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Critical mass communications research and media effects: the problem of the disappearing audience FRED

FEJES*

As is evident from even a quick glance at the major research approaches over the last thirty years, the major focus of traditional mainstream communication research has been on media effects. Fueled by popular concern and financed by private and public monies, effects research has almost become synonymous with mass communication research. In the minds of many, including some communication scholars, the major-if not only-significant question, that communication research should address is what effect do the media have on the audience. After all, it is the presumed power of the media to capture and sway the hearts, minds and behavior of the national public that account for both the fear and anxiety, and the hope and excitement, with which the media are regarded. Within the community of American communication scholars, the issue of effects has been most often formulated in terms of behaviorist interpretations of human nature and society. Drawing upon the dominant behaviorist ideas in psychology, sociology, political science and their hybrids, communication researchers generally approach the study of effects utilizing some type of stimulus-response model of human behavior and media impact. Among individual researchers approaches differ greatly. Nonetheless the goal of such study is to produce some science-like knowledge about the role of the media in human affairs. And this science-like knowledge more likely than not is cast in a behaviorist mold. While a behaviorist focus on media effects still dominates American research, there has emerged recently a new line of communications inquiry and work. This new approach, often termed the critical communications perspective, seeks to shift sharply the context of the discussion and research about the relations among the media, society and the individual. In contrast to the behaviorist orientation of mainstream communications research, critical research seeks to examine the relationship among media, communications and social power / Also in contrast to traditional American research, much of the impetus for this new research perspective comes from researchers in Great Britain and on the Continent. Although it is difficult to generalize or define precisely the character of this new school of thought, it is evident that researchers with this perspective locate their work and debates within the broad tradition of a Marxist critique of industrialized capitalist societies. Drawing upon fields of scholarship and research as diverse as sociology, economics, semiotics, political philosophy, literary studies, psychology and history, critical researchers seek to examine the role the media play in maintaining the class

* Department of Communications, Wayne State University.

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stratified societies of the Western capitalist world. Rejecting as forms of self-delusion the claims of value-neutrality of American behaviorist research, researchers in the critical school explicitly acknowledge the Marxist based assumptions about society and humankind built into their research. These scholars believe that the political and epistemological commitments that underlie their work are as much open to examination and debate as their research methods and conclusions. While this new critical perspective encompasses a wide variety of theoretical and empirical concerns and approaches, following Curran, Gurevitch and Woollacott (1982), it is possible to define three major research approaches within it. The first, the structuralist approach to media analysis, draws upon ideas found in linguistics, anthropology, semiotics and psychoanalysis. The major goal has been the study of the system and processes of signification and representation in the media. Empirical structuralist research focuses on an analysis of media texts such as films, television programs, advertisements and so forth. With an Althusserian notion of ideology that sees ideology less as a simple, if somewhat distorted, reflection of the economic base and more as an optic through which one frames the world, structuralist research seeks to examine the implicit catagories of thought in media texts through which the individual experiences the world. The second major critical approach, the political economy approach focuses upon the economic structure and processes of media production (Murdock and Golding, 1977). The major thrust of this research has been the study of the trend toward increasing monopolization and concentration of control within the media industries. Relying on a more classic notion of ideology utilizing a base and superstructure model, the political economy approach sees the media producing and disseminating a false consciousness which legitimates the class interests of those who own and control the media. While this is seen as the media’s ultimate effect, most of the research taking this approach concentrates on an investigation of the structures of control within the media. The third critical perspective, cultural studies, is similar to the structural approach in that it focuses on the media message. However, in contrast to the autonomy the structuralist approach ascribes to such messages, the cultural approach assumes that media content and impact are shaped by the societal environment in which media messages are produced and received (Hall, 1980). The cultural approach also rejects the simple base-superstructure division by which political economy scholars explain cultural phenomena. This approach argues that culture is a far more complex dialectic between social being and social consciousness than the metaphor of base-superstructure would allow. In the media message one sees an important expression of this dialectic. Taken together these critical perspectives constitute a radical departure from traditional American communications research. The major differences between the two streams of research extend from basic assumptions about the nature and purpose of the research enterprise to methods, and finally to the concepts imbedded in scholarly discourse. In the behaviorist tradition such concepts such as ideology, and hegemony are regarded as meaningless if not inherently polemical and anti-scientific while in the critical tradition they are central. Historically, the behaviorist research tradition has been mainly concerned with the effects of the media. The critical perspective, on the other hand, focuses either on the control and production of media messages or their content in the context of examining how the media develop a specific ideology that supports a class-dominated society.

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One can go to great lengths in detailing and discussing the differences between the behaviorist and critical traditions. Nonetheless one is struck with the fact that the major element underlying traditional behaviorist research-a concern with effects-seems to play such a minor role in critical research. A number of explanations can be offered for this situation. Critical researchers can argue that by focusing on control, production and the content of media messages, they are examining aspects of the media process overlooked by behaviorist researchers. In slighting the issue of effects, they are only reciprocating the behaviorist’s longstanding neglect of media structure. Moreover casting their research in a Marxist context of power and ideology, they are raising issues about the relations between media and society that are rarely present in more traditional research. According to this view, a concern with effects has a very low priority on the theoretical and research agenda. Another possible reason for the lack of attention to effects is that critical research is still at an early stage of development. The conceptual and theoretical framework is still being articulated. For example, given the major differences in the notion of ideology among the structuralist, political economy and culturalist approaches, critical research is as yet unable to advance upon the terrain of effects. Only when there emerges a theoretical consensus about the nature of ideology, and thus the character of critical communications research, can the whole issue of effects be

addressed. of explanations revolve around the fact that, given the theoretical and orientation of critical research, the notion of effects, as generally conceived, is not so much wrong-headed as irrelevant. In critical research, to the extent that effects are dealt with at all, they are subsumed under the more general heading of ideology and hegemony. The impact of the media on the audience is seen in terms of creating and maintaining a hegemonic order. The concepts of ideology and hegemony, much like the Marxist notion of alienation, are structural concepts that cannot be easily translated into analytical notions. They cannot be simply operationalized in terms of discrete variables open to ordinal or higher levels of measurement. Moreover, if somehow overcoming these difficulties, one attempts to study the ideological effects of the media on the audience, one is faced with a predicament. As Bennett notes, the operations of ideology are not inherently invisible. Another

set

assumptions

to

be

(T)heir invisibility is a condition of then effectiveness They have to be made visible (in order studied) It therefore follows that the proposition that the media are influential in proposmg

ideologically denved definitions of reality is one that cannot be dependent for its validation solely upon the subjective reports of those whose consciousness is said to be produced, without their being aware of it, by this process It is a proposition that would automatically lose its theoretical (1982b’ 298) power were it to be operationalized in this way Finally critical researchers can argue that the lack of attention to effects is more certam

apparent than real. There are examples, although not very many, of researchers working within the critical perspective using audience response data in examining audience adaptation of media-relayed ideologies (Hartman, 1979; Morley, 1980). Moreover, it can be argued that the critical researchers do focus on effects, but different kinds of effects. Studies such as Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers ( 1973) and Hall et al. ’s Policing the Crisis (1978), for example, examine the role the media play in an ’amplification spiral’ or a ’signification spiral’ in which a particular incident or phenomenon comes to be

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associated through the media with a larger problem of social crisis. As noted by Hall et al. in their analysis of the British media’s presentation of mugging, other institutions such as the police and the courts are mobilized by the media and in turn act upon the media, expanding the scope of the original phenomenon and increasing the importance and the intensity of the meanings ascribed to it by the media. The end effect in general is a re-enforcement and expansion of the existing institutional means of social control and a clearer definition of deviant and acceptable behavior. In this case the effect is seen as being reciprocal between the media and the other institutions in society as they create a spiral of signification that in turn reinforces the existing social and political order (Bennett, 1982b). Aside from having an effect on institutions, the media can be seen as having a major effect on social collectivities and social movements. Gitlin’s (1980) study of the interaction between the media and the American New Left is a very good example of how the notion of effects can be conceptualized in a manner different from that of traditional behaviorist research. All of these reasons may be advanced to explain why critical communication research does not focus on effects as traditionally conceived. And all of these reasons make a certain amount of sense. Yet one cannot help but wonder whether, in the long run, the tendency against looking at traditional audience-centered notions of effects will ultimately prove debilitating to the optimum development of a critical perspective. There is an assumption in critical research that the impact of the media is powerful. In some ways, perhaps, the situation of critical research is analogous to research on propaganda conducted by Lasswell and others, before and during World War II. Both assume the media are powerful. Thus the focus is away from an analysis of the media effect and more toward an analysis of message content and, in the case of critical research, message production. Yet there is a danger that for critical communications research, as with propaganda research, the audience will be regarded as passive. As more and more research is focused towards message content and production, the audience will become more and more invisible in the theory and research of critical scholars. For critical communications research, there is a distinct danger of a disappearing audience. For example in a discussion about the reality defining role of the media as conceived by critical researchers, Bennett (1982b) argues that there is often a duality present in such conceptions. There is a ’media’ reality and the ’real’ reality of the world which the media interprets. According to Bennett this leads to one seeing ’media’ reality primarily as a distortion of ’real’ reality. This view deemphasizes the complex dialectic of signification that occurs in the process of the production of the media message. Whether one accepts Bennett’s point or finds the notion of duality more compatible, one is struck by how another reality, the reality of the audience, is downplayed. The style, manner and rules by which the audience incorporate, accommodate, alter or reject media reality as part of their own everyday reality are overlooked. If one goal of critical communications research is to develop a politics of the media where popular struggle over the production and character of media presentations is developed, it is quite odd that so little attention is paid to the audience and their relation to the media. Most critical researchers have rejected most if not all of the behavioral tradition of effects research as either inherently uninteresting and/or biased in terms of the liberal pluralist assumptions built into it. Very few can deny that much of such

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research is marked by a dearth of stimulating questions, ideas or prose; or that neoMarxist critique of behaviorism in the social sciences applies with special vigor to behaviorism in communication research. However, a total and blanket rejection by critical scholars of the behaviorist tradition of effects research is hasty and ill advised. If critical researchers admit the need to develop some conception of the audience and media impact on the audience, they will at some point have to confront the body of traditional effects research. Most likely such a confrontation will assume the form of a thorough-going critique of such research. Ideally critical researchers will learn from this what the failings of such research were and such mistakes will not be repeated again in critical research. However, there is another reason critical researchers should investigate traditional behavioral effects research. The traditional field of effects research may not be totally devoid of ideas or insights helpful to critical communication scholars. Current mainstream research is beginning to concentrate more and more on the learning and informational effects of the media as opposed to individual persuasive effects. There is a growing realization that what has been regarded in the past as the effects of the media are more truthfully to be seen as the effects of the specific manner in which production and distribution of media messages are organized (Hirsch, 1978). Also current research is beginning to develop a view of the media as more powerful than a previous limited effects model would allow. Thus, it seems that mainstream research is becoming more relevant to some of the issues and concerns of critical communications research. If critical researchers want to develop a conception and analysis of the audience and its relation to the media, the field of traditional research should not be dismissed out of hand. Not all types of mainstream research are of equal value or use to critical research. Theories and models of media effect developed in the context of psychological models tend to have little relevance at this point for critical scholars. Such models, because of their focus on individual psychological level phenomena, often tend to ignore the larger social and historical environment in which the individual exists and in which media messages are produced. Such models tend to be ahistorical, seeking to define universal traits about human behavior. Moreover, they generally neglect the dimension of power that is central to a critical approach. Mainstream models that are based on sociological theory are of more relevance as they deal with media impact in a larger social context. Over the last ten years four sociological-based models of media impact in particular have been developed that are germane to the concerns of critical research. These are the agenda setting, the spiral of silence, the knowledge gap and the media dependency models. As McQuail and Windahl (1981, pp. 60-61) have noted, these models view effects as long-term and indirect. They differ from other behavioral models as they center on such issues as the informal learning of social roles ; the tendency of the media to convey implicit ideology, the formation of the climate of opinion; the differential of knowledge in society; and long term changes in culture, institutions and social structure. In the remainder of this paper these four models will be discussed both in order to.present their basic and essential features and to outline their relevance to critical communications research. It is not argued that these models be accepted fully and at face value. As shall be evident in the discussion, they have many deficiencies. Nonetheless critical researchers will find some elements of these models helpful to their thinking about audiences and media impact.

. &dquo;

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Some critical researchers (cf. Gitlin, 1978) have noted that the agenda setting model presents a promising if still somewhat narrow approach to a consideration of media effects. The basic idea behind the model is that the media develop agendas for the audience (McCombs, 1981). The media select from a wide range of possible issues and topics and, by giving them differential attention and emphasis, generally measured in terms of volume and frequency of media space or time, define for the audience the relative importance of each. The model is tested by comparing the emphasis and attention the media give to certain issues with the emphasis and attention the audience give to the same issues. The impact of the media, then, is not what it tells people to think, but what it tells people to think about. Figure 1 summarizes the model.

Figure

1.

The

agenda-settmg model; matters given most attention m the media will be perceived as the most important (McQuail and Wmdahl, 1981)

model has been influential within the mainstream American tradition, there has been an ongoing debate about the empirical validity of studies designed to test it (Becker, 1982). Nonetheless, critical researchers should note that the agenda-setting model and research represent one attempt to examine the impact symbolic media realities have on the audience. The emphasis is on how the media shape the larger cultural environment of the audience, not only in terms of the issues they raise, but also, and equally important, in terms of the issues or topics they de-emphasize or ignore. Yet the agenda-setting model represents a crude attempt to explore media realities. The model says little about the actual symbolic realities portrayed by the media. It is very insensitive to the specific content and the nuances of the cultural meanings created. Yet the ability to demonstrate, if only in a small and crude way, the manner in which the audience accepts the symbolic universe created by the media should not be dismissed by critical researchers. In this sense the agenda-setting model touches some of the central concerns of critical research. The spiral of silence model developed by the West German media sociologist Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann (1974, 1980) is in some ways the negative mirror image of the agenda setting model in that it centers on the ability of the media to remove from public view and discussion certain issues and topics. This model is based on

While the

agenda setting

225

the

that individuals strive

to avoid isolation by avoiding holding held opinions by the majority in the society. Individuals scan the environment to see what views are held by the majority or are gaining strength and what views are in the minority or are declining. One is more likely to express one’s views if they are perceived to be consistent with the majority. On the other hand, if they are perceived to be in the minority, one is more likely to suppress them. The perception of the dominance of one set of views often has little relation to whether or not a majority of people actually have such views. Perceived majority opinions are many times only held by a minority. Nonetheless the perception that one set of views are in the majority sets off a spiraling process by which people who hold opposing views begin to become silent and the perceived majority view is established as the actual prevailing one. The spiral of silence develops as people look to the media for prevailing definitions of reality. Because of the monopoly nature of the media and the inherent routines of media production, there is a high degree of agreement or consonance among the media as to which views of reality to present. While interpersonal communication also provides information, the media tend to be the major factor. Figure 2 summarizes the model.

assumption

attitudes, beliefs

or

not

An example of a spiral of silence; mass media expressing dominant opmon together with mcreasmg lack of interpersonal support for deviant views bring about a spiral of silence, with an increasing number of individuals either expressing the dommant opmion or failing to express deviant

Figure 2. an

(after Noelle-Neumann, 1974) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981) While some have noted the difficulties inherent in operationalizing and testing this model fully (McQuail and Windahl, 1981), some of its key elements have received empirical support (Taylor, 1982). This model is particularly provocative in the way it shows how the media operate to legitimate or de-legitimate certain symbolic realities. Moreover, it can be useful in talking about past phenomena that have emerged as central to an understanding of the role of media in culture and society. For example, a major concern of the Frankfurt School theorists, an influential source of ideas for critical research, was to understand how the Nazis were able to take control of German society and cultural life with so little opposition. Their explanation was based on notions of mass society (Bennett, 1982a). This model offers an alternative understanding of how the media could operate to assist in the acquiescence by an entire society of a political and cultural order seemingly at odds with its history and tradition. The example of Nazi Germany was the ultimate case. There was total control of the media and so the ones

, &dquo;

226

spiral of silence operated effectively. Neumann’s explanation is far more interesting and useful for a wide range of cases than that provided by the Frankfurt School. The spiral of silence does not imply a mass society view of the relations between the human individual, society and the media. Room is left not only for the role of interpersonal structure and communication, but also for the possibility of individuals and groups to contest the power of the media. Not expressing one’s view because it is not perceived to be in the majority does not necessarily mean one’s view is changed. Minority or oppositional views may be kept alive in interpersonal settings where social support exists for a view. Dramatic changes in public opinion are due less to the persuasive or conversion effects of the media and more to the fact that the spiral of silence has been broken. Opinions held by the majority but perceived to be in the minority are suddenly recognized to be in the majority. Suddenly they emerge and are expressed (Katz, 1981). This suggests that aside from the world of expressed public opinion there exists a subterranean universe of attitudes, views and opinions that are held in check by the power of the media and that stand in opposition to the perceived majority position. A breakdown in the power of the media to present and enforce only one set of views would presumably bring to fore attitudes, views and opinions long suppressed. As with the agenda-setting model, the spiral of silence model is insensitive to the complexities involved in an understanding of media content. It treats the issues of media signification and representation in a crude way. In this sense it is incomplete. Nonetheless, this model, along with the agenda-setting model provides a useful way for critical scholars to think about media impact. While being aware of the vast differences in language and concepts between the behavioral and critical traditions, one perhaps can suggest that both the agenda-setting and the spiral of silence models can be one way, albeit a rough way, of studying empirically the ideological impact of the media on the audience. The knowledge-gap model focuses on another area of media impact (Tichenor, Donohue, Olien, 1970; Tichenor, 1982). Utilizing a social systems perspective, this model examines the relationships between media impact and social power in terms of the distribution of media information among various social classes. The basic idea behind the model is that ’as the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socio-economic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower socioeconomic segments, so that the gap in knowledge between the segments tend to increase rather than decrease (Tichenor, 1982, p. 81)’. The media act not only to maintain inequalities in the class structure, but to increase and amplify them. Lower classes remain information poor or even become poorer in a relative sense, while higher social class segments become information richer. This model is summarized in Figure 3. In studies on this model, educational level is generally used as the index of class status. Empirical research conducted both in industrialized and Third World societies tend to support the basic ’tenets of this model’ (Dervin, 1980). What has occupied much recent research is a search for the conditions under which the knowledge gap does not exist or is closed. One major condition that seems to inhibit the knowledge gap dynamic is the interest and motivation on the part of lower social classes to learn about a specific issue that is of concern to them or the entire community (Ettema and Kline, 1977; Genova and Greenberg, 1979).

227

Figure 3. Non-closing information gap (after Thunberg et al., 1979) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981) Another condition that is in some ways related to interest is social conflict. The greater the conflict surrounding a certain issue, the smaller the knowledge gap (Donahue, Olien and Tichenor, 1974). The knowledge-gap model presents some insights into the manner the media can act to strengthen the political and economic structure of class-stratified capitalist societies. In terms of a simple base-superstructure model, the knowledge gap demonstrates that the inequalities inherent in the realm of the economic base are reproduced in the sphere of culture. Marx’s notion of the increasing immiseration of the working class under capitalism can be extended to the area of the media. In this sense this model provides a powerful critique of the argument that increasing the power and scope of the media provides benefits to all segments of society (McQuail and Windahl, 1981). More importantly the idea that the gap can be lessened by conflict surrounding an issue suggests that conflict plays a constructive role in the process of social change. The knowledge-gap model can present a starting point for critical researchers to consider some of the larger social consequences of the media in a class-stratified society. The final model to be considered, the dependency model of media effects, is an example of an extremely promising approach whose possibilities so far have not been realized, or even appreciated by traditional mainstream research. Formulated by Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur (1976, 1982) the dependency model views audience effects in the context of the larger social structure in which the media and the audience exist. It attempts to explain the interaction between audience, media systems and the larger societal system. As societies become more complex, individuals become more dependent on the media for information about, and orientation to, the larger social world. The type and degree of dependency vary, depending in large part on the structural conditions of society and the degree to which society is in a condition of change, conflict or instability. Audience dependency on media information, and thus the type and intensity of effect (cognitive, affective and behavioral) increases as the level of structural conflict and change increases. Likewise the role of the mass media will vary in quantity, diversity, reliability and authority according to societal conditions. The model is summarized in Figure 4. In its basic outline, the dependency model seeks to explain variance in media effects in terms of variances in the historical conditions of a society and its media. This relationship leads to a number of interesting consequences. First, the effects of the media are not strictly comparable across time or across societies because the

228

Figure 4. Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur’s dependency model, showing the mterdependence between society, mass media, audience and effects (after Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, 1976) (McQuail and Wmdahl, 1981)

..,

necessarily vary. This allows for a consideration of a number of Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, drawing upon mainstream communications research, list a number of different cognitive, affective and behavioral effects that the media can produce under different conditions. Second, the model suggests that audience effects may lead in turn to effects on the social system and institutions. A continual series of war combat footage on the nightly news, such as occurred during the Vietnam War, could lead to opposition to the fighting that then changes the structure of foreign policy making in the government. Third, the model emphasizes the factor of social stability and instability as major conditions of the type and strength of media effect. Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur are suggesting here that the important issue is not one of powerful media effects versus limited effects. Rather it is the societal conditions that determine the power and type of media effects. Finally, this model strongly posits the need for analysis of societal condition in relation to the media and the audience. If the emphasis is on the inter-relationship among social structure, the media and the audience, there is thus the need to map out these inter-relationships. This requires that an understanding of the media be integrated with an understanding of political theory, political sociology and history. The dependency model suggests an analysis of the media and the audience that requires placing both in a larger societal context. As is evident, the dependency model comes close to the orientation and some of the concerns of critical communication research. Unfortunately, research based on the dependency model has yet to realize any of its interesting possibilities for understanding the relations among media, society and audience. While the model paints large the picture of media-society relations, the related research has focused primarily on the dependency relations between audience and media. Empirical research based on this model uses it more as an ’audience centered’ model of effects (Becker and Whitney, 1980; Nigg 1982). Its larger societal and historical structural conditions

different

effects.

229

have generally been ignored by mainstream researchers. Nonetheless it remains a suggestive set of ideas on which critical researchers could follow up. The four models of media impact on audiences suggest that critical researchers need not necessarily reject all aspects of the behaviorist tradition. On the other hand one should not overestimate the value of these models or suggest that they can replace the many other avenues of research found in critical communications studies. While these models offer some insight and ideas about audience effects and the power of the media, one can easily find major deficiencies in each. As a whole the models offer little about the social and historical context of the control and production of media messages. If agenda setting is one demonstrable effect of the media, then the next logical question should be what is the process by which the media’s agenda is formulated in the first place. This raises issues of the organizational structure of the media, the role of professionalism, the larger structure of control of the media such as ownership, and the media’s relationship to other social and political institutions, all of which mainstream research on agenda setting ignores. If the media play a central role in a spiral of silence, by what process and under what conditions is the uniformity or consonance of the media’s messages created and maintained? This again raises the question of media production and control. The knowledge gap and dependency models are likewise mute about media production and its relation to a larger societal environment. Another major deficiency of these models are their assumptions and treatment of the media messages. As noted earlier these models conceive of media messages in a simple way, as discrete measurable units of information transmitted to receivers. To a critical researcher whose aim is an analysis of media messages as a system of representation and signification, this view of media content would be regarded as crude. These models are not alive to the notion of media messages as cultural and ideological phenomenon whose specific meanings have to be carefully examined and interpreted. One should not argue, as some have (Blumler and Gurevitch, 1982), that the existence of mainstream models such as these strongly suggest the possibility of a easy convergence between Marxist and behavioral approaches to communication issues. To utilize Gouldner’s terms, the ’world hypotheses’ and ’background assumptions’ inherent in each of these two approaches are too radically different and opposed to allow an easy merging of these two traditions (Gouldner, 1970: 20-60). Critical research is organized around an examination of the role that the media play in maintaining and changing the structures of power in society. The researcher is not a neutral observer but a member of society and a committed participant in the larger social processes. Research is thus a political act and the nature of research is open to examination and debate. Finally, traditional behavioral communications research is based on an analytical mode of argument in which a phenomenon is broken down into its components and each part studied as a separate entity. In contrast critical research is based on the holistic mode or argument which attempts to deal with a phenomenon such as the social role of the media as a complex integrated system of power relations. The goal is to understand the parts in relation to the whole. The models outlined are at best, preliminary ideas, sketches or frameworks, for critical researchers; these must be extensively reformulated in the context of critical concerns and orientations. The fact that they reintroduce the notion of a powerful media and suggest that the societal context of the media is a factor to be considered

implications

230

should

critical researchers to examine them for possible ideas about media audiences. impact Of course one is not limited to these models in a formulation of media impact. Ethnographic studies of media effect can provide a new approach to an understanding of impact. A reconceptualization of the audience from individuals to collectivities, interpretive communities or social movements can prove equally fruitful. In general, in seeking to address the question of media impact, critical researchers must rethink the entire issue of the nature and definition of the media, audience and effect and the relation among them. In doing so, they should draw upon a wide range of bodies of thought and work for their ideas. Behaviorist models should not automatically be excluded. Indeed it needs to be pointed out that these traditional models raise some significant issues for critical researchers. While critical researchers may stress the analysis of the type and range of meaning in media content, they have not demonstrated what difference it all makes. Behavioral researchers may treat the media message in a comparatively naive way. Yet they have successfully demonstrated that differences in media content have different consequences. At a more fundamental level lies the issue of where meaning is located. At the theoretical level, critical researchers are aware of the complex interaction between messages, meaning and receiver. Yet at the empirical level, their work suggests that meaning is located in the message. This conclusion is due more to the lack of attention to the relation between the message and the audience than to a clearly worked out theoretical stance. Behavioral researchers, on the other hand, assume that the meanings are in people-that in themselves messages have no meaning. They only act as stimuli and people create meanings in response to these stimuli. One could argue that the burden of proof is on critical researchers to show that all the meanings uncovered in media content make a difference. For critical researchers, a theory of the media is incomplete without a ’theory of reception’. The ideal of course is to develop an understanding of the mass communication process that is able to examine and explain media production, messages and effects in the framework of a specific and clearly articulated theory of society, history, culture and power. The need now, though, is to bring the audience back into critical communications research. cause

on

Acknowledgements thank Sam Becker and Eileen Meehan of the University of Iowa for their extremely helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The author, of course, is solely responsible for the content. I wish

to

Notes can argue that a concern with power is not absent from mainstream American research. While critical researchers ask about the rôle of the media in the maintenance of a class society, mainstream scholars focus more on the rôle of the media in creating and maintaining the power of a particular politician, party or interest group. In this sense the concern with power is shared by both groups of scholars The main difference, of course, is the theory of society and the resulting conceptions of power that underlie their questions about power and the media.

1. One

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