Changes and Continuities in the Media Effects Paradigm

Erica Scharrer

Media Use Around the World

There has never been a more fascinating time to study the role of the media in the lives of people young and old. Individuals are faced with a dizzying array of choices and many media consumption levels are at an all-time high. In the United States, for instance, adult men and women are estimated to watch television about five hours per day whereas kids aged 8 to 18 watch about three-and-a-half hours per day, both figures reflecting an increase of about 30 minutes daily since the data were collected 10 years prior (Nielsen, 2010). Similarly, Eurodata TV Worldwide recorded an increase in television viewing of 28 minutes per day between 1995 and 2005 among the 30 countries from which it gathers data, setting an average daily exposure time across those countries at three hours and four minutes. Throughout the world, newer forms of media compete and coexist with old, resulting in a myriad of devices, platforms, and gadgets to be used for purposes including entertainment, information acquisition, and communication. Media use begins in many cases even before birth, purporting to stimulate babies in utero, drawing the very young to screens at increasingly earlier stages, and continuing to appeal in various forms and functions throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

In some ways, the flourishing media landscape has created more options than ever for audience members and therefore the types of effects media engender continue to become more complex and important to study. This complexity and transformation can be illustrated easily within the medium of television, for instance, for which one is no longer at the mercy of the programming schedule, as time shifting through DVRs (with an estimated penetration of 37% of US homes, Nielsen, 2010) and calling up shows on Internet sites and “smartphones” (as approximately 20 million individuals in the US did in the first quarter of 2010, Nielsen, 2010) become more prevalent practices. The media-rich environment is also illustrated by the statistic that an estimated 79% of homes in the United States are wired for high-speed Internet (Nielsen, 2010), a boon to those who have this means of immediate access but a severe impediment to those who do not in a context in which institutions from banks to schools assume 24/7 connectivity (Jung, 2008 van Dijk, 2005). Although not as prevalent in time use as their screen-based counterparts, approximately 39% of US adults read a newspaper each day (spending an average of 26.4 minutes daily with it) and 29% a magazine (spending an average of 15.6 minutes; Nielsen, 2010). Radio still reaches an estimated 61% of all adults in the US per day (Nielsen, 2010) and remains the most global of media due to its affordability and nonreliance on literacy and electricity (Hendy, 2000; Manyozo, 2009). Videogames are both used more often by their most ardent fans and now have a wider demographic reach, accounting for an average of 1 hour and 13 minutes per day for young people (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010) but are also used by 53% of all adults in the United States, with an only slightly greater prevalence in use among men compared to women (Lenhart, Jones, & Macgill, 2008). Children in the United States are raised in home environments that contain, on average, 3.8 television sets, 2.8 playback devices such as DVD or VCRs, 1 digital video recorder, 2.2 CD players, 2.5 radios, 2 computers, and 2.3 video game systems (Rideout et al., 2010). Most if not all of these media forms feature increasing amounts and types of commercial content, resulting in a frenzy of ad messages that occupy a growing proportion of space and time in content that is both overt and readily distinguishable as advertising and increasingly embedded into programs and other more covert forms, as well.

Other nations boast similar figures and similarly media-rich environments. In the United Kingdom, for instance, individuals spent an average of 218 minutes watching television, 164 minutes listening to the radio, and 24 minutes on the Internet per day in 2007 (Ofcom, 2008). A full 98% of those in Iceland are Internet users, as are 95% in Norway, 93% in Sweden, 90% in Greenland, 89% in the Netherlands, 88% in Bahrain, 86% in Denmark, 85% in Finland, New Zealand, and Luxembourg, 83% in the United Kingdom, 81% in South Korea, 80% in Australia, 79% in Germany, and 78% in Japan, Canada, and Belgium (Internet World Statistics, 2010). Residents of France, Germany, Norway, Italy, Canada, Japan, Poland, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, and the United Kingdom average between 154 and 268 minutes per day of television consumption (Ofcom, 2007). Among the 30 countries covered in the Eurodata TV Worldwide data, Japan had the highest level of television use per day at 4 hours and 11 minutes. The average television use across Asian countries, in general, was 2 hours and 34 minutes, across Latin America 3 hours and 16 minutes, and in the Middle East 3 hours and 37 minutes in 2005 (Eurodata TV Worldwide, 2010). With additional media technologies commanding attention alongside television and the Internet, media consumption occupies increasingly larger amounts of individuals' time around the world. In Africa, for instance, mobile phone subscriptions have grown from less than 2% of the population in 2000 to 30% in 2007 (International Telecommunication Union, 2008) and Internet subscriptions rose from approximately 100,000 in 1998 to 800,000 in 2002 (Jensen, 2000; Wilson & Wong, 2003).

This medium-by-medium description does much to illustrate the point of a media-rich environment and daily exposure levels to singular media forms, but it does little to demonstrate the sheer complexity of studying media influence when uses of each of these media types are considered in the collective. Increasingly, children, adolescents, and adults spend time “multitasking” with media – attending to multiple media forms simultaneously – posing a considerable obstacle to researchers whose goal is to discover how individuals respond to it all (Rideout et al., 2010). The field of media effects, therefore, is presented with both the challenge and the opportunity to sort out these complex and potentially idiosyncratic experiences in a context in which the number of media outlets has proliferated, their use occurs at virtually any location and time of day, and their consumption and purposes intersect and converge more than ever before.

Why are individuals drawn to media to such impressive degrees? How do they process and make meaning from media messages? What types of content are they both receiving and creating when spending time with media? What are the consequences of such media use? What factors and conditions help explain why individuals vary in their responses to media? And what factors and conditions may moderate or mediate such responses? Media effects research has long taken up these critically important questions. The answers provided in a large and still growing body of knowledge have crucial implications for day-to-day interactions, for public policy, and for society, at large.

Media Effects Scholarship: Stability and Change

Just as the media landscape has both changed and remained the same, media effects scholarship has taken a parallel course. Scholars continue to explore issues in traditional areas of inquiry such as media violence, political communication, and children and media, responding to the changing media landscape in each. These areas are well represented in the current volume as they are in the literature, and in the effects paradigm at large, and they each include perennially important questions with new twists. For example, what are the effects of consuming media that feature violent content? Television and film have long been studied in an attempt to answer that ever-important question, but video and computer games are relatively new forms that demand (and increasingly command, as we will see in this volume) scholarly attention. What role do the media play in electoral politics, and how do individuals respond to (learn from, be inspired by, be discouraged by, be angered by, accept, question, etc.) political ads, news coverage of campaigns, and other political media content? In this case, important studies of uses of and responses to more traditional media forms persist. Yet, newer media have led to an increasingly fragmented array of outlets for individuals to attend to that correspond or contradict one's own political allegiances, as well as the potential for individuals to be not just media consumers but also media producers through such outlets as social media and blogs. What does the amount of time children spend with the media mean for their health and fitness, their performance in school, their knowledge of and requests for products advertised, their views of themselves and others, and their face-to-face communication with parties including parents and peers? Again, these questions have been the subjects of decades of scholarly work but have spurred newer topics to interrogate as levels of media use rise and popular media forms shift toward greater interactivity with technology.

Media effects scholars continue to use variations on tried and true research methods, including content analysis, experiments, and surveys. The latter two methods directly explore associations and causal connections between media use and particular outcomes, whereas the former – content analysis – is conducted in order to have a sense of what themes, patterns, and messages prevail in media, seen by many in the field as a necessary first step toward the exploration of effects (Riffe, Lacy, & Fico, 2005). Yet, once again, methodological approaches have had to evolve as well, such as new strategies to deal with the ephemeral nature of Internet content in content analysis, more lengthy and multi-faceted survey questions to accurately capture complex media-use patterns in survey research, and newer physiological means of studying individual responses used to supplement (or in some cases replace) paper-and-pencil outcome measures in the lab. Scholars have embraced more sophisticated statistical analyses (such as structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling) and triangulation both within the quantitative tradition and beyond. The increasing speed of computer technology assists the modern media effects researcher greatly in exploring these processes through complex statistical procedures executed in seconds by a simple click of a button. Indeed, as the media effects field matures, many journals in the field are requiring scholars to supplement statistical tests of difference across groups (like analysis of variance) with measures of effects size in a concerted effort toward greater precision. As always, these statistical results point to what is known about the phenomenon of study – such as that two variables are correlated within the sample, or that a host of predictor variables explains a certain amount of variance in an outcome variable. Yet, they also point to what is not known – such as the unexplained variance in an outcome variable or the multitude of reasons why groups may differ from one another on an opinion item in a survey or a dependent measure in an experiment. The goal of effects researchers is, of course, to minimize the unknown by making sound contributions to the scholarly literature that both replicate past discoveries and extend areas in new directions as well as to periodically assess the state of the body of knowledge on a topic as a whole. This volume will do both, identifying important individual scholarly inquiries and synthesizing them to form conclusions about what we can say that we know about a topic of study with some confidence and what questions remain unanswered in the field.

The form and the focus of media effects research have each become more sophisticated and thereby increasingly able to acknowledge and ascertain the complex processes through which individuals attend to, comprehend, and respond to media. The increased focus on cognition that occurred in the field of psychology (Robins, Gosling, & Craik, 1999) has helped shape recent directions in media effects, as well, with heightened attention to brain mapping, neuroscience, and other ways of examining processing of and physiological responses to media. For instance, media effects researchers have used fMRI technology to study how children attend to and comprehend television content (Anderson, Fite, Petrovich, & Hirsch, 2006) as well as how young people's brains are activated by exposure to media violence (as we will see in this volume; Murray et al., 2006; Weber, Ritterfeld, & Mathiak, 2006).

At the same time, there has been amplified attention to affective processes, as well, through more consideration of the role of emotion in individuals' interactions with the world around them. The literature in this area has grown sufficiently to warrant an edited collection, The Routledge Handbook of Emotions and Mass Media (Doveling, von Scheve, & Konijn, 2010), with entries on such topics as the role of emotion in both the processing and the enjoyment of media content, fear responses to media, and emotional responses to visuals. If media effects research has traditionally emphasized behavioral outcomes, the recent trend is to supplement that emphasis with affective and cognitive outcomes, as well, and to attempt to understand the links among thoughts, emotions, and actions.

Finally, across the spectrum of cognitions, emotions, attitudes, behavior, and physiological responses, studies of media effects have included a growing number of variables and have examined direct as well as indirect relationships among them, thereby augmenting both the richness and the complexity of their conclusions. We have determined, for instance, that although some outcomes may stem directly from exposure to media (like playing a violent videogame triggering aggressive cognitions), others may travel only through intermediary conditions or steps (like use of television contributing to a view within adolescents that many of their peers consume alcohol and that view of their peers, in turn, predicting adolescents' own use of alcohol).

The Emergence of “Media Psychology”

Within this shifting backdrop, the current volume brings emerging and established scholars together to provide a thorough and comprehensive account of recent and enduring foci in scholarship in the rich and ever-relevant fields of media effects and media psychology. A large number of socially significant contributions to this body of knowledge continue to be produced under the traditional name for this paradigm, “media effects.” This research includes systematic analyses of media content (again, often as a necessary first step toward linking with attending consequences of exposure to such content), opinions, orientations toward and uses of media, media influence on thoughts, attitudes, emotions and behavior, and interventions thereof. This extensive and continually evolving body of knowledge is assembled, reviewed, and extended here.

Yet, as the title of this volume implies, the field has shifted in nature, as well, increasingly embracing and exploring a view of the individual's capacities in processing media content, making sense of media texts as a precursor to or in lieu of an emotional or behavioral response. The term “effects” seems less relevant to this newer thread of research, as the consequences of exposure to media are less the focus than the response that is triggered by encountering media texts. Within some forms of media psychology, the emphasis is less often on what media may do to individuals (such as influencing what they think or know about a topic, affecting their attitudes or feelings, or encouraging or discouraging particular behaviors) and more often on how individuals make sense of media texts, using cognitive capacities to process them, affective routes to respond, and registering physiological change. To cite just one of many possible examples to illustrate this point, the work of L. J. Shrum (2002, 2007) has provided a processing explanation for the cultivation effect by showing that cognitive tendencies toward drawing on accessible and available sources of information can produce differential outlooks between heavy and light television viewers. Thus, the term “media psychology,” understood broadly as the intersection between media studies and the discipline of psychology with its attendant interest in the study of individuals and their mental functions as well as neurobiological processes that guide social behavior, is increasingly apropos.

By all means and measures, work that bridges communication and psychology is growing. Media psychology is a vibrant division in the American Psychology Association. It is the sole focus in academic journals such as Media Psychology from Taylor & Francis and American Journal of Media Psychology from Marquette Journals. Its emergence as an important scholarly focus only strengthens and sharpens the research done in the area of effects, which has its own set of journals that tend to devote it space, including Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Mass Communication and Society, and others. Moreover many scholars publish in both and reference both, thereby illustrating their intersection. This volume of the Encyclopedia, therefore, is titled Media Effects/Media Psychology, reflecting both the established and the emerging nomenclature, and providing a state-of-the-art review of this vital and generative field.

Distinguishing Characteristics of the Volume

In addition to cultivating the fertile ground at the intersections of media effects and media psychology, there are a number of additional features of the current volume that make it distinctive. It is written by scholars whose locations span six countries of residence. Indeed, it is international in both author affiliation and in scope – with authors from Belgium, Canada, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and the United States and studying global regions including Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Chapter authors were asked to reserve a central place for their own scholarship within their review, and therefore rather than a traditional literature review, there is a synthesis of the author(s)' own contributions to the topic area and the corresponding literatures.

It features topics one would rightly expect in any volume of its sort because of their continuing standing in the field, including lengthy treatments of subjects within the realm of media and politics, reviews of prominent theories of media influence, and explorations of the literature regarding effects on such phenomena as stereotyping and aggression, and stemming from such content as advertising and communication campaigns. In many of these cases, however, in order to provide a fresh perspective on these long-standing topics, an author with a unique view on the topic has written the chapter. The resulting, innovative takes on traditional subjects seen, for instance, in the chapters on cultivation theory and on fear- and anxiety-provoking responses to media, set this volume apart from others.

The volume also includes more novel and innovative foci in an effort to reflect newer directions in this dynamic field. For example, volume chapters explore news representations of war and their consequences for audiences, physiological responses to media exposure, exploration of enjoyment as a media effect, and theories not just about media influence but about individuals' perceptions of media influence. Compared to similar volumes it also gives particularly strong weight to the topic of violence – justified by the enduring controversies and concerns in this area – and to the child audience. In fact, this volume devotes an entire section to media effects on children and adolescents, groups that have long been considered particularly vulnerable due to their cognitive development and limited life experiences but that also have been viewed as active agents in media use within the media effects paradigm (Comstock & Scharrer, 2007; Strasburger & Wilson, 2002). Finally, a unique aspect of this volume is its emphasis in the latter chapters on mediating or moderating media effects (primarily on children) through such practices as parental interactions around media (including rule making and verbal responses to content), media literacy, and policy making in the arena of children's programming. In closing the volume in this fashion, an activist, applied interpretation of the field is encouraged, providing the reader with what the research evidence suggests about both micro- (parental mediation, media literacy) and macrolevel (through public policy and governmental involvement) ways to intervene effectively in unwanted media effects and to promote positive interactions with media.

Overview of Organizing Scheme

Providing a state-of-the-art review of this vast and rapidly changing field is a demanding task. This volume aims to represent the contemporary state of media effects and media psychology insofar as it is possible to illustrate major traditions as well as dynamically innovative elements. The wide-ranging span of the field requires an equally complex organizational scheme for a volume of this type. Thus, the book is organized into three parts, each with its own sections. The sections have multiple chapters contained within.

The first part, “Theories and Processes/Processing,” brings together a review of some of the most prevalent and generative theories in the field (the “Theories and Processes” component) and the latest literatures on “Processing,” roughly defined as the ways that individuals make sense of or make meaning from media. What these two areas – theories and processes and processing – have in common is that they both answer the question of how and why media effects occur. Within this part, therefore, chapters on traditional theories in media effects in Section I are presented alongside scholarly explorations in Section II of “internal mechanisms,” meaning processes that primarily occur within the individual – including cognition stimulated by media content, motivations for seeking out media, theoretical propositions about enjoyment, and physiological responses in the brain during media exposure – that help explain orientations toward and responses to media.

The second part, “Evidence of Effects,” organizes and synthesizes the vast literatures on both newly emerging and long-lasting areas of inquiry in the study of media impact. It is divided into sections assessing effects “On Views of Self, Others, and Events,” “On Personal Health and Social Well-Being,” “In the Political Arena,” and “On/Of Persuasion,” with each section bringing together related literatures. The section labeled “On Views of Self and Others” (Section III) is concerned with ways that media shape knowledge of, attitudes about, and feelings toward the self, others, and major global events. In doing so, the section begins with media effects on socialization (the process of learning about the culture and one's roles within) and includes the development and manifestation of stereotypes. It ends with influence of media on perceptions of events covered in the news, particularly war and conflict (the “views of events” component), a critically important topic with implications for foreign policy and public opinion. Section IV, “On Personal Health and Social Well-Being,” has to do with such health- and well-being-related outcomes as body image, obesity, fear, anxiety, aggression, and sexual behavior. These effects, therefore, are variously intra- and/or interpersonal in nature, revealing themselves in both individual cognition and affect and social interactions and behavior. Section V, “In the Political Arena,” brings together media effects related literature about political ads, political entertainment (exemplified by such programs as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or in monologues of late-night show hosts), and news coverage of politics in the age of digital media and such outcomes as political knowledge, support of policies or politicians, voting and other forms of civic participation. The section, therefore, implicates campaigning, governing, and participating in the electoral process as well as in other aspect of civic life. The final section in this part, Section VI, “On/Of Persuasion,” illuminates connections across persuasive media attempts including advertising for products and services and public communication campaigns, with the latter including such constitutive elements as social marketing and public service announcements. The communicative strategies of persuasion are thus studied in this section, whether for the purpose of public health or corporate profit.

Finally, the third part of the book is titled “The Young Audience,” and it closely examines the unique circumstances that arise when media are being consumed (and sometimes produced) by children and adolescents as well as the corresponding challenges and opportunities for parenting, teaching, and policy-making. Of course, media effects research is intimately connected with audiences, and this final part of the book reflects the particular ways that children and teen audience members have of interacting with media – such as through educational programming among the very young or via social networking sites or mobile phones among adolescents – as well as the consequences of these media uses. Thus, Section VII, “Media Use and Effects on Learning and Development,” discusses ways in which media can be intentionally educational (such as through educational and/or “prosocial” programming that encourages social and emotional growth) as well as ways media can unintentionally interfere with skills necessary for educational achievement. Because learning is not limited to formal education, per se, the section also focuses on the Internet's role in key aspects of adolescents' development, including their communication with others and their expression of identity. The final section, Section VIII, “Mediating and Mitigating Effects,” examines the ways in which various parties can intervene in media effects: teachers and members of community organizations through media literacy, parents and caregivers through parental mediation, and the government and other policymaking entities through laws and guidelines for children's media.

Introductions to the Chapters

The first section of Part 1, “Theories and Processes/Processing,” entitled “Theories of/about Effects,” devotes chapter-length treatments to some of the most important and lasting theories in the field. Many of the theories have to do with why and how and under what circumstances individuals are influenced by media, and these are the theories of effects. Yet, the section also includes a chapter on theories and concepts pertaining to how individuals perceive the media and how they perceive media influence on themselves and others. This aspect of the section is therefore the theories about effects.

Maxwell McCombs and his co-author Jae Kook Lee have the lead chapter in this section, Chapter 1, in which they detail the evolution of one of the field's most prominent theories of media effects, agenda setting. The chapter discusses how the news media can make issues, events, and characteristics of public figures more salient, both intentionally and not, and it identifies factors that make agenda-setting effects more or less likely to occur. McCombs and Lee also provide an explanation for how such effects occur through such concepts as knowledge activation and affective response.

In Chapter 2, Jan van den Bulck takes a novel approach, emphasizing the sociological, in his treatment of another long-standing and central focus in the field, cultivation theory. Van den Bulck draws heavily on early publications explaining and testing the theory in his explanation of cultivation as an exceptional theory of media effects, different from other theories, for example, in the use of micro-level data (from content analysis and surveys) to make broad-based inquiries into power structures in society. The degree of activity of the viewer and the range of possible meanings to be made from television texts is discussed for its implications for the theory in the chapter, as is the turn toward greater attention to cognitive processes in social science.

In Chapter 3, framing and priming theories are reviewed by political communication scholars (and brothers) Bertram T. Scheufele and Dietram A. Scheufele, who introduce a multi-level matrix to identify factors operating at the micro- (effects on individuals), meso- (effects on organizations), and macro-level (effects on public discourse or politics at large). In doing so, the authors provide a pioneering synthetic treatment of these two interrelated and long-standing theories and discuss the implications of these processes in politics as well as other contexts.

The general aggression model (GAM), a model built from a resourceful assemblage of prior theories and concepts used to explain how and why individuals may learn aggression from exposure to violent media, is discussed by Christopher P. Barlett and Craig A. Anderson in Chapter 4. The authors also introduce and explain the general learning model, a broader extension of the GAM that encompasses other media effects aside from aggression that are learned from nonviolent media use. For each of these models, Barlett and Anderson discuss both short- and long-term effects and individual difference variables that identify who among audience members is more or less likely to experience an effect.

Finally, Chapter 5, written by Yariv Tsfati and Jonathan Cohen, finds conceptual similarities among theories and models pertaining to perceptions of media effects that have largely been considered one by one rather than in conjunction with one another in past research. Opinions regarding the credibility of news media, views of media as “hostile” when they're perceived as insufficiently supportive of one's own position on an issue or topic, and the tendency to perceive others as more susceptible to negative media influence than the self are the perceptual threads that Tsfati and Cohen weave together in this ground-breaking chapter. The first section of Part 1, then, both discusses enduring and evolving single theories (like cultivation and agenda setting) and introduces new meta-theoretical principles through the art of synthesis. It also encompasses theoretical propositions and the resulting empirical support for explanations of media effects themselves and of perceptions of media effects.

The second section of Part 1 is titled “Internal Mechanisms: Enjoyment, Appeal, and Physiological Response,” and, again, is defined by forces and tendencies within individuals that shape their interactions with media. The antecedent question of why individuals are drawn to particular media is addressed here, as are explanations for why we find media so enjoyable and appealing. The section also encompasses the biomedical and physiological processes that are triggered in the human body and mind when encountering media messages of particular types. Thus, the emphasis is largely (but not wholly, as, of course, the psychological is intertwined with the social and cultural) internal, dealing with psychological motivations, cognitive processing, and systems activated within the individual.

The section is led by an entry on the uses and gratifications tradition by Paul Haridakis in Chapter 6, in which he points toward a number of new directions within the paradigm, including a more thorough examination of motives for seeking particular media exposures and a wider view of degree of audience activity as a variable rather than a taken-for-granted condition. Throughout the chapter, Haridakis demonstrates how uses and gratifications should not be positioned in opposition to media effects but rather as a complementary component. Why individuals seek out particular media to interact with plays a substantial role in how they respond within those media interactions.

Entertainment theory is reviewed and discussed by Tilo Hartmann in Chapter 7, assembling research findings and corresponding concepts regarding why individuals enjoy spending time with media. Adaptive tendencies within humans, Hartmann shows, help explain needs for both recreation and psychological growth, and media provide safe and supportive challenges to our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

In Chapter 8, the concept of selective exposure and the particular allure of violent media are addressed by Marina Krcmar. She discusses the use of violent media to manage or adjust moods, to undergo the thrill of “excitation,” and to experience connections with characters. The role of personality traits is also thoroughly considered and the attending research regarding what characteristics make individuals more or less likely to be attracted to violent media is reviewed.

Chapter 9 and Chapter 10 then turn more decidedly to the topic of cognitive processing and physiological response, first in Annie Lang's chapter and then in John P. Murray's piece in which neuroscience findings in the topic of media violence are presented alongside more traditional forms of inquiry. In Chapter 9, Lang presents a multi-faceted model using a nesting structure to explain the processes that ensue when an individual encounters a stimulus (which can include both media and interpersonal inputs). The cognitive system is the smallest of the concentric circles, followed by the motivational system, then the biological system, next the social system and, finally, the cultural system. Lang's chapter focuses on the first few layers, and she demonstrates how rather than change- or no change-defining media effects, interactions with media can best be seen as continuously dynamic responses within and between these systems.

In Chapter 10, Murray views the shift within media effects/media psychology toward the greater use of brain mapping and fMRI technology through the lens of the violence literature. Murray begins with a detailed history of the research- and policy-related concerns of media violence (including the government-led inquiries into the effects of violence) and then traces the literature through the very recent reliance on neurological investigations of audience responses. Changes revealed through cutting-edge research using brain mapping within the prefrontal cortex bring the literature on violence effects full circle. The theme of the section as a whole, therefore, is an exploration of the mechanisms within individuals that trigger, shape, and explain their particular orientations toward and responses to media.

Part 2 of the book, “Evidence of Effects,” is divided into sections assessing effects in particular realms, and in doing so, it foregrounds the evidence for psychological, social, and political effects themselves more so than the mechanisms by which those effects transpire, as was the case in the prior part. Here, the large and expansive literatures on media effects in a number of aspects of social life are reviewed and synthesized, organized into cohesive subtopics that represent enduring foci.

The first, Section III, titled “On Views of Self, Others and Events,” begins with a chapter by Nancy Signorielli on media messages about gender and their influence on the individual, Chapter 11. Signorielli illustrates the power of television to act as an agent of gender-role socialization, first documenting the patterns of content regarding television's treatment of gender that persist in the twenty-first century and then reviewing the empirical evidence for the ways in which viewing those depictions can shape individuals' views of what is acceptable or ideal for men and for women in contemporary society. In the chapter, the interwoven aspects of identity – not just gender but also age and race and social class as seen through occupations – is readily apparent as the case for lasting media effects is made.

In Chapter 12, Travis L. Dixon and Christopher S. Josey review the evidence on the treatment of race in news coverage of crime and the ways that audience members' views are shaped by such treatment. Dixon and Josey also use content analysis findings as a starting place to establish racial biases in news, and they proceed to empirical evidence of the effects of such representations, including studies conducted within the cultivation tradition and those stemming from a priming paradigm in which such concepts as cognitive accessibility play a central role. In the chapter, the effects research on both traditional news and the still nascent area of online news are critically reviewed.

In Chapter 13, Dana Mastro and Riva Tukachinsky also explore the impact of race and ethnicity in the media, concentrating their efforts on entertainment media content more so than news. They review the relevant content patterns in media and then provide a detailed explanation of stereotype construction and schema formation. As other authors in this section have done, Mastro and Tukachinsky review findings framed by cultivation theory, social cognitive theory, and priming, yet they also include social identity theory in their review and give careful attention to factors that may intervene in a media effect on stereotypes. The chapter encompasses such outcomes as influence of media stereotypes on opinion formation on policies, on non-dominant group members' views of themselves, and on dominant group members' views of non-dominant “others.”

Finally in this section, in Chapter 14, Michel M. Haigh reviews the content and effects research pertaining to a topic not always covered in media effects books but one that is of immense social significance, the impact of news coverage of war on individuals' attitudes and opinions. Like in the Travis and Dixon chapter, Haigh places news media as a matter of central concern, yet the latter part of the chapter also reveals the effects of less traditional and more hybrid media forms such as political entertainment and political blogs. Haigh incorporates both long-standing concerns regarding news coverage of war and more recent issues such as reporter “embedding” within military units. She also uses the content analysis research as an important step in determining how news media tend to cover war and conflict and then she draws from these patterns when reviewing the research evidence for effects on public opinion.

The section at large, therefore, makes apparent the potential for news and entertainment media to define how one considers, conceptualizes, and evaluates the self, others (including both particular social groups and “the enemy” in a situation of military conflict), and critical global events.

The second section, Section IV of Part 2, “On Personal Health and Social Well-Being,” turns the reader' attention to the health and well-being of the individual through such topics as body image and obesity or therapeutic effects of television viewing. Yet it also attends to one's social well-being as it takes shape within social interactions, be they aggressive or sexual in nature, or fear and anxiety provoking.

In Chapter 15, Kim Bissell combines two related literatures that are sometimes kept quite apart, the role of the media in weight-related health on both sides of the spectrum, overweight and underweight. First, Bissell reviews the key findings in the vast literature on the role of media in body image disturbances that range from body dissatisfaction to full-blown eating disorders, devoting considerable attention to additional factors that mitigate media influence and to the theoretical perspectives that inform these studies. She also discusses the phenomenon of “weight bias” (negative perceptions of those who are overweight) and the role of media in contributing to this stigma, as well as the literature regarding media use and a tendency toward being overweight or even obese. The final section of the chapter calls for greater integration of these elements in future studies that attempt to determine why and how media use can encourage underweight tendencies in some individuals and over-weight in others.

In Chapter 16, Robin L. Nabi and her co-authors Jiyeon So and Theresa de los Santos examine the increasingly popular reality television genre for its potential for health effects. They begin by defining the elements that characterize the genre and then review the literature regarding the motives and gratifications behind its viewing. The bulk of the chapter, however, is concerned with effects and Nabi and colleagues review cultural studies contributions arguing for ideological messages within the genre as well as empirical studies of the effects of reality crime, dating programs, and personal makeover shows. They demonstrate the importance of such concepts as identification and involvement, perceived relationships with characters, and para-social interaction in these processes and discuss the research evidence for both positive and negative implications for health-related outcomes.

Cynthia A. Hoffner and Elizabeth L. Cohen also cultivate fertile new conceptual ground in their chapter on fear, risk, and social anxiety and intergroup relations pertaining to media. In Chapter 17, Hoffner and Cohen begin by reviewing the immediate and lasting effects of media on fear, drawing from both entertainment and news media, with the latter topic extending into audience perceptions of risk and the implications of those perceptions for behavior. In what is perhaps most groundbreaking about their chapter, Hoffner and Cohen then extend the focus toward the fear and anxiety produced by and in “Intergroup relations,” discussing the research evidence and theoretical perspectives regarding ways in which individuals can perceive others as posing a threat. In so doing, the chapter makes important connections to prior chapters in the volume regarding both stereotypes and perceptions of media influence on others.

Finally in this section, perhaps the two most enduring controversies and concerns about media effects, violence and sex, are taken up in the last two chapters. Since the advent of television and with film and radio before it, members of the public have expressed anxiety about the influence of sex and violence on children, Congressional inquiries have either threatened or actually brought about regulation (such as in the form of labels to accompany television programs), and researchers have conducted studies to document and explain effects.

In Chapter 18, Ron Leone and Angela Paradise review the findings regarding aggression and desensitization from violence, incorporating research evidence that answers two critical questions: can media encourage aggressive thoughts, attitudes, and behavior and can media use make individuals become habituated to violence, so that violent exposure no longer registers as a matter of concern? The evidence points decisively to an answer in the affirmative to both questions, and the Leone and Paradise chapter both shows how aggression and desensitization are related and also points to factors that make such outcomes more likely, including factors within the individual (like particular personality characteristics) and in the media content (including the inclusion of rewards or punishments for characters' violent behavior).

In Chapter 19, Kirstie M. Farrar provides an accounting of the body of knowledge on effects of sex on television, emphasizing socialization processes, or the ways that individuals – especially adolescents – learn about sexuality. Farrar reviews the theoretical bases for the media's sexual socialization effects, including social cognitive theory and cultivation theory, and then organizes the empirical research record on effects according to influence on cognition (including expectations and perceptions of social norms), attitudes, and behavior. Antecedent and intervening variables are identified in the chapter, as well (such as the demographic characteristics of the viewer or the ways in which sexual activity is depicted in the media) and the chapter concludes with a discussion of the empirical evidence for positive effects of media on sex-related outcomes, such as on perceptions of the efficacy of condom use or attitudes about safe sex. On the whole, therefore, the section is organized around the concepts of health and well-being, including weight-related health concerns, fear and anxiety both personal and social in nature, aggression and desensitization, and attitudes toward, views of, and behaviors regarding sex. A unifying element is the relationships that individuals form, both with each other and with characters they encounter in the media.

The third section of Part 2, Section V, of the book, “In the Political Arena,” provides a comprehensive view of the vast and highly developed subfield of political communication, with chapters covering the media's role in critical issues and outcomes pertaining to electoral politics and democratic participation. Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive overview of media effects in this massive area, particular media forms are emphasized, including political commercials (since they are so central in political campaigns), debates (because they draw large audiences and media spectacle), blogs, websites and other Internet-based forms of political communication (because they represent a critical new means of communication), and political entertainment (because the research evidence suggests important effects can stem from even humorous or entertainment-based political content). Within these emphasized media forms, effects on knowledge of candidates and of policies and events, on attitudes and emotions including support or lack thereof, and on voting and other forms of both political and civic participation are discussed. The resulting conclusions are critical for democracy and relations between press, politics, and public in the twenty-first century.

William L. Benoit and Jayne R. Henson lead off this section with Chapter 20 on the central role of political advertisements and debates in the political realm. Benoit and Henson first argue persuasively for the continuing importance of these practices and then review their functions within campaigns and their most frequent topics, including descriptions of particular issue positions or policies and attacks on opponents. They then consider whether and why effects of these political media forms might be considered “minimal,” and they end the chapter with a review of the evidence for effects of commercials and debates relying heavily on meta-analysis to point to the most reliable conclusions.

The next two chapters both examine the intersection of information and entertainment in contemporary media. In Chapter 21, Patricia Moy, Michael A. Xenos, and Muzammil M. Hussain first provide a broad and sweeping review of both traditional news and of “infotainment” and the role of each in individuals' participation in democratic activities and civic participation. Moy, Xenos, and Hussain begin their chapter by defining activities and roles that fall within the concepts of civic participation, citizen engagement, and social capital and then they turn toward a discussion of the effects of news coverage of politics in newspapers, television and the Internet. They connect these more traditional outlets for political information to political comedy as seen in satirical news programs, late night shows, and sketch comedy, and then call for ways in which scholars can respond to the increasing fragmentation and stratification of audiences across an ever-widening array of outlooks. It is precisely the hybridity of genres (such as information/news and entertainment) and texts and audiences that R. Lance Holbert and Dannagal Goldthwaite Young take up in Chapter 22.

Holbert and Young advance a research agenda for future scholarship at the budding intersection of politics and entertainment. From sitcoms and dramas to “fake news” programs (like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) and talk shows airing during the day (such as Oprah) or late at night (such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno), political communication scholars are increasingly responding to a changing media environment in which individuals gain information and insights regarding politics from a number of sources. The authors study the composition of the audiences for these hybrid media forms and draw from more humanistic research traditions in arguing for how audiences actively make meaning across media texts, in understanding the conditions that pave the way for political entertainment, and in addressing the larger implications for policies including gay rights and the protection of the environment.

Finally, the critically important topic of the role of the Internet, which positions individuals not just as audience members but also as content producers, is discussed by Leticia Bode, Stephanie Edgerly, Ben Sayre, Emily K. Vraga, and Dhavan V. Shah in Chapter 23. Bode and her colleagues begin by discussing the research evidence that they weigh in favor of a positive effect of Internet use more broadly, and social networking sites more specifically, on both sociability and social capital. They then turn their attention to online news and blogs, successively, and connect to such important outcomes as perceptions of credibility, learning, and mobilization. Bode and colleagues end with a discussion of larger shifts regarding the media and politics, including in the nature of the public sphere, the conditions of political deliberation, and other implications for democratic practice. The section “In the Political Arena,” therefore makes both micro- and macro-level observations of the political scene, reinforcing the continued importance of long-standing elements of political campaigns including televised and newspaper news, political ads, and debates, but also reflecting the importance of newer elements or directions such as political comedy and political entertainment, online news, blogs, and social networking sites. The evolving media landscape has perhaps never been better illustrated – and its consequences more important – than within the realm of politics, as these chapters show.

The fourth and final section, Section VI, of Part 2, “On/Of Persuasion,” explores relevant theories and research results regarding advertising, marketing, and media campaigns designed to persuade, either regarding products and services as in traditional advertising or regarding health and safety behaviors as in communication campaigns and social marketing. The unifying theme, therefore, is on purposive attempts via media and other forms of communication to convince audiences in favor of some outcome, whether it's the purchase of a product or the adoption of a behavior such as applying sunscreen or recycling materials and reducing trash. Relevant theories of persuasion are reviewed in this section, as is the empirical evidence for the conditions in which persuasive attempts are most likely to be successful.

In Chapter 24, Charles K. Atkin and Ronald E. Rice lead off this section documenting both their own seminal contributions to and emerging foci within the study of public communication campaigns. They illuminate the steps involved in campaigns, from design to early research to mid-process assessment and summative evaluation, and provide a thorough discussion of varying features of the persuasive message (such as emphasis on information vs. persuasion or the use of particular appeals) and the research record documenting their effects. In the latter part of the chapter, Atkin and Rice use three case studies to model the ways in which these processes unfold in contemporary communication campaigns.

The phenomenon of social marketing is defined and discussed and relevant empirical findings reviewed by Michael D. Basil in Chapter 25. Social marketing differs from communication campaigns in that it engages real-world conditions in an attempt to make the behavior change in question more likely through the facilitation of rewards or the removal of obstacles. Thus, Basil begins his chapter with some of the limitations of information-based campaigns and then demonstrates how individuals can best be influenced to make a behavior change when material conditions allow, for instance when mosquito nets are made readily available and affordable to combat malaria, and when a fleet of limousines can be employed to give rides to individuals under the influence to fight against drunk driving. Basil explains both the promise and the limitations of this approach and then reviews the empirical evidence from prominent prior social marketing campaigns.

Xiaoli Nan focuses on particular frames in campaigns designed to promote health in Chapter 26. She distinguishes between “gain-based frames” that show audiences members the advantages of adopting the behavior featured in the campaign and “loss-based frames” that focus on the disadvantages and negative repercussions that may follow from failing to adopt the behavior. Nan traces the intellectual history of the concept of framing and the attending observations about how and why individuals respond to messages framed as potential gains or potential losses differently. She identifies a number of important moderators of framing effects within communication campaigns, including the type of behavior targeted, the individual's degree of involvement with the issue at hand, other factors influencing motivation, and the perceived desirability of the end-state that the behavior change predicts.

The role of advertising in the lives of children is addressed by Moniek Buijzen and Patti M. Valkenburg in Chapter 27. The authors begin by applying the main theories regarding how individuals process advertising and other persuasive messages to the unique development and cognitive capacities of children, focusing on the degree of cognitive elaboration (thinking the message through carefully and rationally) a message is likely to inspire. Then, they give a comprehensive review of the evidence for intended effects of advertising on young audiences, including on such outcomes as brand awareness, favorable attitudes toward brands, and purchase requests or attempts. Buijzen and Valkenburg then synthesize and discuss the research results regarding unintended effects of advertising on such outcomes as fostering materialism, triggering conflict with parents, influencing consumption of non-healthy foods, and diminishing overall satisfaction with one's life. Finally, they use the research record to express skepticism over whether advertising literacy, an outlook that has been shown to increase as children develop, actually decreases advertising influence, but optimism about the role of interactions with parents and caregivers to moderate such influence.

The section as a whole coheres around purposive attempts to use media and other communication strategies to convey information, sway attitudes, and shape behavior on behalf of a client with a goal, be it commercial (selling products and services) or non-profit in nature (working toward public health and safety). The section identifies theories regarding how individuals both young and old process such content, and discusses a host of factors that help determine whether particular desired outcomes will be achieved. The final chapter in the second part also serves the purpose of transitioning the reader into the final part of the book, which focuses on a segment of the media audience that has historically spurred the largest amount of concern regarding negative media effects, as well as the largest amount of promise for positive effects: children and adolescents.

The first section, Section VII, of Part 3 of the volume synthesizes the research on the implications of “Media Use and Effects on Learning and Development” in childhood. Learning is conceived of quite broadly in this section, first by focusing on formal measures of achievement in school and on standardized tests, and then by emphasizing social development, such as learning to take turns, to resolve conflicts among friends, or to embrace diversity in the social environment. The child audience is also considered with a wide lens in this section, with relevant discussion ranging from whether benefits may derive or negative consequences may transpire when television viewing begins before the age of two to the risks and opportunities afforded to adolescents by the Internet. Regardless of the age of the young consumer of media, the role of television, the Internet, and other media forms (and the genres and program types within) in learning school-based skills as well as how to relate to others is studied in the first section of the last part of the volume.

George Comstock begins the section by synthesizing the theories and empirical evidence for the role of media in children's achievement and performance in school in Chapter 28. With the use of many media forms rising, the potential displacement of time that might be spent with homework or other educationally enriching activities by largely entertainment-oriented media use is reviewed in this chapter. Comstock weighs the complex and varied studies that bring data to bear on the question of whether television use, in particular, is associated with poorer performance in school or in academic testing as well as related outcomes such as attention deficiencies, slower adoption of vocabulary and language development, and diminished creativity and imaginative play. He then reviews the evidence for why such relationships occur, including displacement of time, interference with mental abilities, and socialization of attitudes toward schooling and the skills emphasized within, and concludes with a discussion of other media forms aside from television and moderating factors including the prominence of media within household norms.

Daniel R. Anderson, Heather J. Lavigne, and Katherine G. Hanson then assess the body of knowledge pertaining to the influence of educational television in Chapter 29. In order to do so, they begin with a discussion of the skills that need to be sufficiently developed in children in order to attend to the screen and comprehend its content, which, in turn, are necessary conditions for learning to occur. Anderson and colleagues organize the next segment of the chapter according to the age of the child, reviewing the small but growing research evidence for the consequences of television viewing among infants and toddlers age two or younger and then the much-larger body of literature for viewing among preschoolers aged two to five. Finally, they provide a review of such educational titles as Sesame Street, Blue's Clues, and other programs intended to promote learning and development for their impact on outcomes including “school readiness,” a broad concept that includes verbal and numerical literacy as well as emotional and social skills.

In Chapter 30, Marie-Louise Mares widens the lens from educational to “prosocial” television, examining impacts from television that extend beyond school-related subjects and skills into such areas as stereotype reduction, friendliness, cooperation, and other “socioemotional” outcomes. Despite the positive intentions of producers, Mares uses the research record to demonstrate that “unaided” viewing of such content tends to have only weak effects. She shows that prosocial learning from television demands particular viewer characteristics and facilitative conditions that are not always present which helps explain why, for instance, many children have trouble understanding the moral in television and film narratives. Finally, Mares discusses ways to increase the likelihood that positive prosocial effects will accrue from media, including through repeated exposure, explanatory parental coviewing (in which an adult watches with the child and points out important themes and messages) or supplemental activities to reinforce the messages received from the program (such as activities conducted in school).

Finally, in this section, in Chapter 31, Jochen Peter and Patti M. Valkenburg provide a broad treatment of the scholarship regarding adolescents and the Internet, reviewing statistics of use and constructive as well as potentially detrimental effects. The authors point to the ability of the Internet to invite self-presentation and self-disclosure as both a potential risk and a potential reward, especially pertaining to adolescents' identity and intimate relationships. In doing so, they first describe the features of the Internet that facilitate self-presentation and self-disclosure, including but not limited to its anonymous and asynchronous nature, and then they discuss the relevant research findings on the ability of the Internet to impede positively or negatively (or both) on self-concept, self-esteem, friendship formation, and the quality of friendships. Communication with strangers and cyberbullying are both addressed, as well, and Peter and Valkenburg conclude their chapter with calls to strengthen and to integrate research in this increasingly socially significant topic area.

The first section of Part 3 of the volume, therefore, elucidates the role of both traditional (television) and newer (Internet) forms of media in the lives of children and teenagers. The section takes a nuanced look at the positive as well as the negative functions and effects of media on young people's learning and personal and social development. In doing so, it highlights many of the most headline-grabbing controversies about media effects in the twenty-first century, including whether “baby videos” like Baby Einstein actually make kids smarter, whether time spent with media has negative implications for doing well in school, and whether “stranger danger” or cyberbullying can victimize young people. Yet, it also emphasizes the pleasures and opportunities that media forms have created for youth, including building a bridge for preschoolers into the demands and expectations of elementary school, fostering an understanding of cultures different from one's own or encouraging cooperation and conflict resolution through prosocial programming, and providing a means by which to express one's self and build social relationships online for adolescents. Through these and other processes, the role of media as an agent of learning and development for young people is illuminated.

As with other audiences, young people's use of the media occurs within a wider social, political, and cultural sphere with a host of additional forces and factors. Section VIII, the final of this volume, describes three processes through which effects of media on young people can be mitigated in school by teachers, at home by parents and other caregivers, and at the level of government through the formation of public policy and regulation. These forces help shape the media environment of young people and the ways in which media messages are received. Therefore, the final section includes extensive discussions of media literacy, parental mediation, and children's media policy.

The section begins with Chapter 32, in which Smita C. Banerjee and Robert Kubey provide a thorough discussion of media literacy and the variables that maximize its effectiveness in encouraging children and adolescents' media analysis and production skills. They begin by defining media literacy and the growing subfield of media literacy as intervention, in which active cognition of media messages is encouraged as a means of mitigating media effects. Applied research testing the effects and effectiveness of curricular units for school-aged children in such areas as smoking prevention, drinking prevention, violence prevention, body image, and advertising awareness are reviewed in the chapter. Across these different topics, key variables are then identified from the empirical research that have a bearing on the likelihood of achieving desired outcomes, including the duration of the curriculum, the research design (including whether a control group is utilized), the age of the participants, and modes of instruction (including the use of media clips and homework assignments to promote skills in media analysis, or exercises and activities in which young people create their own media to promote media production skills) or spurring “boomerang effects” in which undesired outcomes occur. The chapter represents an important synthesis of a growing emphasis within media effects research, the ability to intervene in undesirable media effects via lessons facilitated in the classroom setting.

In Chapter 33, Yi-Chun (Yvonnes) Chen and Erica Weintraub Austin discuss another critical phenomenon, parental mediation – the role of parents and caregivers in setting rules, speaking up about content, and otherwise attempting to shape children's exposure and response to media. The benefits of active mediation in which the adult converses with the child about the media messages during or after exposure are demonstrated by Austin and Chen's review of the literature which shows, for instance, parents' comments can make negative effects of violence viewing less likely and positive effects of educational television viewing more likely to occur. The authors then provide a convincing link between parental mediation and media literacy, two endeavors that are often viewed quite apart from one another, in being similar strategies differing primarily only by setting (in the home vs. at school) and participants (parents and caregivers vs. teachers) and not by substantive features. Thus, they examine the research findings for parental mediation and for media literacy pertaining to substance abuse, and they introduce a new study in which negative active mediation about tobacco and alcohol use was associated with higher media literacy skills among young adults.

Finally, the last chapter in the book is written by Amy B. Jordan and presents a detailed accounting of the relevant policy formations that shape the media landscape with which children interact. In Chapter 34, Jordan explains how goals of children's media policy include maximizing their access to positive content and restricting their access to potentially harmful content and traces the development of such updates in children's media policy as the Children's Television Act of 1990 and its 1997 update, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the V-chip provision, and various acts pertaining to “decency.” For each of the policy changes that she includes, Jordan weaves in scholarly research on the implications of the change for young people. She also shows how federal funding, like federal regulation, can help determine the contours of the media landscape. Finally, she discusses the force of self-regulation by media industries as exemplified by such practices as voluntarily labeling CDs for the content of their lyrics and marketing healthier products to children in the food and beverage industries.

The final three chapters that comprise this last section of the book, therefore, are each about shaping access and responses to media, protecting young people from negative effects through such practices as comments from parents that counter negative messages, curricula that encourage critical orientations toward media, and labeling of programs that contain violence or other material that might be deemed objectionable by parents. Yet, each of the three processes discussed in this section – media literacy, parental mediation, and children's media policy – are sufficiently flexible to recognize and encourage positive roles of media in the lives of young people as well. Processes including parental coviewing, active mediation to reinforce positive media messages, curricula in schools that include making one's own media, and policies increasing the presence of programs designed to benefit young people's development are included within the emphases of the section, as well. The skills of negotiating media – both its use and its varying messages through content – are increasingly important to cultivate among children in a media-rich environment.

Conclusions and Future Directions

The vast number and wide range of topics examined in the 34 chapters that comprise this volume make the size and scope of media effects and media psychology scholarship abundantly clear. Research derived from this paradigm continues to occupy a large and significant presence in media studies. The field is simultaneously venerable and enjoying renewed growth as “new” media and new media applications spark fresh research questions and traditional media continue to provoke unanswered inquiries, as well. The state of the field is healthy, vibrant, and generative as the chapters of these established and emerging scholars demonstrate.

The chapter authors provide up-to-date and comprehensive reviews of the massive literatures within this research tradition, pointing in all cases to classic theories, patterns in research findings, and conclusions as well as recent directions. The authors also incorporate their own research into the chapters, demonstrating how the studies they have conducted have advanced the literature and how their own research can be placed into a larger context. The result is an “expert's eye view” into each topic area, revealing the ways in which knowledge is produced and patterns emerge in social science.

One pattern that is apparent when one reads this volume is the careful attention in contemporary media effects/media psychology scholarship to exploring the complexities involved in individuals' interactions with media. Nearly every chapter has pointed to a sizeable list of factors that have been shown to shape media effects in the topic areas covered in the book. A far cry from a simple “X causes Y” explanation for media effects, we have seen how multiple considerations pertaining to individuals themselves (such as their personality tendencies or the various aspects of their identity), to situations or circumstances in the environment (such as their interactions with others or conditions that may influence their mood) and to media content (including not only whether there is violence, sex, political content, persuasive appeals, educational programming, etc. but also how those themes are presented) are important variables. The trend, overall, in the field is toward intricacies in the relationships between and among these multiple factors and greater recognition of variation in media effects.

We have also seen the nature of media effects examined and explored some research that may even call into question whether “effects” is the best term to describe the field. When we think of the phrase “media effects” we likely envision the impact of media use on individuals' thoughts, attitudes, emotions, behavior, and physiological state and the consequences of such impact for society at large. And, indeed, a great deal of scholarly attention is still focused on these critically important questions, as well it should. Yet, we have also seen that the research tradition explored in this volume has always extended well beyond media impact, into questions of media content, media uses and the factors that explain such use, opinions about and perceptions of media, and media policies enacted in the home, in schools, or at the governmental level. The media influence aspect of media effects scholarship, therefore, is a crucial part but only one part of a multi-faceted approach.

The idea that spending time with media causes some measurable change in individuals can be explored from psychological and social perspectives, as we have seen, but it can also be explored within responses of the body and mind. The systems for processing any incoming stimulus, including media, are explored in this volume, as well. Not an “effect” per se, but a means of making sense of media – attending, comprehending, perhaps responding emotionally, physiologically, or with greater cognitive collaboration, and so on – is an emerging focus in the field, as we have seen in this volume. The stimulation of such responsive systems is often measured not through pen-and-paper questionnaires or even observations of social behaviors but rather through physiological or biomedical means including brain scans, skin response, heart rate, and blood pressure. These indicators give important new insights into how individuals take in media, assign meaning to media texts, and respond.

The future of media effects and media psychology scholarship is wide open. With children and adults alike increasing the amount of time they devote to television around the world, with the digital revolution bringing Internet access to many, and with the increasing allure and adoption of technologies from the mobile phone to videogames to social networking sites, new research questions will undoubtedly emerge. With newspapers facing new challenges, with magazines' ongoing search for the winning niche, and with commercial and community radio entertaining and informing audiences across the globe, new studies will be necessary. With advertising emerging in new locations in the ever-present quest for the desired audience, to persuade people to buy products or to adopt health-protective behavior, new inquiries will emerge. The world is becoming more and more media rich and media focused, and there will only be greater demand for social science research into the role of media in our lives.

There has never been a more exciting time to study the media. And this volume is an excellent place to begin!

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