Page 214 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

8. INTERMEDIA PROCESSES 203

data-gathering that is conducted rather immediately after the media
event of study. This more disaggregated approach has seldom been used
in most media effects studies. 4

THE PRESENT METHODOLOGY

The author’s interest in reconsidering mass communication research on
media effects began when he read a brief research report by Gellert, Weis-
muller, Higgins, and Maxwell (1992) in the New England Journal of Medi-
cine. These scholars traced the effects of five AIDS-related news events
(for example, Rock Hudson’s death in October 1985, Magic Johnson’s
announcement of his HIV-positive status in November 1991, and so forth)
on the number of individuals getting AIDS blood tests in Orange County,
California. These data suggested strong media effects.
Four distinctive aspects of the Gellert et al. (1992) research methodol-
ogy can be identified:

1. The focus of study was on one or more important media events
that occurred at a specific point in time.
2. Each event received major news coverage.
3. The media effects were measured by data available from an inde-
pendent source (clinic records) about overt behavior changes on
the part of individuals (obtaining an AIDS blood test).
4. The data on the overt behavioral effects of the media were obtained
rather immediately after the media coverage and at a specific point
in time, and thus it could be assumed that the effects were caused
by the media messages about the media event (for example, Magic
Johnson’s announcement that he was HIV positive).

The methodology utilized by Gellert et al. (1992) is remarkably similar
to that used by Cantril and Merton and their colleagues 50 years previ-
ously. Gellert and others are not communication scholars, nor did they
know of the media effects research on the “Invasion from Mars” broadcast
and the Kate Smith War Bond marathon. So they rather naively rediscov-
ered powerful effects. A communication scholar, trained and experienced
in the paradigm of mass communication effects research, might have
missed this opportunity.

4 This disaggregated research strategy has been useful in agenda-setting research, in longi-
tudinal studies of a single issue (like AIDS in the 1980s) (Dearing & Rogers, 1996).