Class and Audience Effects: A History of Research on Movies, Radio, and Television

Abstract

Athread of commentary runs through some of the most prominent media effects studies spanning decades. This thread casts subordinate groups (children, women, poor minorities and immigrants, and lower classes generally) as more susceptible to and mentally less capable of dealing with the alleged dangers of media use. The commentary is seldom the main line of argument, but is secondary, often incidental, and stated without supporting evidence. Through distinctions between more and less susceptible groups, class and other prejudices have crept into these research reports and have disguised themselves as objective scientific conclusions. The comments reveal an ethnocentrism in judging lower class behavior using middle-class standards. In this article, I explore this thread by focusing on comments about class in a few of the most well-known studies.

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