The "Media Effects" Model Questioned

It is difficult to understand media effects. Do the media truly make a difference in our behavior? Is there a direct correlation? David Gauntlett argues in, "Ten Things Wrong with the 'Media Effects' Model", that the reason where we do not know how the media has affected us is because the wrong type of research has been conducted. I want to talk about some of the points he mentioned, mainly because I see a lot of validly in what he is trying to prove.

Gauntlet’s first point is that, "the 'media effects' approach, in this sense, comes at the problem backwards, by starting with the media and then trying to lasso connections from there on to social beings, rather than the other way around.” Instead of looking at media as being the problem, one must look at an individual’s background first. With regards to violent of television, said to be the cause of violence in reality, Gauntlet’s studies showed a different outcome. He looked, "not to the mass media but to social factors such as poverty, unemployment, housing, and the behavior of family and peers" and found many violent teenagers actually watched less television than "normal" teenagers.

Although I believe the media does have an affect on us, especially emotionally, I do not think one can put the blame on media entirely. Societal factors play a big part in how someone turns out in life, whether that is positive or negative.

Gauntlett says that another problem with the ‘media effect’ model is that it, “treats children as inadequate”. I completely believe that this is wrong as well, especially since children of today are extremely knowledgeable. Why can’t they understand mass media and be cynical of its messages? Gauntlett explains that psychologists believe in the idea that children do not have the logic of an adult and are viewed for what they cannot do, rather than what they can. Gauntlett says,

Most laboratory studies of children and the media presume, for example, that their findings apply only to children, but fail to run parallel studies with adult groups to confirm this. We might speculate that this is because if adults were found to respond to laboratory pressures in the same way as children, the 'common sense' validity of the experiments would be undermined.

I find this quote really interesting. I do wonder what would happen if the same tests were run with both children and adults. The findings could be quite interesting.

In the end, Gauntlett points out that the ‘media effects’ model is in no way grounded in theory. People tend to think about the specific effect that will be produced by the media, but “the basic question of why the media should induce people to imitate its content has never been adequately tackled”. A lot of other things have been assumed instead of answered such as, “the media (rather than people) is the unproblematic starting-point for research [and] that children will be unable to ‘cope’ with the media”.


Works Cited:
Gauntlett, David. "Ten Things Wrong with the 'Media Effects Model". Oct 4.