Page 92 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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powerful influences on audience members from exposure to mass commu-
nication. Another elucidates that such influences will be long-term, indi-
rect, selective, and limited. The dissimilarity among contemporary theories
of mass communication exists because each focuses on different configura-
tions of independent and dependent variables and therefore each use dif-
ferent assumptions in uniqueness to make predictions about influences on
people and society. For example, one focuses on beliefs, attitudes, and behav-
iour at an individual level while another attempts to explain shared conven-
tions of meaning and their influences on social organization, society, and
culture. Few scholars today would maintain that the ‘magic bullet’ theory
provides adequate explanations on how the media influences people. The
accumulated research evidence has failed to support its claims. Other earlier
formulations have similarly started to come into question. Yet, most of the
theories still remain as sources of important research hypotheses and until
totally convincing data have been gathered it is not time yet to dismiss them
completely. Some of these theories of communication are:

• Congruence theory
• Conspiracy theory
• Dependency theory
• Play theory
• Reflective-projective theory
• Uses and gratification theory
• Hypodermic syringe theory
• Effects theory

Sleeper Effects of Communication

It is described to be the unconscious effect upon subjects that do not become
apparent until unspecified subsequent occasions are spontaneously aroused.

Cognitive Dissonance

The basic need of man is information and a structure by which to interpret it.
Man is an inquirer regulating his life and behaviour by forming hypotheses
about his environment and the events within it, and by noting the criteria
that will assist him the most. Individuals, more over, may differ in this
respect. When information that an individual receives is already familiar to
him, a range of inner motivational and cognitive factors affect his reactions
to it. On the other hand, when it is not as Festinger (1954) indicates that
the individual is forced to use more tenuous external criteria for evaluating

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