TheMedia Effects Theory

• Media Effect theory is how media can affect society and how society affects the media. Some negative implications of this theory are when people do “copycat murders”, i.e. when a teenage boy murdered his best friend in 2004, the game ‘Manhunt’ was banned in the UK, because the murder was styled upon a murder within the game.

• An audience that tends to see the audience as passive and sees how exposure to particular aspects of media content can influence the behaviour of the reader or viewer.

What is The Media Effect Theory?

The theory helps explain Moral panic in relation to representations of; sex violence and deviant behaviour and it’s supposed effects on youth. Moral panic

The feeling that the situation is out of control in some way, and therefore represents a threat to the moral order.

•The media effects theory was firstly proposed by the Frankfurt School of social researchers in the 1920’s – from people’s reaction to Nazi propaganda

• Hypodermic Model – refers to the idea that the media is like a drug that is addicted to.

The media effects theory and how it affects representation of England/ Englishness

The media effects theory affects how English people view themselves, for instance, in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the English are represented in a rough, ‘cockney-geezer’ way… This is a self-gratifying stereotype, but would likely be viewed as negative by a non-English audience. The theory is that these stereotypes that we view of ourselves are likely to affect the way we view ourselves, and, in turn act.

THINGS WRONG WITH THE THEORY!!!!!

1.The effects model tackles social problems 'backwards‘

A study was carried out by interviewing 78 violent teenage offenders and then tracing their behaviour back towards media usage, in comparison with a group of over 500 'ordinary' school pupils of the same age - Hagell & Newburn (1994) found only that the young offenders watched less television and video than their counterparts, had less access to the technology in the first place, had no particular interest in specifically violent programmes, and either enjoyed the same material as non-offending teenagers or were simply uninterested.

2. The effects model treats children as inadequate

This situation is clearly exposed by research which seeks to establish what children can and do understand about and from the mass media. Such projects have shown that children can talk intelligently and indeed cynically about the mass media and that children as young as seven can make thoughtful, critical and 'media literate' video productions themselves .

3. The effects model is often based on artificial studies

They may then be observed in simulations of real life presented to them as a game, or as they respond to questionnaires, all of which are unlike interpersonal interaction, cannot be equated with it, and are likely to be associated with the previous viewing experience in the mind of the subject, rendering the study invalid.

4. The effects model is selective in its criticisms of media depictions of violence5. The effects model makes no attempt to understand meanings of the media6. The effects model is not grounded in theory