B.F. Skinner
- behavioral signs/operant conditioning
- the notion of free will is fiction
- states that we are acting under the conditions of a social structure
- schedule of reinforcement
Harold Lasswell
- involved in the first world war
- wrote book in 1927 called ‘propaganda technique in the world war’
- highlighted the brew of a ‘subtle poison which industrious men injected into the veins of a staggering people’
- hypodermic model – suggests the direct injecting of media messages into the passive audience
- highlights the difference between propaganda and persuasion
- developed the theoretical tool of ‘content analysis’
My example:
who: Nigel Morris – journalist for ‘The i’
says what: ‘No more left and right: UK’S ‘seven political tribes’
channel: The i newspaper
to whom: readers of ‘The i’ newspaper who are centrally politically aligned/ more left leaning
with what effect: suggests that
Shoshana Zuboff
- the age of surveillance capitalism – book
- emerging behavior control technology e.g. phones, used to stimulate certain types of behavior
- “the behavioral technology being developed in the united states today touches upon the most basic sources of individuality and the very core of personal freedom”
Cambridge Analytica
- Alexander nix – CEO
Shannon and Weaver (1949)
Laswell’s hypodermic model of media effect was adapted/developed by Shannon and Weaver in 1949 as the Transmission model of Communication, which included other elements, such as NOISE, ERROR, ENCODING and FEEDBACK
Paul Lazarfeld
- recognised that a simple, linear model may not be sufficiently complex to understanding the relationship between message sent > message received
- , in 1948 he developed the Two Step Flow model of communication
- Lazarfelds model also took account of the way in which mediated messages are not directly injected into the audience, but while also subject to noise, error, feedback etc, they are also filtered through opinion leaders, those who interpret media messages first and then relay them back to a bigger audience.
- audiences are active, choosing which opinion leader/influencer to listen to
uses and gratifications (active selection)
- Research into this area began with Denis McQuail and Jay Blumler, who in 1969, looked to study the 1964 UK Election. In the early 1970’s they were joined by Elihu Katz, Joseph Brown, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas.
- they put forward research to show that individual audience members are more active than had previously been thought and were actually key to the processes of selection, interpretation and feedback
- suggested people seek particular pleasures/uses and gratification that are catogorised into ;
- information / education
- empathy and identity
- social interaction
- entertainment
- escapism
Or categorised as: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance.
It is suggested that much of this research was informed by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1954)
George Gerbner’s cultivation theory
- George Gerbner, Larry Gross and others worked on a large-scale, positivist, in-depth, longitudinal study into the effects of television, which started in 1975
- Looking primarily at the relationship between violence on television and violence in society. They developed what is known as cultivation theory, noting the distinct characteristics of television in relation to other media forms.
- Quote: ‘television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources‘
Stuart Hall’s theory of preferred reading
the theory suggests that there are three different ways of reading/interpreting a text, dominant/negotiated/oppositional which suggest;
- A dominant position accepts the dominant message
- A negotiated position both accepts and rejects the dominant reading
- An oppositional position rejects the dominant reading