ABSTRACT
In the early days of communication research, emotions were seen as ‘noise’ – they were hardly studied as key concepts in research concerning the reception process of media messages. The emphasis was largely on cognitive aspects such as recall, learning, thoughts, and beliefs. Understandable, since theories such as those of the ‘hypodermic needle’ effects of mass media ruled, in which scholarly attention for the individual processing of mass media messages was limited (Katz and Lazarsfeld 1955). Hypodermic needle and related ‘sender-receiver’ theories resembled behaviorist theorizing such as stimulus-response models and ignored ‘black boxes’ such as inner feelings that were conceived of as not relevant to study. Serious messages worth studying conveyed through mass media could therefore not deal with affect, feelings, or emotions (cf., Bryant and Miron 2004; Zillmann 2003). Such affective aspects were reserved for entertainment media, where affect was mostly studied in an understanding of processes of emotional involvement and gratifi cations. Nowadays, the borders between entertainment, news as well as information fare become blurred and emotion research is growing in importance. Although still in its infancy, there is a growing number of media effect studies showing the important role of emotions and affect in infl uencing how media messages are perceived (Nabi 2009; Nabi, So, and Prestin, this volume). Interestingly, these developments run in parallel to certain developments in psychology – the main discipline of today’s emotion research.
