I just explained that the belief in the all-powerful media
had fuelled academic research in to the topic of mass communication.
Although many anecdotes, like the Martian Attack, seemed to indicate great effects,
further scientific exploration actually failed to prove this hypothesis.
Many researchers now argued that the effects of mass communications had been overestimated.
Also the idea of a passive audience that is either shot or injected was also rejected.
World War I and later World War II propaganda was again looked at in this light
and scholars, like the influential psychologist Carl Hovland,
found that audience members were often not passive at all
but quite able to select messages and block persuasive attempts.
Especially when they were aware a forehand that there was going to be a persuasion attempt
this is the so called inoculation theory,
the core premise of which is basically
that a prepared audience is better able to resist persuasion.
Also they found that it was often difficult to prove the power of media in reality
because there are too many variables in real life
to reliably ascertain the effect of one specific variable like media influence.
When Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet studied the effects
of the Roosevelt presidential campaign of 1940,
they found that people were not swayed by the campaign efforts.
There was some influence
but this had more to do with reinforcement of a position someone already had
than with actual change.
Another element of the magic bullet theory was debunked by this.
Also the researchers found that people were in fact influenced quite a lot,
not by the media but by so called opinion leaders.
Opinion leaders are those who influence and inform the people around them.
Typically opinion leaders expose themselves to media
in order to be informed and reinforce their standpoints with arguments.
A so called two-step flow model was proposed were people are influenced by opinion leaders.
The media use of these opinion leaders was of course very different
than the old powerful media model would suggest.
They actively sought out media they wanted to use,
made selections based on their own opinions, wants and needs.
So basically they are quite powerful and not easily manipulated at all.
The powerful media paradigm was discarded
and scholars like Lazarsfeld proposed a ‘minimal effects’ theory instead.
Media are only one of many variables in a situation,
and often not the most influential one by far.
People are more likely to be persuaded through social means
and therefore media use and influence should be studied from this perspective.
Not viewing the audience as uniform and passive
but in fact taking into consideration audience factors,
seeing that effects can differ from person to person and group to group.
This approach can be characterized by a famous quote from Berelson
"Some kinds of communication, on some kinds of issues,
brought to the attention of some kinds of people,
under some kinds of conditions, have some kinds of effects."
Although the minimal effects paradigm was becoming more popular,
two things happened that sparked a new popular belief in the powerful media idea.
Firstly we gradually learned more and more about the Holocaust
and the world needed theories that explained how this horror could have happened
and why so many had kept silent during the reign of Hitler.
Secondly a new mass medium quickly rose to prominence,
drastically changing the media landscape and people’s daily lives.
Television.