Research Philosophies: Positivism and Beyond

Positivism vs. Postpositivism

• Positivism suggests that knowledge and logic come from empirical or sensory evidence.
• Positivism advocates using scientific methods across studies and believes scientists can remain independent and objective.
• Postpositivism considers that scientists' personal backgrounds, historical context, and ideological values influence their research.
• Postpositivism accounts for possible biases and value judgments during research.

Hermeneutics (Theory)

• It suggests that human behavior can be studied using religious or media texts.
• Hermeneutics seeks to interpret social interactions and media content as texts reflecting historical and social contexts.

Critical (Theory)

• A critic judges social behavior or cultural products.
• Critical theorists aim to reveal the causes, motivations, and struggles within social reality.

Normative (Theory)

• It seeks to establish a norm or an idealized way for things to function, regardless of reality.

Mass Society Theory

• It posits people in today's society belong to an isolated group and are vulnerable to extremist ideas.
• From the 1850s-1950s, it aimed to explain how mass societies worked and what was lost during the shift from traditional agrarian communities to modern urban societies due to industrialization and urbanization.

Semiotics

• Semiotics studies signs and symbols related to media.
• Languages are formal systems or codes made of arbitrary signs.

Polysemy

• Media texts (like films, TV shows, ads, or news articles) have multiple meanings and can be interpreted differently by various audiences.

Ideology

• It is "the study of ideas."
• Karl Marx and socialists defined it as "a set of ideas that an economic or political system is based on."
• Havens and Lotz defined it as "lenses that we use to interpret the world around us."

Compensatory Practices

• Strategies used by media industries, creators, or audiences to compensate for perceived shortcomings, biases, or limitations in media content, production, or reception.

Economies of Scale

• Achieved when the average cost of a commodity decreases as output expands.

Bourgeoisie

• The ruling or dominant class in a capitalist society, typically those controlling the means of production, including media institutions.

Estrangement/Alienation

• Concepts that describe how media can create distance between audiences and familiar ideas, societal norms, or even themselves.

Structural Standardization

• Achieved systematically through easily imitated formulas and techniques.
• It results in standard reactions, conditioned reflexes, uncritical consumption habits, and obedience.

The Commodity Form

• Things, services, ideas, and people transformed into objects for sale in a capitalist economic system. Consuming without thinking.

The Culture Industries

• The culture industry critically seeks to manipulate tastes and keep individuals dependent.
• Media is part of the culture industry and controls the working class.
• Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer argued that mass-produced culture is designed to make money and keep people thinking predictably.

Glamor

• "The 'now we present' attitude," "richness and roundness of sound," "a mental construct of the success story."
• It can be a form of pseudo-individualism in which a song creates positive emotions.

Plugging

• The constant repetition of a particular hit to make it "successful."
• Plugging breaks down resistance to music by making it all sound the same, using a standardized structure.

Pseudo-Individualization

• It's "the illusion of free choice" in a highly standardized world.
• Standardization offends the notions of taste and consumer choice and must be hidden.

"Leisure Time"

• Leisure time prolongs work by distracting people with entertainment forms.

Recognition

• Repetition leads to recognition and acceptance.
• It involves vague remembrance ("I must have heard this somewhere") and actual identification ("That's it").

Subsumption

• Subsumption by label - "That's ____ by ____."
• Self-reflection - "Oh I know it, this belongs to me."
• Psychological Transfer - "That's a good song."

Social Cement

• It is an agent that bonds communities or societies.
• Refers to two types of listening cultures the culture industry promotes such as a rhythmically obedient type and the emotional type.

Rhythmic Obedience

• First type of listeners, exhibiting an immediate desire to obey music.
• Adaptation to machine music necessarily implies renunciation of one's own human dealing and at the same time a fetishism of the machine.

Wish Fulfillment

• Music allows listeners to see what they cannot have but desire.
• Serves as space where audiences vicariously experience desires, fantasies unattainable in real life.

Katharsis

• The emotional release experienced when engaging with media, especially in response to intense or dramatic narratives.

Ambivalence, Spite, Fury

• Ambivalence occurs because mass listening habits are ambivalent due to the rapid obsolescence of the modern world.
• Spite arises from the unwillingness to admit the shame of having resistance overcome.
• Fury ensues when spite boils over, leading to a rage-filled hysteria.

The Aura

• Benjamin uses aura to describe the unique presence and authenticity of an original work of art, which he argues is lost through mass reproduction.

Exhibition Value

• How a media text is presented and its significance in the cultural context.
• Format, aesthetics, and context of a media piece all contribute to its perceived value, often in terms of capital, prestige, and marketability.

Revolutionary Potential of Film

• Film can serve as a tool for social, political, and cultural change.

Empiricism

• Knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.
• Empiricism is one view of epistemology, of the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism and skepticism
• Systematic and objective investigation uses experimentation and observation to test hypotheses and models.

Hypodermic Needle/Magic Bullet

• Aligns with the "Mass Society" Communication Theory known as the "Strong Effect model."
• The Hypodermic Needle suggests that media directly inject messages into a passive audience's brain.
• Media has a powerful negative effect on society and individuals.
• Similar to the "magic bullet" theory that assumes media's message is a bullet fired from the "media gun" into the viewer's "head."
• For example, Hitler monopolized mass media to support Nazi ideology, contributing to theories’ development.

Content Analysis

• Categorizing content and separating it into component parts is key.

Audience Analysis

• This involves analyzing the audience receiving media messages and how they can be categorized and counted. -Refers to examining the characteristics, preferences, and behaviors of the intended recipients of a message.

Control Analysis

• Examines minimal administrative school research and whom usually funds the research.
• An example is the War of the Worlds research being funded by CBS in an attempt to improve their image.

Propaganda Studies

• Focuses on how information is diffused and how propaganda affects people.
• Propaganda uses visual stereotypes and symbols and reinforces racial, gender, and cultural norms.

The War of the Worlds

• A radio drama by Orson Welles caused mass panic as people believed fiction was fact due to the radio broadcast.
• In the '40s, the dominant perspective was mass society theory.
• The 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast triggered a panicked response among citizens who believed it was real.
• Only a small population panicked, and they each possessed specific psychological dispositions that went against mass society theory. This inspired more empirical research on audience effects.
• By the '60s, limited effects theory became the dominant perspective.

Voting Studies

• These studies tracked 600 voters in 1940 and 2000 voters in 1944.
• Media generally did NOT highly affect people's voting behavior. Rather, interpersonal interactions proved far more influential.
• A small subset of individuals that were opinion leaders, and these leaders influenced those around them.

Interpersonal Interactions

• These are more influential than media in voting studies.
• Researchers found that interpersonal interactions were more influential in people's voting behavior overall.

"Who Says What to Whom and with What Effect?"

• Who is control analysis
• What is Content analysis
• Whom is Audience analysis
• What effect is Effect analysis (interview data)

Status Conferral

• Media can raise awareness of people, organizations, or issues, and this gives them status and legitimacy; it's one of the social functions of mass media.
• It has an endorsing function as it legitimizes, elevates, and amplifies status by providing a platform for issues.

Enforcement of Social Norms

• Mass media can expose immoral activities, encouraging organized social action to address conditions or enforce social norms.
• The power of the press or “the bright glare of publicity"
• Standards have been “frozen” through social scrutiny of social enforcement upon the agencies themselves

Canalization

• Media can redirect pre-existing behavior but struggles to fundamentally reshape value systems, for example, a toothbrush brand .
• It's critical for propaganda to be effective along with monopolization and supplementation.
• Mass media canalizes pre-existing behavior patterns/attitudes rather than aiming to change basic values and seldom seeks to instill new attitudes/behavior patterns.
• It channels existing values rather than challenging them.

Supplementation

• Mass media propaganda is more effective if it gets supplemented with face-to-face contacts.

The Narcotizing Dysfunction

• Exposure to a flood of information can narcotize, rather than energize, the average listener or reader.
• More time is spent consuming media, which reduces time for organized action.
• People are knowledgeable about issues that are happening everyday, but little is done.
• Media creates the illusion of engagement without real participation challenging the concept of active audiences.

Social Prestige

• This is to appear informed
• A Hypothesis created by Bernard Berelson is tested through quantitative methods using surveys and polls.
• How society perceives your worth is based on achievements and skills and is either inherited or earned.

Active Audiences

• Audiences assign new meanings to media content in ways that cannot be predicted by producers or distributors.
• Active audiences consume media by interacting with questioning it, discussing it, and then responding.

Opinion Leaders

• Information and influence flow from media to opinion leaders (gatekeepers) and then from leaders to followers.
• Most influence is between leaders and followers at the same societal level, resulting horizontal flow.
• They are more likely to use media and have more social contacts.
• They are at all levels, not limited to corporate leaders and business tycoons.

Snowball Interviews

• A recruitment technique where research participants assist researchers in recruiting additional participants. This technique helps current enrolled researchers identify other potential participants.

The Drug Study (1954-1955)

• It looked at Inter-physician influence.
• Findings found it possible to map interpersonal networks by tracing the diffusion of a specific item through the social structure of an entire community.
• Social structures and interpersonal networks are highly relevant factors determining the sequence of diffusion.

Project Revere (1951-53)

• The project aimed at assessing and improving communication and information dissemination strategies during the Cold War and was significant for government strategies.
• The project was significant for government strategies, and was research on public opinion and technological impact

Preventative/Incremental Innovation

• Preventative innovation includes adopting now to avoid loss of desired value in the future, such as a seatbelt. This usually results in a slower rate of adoption.
• Innovation involves adopting now to gain a possible increase in desired value in the future, such as games. This usually resuls in faster rate of adoption.

Selectivity

• Selectivity is a factor limiting the effects of mass media. Types include:
  • Selective exposure: What individuals choose to expose themselves to.
  • Selective attention: the changing amount of individual attention being spent on media varies depending on their environment.
  • Selective interpretation: Individuals interpreting messages depend on their mood, cognitive awareness and/or stored knowledge.
  • Selective recall/retention: individuals may remember messages differently or may forget them entirely.

Social Distance

• "Me and you" vs "them."
• Defined around some clear demographic factor, such as level of education, age, ethnicity, or gender.
• The perceived level of separation between individuals or groups is based on social, cultural, economic, or ideological differences and influences interactions, empathy, and group dynamics.

Pluralistic Ignorance

• It is a situation where individuals mistakenly believe that private opinions, beliefs, or behaviors differ from the majority, even when aligned.

Silent Majorities

• Most people passively consume media rather than actively.
• Further, people do not actively engage; media creates a fake reality.

Symbolic Catharsis Theory

• Exposure to violent media lets you expel tension and reduce aggression.

Desensitization

• This applies easily to violent media.
• Constantly seeing violence in media makes people jaded toward it making the reaction to violence becomes less prominent.

Disinhibition

• Media allows inhibition of actions/behavior, indicating strong effects, such as acting differently online than face-to-face.

Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis

• If an individual cannot directly show their frustration toward its cause, they may lash out on a scapegoat.
• For example, people who hate Biden may lash out on Biden supporters, despite their core issue being with Biden himself.

(Issue) Salience

• Making information noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to audiences.
• Increased salience enhances the probability that the receiver will make meaning of the information and store it in memory.

Correlation vs. Causation

• Correlation includes studies that look for patterns or connections between factors, such as specific media demographic and content data.
• Causation uses experiments which test fewer variables in highly controlled environments (lab) and test more variables in less controlled environments (field). Correlations are not causations.

Protest Framing Cycle

• It involves framing some groups as good versus bad, admirable versus terrorist.
• As an example, consider organized activists versus eco-terrorists, peaceful civil rights versus racial terrorists, and violent looters versus black lives matter.

Frankfurt School Critical Theory

• Theorists include Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Walter Benjamin.
• The Frankfurt School was founded to explain how the commodity form is consequential and to explain how individual experiences are effected by the media.
• The standardization of commodity makes culture predictable and reinforces control
• Reproduction detaches art from unique existence decreasing its authenticity, however making film accessible to all and a tool for liberation.

Bureau of Applied Social Research (Administrative School) Empiricism

• Theorists included Paul Lazarsfeld, Frank Stanton, Herta Herzog, Bernard Berelson, Hadley Cantril, and Robert Merton
• They wanted to find what the BASR was responding to if media had limited effects and those how would benefit.
• BASR discovered that media effects were limited reinforcing opinions unless combined with interpersonal influence.

Uses and Gratifications Theory

• Theorists include Herta Herzog and Bernard Berelson.
• Uses & Gratifications theories looks at how people use media and listening to media as an emotional release
• These types of the theories are ineffective at addressing what criticisms U&G research draw

The Two-Step Flow Model

• Theorists included Paul Lazarsfeld, Robert Merton, and Elihu Katz
• This model challenges media effect as they are delivered through secondary parties.

Information Diffusion Theory

• Theorists include John Robinson and Elihu Katz.
• Different message types affect the way that information diffuses.
• Mass media tends to reinforce status quo –Personal contact more effective than mass media

The Knowledge Gap Hypothesis

• Theorists include P.J. Tichenor, G.A. Donahue, and C.N. Olien.
• Assumes that education comes with socioeconomic status, favoring mainly print.

The Third Person Effect Hypothesis

• Theorist W. Phillips Davison –The belief that the news only effects other people not me

Spiral of Silence Theory

• Theorist Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann –If people tend to be in the minority, they will separate themseleves because people want harmony

Framing Theory

• Theorsists Leonard Berkowitz, Ronald Corwin, and Mark Heironimus
• Uses sets of aspects that affect individuals to make decisions in the world. Framing occurs when individuals resist the thoughts and media around them
• Frames help define problems, diagnose causes, make moral judgements, and suggest changes