposed to a very wide range of messages, and no single type of message is likely to have much effect on their baseline. In contrast, other people might spend all their time playing violent video games and watching action/adventure movies. These people are likely to have a baseline very close to the manifestation level for aggressive behavior.

Fluctuation Factors

While understanding where your baselines are in the processes of influence, it is also important to monitor the factors that can trigger a fluctuation off your baseline. In this section, I present three types of factors about the media as well as three types of factors about you that are important in assessing whether fluctuations will occur or not.

Content of the Messages

It matters what you expose yourself to in a particular media session. Let’s say you have a habitual exposure pattern of horror and action/adventure shows, and your baseline is very high for an aggressive effect. If you watch another hour of video, will that be enough to push you above the manifestation level? It depends on what content you watch. If you watch a comedy in which the characters help each other and the themes are prosocial, then you are likely to move away from the manifestation level. But if you watch a highly violent program, then you will be more likely to move toward the manifestation level.

Context of Portrayals

The meaning of the messages arises from the way they are portrayed, especially social lessons. When the characters in a story are portrayed as being highly attractive, when their actions are portrayed as being justified, and when they are rewarded for those actions, then audiences will likely identify with those attractive characters, experience the action from their point of view, and learn from this vicarious experience. Audiences are likely to accept the meaning of the experience that was portrayed by those characters.

This is why the portrayal of violence in the media is so dangerous. The “good guys” are as likely as the “bad guys” to commit acts of violence. The good guys’ violent acts are almost always portrayed as being justified, and they are rarely punished. The meaning of violence, then, is that if you are a good guy, violence is an essential and successful means of resolving conflict. Because each viewer regards himself or herself as a good guy, viewers learn that it is okay for them to use violence.

Cognitive Complexity of Content

When a media message makes few cognitive demands on the audience, people can process its meaning easier (Lang et al., 1999). The more demands the narrative makes on a person’s working memory, the less well facts will be comprehended and remembered (Fisch, 2000). For example, children remember news better from television than from print, regardless of their reading proficiency. This is because television news can provide information in several channels at once (pictures, words, and sound), and when the information is semantically redundant—that is, it complements and reinforces each other—learning is achieved better (Gunter et al., 2000). Children’s comprehension of educational content from media messages is dependent on the degree to which the information is central to the narrative. Facts that are tangential to the main flow of a message are learned less well than facts that are central to the message. Also, people remember information better when emotional cues are also used (Bucy & Newhagen, 1999).

Motivations

When we have a conscious need for a particular kind of experience, we will actively seek out this type of experience in the media, and the chance of us learning from this experience is high. When we are passive, learning can still occur, but it is not as likely. Also, people who have achieved a higher level of education and who have a higher level of intelligence are more motivated to seek out information from the media. These people select the information that has the greatest utility to them.

States

A state is a temporary drive or emotional reaction that occurs in response to some stimuli. Oftentimes, something will happen in our lives that will cause us to feel angry or frustrated. This state can interact with media content and lead to certain effects. For example, someone who is frustrated and then views violence will be much more likely to behave aggressively than if only one of these conditions is present.

The media frequently alter our psychological states. Perhaps the most important of these states is arousal. When we are aroused, our attention is more concentrated and the experience is more vivid for us. We will remember the portrayals more and will be more likely to act while aroused (Comstock et al., 1978; Zillmann, 1991). Producers of media messages know that certain production techniques tend to arouse audiences. These techniques include fast cuts, quick motion within a frame, loud music, and sound effects. Also, certain narrative conventions (such as suspense, fear, life-threatening violence, and erotica) can lead to arousal.

Actor Dwayne Johnson is seen holding a large blow torch with a cable attached to it on the street from the movie, The Fast and the Furious.

The Fast and the Furious franchise uses production techniques such as explosions, car stunts, and life-threatening violence at the hands of actor Dwayne Johnson to arouse viewers.

AF archive/Alamy Stock Photo

Although most states are regarded as physiological or emotional ones, there are also cognitive states, and these are especially important in media literacy. If you find yourself confronting information about a topic that you have no context or background information for, you will likely find yourself in a state of ignorance. This cognitive state of ignorance is usually associated with emotional states of frustration or despair, which are emotions we try to avoid. But if we regard ignorance on a topic as an opportunity rather than a burden, then we are more likely to find value in the state of ignorance and use it as a motivator to learn more, which is likely to lead to positive emotional states triggered by the pleasure of achievement.

Degree of Identification

Identification with particular characters in media stories is also a key factor in the effects process because we typically pay more attention to those characters with whom we identify. We can form strong attachments to certain characters, depending on what those characters do and say (Hoffner & Cantor, 1991). The stronger the attachment, the stronger the probability of an effect (Bandura, 1986, 1994) that will show up as a fluctuation.

We become involved in media-depicted events through a psychological relationship with characters in a two-step process. First, we make a judgment about how much we are attracted to the character. Attraction is linked to how much we feel that the character is like us or how much we would like to be like that character. Second, we engage in an “as if” experience in which we imagine ourselves in the role of the character. We frequently take these two steps while following stories in the media and this increases the degree to which stories can affect us.

Process of Influence

In the previous two sections, I laid out many groups of individual factors that have been found to influence the baseline as well as trigger fluctuations off that baseline. While each of those factors was presented individually, you should understand that rarely does a factor act alone so that it is solely responsible for a fluctuation or a baseline. Instead, factors work together in a complex process so that combinations of factors must be present at certain times in order for changes to occur.

THINKING ABOUT BLAME

Let’s return once again to the Russian roulette situation from the beginning of this chapter and readdress the question: Should the media be blamed for the death of the boy who shot himself? This question is continually asked whenever we hear about a killing that is modeled after a portrayal in a movie, a television show, or a video game. A death resulting from someone imitating something they saw in the media typically triggers public discourse that is polarized, where different groups will blame other groups. For example, parents will blame the media. The media will blame the gun industry, a lack of regulations on gun ownership, and the parents for leaving a loaded revolver where the boys could play with it. The gun industry will blame the parents and the boys, saying that guns do not kill people; people kill people. The arguments about who deserves all the blame are nonproductive. The reality is that many factors contributed to the eventual death of the boy, so blame needs to be apportioned across all these factors.

We need to understand that in our complex society, seldom does a single element cause an effect. There are always many influences, and those multiple influences work in combination. This is not hard for us to understand when it comes to knowing what causes a fire, for example. A fire requires fuel, oxygen, and heat. All three must be present to have a fire. With media effects, there are many factors about the media portrayal, factors in the life of the people involved, and factors about the real-world situation that all contribute to a probability that an effect will break through the manifestation level. No one of these factors is responsible by itself.

Who is to blame? It depends on how you ask the question. If the question is, “Should the gun manufacturers be held solely responsible for crimes committed using their guns?” the answer is no, of course not, because there are other influences involved. If the question instead is, “Are the gun manufacturers blameless?” the answer again is no, because their guns have been essential ingredients in many violent crimes. The key here is to recognize multiple influences and not allow any one of the influences to be absolved simply because it was not the only influence.

BECOMING MORE MEDIA LITERATE

If I had to summarize the media effects process in one word, that word would be complex. There are many factors about the media, their messages, and audience members that continually interact in various ways to explain media influence. However, this does not mean that you need to understand all the nuances of the media effects research literature in order to be media literate. You can significantly increase your level of media literacy by keeping in mind four key ideas presented in these effects chapters. First, remember that there is a wide variety of media effects that vary by time, valence, intentionality, and type. Second, be aware that media effects are constantly occurring even when they cannot be easily observed. When an effect is manifested, it is usually a fluctuation off a person’s baseline. The appearance of the effect is explained by both the nature of a person’s baseline and the particulars of the fluctuation.

Third, many factors are constantly shaping each person’s baseline on each of these effects. The more you know about these factors, the more you can understand where your baseline is on each effect; that is, you can more accurately assess your probability of experiencing an effect.

Fourth, many media effects are positive. Use what you know from the above three ideas to shape your baselines for positive effects in such a way that it will take little effort for a fluctuation to manifest itself. Conversely, shape your baselines for negative effects in such a way that it will be rare that any fluctuation will result in the manifestation of those negative effects. Use this information to be proactive in controlling media effects so that you are able to maximize their positive effects while minimizing their negative effects.

Let’s see how well you are able to apply what you have learned in this chapter by undertaking Exercise 4.1. Consider each of the six short scenarios and see how well you can use the information you learned in this chapter to speculate about where the baseline is likely to be in each case. Then think about what factors must have occurred to create a fluctuation off that baseline.

Now let’s make the exercise more real to you by identifying a media effect that you have experienced that you did not like (see Exercise 4.2). Think of yourself as a psychotherapist who will analyze your personality, habits, and environment to construct a profile of all the factors that likely led to that effect. At this point, don’t worry about whether the scholarly research supports your profile; instead, use your native intelligence and what you have learned in this chapter to make a reasonable argument for a set of factors.

SUMMARY

Media effects are constantly occurring in a complex process. Perhaps it would be useful to think of this in a metaphorical way to make these ideas more accessible. We are all familiar with the idea that there is always weather and that its effect on us is constantly changing.

The Weather as an Analogy for Media Effects

Media effects are similar to the weather in many ways. Weather is always there, but it can take many forms. Sometimes it makes you shiver, sometimes it makes you wet, and sometimes it gives you a painful sunburn—but it is all weather. Weather is very difficult to predict with any precision because the factors that explain the weather are large in number and their interaction is very complex. Supercomputers are used to try to handle all the factors in highly complex models. They help increase the predictive accuracy on the broad level; that is, they can tell us how much rainfall and how many sunny days a particular locale will have this year. But they cannot tell us with accuracy who will get wet on which days. Although the Weather Bureau cannot control the weather, we as individuals can control the weather’s effect on us. We can carry an umbrella, use sunscreen, or close ourselves off from elements we don’t like. And we can run out to embrace a beautiful day.

Similar to the weather, the media are pervasive and always around us. Also like the weather, media influences are difficult to predict because the factors that explain such effects are large in number and their interaction is very complex. We use powerful computers to examine large sets of variables when trying to make such predictions, and we have learned much about media effects. We know that certain types of messages will lead to certain kinds of opinions and behaviors in general, but we cannot predict with precision whose opinion or behavior will be changed. And as individuals, we do not have much power to control the media, but we have a great deal of power (if we will use it) to control the media’s effects on us. To know how to use this power, we must be sufficiently literate about media effects.

There is an important difference between the weather and the influence of the media on us. With the weather, we all recognize its different forms and know when they are happening. It is fairly easy to tell the difference between rain, fog, and snow because there is tangible evidence whenever these occur. But with media influence, the effects are often difficult to perceive until someone points them out. Then they become easier to spot. We need to train ourselves to be able to spot manifestations of media effects—positive as well as negative. And we need to be sensitive to the fact that there are also process effects in addition to manifested effects.

By now, you should have a basic knowledge structure about the wide variety of media effects and how the effects process works. This will give you a much better perspective on controlling the process and thereby achieving the effects you want. However, this chapter cannot give you much detail about all the different factors that change the probabilities of all the media effects that could occur. While I have alerted you to the different types of factors that have been found to influence many effects, you need to elaborate on this basic knowledge structure that this chapter presented by taking additional media effects courses and doing some additional reading of the relatively large literatures of media effects research studies.