ABSTRACT
The study of media effects has a relatively long history, tracking back to the end of the nineteenth century. The hypodermic needle theory or the bullet theory, the earliest conceptualization of the media effects, articulated the awe about the newly emergent mass media, claiming that the effects of mass media were immediate, direct, and immense. This perspective was largely influenced by the mass society theory, in which the view of the audience was extremely pessimistic (Lowery & DeFleur, 1988; McQuail, 1987). The theory posited that industrialization and urbanization resulted in destruction of communities and replacement of the public by the mass, the isolated, atomized, and mutually anonymous group of people whose behaviors were mainly motivated by self-interests (Arendt, 1951; Bell, 1960; Fromm, 1941; Kornhauser, 1959; C. W. Mills, 1956; Riesman, 1953). The audience of mass media, mostly ill informed, inevitably succumb to the power of the media.
