Page 223 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

212 ROGERS

out of what is happening. 16 For example, the Tanzanian respondents
often discussed the characters in the radio soap opera with their friends
and family members, relating the positive and negative role models’
behavior to their own lives (Rogers et al., 1999). Further, entertainment-
education messages are highly involving for audience individuals, as
they develop parasocial relationships with media personalities (Sood &
Rogers, 2000).
Our present analysis shows that intermedia processes (Gumpert &
Cathcart, 1986) are a basic reason why the mass media sometimes have
strong effects. The notion that media messages have their effects through
peer communication raises basic questions about the dichotomy of inter-
personal versus mass media communication that pervades communica-
tion study (Hawkins, Wiemann, & Pingree, 1988; Reardon & Rogers, 1988;
Rogers, 1999). Past research has often “created a false competition
between mass and interpersonal communication” (Chaffee, 1986, p. 62).
Perhaps this false dichotomy is created because communication scholars
in the academy divide themselves into two subdisciplines (Reardon &
Rogers, 1988; Rogers, 1999). Then the world that they perceive consists of
either mass media or interpersonal communication, rather than the two
types of channels working together to have effects.
We conclude that past mass communication effects research may have sup-
ported a minimal effects model, in part, because of the methodology with which it
was conducted. Tracing a specific and spectacular message content that is
conveyed by the mass media to audience individuals and taking into
account their interpersonal communication about the media message
event represent fruitful approaches for media effects research in the
future.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The data reported in the present paper were made available by Fred
Kroeger of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta; Dr.
Arvind Singhal, Ohio University; and Dr. Peter Vaughan, Department of
Biology, Macalester College. The present essay was originally presented
as a paper at the 1995 National Communication Association session, At
the Helm in Mass Communication and in a revised version as Rogers (1998).

16 One evidence of the social construction process through which entertainment-education
messages are given meaning by audience individuals is the oppositional readings that may
take place. For example, some Tanzanian listeners to Twende na Wakati perceived Mkwaju as
a positive role model; this oppositional reading, also called the “Archie Bunker effect” (Vid-
mar & Rokeach, 1974), occurred for only 1% of the male respondents and decreased with the
degree of exposure to the radio program (Singhal & Rogers, 1999).