British Politics and the Media – Introduction
British Politics and the Press
British Politics and the Tabloid Press
British Politics and Media Ownership
British Politics and Media Self Regulation
The Leveson Inquiry and Regulation
British Politics and the Cinema Newsreel
British Politics and the Radio
British Politics and the Television
British Politics and the Internet
Media Effects Theory – Direct Effects
Media Effects Theory – Minimal Effects
Media Effects Theory – Long Term Effects
Constructivism, Media and Society
Structuralism and Critical Theory
Political Communication – Introduction
Political Communication – National and Direct
Political Communication – Local and Direct
Politicians and the Media – Their Relationship
The First Phase of Political Communication
The Second Phase of Political Communication
Political Communication – The Leader’s Debates 2010 and 2015
Lazarsfeld in The People’s Choice (1944) and then with Elihu Katz in Personal Influence (1955) developed the two step flow theory which moved away from the idea of direct effects on individuals.[amazon_link asins=’B0747QLCD6′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’brituniversity-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’7957a518-f794-4e69-8d1a-baa2b6f1016d’]
This suggests that ideas flow from the media to opinion leaders in local communities who pick up those ideas that they agree with and spread them to other people, and this face-to-face contact is more powerful than media influence.
Early uses of the theory saw the opinion leaders as people with high social standing but more recent works sees opinion leaders as anyone who influences others and a range of factors may lead people to adopt that role, including just personality.
Davan Shah and Dietram Scheufele provide a good explanation of what these factors are in Political Communication, Volume 23 No 1 2006.
The internet has been seen as having limited effect on elections but Pippa Norris and John Curtice use the two-step model to show that people who gained information from the internet during the 2005 general election were more likely to talk to others about the election, almost always by telephone or face-to-face (Journal of Information Technolog,y Volume 4, No 4, 2008).
Even further from direct effects ideas is uses and gratification theory. Blumler and Elihu Katz in The Uses of Mass Communication (1974) reverse the idea of the media message affecting people.[amazon_link asins=’1138729612′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’brituniversity-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’b6167d3e-36d1-4888-832b-27bbe42501d7′]
They argue that people have various reasons for using the media, which may include seeking information, entertainment, escapism, relaxation, socialising with friends or even just background noise and will choose what they look at to match their objective.
Different people may want different things out of the same piece of media. People’s individual characteristics and attitudes are more important than precisely what the message from the media is and, indeed, the media may adjust their content to provide what market research shows the audience is looking for.
The approach has typically used questionnaires to ask people why they use the media, although whether people can clearly articulate this has been one of the criticisms of the approach.
Joseph Klapper in his reinforcement theory argues that the media is just one of the many social influences on people and is more likely to reinforce than change the views developed from other social influences (The Effects of Mass Communication, 1960).[amazon_link asins=’0029173809′ template=’ProductAd’ store=’brituniversity-21′ marketplace=’UK’ link_id=’af8ae871-1a1a-47e6-b185-d70c8bd7894f’]
In terms of the political content of the media, people may selectively take from it what reinforces the political views that they have already, rather than that the media influences their political views.
