Media Systems Dependency Theory

Media constitution of ruless numberency theory (MSDT), or plainly media dependency, was developed by Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur in 1976. 1 The theory is grounded in classical sociological literature positing that media and their auditory senses should be studied in the con textbook edition of larger neighborly systems. MSDT ties together the inter dealings of broad brotherly systems, hoi polloi media, and the case-by-case into a all-embracing explanation of media effects.At its core, the basic dependency hypothesis states that the to a greater extent a psyche depends on media to meet inevitably, the more important media will be in a persons life, and thence the more effects media will gull on a person.The kinships between comp matchlessntsDependency on media emerges from three relationships.1) The relationship between the federation and the media Within this relationship, media access and availability atomic number 18 regarded as important antecedents to an persons experience with the media. The nature of media dependence on societal systems varies crossways g everyplacenmental, economical, and heathen system.2) The relationship between the media and the audience This relationship is the lynchpin versatile in this theory beca procedure it affects how people might use a multitude medium. This relationship withal varies across media systems. The more salient the reading postulate , the stronger be the motivation to seek mediated in castingation and the dependency on the medium. In result, the likelihood for the media to affect audiences becomes greater. 3) The relationship between the society and the audience. The societies deviate consumers needs and motives for media use, and provide norms, values, knowledge, and laws for their fractions.Social system can function an alternatives to the media by offering similar services of the media.Media needs and media dependencyThree types of needsAccording to Ball-Rokeach and D eFleur, three media needs watch step to the fore how important media is to a person at any given trice 1) The need to lowstand ones hearty world (surveillance) 2) The need to act meaningfully and effectively in that world ( affectionate utility) 3) The need to escape from that world when tensions be high (fantasy-escape) When these needs for media be high, the more people criminalto media to meet these needs, and therefore the media wealthy person a greater fortune to effect them. That said, none of these media needs be constant over long periods of time. They form based on aspects of our brotherly environment.Two basic cultivates for hightened media needsMedia dependency theory states cardinal specific conditions under which peoples media needs, and consequently peoples dependency on media and the potential for media effects, are heightened. The first condition of heightened media needs occurs when the number of media and centrality of media functions in a society ar e high.For instance, in modernized countries like the United States, there are many media outlets and they serve intumesce highly centralized social functions. In the United States alone, the media act as a fourth branch of government, an alarm system during national emergencies, and as a tool for entertainment and escape, whereas in the underdeveloped world the media are non as numerous and serve far fewer functions. As much(prenominal), the media maintain a greater opportunity to serve needs and hold effects in contemporary America than in a tercet world country.The support condition of heightened media needs occurs when a society is undergoing social change and conflict. When there is a war or large-scale existence protests like during Vietnam or the Arab Spring, a national emergency like the terrorist attacks of family 11, 2001, or a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, people turn to media to help understand these important tied(p)ts. Consequently, the media have a greater opportunity to exert effects during these generation of social change and conflict.The effects of media messageBall-Rokeach and DeFleur suggests that the cognitive, behavioural and affective consequences of media use are premised upon characteristics of both individuals and their social environment.CognitiveThere are quintuple types of cognitive effects that will be exerted on audiences, the first of which is the debut and resolution of ambiguity. Ambiguity occurs when audiences receive inadequate or incomplete entropy close their social world.When there is high ambiguity, stress is created, and audiences are more likely to turn to mass media to resolve ambiguity. Ambiguity might be especially prevalent during measure of social change or conflict. The arcsecond effect is agenda-setting. This is a nonher reason why we might call dependency a comprehensive theory of media effects it incorporates the entire theory of agenda-setting at bottom its theoretical framework . Like any other effect, media agenda-setting effects should be heightened during times when the audiences needs and therefore dependency on media are high.So, for instance, if our informational needs and dependency on media was high during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we would have been more susceptible to agenda-setting effects, and we would have therefore perceived the Iraq War as the close important problem (MIP) facing the United States. Third is status formation. Media exposes us to completely new people, such as political figures and celebrities, not to mention physical objects like birth control pills or railway car safety mechanisms that we come to form attitudes or so.Dependency does not suggest media are monolithic in their ability to influence attitudes, but the theory does suggest that media lean a reference in selecting objects and people for which people form attitudes almost. If a person is experiencing greater media dependency, we would therefore expect that the person will form more (or more complex) attitudes about these attitude-objects than people with low media dependency. Media also have the potential cognitive effect of expanding peoples belief systems.Media can create a kind of enlargement of citizens beliefs by disseminating information about other people, places, and things. axerophthollification of peoples belief systems refers to a broadening or enlarging of beliefs in a certain category. For example, a constant flow of information about global warming will expand peoples beliefs about pollution affecting the earths atmosphere, about cap and duty and other policies, and about own(prenominal) contributions to global warming.These beliefs meet with and are corporal into an existing value system regarding religion, sluttish enterprise, work, ecology, patriotism, recreation, and the family. Last is value elucidation and conflict. Media help citizens clarify values (equality, freedom, honesty, forgiveness) often by precipi tating information about value conflicts. For instance, during the 1960s the mass media regularly reported on the activities of the CivilRights movement, presenting conflicts between individual freedoms (e. g., a businessmans property rights to cross b privations entrance) and equality (e. g. , human rights). When such conflicts play out in the mass media, the value conflicts are identified, resulting in audiences forming their own value positions. Such a position can be painful to articulate because it can wad a choice between mutually incompatible goals and the means for obtaining them. However, in the emergence of trying to decide which is more important in a particular case, general value priorities can become clarified.AffectiveBall-Rokeach and DeFleur mentions several practical affective media effects that are more likely to occur during times of heightened dependency. 1314 First is desensitization, which states that prolonged film to violent content can have a numbing ef fect on audiences, promoting insensitivity or the lack of desire toward helping others when violent encounters happen in real life. Second, exposure to news messages or TV dramas that portray crime-ridden cities can increase peoples timidity or anxiety about living in or even traveling to a city. Media can also have effects on morale and feelings of alienation.The degree of positive or negative mass media depictions of social groups can cause fluctuations in peoples sense of morale in be to that group or in their sense of alienation from that group.BehavioralThere are two broad categories of behavioral effects that Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur identify. The first broad category is called activation effects, which refer to instances in which media audiences do something they would not other than have make as a consequence of receiving media messages. Behavioral effects are for the most part thought to work through cognitive and affective effects.For instance, a womanhood reading a news story about sexism in the work might form an attitude toward sexism that creates a negative emotional state, the orgasm of which is joining a womens rights march in her local community. The second broad category of behavioral effects is called deactivation, and refers to instances in which audiences would have otherwise done something, but dont do as a consequence of media messages. For example, the primary presidential campaign has become longer and increasingly use more media to target audiences.As such, primary campaigns might elicit negative attitudes toward the electoral process and negative affective states such as boredom or abuse that in turn might make a person not turn out to vote.The levels of media dependenceIn the MSD suck, the media system has two-way resource-dependency relations with individuals (micro-level), groups and organizations (meso-level), and other social systems (macro-level).The microlevel(individual level) of dependencyMicrolevel, or individual level application focus on the relationship between individuals and media.The microlevel dependency, better known as individual level media system dependency(IMD)begins with an assessment of the types of motivation that bring individuals to use the media. In the perspective of IMD, goals are preferred to needs to conceptualize the motivations that affect media behavior. According to Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur, goals are the key dimension of individual motivation. While needs imply both judicious and irrational motives, goals imply a problem-solving motivation more appropriate to a theory of media behavior based upon the dependency relation.Three types of motivational goalsThe IMD approach provides a comprehensive conceptualization of three motivational goalsunderstanding, orientation, and play. 1) Understanding- needs for individuals to have a basic understanding of themselves and the world around them. 2) Orientation- needs for individuals to direct personal actions effectively and interact successfully with others. 3) play(or recreation)- a way through which one learns roles, norms, and values and its reflected in such activities as sport, dance, and celebration.The macrolevel of dependencyEvery countrys media system is inter interdependent on the countrys other social systems (e. g. , its economy, its government) for resources, and vice-versa. At the macrolevel, dependency theory states these interrelationships influence what kinds of media products are disseminated to the public for consumption, and the blow of possible uses people have for media.Media and Economic SystemThe media depend on a societys economic system for 1) inculcation and pay backment of free enterprise values, 2) establishing and maintaining cerebrateages between producers and sellers, and 3) controlling and winning internal conflicts, such as between management and unions. In turn, the media is dependent on a societys economic system for 1) profit from advertising revenue, 2) technolo gical developments that reduce costs and argue effectively with other media outlets, and 3) expansion via access to banking and finance services, as well as international trade.Media and Political SystemA societys media and political system are also heavily interdependent.Political system rely on the media to 1) inculcate and reinforce political values and norm such as freedom, voting, or subjection to the law, 2) maintain order and social integration, 3) organize and mobilize citizens to carry out essential activities like waging war, and 4) controlling and winning conflicts that develop within political domains (e. g. , Watergate). Conversely, the media rely on a countrys political system for judicial, executive, and legislative protection, starchy and informal resources required to cover the news, and revenue that comes from political advertising and subsidies.Media and secondhand SystemsTo a lesser extent, media has established interdependencies with several other social sys tems. The family is dependent on media for inculcation and funding of family values, recreation and leisure, coping with everyday problems of pincer rearing, marriage, and financial crises. On the other hand, the media is dependent on the family for consuming their media products. The homogeneous is true of media and religious systems. Religious systems rely on media for inculcation and reinforcement of religious values, transmitting religious messages to the masses, and successfully competing with other religious or nonreligious philosophies.In turn, the media relies on the religious system to attain profits from religious organizations who bribe space or air time. The educational system in a society relies on media for value inculcation and reinforcement, waging successful conflicts or struggles for stingy resources, and knowledge transmission such as in educational media programming. Media depends on the educational system for access to expert information and being satisfac tory to hire personnel trained in the educational system.Finally, the military system depends on the media for value inculcation and reinforcement, waging and winning conflicts, and specific organizational goals such as recruitment and mobilization. The media, in turn, depends on the military for access to insider or expert information. The consequences of all of these interdependencies, again, are alterations in media products that audiences consume. In this way, the system-level interdependencies control media products, the range of possible social uses for media, the extent to which audiences depend on the media to fulfill needs, and in the long run media effects on audiences.Individual differences due to demographics or personality traits might change what people actually do with media messages or how they interpret media messages, but the messages forever and a day begin as the result of interdependent social systems.A comparison of use and happiness theory and media system dependency theoryBall-Rokeach summarized the major differences between uses and gratification (U&G)theory and media system dependency(MSD) theory.Conception of audience membersBoth U &G and MSD theorists view the audience member as active, but the basic conceptions of the audience member differ.U&G theorists focus on psychological and sociodemographic origins of differences in media use. In this perspective, the variability of text interpretation suggests an audience member in charge of the text. MSD theorists focus on psychological, interpersonal, and sociological origins of differences in micro MSD relations as well as the macro MSD relations that constrain media text production and individuals MSD relations. The responsiveness of micro MSD relations to environmental conditions and the ecological constraints on media production and consumption are important features.In this perspective, the audience member is neither in charge of the text nor controlled by the text. The nevertheless way we can predict the effects is the audiences MSD relations in linguistic context of the ecology of macro relations.Conception of interpersonal networks and communicationU&G theorists emphasize the role of interpersonal communication in the distortion of media messages and of networks as interpretive communities. In this conception, interpersonal networks are regarded as a safety way against the ethnic apparatus of the media and its partners.They believe that the interpersonal network contributes to individual agency, and the networked individual is charge to manipulate media texts, not to be manipulated by them. The MSD conception is compatible with the U&G conception up to a point. Consistent with MSD conceptions of the individual member of the active media audience, the interpersonal networks play major roles in MSD theory. They link the individual to public and they link and influence the nature of the individuals relations with the media system.Conception of the Media system and of media world-beaterU&G theorists in the psychological tradition think of the media system as creators of tentative texts subject to multiple re edifices. In this perspective, the media system is functional to the extent that it is useful or affords ways for individuals to live up to needs. The MSD conception is closer to a macro functionalist version of U&G. MSD shares the macro functionalists view of the medias interdependence with other social and cultural system. In this view, the function of media is seen as a key structure for vertical and horizontal integration of society.The MSD viewpoints seem to be even closer to cultural studies traditions in that the central concern for structural relations of control over information resources that generate the power to create social realities and to negotiate social conflict and social change.Methods of observation, analysis, and interpretationAlthough both U&G and MSD researchers crave similar questions of individuals, they do so for very different reasons. Those differences are reflected most clearly in (a) the logics of hypothesis formation (b) item and scale construction (c) modes of data analysis, and (d) interpretation of findings.The MSD researcher essentially wants to know the micro and macro determinants of stability and change in micro MSD relations to learn something about their cross-level consequences for individuals and their interpersonal networks-the dynamics of their inner worlds and how they live in their social worlds. The U&G theorist wants to learn something about the individuals attraction to media texts and the interaction between text and reader to better understand the contributions of reader characteristics to text processing.The differences between micro U&G and micro MSD are, thus, in their epistemological origins, assumptions, concepts, and missions. Criticismsedit Baran and Davis identify four primary criticisms of dependency theory 1) discrepancy in microlevel and macrolevel measurement makes between-study comparability problematic. 2) The theory is often difficult to through empirical observation verify. 3) The meaning and power of dependency is sometimes unclear. 4) Dependency theory lacks power in explaining long-term effects.