The idea suggests that because we often watch the media
independently, it has more chance of affecting us. [Certainly
many parents think this is true and will make a point of sitting with their
young children while they watch potentially disturbing programmes so that they
can have some influence on the way the children take in the messages and
explain confusing issues, but do adults need to be protected in the same ways?]
Some critics of the idea of the mass audience have pointed out
the many ways that individuals who watch programmes alone will then share their
experience with others in conversations about what they have seen. One argument
is that these kind of conversations have much more influence on
potential behaviour than the programme.
THIS THE 2 STEP-FLOW THEORY
The 2-step flow
As the mass
media became an essential part of life in societies around the world and did
NOT reduce populations to a mass of unthinking drones, a more sophisticated
explanation was sought.
Paul Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet analysed voters' decision-making processes during a 1940
presidential election campaign. Their findings suggested that the information does not flow directly from the text into the minds of its
audience unmediated but is filtered through "opinion leaders" who then communicate it to their less
active associates, over whom they have influence. The audience then mediate the
information received directly from the media with the ideas and thoughts
expressed by the opinion leaders, thus being influenced not by a
direct process, but by a 2-step flow.
Think
about this honestly- are your opinions about television, films, music etc ever
influenced by other people? Who? How?
Going a stage
further- do you think a friend's ideas about a media text could ever effect
your behaviour in any way?
There is some
suggestion that what happened in the James Bulger case is that Venables or
Thompson talked about a film they had seen [Child’s
Play] and influenced the
other's behaviour
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