Influencing Attitudes and Actions through Modeling, Agenda, and Framing - Research Paper Example

November 30, Media Effects: Influencing Attitudes and Actions through Modeling, Agenda, and Framing How media affects society has been an interest for media and communication scholars since the “beginning of the twentieth century” (McQuail 9), after the radio and television were subsequently invented and became mass media tools. It is hard to fully understand how the media influence society, however, because, in reality, every person is exposed to different social factors that can impact their attitudes and behaviors and they also have internal factors that shape their actions too. A possible way that can directly measure how exactly the media affect people is through an unethical experiment where the person is exposed to only media and not other sources of possible influence, such as family, religion, education, and other institutions. Despite constraints on determining causal relationships between mass media and social effects, several empirical attempts have been made to understand how media can influence society. Mass media affects society through providing a model for learning behaviors, setting agenda that can affect people’s prioritization of and response to social issues, and framing information that can impact how people understand and react to events and schemas. Mass media influences society by offering models for learning behaviors. Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory can help explain how mass media shapes behaviors. Social Learning Theory states that people learn attitudes and behaviors by “observing and modeling” others (“Social Learning Theory”). Learning is not the same as imitating because learning means that people are not only imitating something, but has absorbed the underlying knowledge and/or skills, as well as values and norms (when present). Mass media can then have positive or negative effects on people by shaping their attitudes and/or behaviors through the social modeling mechanism of learning. One of the most studied and controversial mass media effects is violence, specifically youth violence. Craig Anderson and colleagues surveyed a wide literature of media effects on violence. They stress that, based on their findings, numerous studies with different sampling, methods, and media genres prove that violence in mass media can increase the possibility of aggressive behaviors for the youth in the short-run and/or long run through different ways. Craig et al. state that observational learning can result to children learning “aggressive attitudes and behaviors” from mass media, such as “television and video games” (94). The studies of Bjorkqvist in 1985 on 5 to 6-year olds Finnish kids and Josephson in 1987 on 7 to 9-year old boys provide some evidence that, for their cross-sectional studies with control groups, those who “watched violent films” acted more violently against other children afterwards than those who did not watch violent films (qtd. in Craig et al. 85). Mass media can be argued as affecting these children by providing negative models of violent behaviors, which affected their actions too, at least in the short run. A longitudinal study from Eron et al. show that boys who watched violent TV shows since the age of 8 showed “more violent attitudes” later on in life (qtd. in Craig et al. 87). Mass media can have, based on this study, lasting effects on people’s behaviors too, provided that it is a prevalent and significant presence in a child’s life. These studies indicate that mass media can affect society by teaching harmful models of behaviors. Not all mass media effects on society are negative, nevertheless, because mass media can be programmed to teach pro-social behaviors too, where it can affect society through modeling positive attitudes and behaviors for the youth. Many television and CD/DVD shows, for instance, are geared to teaching children positive social behaviors and new knowledge and skills. Dimitri A. Christakis et al. wanted to know if exposing children to TV shows that teach pro-social actions can shape their behaviors too. Their sampling included 565 parents of children ages 3 to 5 years old who were provided pro-social TV shows for their children. Christakis et al. measured the impact of these shows on children’s Social Competence and Behavior scores, 6 and 12 months after the mass media intervention. Their findings showed that even after 12 months, children had “lasting changes” in their social attitudes and actions (Christakis et al. 437). The effects were greatest for “boys from low-income families” (Christakis et al. 437). The paper understands that these effects had potential reporting bias, since parents were the main sources of information, although it is essential in showing that media content can be shaped in providing positive attitudinal and behavioral models for children. Mass media can have a positive effect on social behaviors by offering compelling models for good behaviors. Apart from social modeling and learning, another way that mass media can shape society is through setting agenda that can influence people’s prioritization of and reaction to social issues. Agenda setting theory states that there is a strong correlation between the “emphasis” that mass media place on certain issues or people and the importance that the audience attaches to the latter (Scheufele and Tewksbury 11). Several studies prove that mass media affects society through shaping the agenda on people’s minds, which can impact their perspective and/or actions towards these social issues/people/events. Yue Tan and David H. Weaver studied the long-term trend in agenda diversity of the public that Gallup Most Important Problem covered from 1956 to 2004. These researchers wanted to understand how mass media, particularly The New York Times, affected media agenda, and to determine causal relationships in the long-term changes in public agenda diversity, The New York Times’ content diversity, and The New York Times' agenda-setting impact on public opinion. Tan and Weaver learned from their findings that public agenda diversity reduced the influence of The New York Times in setting public agenda, but The New York Times did not have a “decreasing effect” on agenda-setting effect in general (784). The study shows that mass media can impact public issue diversity through its own social issue diversity. By reporting on news that it deems as newsworthy, The New York Times provides information that can stimulate people to focus more on particular events, issues, or people only. The main concern with this study is that it is more descriptive, however, than analytical in understanding media effects. Nonetheless, the study suggests the power of mass media in shaping what matters most to people and how they can react to these matters. An article helps explain how mass media can have secondary effects on people’s political attitudes and political participation through secondary agenda-setting mechanism. Instead of claiming that mass media can cause people to act a certain way, other scholars believe that mass media can affect what people think about and how they think about these things, so that their attitudes and behaviors toward it changes or are formed. Soo Jung Moon studied the effects of agenda setting on voting and other kinds of political participation. He hypothesized that the more that people are exposed to news media, the more vulnerable they are to agenda-setting effects, and these effects can influence their thoughts and emotions toward presidential candidates, which, subsequently, can affect their political participation. He presents the hierarchy-of-effects model, which follows the sequence: C(cognitive)-A(affective)-B(behavior): News attention to presidential candidates creates second-level agenda-setting effects among the public (C); in turn, agenda-setting effects trigger strong attitudes toward candidates (A); and finally, strong attitudes lead to various types of political participation (B). (Moon 701). Findings of Moon’s research showed that agenda-setting had direct and indirect effects on political participation, which led Moon to conclude that agenda-setting is a “mediator” between media use and political participation (710). Moon considers that either media has impact on cognition first or on emotions first that can lead to affinity and then to actions. The study indicates that mass media can influence society through providing a specific powerful agenda, which can change or start people’s ideas and emotions toward issues and events (even people), which can further shape attitudes, or behaviors, or both. The final process by which mass media influence society is through framing information that can impact how people understand events and schemas, which may have impacts on their attitudes and actions. Framing means that how an “issue or schema” is presented in the media can impact how it is understood by the audiences (Scheufele and Tewksbury 11). A schema is a cognitive framework or frame that help people “organize and interpret information” (Meirick 633). Mass media can present information or knowledge that is written and prepared in a way that can result to certain perceptions or schemas. Biased news reporting, for instance, can lead to biased perceptions, although not all the time and for all people. Ashlie Delshad and Leigh Raymond studied the relationship between media framing and public opinion on biofuels ( uels that are made from renewable sources, such as plants, animals, and wastes). They conducted a content analysis of newspaper coverage from 1999 to 2008, where they started in 1999 because biofuels began getting more news coverage in the “early 2000s” (Delshad and Raymond 191). Delshad and Raymond learned that negative frames of biofuels have increased since 1999, where some news articles stressed that biofuels would have a “negative economic effect” on consumers (198). Furthermore, because of the dominance of negative frames on biofuels, it was not surprising that surveyed public opinions showed weak support for it “in general” (Delshad and Raymond 200). Surveyed respondents also had “weak support” for policies promoting biofuels during the time of negative frames (Delshad and Raymond 201). Delshad and Raymond also learned that “party ID, regional economic interests, and personal identity as an environmentalist” affected support for biofuels too (206-207). They concluded that media frames affected social attitudes toward biofuels. The paper interprets that mass media affects society by framing social issues in ways that also impact how they frame and respond to these issues. Another study shows that mass media can impact society through shaping media schemas that also affect their perceptions and actions. Patrick C. Meirick cites the hypothesis of third-person effect from Perloff, who stressed that people have a theory of media or media schema that seemed to have a “hypodermic” effect: “To the degree that individuals believe that the average person is susceptible to media or that the media are all-powerful, they can logically infer that others are more vulnerable to media than themselves” (qtd. in 632). Assuming that media are powerful can lead to “perceptions” that media can have influential impacts on people’s attitudes and actions (Meirick 632). Meirick learned from his group study that mass media can shape the schema of others, which can affect their own ideas and actions toward the mass media content. One more way of framing is through framing gender roles and responsibilities. The media has often been criticized of promoting stereotype female and male gender norms and values that affect femininity and masculinity beliefs and practices. Some examples are TV shows and advertisements that portray beautiful and sexy women attracted to men who drink, smoke, and have violent attitudes. The impact is that it is framing the youth to think that to be feminine is to be a sexual commodity, weak and attracted to violent men. These studies and examples indicate that mass media influence society by framing knowledge and issues in ways that may impact social perceptions, attitudes, and actions. These studies and examples provide evidence that mass media influence society through social modeling and learning, agenda-setting, and framing of schemas and other issues. These mechanisms explain that mass media can impact, not only what people think about, but how they think about issues and personalities. In turn, mass media can shape emotions and knowledge that can drive or change social attitudes and actions. Hence, mass media can have short-term or long-term social effects, although other factors can impact these effects also. Works Cited Anderson, Craig, Berkowitz, Leonard, Donnerstein, Edward, Huesmann, L., Johnson, James, Linz, Daniel, Malamuth, Neil, and Ellen Wartella. “The Influence of Media Violence on Youth.” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 4.3 (2003): 81-110. Christakis, Dimitri A., Garrison, Michelle M., Herrenkoh, Todd, Haggerty, Kevin, Rivara, Frederick P., Zhou, Chuan and Kimberly Liekweg. “Modifying Media Content for Preschool Children: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Pediatrics 131.3 (2013): 431-438. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2012-1493. Delshad, Ashlie, and Leigh Raymond. “Media Framing and Public Attitudes Toward Biofuels.” Review of Policy Research 30.2 (2013): 190-210. McQuail, Denis. “The Influence and Effects of Mass Media.” Media Power in Politics. Ed. Doris A Graber. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1994. Meirick, Patrick C. “Media Schemas, Perceived Effects, and Person Perceptions.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 83.3 (2006): 632-649. Moon, Soo Jung. “Attention, Attitude, and Behavior: Second-Level Agenda-Setting Effects as a Mediator of Media Use and Political Participation.” Communication Research 40.5 (2013): 698-719. DOI: 10.1177/0093650211423021. Scheufele, Dietram A., and David Tewksbury. “Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models.” Journal of Communication 57 (2007): 9-20. “Social Learning Theory.” University of South Alabama: Online Learning Laboratory, n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. < http://www.southalabama.edu/oll/ mobile/theory_workbook/social_learning_theory.htm>. Tan, Yue, and David H. Weaver. “Agenda Diversity and Agenda Setting From 1956 to 2004.” Journalism Studies 14.6 (2013): 773-789. DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2012.748516. Read More