MASS COMMUNICATION-ASSIGNMENT

Name: Enock Gyan
Level: 100
Date: 19th March, 2010

Q.Critique media effects as stated in the hypodermic needle theory

Mass media plays a very crucial role in framing and reframing public opinion, connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self image of society. The mass media in the 1940s and the 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence. The fast rise and the popularization of radio and television, the emergence of persuasion industries such as advertising and propaganda and Hitler’s monopolization of the mass media during the World War II to unify the German public behind the Nazi party amongst other factors, contributed to the need to investigate the effect of the mass media on society. In an attempt to demonstrate the effects of the mass media on the public Harold Laswell propounded the hypodermic needle theory in his pioneering work ‘Propaganda technique in the world war’(1927).

The phrasing ‘hypodermic needle’ is meant to give a mental picture of the direct, strategic and planned infusion of a message into an individual. Also known as the hypodermic-syringe model, this communication model holds that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. The Psychological strings of the theory is rooted in behaviorism and based on Ivan Pavlov’s stimuli response learning theory. Laswell stated that human response to the media is uniform and immediate. Upon careful dissection in the theater of mass communication, the hypodermic needle theory suffers some malady.

Research has challenged the propagation that individuals’ response to the media is uniform and immediate. The most famous often cited for the hypodermic needle model was the 1938 broadcast of the world war and the subsequent reaction of widespread panic among its American mass audience. In a research led by Paul Azarsfeld and Herta Herzog, their findings showed that reaction to the broadcast were in fact diverse and were largely determined by situational and attitudinal attributes of listeners. This research is in consonance to ‘timing’ under the basic dimensions of media effects research. It stipulates that media effects can occur either directly or a long time after exposure to the media content. Thus individual response to media exposure varies according to the physiological, psychological cognitive, emotional, attitudinal and behavioral coloration of the individual. For instance in Ghana, interview conducted by an Accra based radio station to determine the response of individuals to the earth quake hoax that swept through the country recently, is a classical example. Whiles some people stormed out of their rooms like a madman chasing nothing, others stayed in doors and remained unperturbed on hearing the news about an impending earthquake.

The assertion that individual’s swallow everything that trickles down from the media under the hypodermic needle theory lacks meat. According to the Agenda –setting theory, the press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is conspicuous enough in telling people what to think about. This theory accounts for the complex nature of human attitude and recognizes that people do not accept what the media always say. There is enough evidence that abounds to the effect that people in our society today do not take the media as the final authority as far as news is concerned. The media now serves as the source for society to receive information and filter it by herself. For example a news item that reports on a corruption scandal involving one of the most respected Statesmen will be hardly swallowed by the Ghanaian public prior to the provision of hardcore evidence or a court ruling. Underscoring this essential human attribute, Berleson (1948) aptly comments: ‘many hear, but few listen’

In sum, it is unequivocal to stress that the hypodermic needle theory is not based on empirical findings from research but rather on assumptions about human nature. Thus the absence of a scientific orientation has flawed the theory as incoherent and inconsistent and in stark contrast to the situation on the ground. In spite of the material inaccuracies that clothes the hypodermic needle theory; it nevertheless served as a trailblazer for other modified theories on media effects to emerge. Others that followed this breakthrough includes the ‘Cultivation theory’ by George Gerbner, the ‘Social action theory’ by Anderson and Meyer, the ‘Agenda setting theory’ by Maxwell Mc combs and Donald and the ‘Media dependency theory’ by Ball Rokeach and DeFlner. These theories have managed to tackle media effects holistically by considering the social, psychological and behavioral implications of media exposure.