Media Effects Reconsidered

Abstract

Arguments are presented for looking at cognitive outcomes as dependent variables in communication research rather than placing emphasis only on affective realms. This approach also brings attention to the independent-dependent variable emphases found in the communication literature over the last few decades. The social context of media use and the motivations that spring from this contextual embeddedness are also discussed with regard to information utility and the distribution of information availability. Finally a comment is offered on how these perspectives may relate to developments in new media technology.

Assessing the Reliability and Validity of Television and Game Violence Exposure Measures

“…A. Anderson & Bushman, 2001, p. 354), these definitions lack precision about the type of violence we are interested in and ignore the issue of what exposure to such content is. A clearer conceptualization of media violence exposure will not only help us understand whether our current measures are capturing what we want to measure (Allen, 1981; Clarke & Kline, 1974) but will also encourage researchers to be more precise in their theoretical predictions about media violence (Jordan et al, 2007; Slater, 2004).…”

Identifying Active Hot-Issue Communicators and Subgroup Identifiers

“…Information seeking, as the active-approach variable of information acquisition, is defined as "the planned scanning of the environment for messages about a specified topic" (J. E. Grunig, 1997, p. 9). Information attending, the passiveapproach variable, means "the unplanned discovery of messages" (Clarke & Kline, 1974; cited in J.-N. Kim et al, 2012, p. 148). J.-N. Kim and J. E. Grunig (2011) revised the label of the passive-approach variable from "information processing" in STP to "information attending" to avoid confusion of the term "processing," typically used in the sense of "the cognitive processing of information after it has been acquired" in the communication discipline (p. 144).…”

Measuring Exposure to Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: A Validation Study in the Context of Cancer-Related Treatment Advertising

“…Consequently, population-level measures of exposures through media market gross rating points of televised health campaign advertising or news reporting have been increasingly implemented as predictors of behaviors instead of individual-level self-reported media exposure measures (Farrelly, Davis, Haviland, Messeri, & Healton, 2005; Hwang & Southwell, 2009; Wakefield et al, 2008). Closed-ended survey questions that specify particular content may contain researchers’ biases and may miss the content that is most meaningful for the study population compared to open-ended questions that permit more in-depth assessment of exposures that are most interest to the target population (Clarke & Kline, 1974). Nevertheless, these alternatives to self-reported and close-ended measures are not without their limitations.…”