ABSTRACT
In 1975, Chaffee and Petrick wrote: ‘There exists in the United States today probably the most extensive and professionalized persuasion industry in world history’ (p. 117). The statement is as true today: advertisers, public relations practitioners, political campaigners, and health and risk communication practitioners all want to infl uence people’s attitudes and behaviors – and most of them use the media to do so, at least some of the time. Decades of media effects research has posited a variety of models explaining how the media change our attitude(s), including direct effects models, models mediated by selective exposure, agenda setting theories, and cognitive response models, to name but a few.
