Ownership, Technology, Content, and Context in the Continuing Search for Media Effects

This chapter argues that the several traditions of communications research converge on the problem of explaining media efffects. The critical tradition emphasizes the role of media ownership in purveying false consciousness and reinforcing the status quo. Technological theorists are concerned with how media structure the ways in which we think and organize. Theorists of content are interested in the persuasive powers of the media, while the (neglected) tradition of contextual studies suggests that the key to effect is in the way in which the audience is “situated.”