Page 222 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

8. INTERMEDIA PROCESSES 211

14
ner were especially likely to adopt family planning. Talking about fam-
ily planning with one’s spouse led to more accurate perceptions of the
spouse’s attitude toward family planning (Vaughan, 2000).
Direct exposure to Twende na Wakati was less important in influencing the
adoption of family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention than was interpersonal
15
communication with a friend, or especially, a spouse or partner. Interpersonal
communication with a spouse/partner stimulated by a media interven-
tion is likely to be particularly important for family planning and
HIV/AIDS prevention because negotiation with a spouse/partner is nec-
essary for adoption.

CONCLUSIONS
The present chapter recommends returning to a research methodology
pioneered 60 years ago by Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues at Columbia
University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research, in which data are gath-
ered (a) about an important media event (b) by tracing its effects on the
overt behavior of individuals exposed to the media messages, (c) whose
contents are analyzed, and (d) whose effects are evaluated by means of
data gathered rather immediately after the event occurs. Here, we sum-
marized the results of four investigations: (a) Magic Johnson’s 1991 dis-
closure of his HIV infection on calls to the National AIDS Hotline, (b) dif-
fusion of news of the 1986 Challenger disaster, (c) diffusion of news of
feeding milk to Hindu gods in India in 1995, and (d) the effects of an
entertainment-education radio soap opera on the adoption of family plan-
ning and HIV/AIDS prevention in Tanzania in 1993–1997. These studies
show that the media can have strong effects, especially when the media messages
stimulate interpersonal communication about a topic through intermedia
processes.
One distinctive aspect of the entertainment-education strategy is that
the educational messages, because of their entertaining aspect, often
cause people to engage in peer communication as they seek to make sense

14 Another possible reason for the strong effects of Twende na Wakati may have been the
high frequency of audience individual’s exposure to the educational content, which
occurred because of the popularity of the radio soap opera. As DeFleur and Dennis (1991,
pp. 560–565) pointed out, strong media effects can occur due to the accumulation of minimal
effects.
15 Similar evidence for this statement is reported by Valente and others (1996) for family
planning adoption in Peru.