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CULTURE, SOCIETY AND THE MEDIA 233
4. discussion of the prospects for a convergence of approach even among
opposed schools of thought towards the study of audience responses to political
communications.

CONTRARY ASSESSMENTS OF MEDIA EFFECTS
RESEARCH

Why is the quest for evidence of media effects on audiences so contentious?
Particular lines of effects research are sometimes castigated for resting on naive
theory or using unreliable methods. Yet if that was all that was wrong, the
solution would lie in more mature theorizing and the adoption of improved
methodologies—the familiar slow road to gradual progress in all social science
endeavour. A root-and-branch scepticism towards effects research, then, must
have deeper origins. We believe these can be found in a mixture of technical,
ideological and cultural considerations.
Technically, whereas the design of effects research is inevitably intricate and
demanding, the evidence that emerges from it often seems ‘dusty’—i.e. complex
in pattern, difficult to interpret, possibly inconclusive and rarely supportive of a
picture of media impact as overriding, uniform or direct. In reaction to this state
of affairs, some investigators recoil as if despairing that such a difficult game can
ever be worth the candle, while others welcome the very challenge of facing and
gradually mastering the inherent complexities of audience response. It is true
that different views of the role of theory in social science may also play a part in
these contrasting reactions. Most committed effects researchers have not
conceived of theory as a valid world-view to be confirmed and filled in by
empirical support. They have tended instead to deploy it like a mobile
searchlight, hopefully illuminating an ever-increasing range of interrelated
phenomena for inclusion in wider understandings. Something like the latter
position probably underlies the comment of McLeod and Reeves (1980) that:

There are abundant number of…processes and concepts that have been
suggested as modifying or interpreting media exposure to effects
relationship…. For the most part, the most interesting communication
theory results from the unravelling of these conditions and interactive
relationships, not from the simple assertions that the media set public
agendas or that children learn from television. (McLeod and Reeves, 1980,
p. 28)

The magnitude of the technical problems of effects research design may be
appreciated by considering some of the steps an investigator of political
communication impact might have to take. He would probably need to embark
on at least the following activities:
1. Specify the sources of media content that he expects to exert an influence on
audiences, which might be divisible into different media (TV, press, radio, inter-