Page 242 - Culture Society and the Media

9

The political effects of mass communication

JAY G.BLUMLER AND MICHAEL GUREVITCH

Public concern about mass communication is chiefly focused on the potential
effects of mass media content on audience members. Parents are anxious to
protect their impressionable children from the assumed consequences of
exposure to extensive portrayals of ‘sex and violence’ on television;
selfappointed guardians of public morality set themselves up as watchdogs,
aiming to shield society from the pernicious influence of less savoury media
materials; spokesmen of numerous institutions, interest groups and social causes
—ranging from the police to trade unions, industry, women’s liberation, the
elderly, racial minorities, etc.—often rail against broadcast and press distortion
or neglect of their affairs; politicians seem to think that ten minutes ‘on the box’
are worth dozens of hours on the hustings; advertising agencies make a
handsome livelihood out of their clients’ faith in the persuasive efficacy of the
media. Underlying all these reactions is a common assumption: that the mass
media do indeed have considerable influence over their audiences; that in this
sense they are powerful. It could appear self-evident, therefore, that a priority
task of communication research should be to study the effects on people’s
outlook on the world of the large amounts of time they spend watching television,
listening to the radio, going to the movies and reading newspapers and
magazines.
Among academics, however, the claims to respect of media effects enquiry are
nowhere near so straightforward. Although some communication scholars,
particularly those based in the United States, are heavily committed to this line
of research, others tend to scorn it as misguided or unenlightening. As a result,
media effects research is probably the most problematic sub-area of the field, as
well as the one which has changed course most often over the years, partly in
response to the ebb and flow of debate over its merits. This chapter, which deals
with the political effects of mass communication, is accordingly shaped by the
four-fold aim of introducing readers to:
1. Some sources of conflicting evaluations of media effects research as such;
2. the main phases in the historical evolution of different ways of investigating
and interpreting media effects in politics;
3. some key examples of recent empirical work on such effects; and