Essential Communication Theories and Media Effects Models

Functions of Communication in Society

• Environmental Monitoring: Observing and reporting events in the environment.
• Response to the Environment: Interpreting information to produce an appropriate response.
• Social Heritage: The transmission of cultural and social knowledge.

Foundational Theoretical Principles

1. One subject generates a stimulus.
2. The encouragement becomes the content.
3. Channels are enabled for the arrival of the stimulus.
4. The object is passive.
5. The subject is active.
6. Defining the relationships between the fields of analysis.

The Shannon-Weaver Communication Model

The model analyzes communication across three distinct levels:

Three Levels of Analysis

• Technical: Analyzes the fidelity of transmission (how accurately the signal is sent).
• Semantic: Focuses on the satisfactory interpretation of the meaning intended by the issuer.
• Efficiency: Shows the degree to which a message influences the receiver.

Short-Term Media Effects Theories

Early theories focused on immediate, powerful effects:

• The Hypodermic Needle Theory: Prominent during the 1920s (film) and 1930s (radio).
• The Two-Step Flow of Communications: Developed in the 1940s and 1950s, suggesting influence flows from media to opinion leaders, and then to the general public.

Klapper's Research on Media Impact

Klapper dismisses the possibility of direct, powerful media impact and considers a number of possible mediating factors:

1. Biases related to selective exposure, selective perception, and selective retention.
2. Conditions resulting from membership in social groups.
3. The interpersonal diffusion process.

Klapper's Conclusions

1. The general rule is that mass communication is not a necessary or sufficient cause of effects on the public.
2. A mass communication stimulus cooperates with other factors.
3. Mass communication produces a change of opinion only if intermediary factors are ineffective or if these factors exert pressure for change.
4. Important attitudes (e.g., family, religion, race) are resistant to change.

The Uses and Gratifications Approach

This research trend attempts to overcome the limitations of short-term effects models by focusing on audience activity. Its basic assumptions are:

1. The audience is active.
2. Audience members have the initiative to link the gratification of their needs with the choice of media.
3. Media compete with other sources of need satisfaction.
4. Audience members themselves can provide data regarding their media use.
5. Value judgments regarding media content should be held in abeyance.

Agenda Setting Theory

This theory links public opinion, journalism, and politics. The media play an important role in the social construction of reality by selecting and classifying information, producing a public agenda that sorts and prioritizes topics.

The media have a long-term influence; they may not tell us what to think, but they tell us how to think about the issues they prioritize.

Cultivation Theory

This theory posits that television replaces immediate and personal experience, leading to a differentiation between heavy consumers and light consumers of media content, who develop different perceptions of reality.