Media research attracted scholars from the humanities and from the social sciences. Important theories in literature, sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, among others, have guided communication scholars. As the 1980s drew to a close, greater social dependent on media and greater understandings of communication processes encourage the development of better integrated and more unified approaches to Media research, that is, communication science or culture-centered paradigm or communication science and culture-centered paradigm (Baran and Davis 349, 367).
Communication Science
Communication science, also called mainstream mass communication theory, was eventually defined in the late 1980s by researchers who sought to eliminate unfruitful fragmentation and to provide a defining core philosophy for the scientific study of all forms of communication. It is an effort to be inclusive rather than to be exclusive, to reject obsolete assumptions of the limited effects paradigm, and to unify all empirical researchers in the field of communication (Baran and Davis 344, 355, 359).
According to Charles Berger and Steven Chafee in Handbook of Communication Science:
Communication science seeks to understand the production, processing, and effects of symbols and signal systems by developing testable theories containing lawful generalizations that explain phenomena associated with production, processing, and effects. This definition is sufficiently general to embrace various communication contexts, including the production, processing, or effects of symbol or signal systems, including nonverbal, in interpersonal, organizational, mass, political, instructional, or other context (qtd. in Baran and Davis 355).
Communication science excludes culture-centered theories, despite their claims to inclusiveness, because they do not meet the criteria of scientific research - theories should explain phenomena and should consist of lawful generalizations that are testable using empirical research methods (Baran and Davis 355).
In 1987, Berger and Chaffee suggested a communication science based on the four levels of communication analysis: intraindividual, interpersonal, organizational, and macroscopic. On the other hand, Susan Pingree, John Wiemann, and Robert Hawkins suggested a communication science based on the two stages in the communication processes: antecedents of communication, which involve the study of abilities, situations, orientations, personality traits, among others, that lead to communication behaviors; and consequences of communication, which involve the study of the results or outcomes of communication and of the results of necessary characteristics of communication, strengths of effects, and mechanism of effects (Baran and Davis 356, 359, 367, 369).
Limited Effects Perspective
Communication science adheres to the many definitions of social research initially formulated by Paul Lazarsfeld, who developed the limited effects perspective with the assumptions that (1) mass media's role in the lives of individuals is limited, but it can be very dysfunctional for some types of people; (2) empirical social research methods can be used to generate theory through an inductive research process; (3) the role of the mass media in society is quite limited; media primarily reinforce existing social trends and only rarely initiate social change; and (4) when media are responsible for social change, these changes are often dysfunctional; they disrupt a stable and benign social order and his contemporaries (Baran and Davis 13, 179, 355).
The limited effects perspective may have gained popularity partly because it provided a comforting answer to the questions that troubled social elites throughout the 1930s. When propaganda threatened to subvert democracy, limited effects theory argued that most people could not be directly reached and influenced by facts, not on a speculative notions about the subversive power of the propaganda or how the media might corrupt culture (Baran and Davis 123).
Culture-Centered Paradigm
Cultural analysis, also called American cultural studies, are less concerned with the long-term consequences of media for the social order and are more concerned with looking at how media affect our individual lives. Critical cultural studies, also called British cultural studies, are less concerned with developing detailed explanations of how individuals are influenced by media and are more concerned with how the social order as a whole is affected (Baran and Davis 282, 285).
Cultural Analysis Theories
Some of the most influential cultural analysis theories are cultivation analysis, symbolic interactionism, framing and frame analysis, and social construction of reality. These theories examine the role of media in our culture and assumed that media have influence through the role that they play in shaping everyday life culture (Baran and Davis 279).
Cultivation Analysis
Cultivation analysis, developed by George Gerbner, addresses macroscopic questions about the role of media in society. Unlike, other cultural analysis and critical cultural studies theories, it attempted to use traditional social scientific research methods to evaluate its assertions and to examine very large-scale humanistic questions. Though cultural analysis theories are apolitical, cultivation analysis tried to influence social policy. Cultivation analysis represents a hybrid theory that combines cultural analysis and critical cultural studies and that combine communication science and the culture-centered paradigm (Baran and Davis 302, 305).
According to Gerbner, television “cultivates” a worldview that, although possibly inaccurate, becomes the reality because we believe it to be the reality and we base our judgments about our own, everyday world on that “reality.” Gerbner also argued that although the effects of television are observable and measurable, independent effects on the culture at any point in time might be small, that impact was, nonetheless, present and significant. The impact of television on our collective sense of reality is real and important, even though that effect may be beyond clear-cut scientific measurement, may defy easy observation, and may be inextricably bound to other factors in the culture (Baran and Davis 303, 305).
