Media and Society: The Role of Media in The Social World

MEDIA AND SOCIETY: THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN
THE SOCIAL WORLD
• Information (Innovation) Diffusion Theory

• Social Marketing Theory
• Media System Dependency Theory
• The Knowledge Gap
• Agenda-Setting
• The Spiral of Silence
• News Production Research
• Media Intrusion Theory
Information (Innovation) Diffusion Theory
• In 1962, Everett Rogers information/ innovation diffusion

theory that explains how innovations are introduced and
adopted by various communities
• Meta Analysis Identifies important consistencies in previous
research findings on a specific issue and systematically
integrate them into a fuller understanding
• Early Adopters In information/ innovation diffusion theory,
people who adopt an innovation early, even before receiving
significant amounts of information
• Change agents In information/ innovation diffusion theory,
those who directly influence early adopters and opinion
leaders
Strengths Weakness
1. Is linear and source-

1. Integrates large amount of dominated
empirical findings into useful 2. Underestimates power of
theory media, especially
2. Provides practical guide contemporary media
for information campaigns in 3. Stimulates adoption by
United States and abroad groups that don’t understand
or want the innovation
Social Marketing Theory
• Social Marketing Theory Collection of middle-range theories

concerning the promotion of socially valuable information
• Targeting Identifying specific audience segments and
reaching them through the most efficient available channel
• Hierarchy of effects model Practical theory calling for the
differentiation of persuasion effects relative to the time and
effort necessary for their accomplishment
• Digital divide The lack of access to communication technology
among people of color, the poor, the disabled, and those in
rural communities
Strengths Weakness
1. Provides practical guide for 1. Is source-dominated

information campaigns in 2. Doesn’t consider ends of
United States and abroad campaigns
2. Can be applied to serve good 3. Underestimates intellect of
ends average people
3. Builds on attitude change 4. Ignores constraints to
and diffusion theories reciprocal flow of information
4. Is gaining acceptance among 5. Can be costly to implement
media campaign planners and 6. Has difficult assessing
researchers cultural barriers to influence
Media System Dependency Theory
• Media system dependency theory Idea that the more a

person depends on having needs gratified by media use, the
more important the media’s role will be in the person’s life
and, therefore, the more influence those media will have.
Strengths Weakness
1. Is elegant and
descriptive 1. Is difficult to verify
2. Allows for systems empirically
orientation 2. Meaning and power of
3. Integrates microscopic dependency are unclear
and macroscopic theory 3. Lacks power in
4. Explains role of media explaining long-term
during crisis and social effects
change
The Knowledge Gap
• Knowledge gap Systematic differences in knowledge between better-

informed and less-informed segments of a population
• It is not only variable access to media technologies, however, that produce
knowledge gaps. They attributed the gap to the public service orientation
of television news in those latter three countries, which “devotes more
attention to public affairs and international news … gives greater
prominence to news [broadcasting news several times an evening in what
Americans would call primetime] … and encourages higher levels of news
consumption” . These factors were strong enough to minimize the
knowledge gap in those countries between the well educated and less
educated and between those who were financially well off and those who
weren’t.
• Digital literacy corps Digital ambassadors in local communities helping
people get online
Agenda Setting
• Agenda Setting The idea that media don’t tell people what to think, but
what to think about
• Walter Lippmann, in Public Opinion (1922), argued that the people do not
deal directly with their environments as much as they respond to
“pictures” in their heads. “For the real environment is altogether too big,
too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not
equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many
permutations and combinations.
Agenda setting 2
• Priming In agenda-setting, the idea that media draw attention to
some aspects of political life at the expense of others
• Agenda Building A collective process in which media, government,
and the citizenry reciprocally influence one another in areas of
public policy
• Framing theory Idea that people use sets of expectations to make
sense of their social world and media contribute to those
expectations
• Second-order agenda-setting The idea that media set the public’s
agenda at a second level or order—the attribute level (“how to
think about it”), where the first order was the object level (“what to
think about”)
• Frames In framing theory, a specific set of expectations used to
make sense of some aspect of the social world in a specific situation
and time
The Spiral of Silence
Spiral of Silence Idea that people holding views contrary to those

dominant in the media are moved to keep those views to themselves
for fear of rejection
• The way news is collected and disseminated, she continued, effectively
restricts the breadth and depth of selection available to citizens. She
identified three characteristics of the news media that produce this
scarcity of perspective:
1.Ubiquity: The media are virtually everywhere as sources of information.
2. Cumulation: The various news media tend to repeat stories and
perspectives across their different individual programs or editions,
across the different media themselves, and across time.
3.Consonance: The congruence, or similarity, of values held by news
people influences the content they produce.

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MEDIA AND SOCIETY: THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN

THE SOCIAL WORLD

• Information (Innovation) Diffusion Theory

• In 1962, Everett Rogers information/ innovation diffusion

1. Is linear and source-

• Social Marketing Theory Collection of middle-range theories

1. Provides practical guide for 1. Is source-dominated

• Media system dependency theory Idea that the more a

• Knowledge gap Systematic differences in knowledge between better-

Spiral of Silence Idea that people holding views contrary to those

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