Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome to Media in Minutes' where I talk you through important concepts in media and
communication.
Today we're talking about the Hypodermic Needle Theory
which was one of the earliest ways of thinking about how the mass media
influences audiences.
It was developed in the 1920s and 1930s after
researchers observed the effect of propaganda during World War I and
events like the Orson Welles 'War of the Worlds' broadcast.
The hypodermic needle theory is a linear communication theory which
suggests that media messages are injected directly into the brains of a
passive audience.
It suggests that we're all the same
and we all respond to media messages in the same way.
This way of thinking about communication and media influences is no longer really
accepted.
In the 1930s many researchers realized the limitations of
this idea
and some dispute with early media theorists gave the idea any serious attention at
all.
Nevertheless,
the Hypodermic Needle Theory continues to influence the way we talk about the
media.
People believe that the mass media has a powerful effect.
Parents worry about the influence of television in violent video games.
News outlets run headlines like 'Is Google making a stupid?' and 'Grand Theft Auto
led teen to kill.'
So how did this way of thinking about the mass media develop?
Back in 1927, Harold Lasswell an American political scientist
and communication theorist published a book called 'Propaganda Technique in the World
War'
Writing about the effect of Allied propaganda during World War I, Lasswell
wrote: "From a propaganda point-of-view it was matchless performance
for Wilson brewed the subtle poison which industrious men injected into the
veins of a staggering people until the smashing powers of the Allied armies
knocked them into submission."
The Payne Fund Studies which were conducted between 1929
and 1932
and looked at the effect movies have on children also contributed to this idea
that the mass media has a powerful
and direct influence on the audiences.
Although these studies have been criticized for the lack of scientific
rigour,
they were really one of the first and most comprehensive examinations of how
the media works
Writing about the influence of movies the project chairman W.W Charters
wrote that they have the potential to profoundly affect the way children
behave.
Even in the 1930s, however, researches were starting to realize that
this way of thinking about media influence was kind of inadequate.
Then, in 1938 Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre broadcast a
dramatisation of HG Wells' 'War of the Worlds.'
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make.
Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence
of our eyes
lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in
the Jersey farmlands tonight
of the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars.
The battle which took place tonight at Grovers Mill has ended in one of the
most startling military defeats ever suffered by an army in modern times;
seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns
pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars.
One hundred and twenty known survivors.
The rest strewn over the battle area from Grovers Mill to Plainsboro
crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster,
or burned to cinders by its heat ray.
The program, which was presented in the format of a news bulletin,
caused some listeners to believe that the Earth was being invited by martians.
The New York Times claimed that thousands of people were gripped by mass hysteria.
While thousands of people may have been panic-stricken, they were only a small
proportion of the six million people who enjoy a quiet night around the radio.
On the surface, events like they seem to suggest that the media can have a
powerful influence on audiences.
Nevertheless,
The Hypodermic Needle Theory is kind of inadequate to describe the process of
communication immediate influence
It just doesn't work.