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The Hypodermic Needle Theory

The Hypodermic Needle Theory suggests that the media has a direct and powerful influence on audiences. It was developed in the 1920s and 1930s after researchers observed the effect of propaganda during World War I and incidents such as Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast. It became the dominant way of thinking about media influence during the subsequent decades. The Hypodermic Needle theory is a linear communication theory which suggests that a media message is injected directly into the brain of a passive, homogenous audience. This theory suggests that media texts are closed and audiences are influenced in the same way. The Hypodermic Needle Theory is no longer accepted by media theorists as a valid explanation of communication and media influence. Although the Hypodermic Needle Theory has been abandoned by most media theorists, it continues to influence mainstream discourse about the influence of the mass media. People believe that the mass media can have a powerful effect on people and parents continue to worry about the effect of television and violent video games.

Lasswell’s 'Propaganda Technique in the World War'

Harold Lasswell's book Propaganda Technique in the World War was one of the principal source for what would later become known as the Hypodermic Needle Theory. Writing about the effect of Allied propaganda, Lasswell wrote: “From a propaganda point of view it was a matchless performance, for Wilson brewed the subtle poison, which industrious men injected into the veins of a staggering people, until the smashing powers of the Allied armies knocked them into submission."

The Payne Fund Studies

The Payne Fund Studies were a series of studies into the effect of movies on children. Although the studies have been criticised for a lack of scientific rigor but were the first, most comprehensive study of media influence. These studies confirmed the belief that the media has a powerful and direct influence on audiences. When writing about the influence of motion pictures, WW Charters - the chairman of the project - wrote: “We see that as an instrument of education it has unusual power to impart information, to influence specific attitudes towards objects of social value, to affect emotions in either gross or microscopic proportions, to affect health in a minor degree through sleep disturbance, and to affect profoundly the patterns of conduct of children.”

Although some of the data gathered from the Payne Fund Studies seemed to prove the hypodermic needle theory, it is important to recognise that these studies also proved significant flaws in this communication theory. As noted in ‘Children and the movies: media influence and the Payne Fund controversy’: “It is also important to realize that the best researchers of the late 1920s were not all naive adherents of what has been caricatured as the “hypodermic” or “magic bullet” theory of mass communication in which media messages were assumed to have a direct and immediate effect on the viewer’s consciousness as if they were injected like a drug into the bloodstream. There are traces of that idea in the PFS, but to some degree it was tested and gone beyond.”

The War of the Worlds Broadcast

On October 30, 1938 the Mercury Theatre broadcast a dramatization of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. Directed by Orson Welles, the program was presented in the format of a news bulletin. Some viewers who tuned in late became convinced that Earth was actually being invaded by martians. As noted on the front page of The New York Times: “A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o'clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells's fantasy, "The War of the Worlds," led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York. The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, "The Shadow," used to give "the creeps" to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria. In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was to be a gas raid. Some began moving household furniture. Throughout New York families left their homes, some to flee to near-by parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice on protective measures against the raids. The program was produced by Mr. Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air over station WABC and the Columbia Broadcasting System's coast-to-coast network, from 8 to 9 o'clock.” Social psychologist Hadley Cantril conducted research on the Orson Wells broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds'. He published his work in a book titled 'The Invasion From Mars - A Study In The Psychology Of Panic'. The research involved interviews with one hundred and thirty people who listened to the broadcast. One hundred of those interviewed were selected for the study because they were frightened by the program. The only authoritative research on this event was conducted by a social psychologist examining the psychology of mass panic, not the influence of the mass media. In his book, Cantril notes that thousands of people became “panic-stricken”. It is estimated that close to six million people listened to the broadcast.

Links

University of Twente: Hypodermic Needle Theory
Wikipedia: The Hypodermic Needle Model
Audience Theory: An Introduction

The Two Step Flow Theory

In 1948, Paul F Lazarsfeld wrote 'The People's Choice' which summarised his research into the November 1940 presidential election. In the course of his research, Lazarsfeld discovered that people were more likely to be influenced by their peers than the mass media.

Lazarsfeld called these people 'opinion leaders'. The Two Step Flow Theory suggests that opinion leaders pay close attention to the mass media and pass on their interpretation of media messages to others. The Two Step Flow Theory maintains that audiences are active participants in the communication process.

As Joseph Klapper noted in The Effects of Mass Communication: "Research has been focused on the process by which people come to decisions regarding public issues, change their food purchasing habits and habits of dress, and select the movies they attend. Specialist studies have inquired into how farmers come to adopt new farming practices and how physicians come to adopt new drugs. In all of these matters, and presumably in others, many people appear to be more crucially influenced by specific other individuals than by pertinent mass communications."

Links

University of Twente: Two Step Flow Theory
Wikipedia: Two Step Flow Theory

The Agenda Setting Function Theory

The Agenda Setting Function Theory was developed by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw as a result of their 1968 study of North Carolina voters during a presidential election campaign. They found a correlation between issues that voters believed were important and issues that the media gave prominence to. They argued that the media can't tell audiences what to think but they can tell them what to think about, that the media has the power to set agendas. As McCombs noted: "The power of the news media to set a nation’s agenda, to focus public attention on a few key public issues, is an immense and well-documented influence. Not only do people acquire factual information about public affairs from the news media, readers and viewers also learn how much importance to attach to a topic on the basis of the emphasis placed on it in the news. Newspapers provide a host of cues about the salience of the topics in the daily news – lead story on page one, other front page display, large headlines, etc. Television news also offers numerous cues about salience – the opening story on the newscast, length of time devoted to the story, etc. These cues repeated day after day effectively communicate the importance of each topic. In other words, the news media can set the agenda for the public’s attention to that small group of issues around which public opinion forms."

The Kylie Effect

Recent research that would appear to support the Agenda Setting Function Theory includes a recent report in The Medical Journal of Australia by Simon Chapman, Kim McLeod, Melanie Wakefield and Simon Holding. In their report, the researchers identified a phenomenon dubbed 'The Kylie Effect' which found a correlation between media reports of Kylie Minogue's breast cancer scare and an increase in the number of bookings for breast cancer screening tests. As noted at the beginning of the report, this is not a well recorded phenomenon: News stories about health and medicine can precipitate dramatic changes in consumer behaviour. For example, news of health problems related to hormone replacement therapy saw an immediate 58% reduction, and a prolonged 40% reduction, in use of hormone replacement therapy in New Zealand. In 2000, a live, on-air colonoscopy undertaken on a prominent US TV show host saw a sustained 9-month increase in the number of colonoscopies performed by a panel of 400 endoscopists. A TV “soap opera” in England featuring a story about the importance of cervical screening was associated with a 21% increase in women having Pap smear tests." The research found that a twenty fold increase in the number of breast cancer related articles led to a forty per cent increase in the number of breast cancer screenings during the two weeks of intense media coverage.

Links

Wikipedia: The Agenda Setting Function Theory
University of Twente: Agenda Setting Function Theory
The Medical Journal of Australia: The Kylie Effect
The Age: 'Kylie effect' helped raise breast screening

The Uses and Gratification Theory

Early thinking about communication theories focused on what the media does to people. The Uses and Gratification Theory, which was proposed by Elihu Katz in 1959, concerns itself with what people do with the media. This theory proposes that audiences are active participants in the communication process. They choose media texts to gratify their own needs - such as the need for information, personal identity, integration, social interaction or entertainment. Uses and Gratification researchers maintain that the best way to find out about media use is by asking the audience because they are "sufficiently self-aware" to explain their reasons for using media texts. According to this theory, texts are open and audiences are active. In fact, the Uses and Gratification theory suggests that audiences actually have power over the mass media. For example, if they choose not to watch a particular program it won't rate and will be taken off the air.

Links

Why do people watch television?
Uses and Gratification Theory

Joseph Klapper's Reinforcement Theory

In 1960, theorist Joseph Klapper published 'The Effects of Mass Communication' in which he proposed the Reinforcement Theory. As Klapper noted: "Whatever it is to be called, it is in essence a shift away from from the tendency to regard mass communication as a necessary and sufficient cause of audience effects, towards a view of the media as influences, working amid other influences, in a total situation." Klapper argued that the mass media does not have the ability to influence audiences. "Regardless of whether the effect in question be social or individual," he wrote,"the media are more likely to reinforce than to change." Klapper argued that people's attitudes, beliefs and behaviour was more likely to be influenced by their family, schools, communities and religious institutions. He argued that the only time the media could influence people was when the media introduced a new idea or concept. Klapper also pointed out that there are particular attitudes and beliefs that the mass media is particularly unlikely to change, such as racial and religious tolerance because attitudes on such topics are "crucial to their self-images and central to clusters of related attitudes, they have occasionally been called "ego-involved," attitudes and it has become somehting of a dictum that ego-involved attitudes are peculiarly resistant to conversion by mass communication - or, for that matter, by other agencies."

When writing about whether media violence encourages people to be more aggressive, Klapper wrote: "Communications research strongly indicates that media depictions of crime and violence are not prime moves towards such conduct. The content seems rather to reinforce or implement existing and otherwise induced behavioral tendencies. For the well adjusted, it appears to be innocuous or even to be selectively perceived as socially useful. For the maladjusted, particularly the aggressively inclined and the frustrated, it appears to serve, at the very least, as a stimulant to escapist and possibly aggressive fantasy, and probably to serve other functions as yet unidentified."

Studies Supporting the Reinforcement Theory

In 'The Effects of Mass Communication', Klapper cites a number of studies that support his theory, including a 1948 study by Larzarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet which revealed that voters were predisposed to opinions and beliefs held by their families. As Klapper notes: "For persons such as the young man who reported his intention to "vote Democratic because my Grandfather will skin me if I don't" - or for his opposite number who explained that "I will vote Republican because my family are all Republicans so therefore I would have to vote that way" - exposure to months of campaign propaganda was found particularly likely to be reinforcing, and particularly unlikely to effect conversion."

In 'The Effects of Mass Communication', Klapper cites a number of studies that support his theory, including a 1948 study by Larzarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet which revealed that voters were predisposed to opinions and beliefs held by their families. As Klapper notes: "For persons such as the young man who reported his intention to "vote Democratic because my Grandfather will skin me if I don't" - or for his opposite number who explained that "I will vote Republican because my family are all Republicans so therefore I would have to vote that way" - exposure to months of campaign propaganda was found particularly likely to be reinforcing, and particularly unlikely to effect conversion."

All media texts are constructed. As a result, they often reflect the social values - the views, attitudes and beliefs - of the period in which they are produced. Although there are many values that do not change - we all believe that murder is immoral, for example - many of the other values that we hold are in a state of constant flux. As noted in the VCE Media Study Design: "...the values of a society are in a state of constant evolution, and tension always exists between the dominant set of values and different or emerging social values.” In VCE Media, social values can be described as dominant, emerging, oppositional or alternative.

• Dominant. Those values held by the majority of people in a society.
• Emerging. Beliefs or attitudes held by a growing number of people in a society. When studying historical texts, these values may eventually become dominant.
• Oppositional. Values and beliefs which are in direct opposition to those held by the majority of people in a society.
• Alternative. Values that provide an alternative to the beliefs and attitudes held by the majority without challenging or opposing them directly.

What kind of text will I study?

In VCE Media, many schools choose to study television programs or films for Social Values. Although schools use different text, your task remains the same: describe how social values have shaped and are reflected in the text.

What is 'production context'?

When writing about your text, it is important to identify the production context. Who made the text? When was it created? What country was it made in? The text's time and place of production can help us understand the social values that the text embodies.

Although this is not a study of history, it is important that you can write authoritatively about the time and place in which your text was created. Don't make simplistic, generalised or unjustifiable statements. If you're writing about a television program that was made in 1950s America, for example, it is not useful to say that 'all women were housewives'. You might, instead, write something like this: "According to an aricle featured on the Organisation of American Historians website: "The late 1940s and 1950s witnessed a sharp reaction to the stresses of the Depression and war. If any decade has come to symbolize the traditional family, it is the 1950s. The average age of marriage for women dropped to twenty; divorce rates stabilized; and the birthrate doubled...democratization of the family ideals reflected social and economic circumstances that are unlikely to be duplicated: a reaction against Depression hardships and the upheavals of World War II; the affordability of single-family track homes in the booming suburbs; and rapidly rising real incomes.'" That's a much more confident and authoritative description of the production period. Statistics, encyclopaedic entries and other evidence is a great way to show that you understand the period in which your text was produced and how that might have influenced its construction.

Also, try not to confuse the production period of your text with its setting. James Cameron's Titanic, for example, reflects the social values of mid-nineties America, not the values and beliefs of England in 1912. If you're having trouble remembering this, here's a good example: The Flintstones reflects the social values of 1960s America, not the social values of the Palaeolithic Era!

Identifying social values

Once you've developed a clear understanding of the time and place in which your text was produced, start to think about the values that it embodies. Watch the text a number of times. What values, beliefs and attitudes are reflected in the narrative? Which characters are the audience encouraged to identify with? Which characters are represented in a positive way? Which characters are represented in a negative light?

When you've watched the text a few times, it's time to start nailing down the social values. When you're writing about the social values, especially in the VCE Media examination, they need to be identified clearly. In previous exams, students have used single words like 'love' and 'families' to identify values in the texts they have studied.

Social values are complex. They cannot be reduced to single words. If you want to successfully identify a social value, you will need to explain it more carefully in a way that clearly identifies values, attitudes and beliefs held during the production period.

Here are some examples:

• Leave it to Beaver supports the dominant social value that there should be a clear distinction between gender roles, that women should take care of the family while men earn money to support it.
• Aliens reflects the dominant social value in 1980s America that there should be greater gender equality, that men and women are capable of performing the same roles.
• Produced in the 1950s, following the devastation unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Forbidden Planet reflects the emerging social value that technology has the potential to be a significant threat to humankind.

Describing representations

When examining the social values in a text, values are rarely stated explicitly. Rather, it is up to you to look closely at representations within the text and think about the way these have been shaped by the values, views and attitudes of the period in which it was produced.

All media texts are constructed. It is because these representations are constructed that they often, very unintentionally, reflect the the social values of the period of production. If you are able to successfully identify and describe representations within your text and comment on how these representations reflect social values, you'll give yourself a real edge when it comes to the Social Values SAC and the VCE Media exam.

When describing representations, it is important to make references to appropriate codes and conventions. If you're studying a film or television program, you might like to consider how the following codes contribute to the representations in the text and, ultimately, what they reveal about social values during the texts production period.

• Camera techniques. How has the camera been used in this text? Films often feature more adventurous and stylised use of camera compared to situation comedies. Nevertheless, when studying such television texts, you might like to consider why particular shot sizes have been used and the effect this has on the audience. Why is a close up used to show a particular character and what effect does it have on the nature of the representation?
• Acting. How does acting contribute to the representation of a character? What does this reveal about social values during this period?
• Mise-en-scene. How does mise-en-scene contribute to the representation of characters and institutions? What type of costumes are the characters wearing? How do these reflect the values and attitudes of the period in which the text was produced?
• Visual editing. Editing is an important part of the production process. When we watch a film or television or program, the editing often appears seamless and natural Nevertheless, editing decisions make an important contribution to the representation. In a sitcom, after a joke, the editor might choose to cut in on the expression of one character instead of another.
• Lighting. The lighting of characters or scenes might reflect values held during the text's production period. Why is one character lit more generously than another? Again, films often contain more stylised lighting compared to situation comedies, which are often filmed on sound stages with high key lighting. However, if you are studying such a text, you might be able to find examples of how lighting contributes to the representation.
• Sound editing. Sitcoms are often filmed in front of live studio audiences and their reaction to jokes is mixed in later. In other cases, pre-recorded laughter is added to the final mix. What does the audience reaction tell us about the social values of this period?
• Dialogue. can often be very revealing about the values and attitudes of the production period. What do characters say? What does this reveal about the values, beliefs and attitudes of the time?
• Music. Music often makes an important contribution to representations in a film or television program. What does the use of music tell the audience about particular characters or situations? What does its use reveal about social values during the production period?

The qualities of a good response

Here are two student responses to 'The Younger Brother', an episode of the television series Leave it to Beaver. Both students are describing the same part of this representation, a shot in which the family sits down to breakfast.

"In Leave it to Beaver, Ward Cleaver is shown as the head of the family. He always has a briefcase and he brings home the bacon. In this episode, he is shown as in charge. When they are sitting around the table, his wife gives them breakfast which shows that she is not in charge."

What's wrong with this response:

• this response does not describe the representation in detail.
• it makes sweeping generalisations about the storyline and characters.
• it doesn’t use terminology relevant to this area of study.
• it doesn’t link the representation to the production period.

“In this episode of Leave it to Beaver, Ward Cleaver is represented as the authoritative, patriarchal head of the Cleaver family. In the opening sequence of the episode, as the family sits around the breakfast table, Ward is represented as the family’s sole breadwinner, dressed in a suit with a briefcase nearby. The juxtaposition between Ward and his wife, June Cleaver, is stark. Whereas Ward’s appearance has been constructed to reflect his role as sole income earner for the family, his wife has a far more feminine appearance. Wearing a dress, it is evident from her acting in this scene - as she serves breakfast for her husband and sons - that she takes primary responsibility for domestic duties, reinforcing the dominant social value that there should be a clear distinction between the role of men and women in a family.”

What's better about this response:

• uses terminology relevant to the area of study such as ‘social value’, ‘representation’, ‘construction’.
• refers specifically to costume and acting, explaining how this contributes to the representation.
• makes links with the production period.

Remember, the best responses will be specific and detailed, commenting on how a representation is constructed and how it reflects values from the production period.

Sample response

Here is a sample student response to the episode of Leave it to Beaver titled 'The Younger Brother'. This response was originally broadcast in 1962 and reflects many of the dominant social values held during this period.

In 1962 the television program Leave it to Beaver produced an episode called 'The Younger Brother'. The fifties and early sixties are often characterised as a quiet time in American history. A time of post-war growth and prosperity, white picket fences and domestic bliss. The American Dream. According to an aricle featured on the Organisation of American Historians website: "The late 1940s and 1950s witnessed a sharp reaction to the stresses of the Depression and war. If any decade has come to symbolize the traditional family, it is the 1950s. The average age of marriage for women dropped to twenty; divorce rates stabilized; and the birthrate doubled. Yet the images of family life that appeared on television were misleading; only sixty percent of children spent their childhood in a male-breadwinner, female homemaker household. The democratization of the family ideals reflected social and economic circumstances that are unlikely to be duplicated: a reaction against Depression hardships and the upheavals of World War II; the affordability of single-family track homes in the booming suburbs; and rapidly rising real incomes." Leave it to Beaver is the epitome of this ideal, the program's opening sequence supporting the dominant social value that families are important institutions that should be happy, close-knit and supportive.

After the title appears and the happy music begins, the camera dollies in on June Cleaver, bringing fresh lemonade out to her husband, Ward, and sons, Wally and The Beaver, who are hard at work in their suburban garden. Immediately, the image of a prosperous, hard working, happy family is created. The Cleavers are a supportive and loving family unit. Ward and June take an active interest in the lives of their children. “You’re going out aren’t ya Beave?” asks Ward, taking an interest in his son’s after school activities. Later, Ward and June encourage Beaver to take up basketball. When he expresses doubts about his ability, June asks “Didn’t ya make the baseball team at school?”. Wally is also supportive of his sibling: “Well Beaver, I think you’ve got a good shot at basketball”. The use of dialogue, music and acting throughout the first part of this representation support the dominant social value that families are an important social institution and they should be close-knit and supportive.

This warm portrayal of family reveals another dominant social value upheld by the text, that adolescents should be polite, dutiful and show respect to adults. Both Wally and Beaver are dutiful sons, who respect their parents and look up to them for advice and support. Their behaviour is polite, their clothes neatly pressed and their checked shirts tucked into their starched pants. The Beaver’s eagerness to please his father is shown when he is encouraged to take up basketball: “Well I guess I could enjoy it if you want me to Dad.” When caught out lying about his attendance at practice, Wally explains his sibling’s behaviour to Ward with “He wasn’t thinking about himself so much. He just didn’t like the idea of disappointing you.” Both boys also willingly help with household chores, as revealed in the opening sequence when Wally and Beaver help their dad in the garden. During the late fifties and early sixties adolescents or ‘teenagers’ emerged as a social grouping in their own right. Rock and roll, fashion, sex and drugs became nationwide preoccupations that have continued right up until the present day. Through the Cleaver children’s studious avoidance of these trends Leave it to Beaver upholds the dominant - but diminishing - social value of the production period that discouraged adolescent rebellion and encouraged respect, manners and good behaviour.

Leave it to Beaver also supports another dominant social values held during this period, the belief that women should be mothers and homemakers, taking primary responsibility for families. June Cleaver, bringing her hardworking boys their lemonade, is framed by the door to the house, and adorned in homely dress and apron. With the contrast of the hedge trimmers in Ward Cleaver’s hand and the sweat glistening on his forehead the gender roles espoused by the program become clearly defined. The Cleaver family is deeply patriarchal; the men do the work and the women content themselves with domestic duties. As the opening sequence ends, a suited Ward heads off to work, the boys head off to school and June remains at home. Later, Wally arrives home he lifts the lids off the pots in the kitchen and asks “Hey mum, when are we gonna have dinner? I’m starved.” June, bathed in soft light and in a dress to match the curtains, replies, “If you keep taking the lids off things it may not be till midnight”. Ward - “Hey, what’s going on in here?” - and Beaver enter and take the lids off as well. Not only do the men not make the food, they don’t even know how to. In another scene, June stands on a chair, trying to fix the curtain.

Ward, dressed again in his business suit, and with a cry of “Lady in distress”, enters and saves the day. June is portrayed as helpless, weak and submissive. During Leave it to Beaver’s production period this attitude towards women was the dominant social value. Despite the war-driven increase involvement in the workplace the cultural ideal was for women to be stay-at-home wives. The sixties saw the beginning of the feminist movement, but as an emerging social value it had yet to make its mark.

Heavy emphasis is also placed on the importance of honesty, a dominant social value tied in with the ideal of adolescent behaviour discussed above. The Beaver feels intensely guilty about hiding the truth about his attendance at basketball practice from his parents. When he finally confronts them, Ward says “I understand about things like this, you don’t have to go through all this deception with me.” At the end of the episode, when June suggests that Wally go easy on Beaver in a game of checkers, Ward perceives this as dishonest: “When you compete you’ve got to put everything you’ve got into it.” When Eddie - one of Wally’s acquaintances from school - comes over one afternoon to copy Wally’s maths homework, the importance of honesty is stressed again. “Is that what you got?” Wally asks of Eddie, who replies “I got it now”. When he realises that Eddie is copying, Wally says, “Come on Eddie, what are ya trying to pull?” When Wally shows Eddie out, the copycat asks, “What is this? East Berlin?”

Eddie’s brief, throwaway comment is deeply revealing, reflecting the dominant social value that the American economy and system of government was superior to that of the USSR. East Germany, under the control of Stalin’s Soviet Union at the time, was a totalitarian quasi-communist state. In the context of the program, this joke relies on the widespread belief in the superiority of America's economic and political system.

Leave it to Beaver: The Younger Brother is quite clearly in tune with the dominant social values that mainstream American society held in 1962, ignoring many emerging social values towards the role of teenagers and women in society.

Overview

Remember these things when studying Social Values:

• Social values are the values, beliefs and attitudes held in a society.
• Social values can be dominant, emerging, oppositional or alternative.
• To understand the social values in a text, you must have a clear understanding of when and where it was produced.
• Do not make simplistic generalisations about a text's production period.
• When writing about social values, identify and explain them clearly.
• Social values cannot be reduced to single words like 'love' or 'family'.
• Describe representations in the text and explain how these may have been shaped and consequently reflect social values during the production period.
• Make reference to appropriate codes and conventions in the description of these representations.
• Use terminology appropriate to the study of social values confidently.
• The best social values responses are detailed, specific and well-informed.