Abstract
Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research, an edited volume, has influenced, advanced, and transcended the field of communication since publication.
Jennings Bryant, Distinguished Professor Emeritus at The University of Alabama College of Communication and Information Sciences, and Dolf Zillmann, Dean Emeritus, College of Communication & Information Sciences and Department of Psychology at the University of Alabama, are two internationally recognized “academic titans” in the areas of media effects and mass communication. In 1994, Bryant and Zillmann brought together the “leading lights” of media effects scholars to contribute to the anthology. In the pre-internet and pre-access-to-digital-articles era, having a collection of the experts contribute to one essential volume, en masse, was a significant feat at the time. Who better to explicate and summarize the evidence for media cultivation than George Gerbner and colleagues? Who better to discuss social cognitive theory than Albert Bandura? The volume, as a whole, sets an intellectual frame around, and parameters for, what now is increasingly referred to as the field of “media psychology.” Soon after its appearance, the volume acquired the reputation as the proverbial “media effects bible.” Media Effects enduring impact is undeniable, as the text and its subsequent editions published by Bryant and Zillmann (2002; 2nd)., Bryan and Oliver (2009; 3rd), and Oliver, Raney, and Bryant (2019; 4th) have provided the stalwart intellectual foundation for most undergraduate- and graduate-level media effects courses over the past three decades.
Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research—A Review
The volume truly brought together the finest scholars in the media effects tradition of the time, starting with Maxwell McCombs, whose work provided the basis for the agenda-setting tradition, contributing a retrospective in Chapter 1 on “news influence on our pictures of the world.” In Chapter 2, Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, and Signorielli offer an overview of “cultivation theory” and the enduring and common consequences of growing up and living with television. Chapter 3, written by Eunkyung Jo and Leonard Berkowitz, describes “priming effects,” supported by ample evidence found in both social and mediated environments, particularly for violent media’s potential to trigger aggressive thoughts and behavior. Albert Bandura fully explicates “social cognitive theory of mass communication” in Chapter 4, positing “social learning,” “modeling,” and “reinforcement” as social determinants of adaptive behavior, with those processes potentially originating with and being influenced by media content. Another foundational perspective—the “elaboration likelihood model of persuasion” (ELM)—is presented in Chapter 5 by Richard Petty and Joseph Priester. The authors chronicle how ELM’s “two distinct routes to persuasion” (i.e., the central and peripheral routes) were developed from the persuasion matrix model and persuasion response theory.
Chapter 6 covers “political communication effects” and is written by Jack McLeod, Gerald Kosicki, and Douglas McLeod. The chapter serves as a scoping analysis of the area, with the authors arguing for the need to consider spatial and temporal sociopolitical environments of each era to better understand and contextualize political communication effects, as well as a need to consider normative standards for mass media systems in democratic societies. Chapter 7, authored by Barrie Gunter, pursues the complex topic of “media and violence” with an overview of its history, followed by a thorough discussion differentiating television violence effects at the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral levels. The chapter concludes with an overview of intervening variables assessed, and methodological approaches employed, to examine the (non)existent relationships between media exposure and violence. Joanne Cantor investigates “fright reactions” produced by mass media representations in Chapter 8. Cantor summarizes research demonstrating the paradoxical relationship between fright and media; that is, that although frightening media fare creates negative emotional responses (e.g., anxiety, fear), it also evokes enjoyment and entertainment. The chapter concludes with a call for parental guidance to prevent media-evoked fear in children. Consistent with the “hot” debates regarding television and violence as well as fright reactions and media consumption among children, Chapter 9, written by Richard Harris, overviews the “effects related to sexually oriented media fare.” In this chapter, “sexually-explicit” and “sexually-violent” media are explicated, as are their effects on arousal, attitudes, values, catharsis, desensitization, and a range of behavioral effects. Chapter 10, written by Bradley Greenberg and Jeffrey Brand, provided an update to the then-current state of “social minorities and the mass media,” specifically in regard to representations on television. Greenberg and Brand overview several content analyses while arguing for the need to establish programmatic research, particularly to better understand the effects of media content on minority perceptions of self and other minority groups.
In Chapter 11, David Stewart and Scott Ward cover “research and theory pertaining to advertising,” specifically how message characteristics, individual differences, and structural components of advertising (e.g., scheduling, repetition) may affect audience responses, and underlying processes, to advertising. Rice and Atkin offer 10 basic “principles of successful public communication campaigns” in Chapter 12. They argue for the need for future research on, and study replications of, campaign approaches and findings. The “effects of media on personal and public health” is overviewed by Jane Brown and Kim Walsh-Childers in Chapter 13. Brown and Walsh-Childers present both the intended and (mostly) unintended effects of advertising in cigarette, alcohol, and food contexts, as well as the effects of health information in entertainment and news media. Two advertising strategies to affect personal and public health outcomes are offered including the use of edutainment and media advocacy strategies. In Chapter 14, Alan Rubin presents the evolution of the “uses and gratifications” paradigm in media research with an emphasis on how social and psychological needs may be fulfilled by media use. The chapter offers a fair balance of the criticisms to uses and gratifications research, as well as evidence for its utility. Dolf Zillmann and Jennings Bryant conceptualize “entertainment as media effect” in Chapter 15, providing evidence in support of selective exposure, excitation transfer, and mood management processes, as well as audience influences on the enjoyment of media entertainment. The volume concludes with Chapter 16 written by Frederick Williams, Sharon Strover, and August Grant who cover the “social aspects of new media technologies.” In this chapter, they conceptualize the “new” media of the day and discuss the different gratifications obtained from new media relative to conventional media. The nuances and similarities of diffusion of innovations theory, media system dependency theory, and social information processing theory are presented.
A Tradition With Maturity, Staying Power, and Opportunities
The sheer range of theories and literatures covered in this single volume, with many chapters authored by the senior investigators in a given area, is what has led to Media Effects’ decades-enduring impact. The scope of media effects covered—from news influence to television violence, from public health to entertainment media—has made this anthology a foundational and essential text for media instructors, researchers, and students around the globe. Its value to the field is reflected in the demand for three subsequent editions, each introducing new theories, methods, measures, nuances, and advancements. Like the first edition, the subsequent editions are also authored by the leading experts in each topic area.
Through the lens of 2023, it is easy to spot holes in Media Effects. The volume is (necessarily) silent on important topics that have emerged in the field since 1994: social and mobile media, digital gaming, computational approaches, positive media psychology, media psychophysiology and neuroscience, to name a few (subsequent editions cover these and other topics). As scholars programmatically carve out new areas in media effects theory and research, building necessary bridges between communication and psychology, marketing, education, public health, political science, public administration, evolutionary-biology, criminology, religion, philosophy, and sociology, they are bringing into clear view the vision offered by Bryant and Zillmann in 1994: a field achieving a clear level of “maturity.” Three decades notwithstanding, the media effects tradition continues to move in a systematic direction while also opening doors to future theory testing, development, and advancement; much of that is due to the foundational knowledge in, and intellectual roadmap provided by, Media Effects: Advances in Theory and Research.
