Page 263 - Media Effects Advances in Theory and Research

252 McLEOD, KOSICKI, McLEOD

Media effects research barely touches on the issues of access, partly
because access is so limited. If sufficient variation in access could be
found, criteria might include how aware citizens are of nonmainstream
groups and positions and their approval of political participation even in
less-traditional forms. Systemic outcomes might include the popularity of
public access programming and participation of lower-status groups in
the political process.

Transmission of Diverse Political Discourse

Media can be judged by how well they facilitate dialogue between diverse
views and two-way communication between power holders and mass
publics. Critics charge that the media focus instead on “mainstream cur-
rents bounded politically by the two-party system, economically by the
imperative of private enterprise capitalism, and culturally by the values
of a consumer society” (Gurevitch & Blumler, 1990, p. 269). Nonmain-
stream political groups are marginalized as “deviant” (Gitlin, 1980;
McLeod & Hertog, 1992), and little coverage is given to less-attractive
audiences like the poor and the elderly. The result may be that citizens are
lacking in awareness of political alternatives and unable even to articulate
their own views. The implication for the political system is a narrowing of
the boundaries of the “marketplace of ideas.”
A combination of content analysis and audience research might be useful
for evaluating media on this standard. Dialogue may be effective only if the
media systematically compare diverse points of view and alternate frames.
Media presentations might be expected to help citizens recognize and artic-
ulate their own feelings and connect them to larger political contexts. Atten-
tive reading of hard news in the print media does seem to facilitate such con-
nections and allows them to be discussed with others (McLeod et al., 1989).

Scrutiny of Institutions and Officials

The media standing as a watchdog over government is one of the cher-
ished images of U.S. journalism. Investigative reporting is a key mecha-
nism for holding officials accountable for their performance. Critics
charge, however, that the growth of government and of economic organi-
zations has far outstripped the ability of the press to engage in costly
investigations of these institutions. The result is a general lack of govern-
ment and corporate accountability. Investigative reporting that is done
may aim too low in the chain of corruption, as in focusing on street push-
ers and users in drug coverage, and in many cases the blame is placed on
individuals rather than on fundamental systemic causes.
Research on causal attribution is highly relevant to this standard. Cov-
erage of government wrongdoing, unless placed in a larger structural and