Page 220 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

8. INTERMEDIA PROCESSES 209

Feeding Milk to Hindu Dieties

Singhal and others (1999) gathered data by telephone interviews from a
sample of 199 residents of Delhi, India, about a spectacular news event
soon after it occurred in the very early morning of September 21, 1995:
That statues of Hindu dieties were drinking milk! Some 87% of the
respondents said that on hearing the news, they told an average of 21 oth-
ers. Word-of-mouth channels were particularly important because the
mystery surrounding this event led to a high degree of personal involve-
ment with the event, and thus to a social construction of the meaning of
the milk drinking.
Upon initially hearing the news that the Hindu gods were drinking
milk, only 17% believed this divine miracle and 36% were unsure. The
news set off an unprecedented devotional frenzy, with 74% of the 199
respondents trying to feed milk to the dieties, either at a Hindu temple or
at an altar in their home. This experimental behavior convinced 68% of
the individuals that the dieties had indeed consumed the milk.
By the late morning of September 21, milk supplies were exhausted in
all major cities in India, and by midday, police had to intervene in order to
maintain order as crowds at Hindu temples became unmanageable.
Newspaper headlines proclaimed: “Dieties Drink Milk in Tonnes,”
“Divine Miracle Stuns the World,” and “Miracles Claimed in Temples
Abroad.” Soon, Indians living abroad in the Indian diaspora in England
and the United States were feeding milk to Hindu gods. Scientists and
many others dismissed the milk drinking by the gods as a hoax “perpe-
trated on gullible and devout people of a deeply religious country” (Hin-
dustan Times, p. 1). Some doubters explained the miraculous events as due
to such processes in physics as surface tension or capillary action. The
controversy over the milk drinking was reported in the mass media for
several weeks after September 21, 1995.
As in the previous two media events of study, mass media coverage of
an important event set off interpersonal discussions, which led to overt
behavior change. The action in this case was feeding milk to the Hindu
gods, reported by 74% of the respondents in India.

INTERMEDIA PROCESSES IN TANZANIA

Both theoretical models and empirical research (Rogers, 1995) suggest
that the mass media often have effects in changing human behavior
through stimulating interpersonal communication about a message
topic. Intermedia processes occur when a mass media message leads to