Lecture 1: Introduction & a brief history of media effects research
Part 1
Review of emotions
Emotion vs affect vs mood
Emotion:
● Discrete (specific) and temporary responses to stimuli that can influence one's cognitive
appraisals, psychophysiology, attitudes & behaviors (e.g., anger, fear, enthusiasm)
Affect:
● Characterizes the level (high/low) and/or valence (pos/neg) of a mood or emotion. It's a
broader concept than emotion or mood (e.g., positive vs negative; weakly vs strongly)
Mood:
● Generalized, enduring state or being that. Like emotion, it can influence one’s cognitive
appraisals, attitudes, behaviors & emotions
You can visualize emotions in different ways:
Plutchik’s ‘Wheel of emotions’ ‘Dyad’ emotions.
Elements relevant to the experience and study of emotion and attitudes:
● Subjective experience
● Physiological response
● Behavioral response
Define political communication
Political communication is an interactive process concerning the transmission of information
among politicians, the (news) media and the public
,The arrows are through communication ^
Connecting emotions and politics
● News media use of emotion (news engagement, shareability, profitability)
○ Could it be that emotion increases news engagement?
○ Will an emotional headline get more clicks?
● Politics/politicians use of emotion (voting behavior?)
○ Can an emotional headline affect people's voting behavior?
● Public use of emotion (mobilization, policy change?)
○ Public protests, emotional social movements
○ How is that mobilizing people?
Key question: how and to what extent does political communication influence emotion, and does
emotion explain effects of political communication?
● Grounded in communication science / political science / psychology
● Applications: electives / climate change / immigration / political discourse and incivility
Emotional media = emotional citizens?
● Think about the gaza crisis
● A recent study discovered that negativity in the news is more likely to be clicked on than
positive words in news headlines
● Negativity drives online news consumption
● This leads to journalists looking for the one with controversy, the one that can really
make people angry
Are emotions good?
It's much more complicated than that!
,“For centuries scholars have tried to come up with an unequivocal answer but largely failed to
do so. Scherer (2005) even views the goal of specifying what an emotion is as a “notorious
problem” because many scholars approach and study emotions from different angles.”
What we do know:
● Emotions can be used by media and politicians to influence the public, and vice versa
● Emotions can potentially lead to unintended and/or unexpected outcomes
● Knowing how emotions influence attitudes and behaviors can potentially reduce
susceptibility to persuasion or manipulation
● Awareness of and attention to your emotions is good
Part 2
The history of media effects research
Media effect dimensions
We can find media effects on:
● Knowledge
● Opinions
● Attitudes
● Behavior
● Perceptions, stereotypes, prejudice etc
● Emotions…
It's harder to change attitudes than opinions; they're more on a core
It's even harder to change behavior because this requires a specific action
In a lot of studies, emotions are seen as a mediator (!)
Emotions are not the only mediators, mediators are just mechanisms that explain why there's an
effect
, In history, media effects went from very powerful → media effects are not powerful at all →
media effects are very powerful under certain conditions
The beginnings: Powerful media (1900-1930)
1. Observation of enormous popularity of media
2. Principles of propaganda; media as manipulators
3. Psychological and biological theories
There was this idea of:
Information → everybody has the same response
But that wasn't accurate in all situations
Hadley Cantril wrote a book about this
He wanted to find out why people respond differently to the same information
→ He found that not everyone was affected
→ There are individual differences
What explains these individual differences?
Age? Network?
The black box explains this!
Considering the Black Box: a little bit less powerful media
1. Discovering individual differences in the black box
2. Intervening factors: existing attitudes, opinions etc
3. No isolated individuals but connected members of small networks
Moderate effects era: Effects on society (1970-80)
1. Shift to long-term effects of media; effects on social change
Part 1
Review of emotions
Emotion vs affect vs mood
Emotion:
● Discrete (specific) and temporary responses to stimuli that can influence one's cognitive
appraisals, psychophysiology, attitudes & behaviors (e.g., anger, fear, enthusiasm)
Affect:
● Characterizes the level (high/low) and/or valence (pos/neg) of a mood or emotion. It's a
broader concept than emotion or mood (e.g., positive vs negative; weakly vs strongly)
Mood:
● Generalized, enduring state or being that. Like emotion, it can influence one’s cognitive
appraisals, attitudes, behaviors & emotions
You can visualize emotions in different ways:
Plutchik’s ‘Wheel of emotions’ ‘Dyad’ emotions.
Elements relevant to the experience and study of emotion and attitudes:
● Subjective experience
● Physiological response
● Behavioral response
Define political communication
Political communication is an interactive process concerning the transmission of information
among politicians, the (news) media and the public
,The arrows are through communication ^
Connecting emotions and politics
● News media use of emotion (news engagement, shareability, profitability)
○ Could it be that emotion increases news engagement?
○ Will an emotional headline get more clicks?
● Politics/politicians use of emotion (voting behavior?)
○ Can an emotional headline affect people's voting behavior?
● Public use of emotion (mobilization, policy change?)
○ Public protests, emotional social movements
○ How is that mobilizing people?
Key question: how and to what extent does political communication influence emotion, and does
emotion explain effects of political communication?
● Grounded in communication science / political science / psychology
● Applications: electives / climate change / immigration / political discourse and incivility
Emotional media = emotional citizens?
● Think about the gaza crisis
● A recent study discovered that negativity in the news is more likely to be clicked on than
positive words in news headlines
● Negativity drives online news consumption
● This leads to journalists looking for the one with controversy, the one that can really
make people angry
Are emotions good?
It's much more complicated than that!
,“For centuries scholars have tried to come up with an unequivocal answer but largely failed to
do so. Scherer (2005) even views the goal of specifying what an emotion is as a “notorious
problem” because many scholars approach and study emotions from different angles.”
What we do know:
● Emotions can be used by media and politicians to influence the public, and vice versa
● Emotions can potentially lead to unintended and/or unexpected outcomes
● Knowing how emotions influence attitudes and behaviors can potentially reduce
susceptibility to persuasion or manipulation
● Awareness of and attention to your emotions is good
Part 2
The history of media effects research
Media effect dimensions
We can find media effects on:
● Knowledge
● Opinions
● Attitudes
● Behavior
● Perceptions, stereotypes, prejudice etc
● Emotions…
It's harder to change attitudes than opinions; they're more on a core
It's even harder to change behavior because this requires a specific action
In a lot of studies, emotions are seen as a mediator (!)
Emotions are not the only mediators, mediators are just mechanisms that explain why there's an
effect
, In history, media effects went from very powerful → media effects are not powerful at all →
media effects are very powerful under certain conditions
The beginnings: Powerful media (1900-1930)
1. Observation of enormous popularity of media
2. Principles of propaganda; media as manipulators
3. Psychological and biological theories
There was this idea of:
Information → everybody has the same response
But that wasn't accurate in all situations
Hadley Cantril wrote a book about this
He wanted to find out why people respond differently to the same information
→ He found that not everyone was affected
→ There are individual differences
What explains these individual differences?
Age? Network?
The black box explains this!
Considering the Black Box: a little bit less powerful media
1. Discovering individual differences in the black box
2. Intervening factors: existing attitudes, opinions etc
3. No isolated individuals but connected members of small networks
Moderate effects era: Effects on society (1970-80)
1. Shift to long-term effects of media; effects on social change
