Media in World Politics

3

“Media Effects”

Key Points

Importance of studies of 'media effects' Identify different types of effects Appreciate methodological problems Understand complex relationship of elites to mass

media

Outline

What are 'media effects'? Historical Background Theoretical Assumptions Press and voting behaviour Other 'mass' effects? Elite effects Summary

Feedback Sheets

What are 'media effects'?

Why are we interested in studying the mass media? Much of the time because we assume that it has some

sort of influential relationship with the world 'outside'. A bunch of other reasons...

How do we know about this 'media influence'? Academic studies: Potter (2012) estimates that there

have been about 10,000 academic appears published which deal with 'media effects'.

However, there is little agreement amongst academics about many aspects of 'media effects'.

Potter, J. W. (2012). Media Effects. SAGE, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi.

Blaming the media

“Which one of the following groups, if any, do you think is most to blame for Islamophobia, fear of Islam, in the UK?”

ComRes poll of 1004 people, 8-10 July 2011

Blaming the media

Attacks on Traffic Wardens in the UK...

“One motorist, on receiving a ticket, struck the warden in the face with a baseball bat. Other drivers are recorded as using their cars as battering rams. NCP believes there is a direct link between inflammatory media reports about the parking control regime in London and incidents of abuse and assault.”

"Tabloid spleen blamed for rise in attacks on traffic wardens"

Hugh Muir, The Guardian, Monday 7 June 2004 02.10 BST

Aspects of Effects Research

Timing when does the effect happen?

Duration how long does the effect last?

Valence is it a good or bad effect?

Change does the effect change something or maintain or reinforce a current state?

Intention did the producer/distributor of the media intend the effect?

Level/Scope exactly what is the scope of the effect; the individual? the whole society?

In/Direct is the effect direct or mediated through other institutions?

Manifestation can we see the effect? How do we know that there aren’t other effects that we can’t see?

The 'Panic Broadcast'

30th Oct 1938: Mercury Theatre, War of the Worlds

WOTW: Immediate Reactions“By the time the broadcast ended, the CBS Building was inundated with police and the press. Welles and co-producer John Houseman were dragged to a back office and held for questioning. The newspaper reporters were especially voracious. Both men have described the experience as unnerving, since at that point the damage caused seemed like a worst-case scenario. Numerous deaths were implied, most allegedly occurring on the highways during the evacuation stampede. Fortunately for everyone at Mercury it would be later revealed that no deaths could be attributed to the program.”

(Heyer, 2003)

Heyer, P. (2003). America under attack 1: A reassessment of Orson Welles’ 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. Canadian Journal of Communication, 28(2):149–166.

Historical Context

1938: the Anschluss, Germany 'occupies' Austria (Mar), Sudetenland (Cz.) (Oct)

Trust: radio was still relatively new as a medium and was widely trusted as a source of news and information

Production: Orson Welles’ innovative production techniques mixed genre conventions in a way that listeners were unused to.

Coincidence or Causality?

Violence in film — real-life murders

Press about health scares — panic behaviour

Biased political coverage — election victories

“. . . but any such correlation needs to be underpinned by a theory which connects the two, that pushes the correlation beyond coincidence into causality” (Street, 2011, 104)

Street, J. (2011). Mass media, politics and democracy. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, 2nd edition.

Establishing causality: 1

Establishing causality: 2

Establishing causality: 3

Trust in information?

If people don’t trust the information carried by the mass media, can it have any influence?

Why do we have different criteria for believing in different situations?

Believability: depends on rules for the 'genre' (fictional film, documentary, radio drama, 'reality' television), skill of producers, etc.

Credibility: whether a particular piece of information conforms to these genre rules.

How (and why) does the credibility of the mass media vary from country to country, over time, from person to person?

Voting & Elections

1922: Walter Lippman, Public Opinion: mass media determine out cognitive map of the world beyond our experience.

1940 US Presidential Elections: Lazarsfeld, Berelson & Gaudet – 7 rounds of interviews with voters in Erie County, Ohio. “little evidence of major mass comm. effects on attitudes and opinions” “Limited-effects model”

1968 US Presidential Elections: McCombs & Shaw – survey of undecided voters in Chapel Hill, N. Carolina “Agenda-setting”: the media cannot tell you what to

think, but it can tell you what to think about.

Bryant, J. and Oliver, M. B. (2008). Media effects: Advances in theory and research. Routledge, New York; London, 3rd edition.

Voting & Elections

Heath, A. F., Jowell, R., and Curtice, J. (1994). Labour’s last chance?: The 1992 election and beyond.

Perhaps there's a long-term effect whereby readers over time come to share the political views of their newspapers. In the timeframe of a 'campaign' there are no significant effects

Miller, W. L. (1991). Media and Voters: The Audience, Content, and Influence of Press and the Television at the 1987 General Election.

Argued: Conservative dominated press → Conservative Govt. in 1987. Effects largely on 'attitudes' rather than 'perceptions'

Voting & Elections

Newton, K. and Brynin, M. (2001). The national press and party voting in the UK. Political Studies, 49(2):265–285.

1. Readers whose politics and paper coincided

2. Those whose politics and paper differed

3. Those who didn't read papers “Conservative identifiers reading a conservative paper were

more likely to vote Conservative than Conservative identifiers reading a Labour newspaper” (p276-80)

TV Effects

More agreement on effects of television. Effects tend to be fairly minimal. Voters who watch a lot of TV are more likely to

vote for one of the mainstream parties (Norris 1996)

BUT, this seems to be mainly a characteristic of media systems with a strong 'public service' component.

Norris, P. (1997). Electoral change since 1945. Blackwell

TV Effects: US

Channels may deliver political influence for the big parties:

“Fox News viewers tend to share its agenda and prejudices [and the] channel does deliver some benefit to the Republican Party.”

“Towns with Fox News have a 0.4 to 0.7 percentage point higher Republican vote share in the 2000 Presidential elections,compared to the 1996 elections.”

“Fox News increased turnout to the polls” “exposure to Fox News induced 3 to 8 percent of the

non-Republican viewers to vote for the Republican party.”

DellaVigna, S. and Kaplan, E. (2007). The Fox News effect: Media bias and voting. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(3):1187–1234.

Other Political Effects

Politics isn't just general elections Expectations and, political attitudes & activity What do people feel/think about 'politics'? Where does responsibility lay within a society? It may be that the source of the mass

media's influence is not in their coverage of particular political events but in how they show the world (and politics) to be.

Elite Effects

Examples mentioned so far have attempted to investigate MASS effects.

Elites read papers too...

The 'CNN Effect' Politicians and governments, and 'opinion leaders' are

more intimately connected to the mass media than 'ordinary people'.

Their relationship with 'public policy' is very different.

Definition and origins

Much disagreement: 'Affects how(when or if) a government responds (through) policy to events reported in the mass media'

Probably first discussed around time of Gulf War (1991)

Thereafter used in connection with govt. responses to disasters such as Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004), Haiti Earthquake (2010).

It depends... It may be that something like the CNN Effect exists but

whether it comes into play in a particular situation depends on a number of factors:

When there is policy uncertainty within an elite (Government/Politicians are unable to present a coherent narrative to journalists)

When media criticise current policy Where coverage is framed in emotive 'Do Something!'

terms (often associated with instances of 'humanitarian intervention')

Summary

'Media effects' can be of many different and highly varied forms.

Controlling for non-media effects is a fundamental methodological problem.

How do we distinguish between 'correlation' and 'causality'?

Wide variety of results obtained over the years, how do we distinguish between the various phenomena they have identified?

Next week...

Political BIAS Reading:

“Telling it as it is? Questions of Media Representation”

Williams, K. (2003). Understanding Media Theory. Arnold, London.

Will mail link during week