MEDIA EFFECT -----A.XH.----

Media effects  The processes and products of media influence that act directly on targets (individuals and macro units of society and institutions) as well as indirectly on targets through other units. These effects can be intentional or non-intentional on the part of the both the media senders as well as the target receivers. They can be manifested or hidden from natural observation. They are constant are ongoing. And they are shaped not just by the media influence but within a constellation of other factors that act in concert with the media influence.

1) Individual-level-effect: Effect on an individual person

2) Macro-level effect: Effect on an aggregate such as the public, institutions, society or the media industries themselves.

Type of effect   One of the six categories of effects cognitive, belief, attitudinal, affective, physiological, and behavioral.

A) Cognitive effect: Media exposure exercising an influence on an individual’s mental processes or the product of those mental processes: typically involved the acquisition, processing, and storage of information.

B) Belief effect: Media exposure exercising an influence on an individual’s perception that probability that an object or event is associated with a given attribute.

C) Attitudinal effect: Media exposure exercising an influence on an individual’s evaluative judgments; typically involved providing people with elements to evaluate or shaping standards of evaluation.

D) Affective effect: Media exposure exercising an influence on an individual’s feelings such as emotions and moods.

E) Physiological effect: Media exposure exercising an influence on an individual’s automatic bodily responses to stimuli.

F) Behavioral effect: Media exposure exercising an influence on an individual’s doing something.

Media-influenced functions  Generic ways the media can influence individuals. There are four in this conceptualization: acquiring, triggering, altering, and conditioning.

1) Acquiring: The media influence the person to obtain something he/she did not have prior to a particular exposure

2) Triggering: The media influences the person by activating something that already exists in the individual.

3) Altering: The media influence the person to change something that the person already had.

4) Reinforcing: The media influence the person by gradually making something in the person more difficult to change over time.

Media Effects Template (MET)    A two-dimensional matrix that is used to categorize the media effects literature. One MET is for individual-level effects and is structured by six types of effects with four media – influenced functions. The macro-level MET is structured by five types of effects with three macro structures.