Reflection Hypothesis

Overview

The idea of reflection or reflexivity is used in many fields in the humanities and social sciences. That is why it is important to define, when speaking of the reflection hypothesis, that it is in the context of human communication. A hypothesis is a postulate, assumption, or supposition based on very little evidence, usually used as a conjecture that will kickstart research for a theory. It can also be considered a temporary explanation that must be verified or corroborated. In the concrete case of the reflection hypothesis, reflection refers to the idea that a cultural product reflects social values or society itself. It is commonly used in the field of literature, for example, to explain that a given genre or type of literature reflects the social mores of its time. That would include their ideas about religion, family, gender, work, social class, race, and so on. Others would argue, however, that a cultural product—a novel, a film, a news program—has much to do with many distinctive factors of power, that is, who has the means to produce the film, publish the book, and thus, influence the content of that media product. The latter view is in direct opposition, then, to reflection hypothesis.

It continues to be known as a hypothesis because it has never been proven beyond a hypothesis and because it was subsumed into a whole theoretical corpus or body that expanded upon the topic beyond the postulates of the hypothesis. It is important to note, however, that the reflection hypothesis was not completely disproven. Social values do respond to a historic period and a wide variety of social, cultural, and material circumstances. They are dynamic, that is, constantly changing, never static. All products created during a given period are likely to be influenced by the social values, views, and beliefs of the time, and these will also affect how the public consumes the cultural product. Theories are also cultural products; therefore, theories are contextual and subject to change over time.

The reflection hypothesis, then, posits that all that is portrayed in mass media—images, values, and attitudes—reflects the values of the public. Because media is always trying to appeal to and attract the most ample or broad audience possible, they will aim to cover the most mainstream of these ideas and values. Further, the reflection hypothesis argues that what people see in the media is just a reflection of daily life and what the public really wants to see. Media managers understand this and provide their audiences with what they demand. The media, in this view, has scant influence on their viewers' thought processes or on society in general. It is, in a very real way, a view of the media as passive that runs contrary to those who hold the view of the media as an active persuader and producer of manufactured consent.

Other theorists have argued the opposite; instead of reflecting social values, the media presents the audience with distorted representations of reality. For example, very few people in the audience live and look like characters as represented by Hollywood and televised programs. These products may build upon some of the aspirations of people, and build upon them, creating mythic or impossible-to-achieve imagery. Because mass media seeks to appeal to the widest audience possible, it relies on tropes and stereotypes, and these are the values and ideas that get replicated in the public.

For example, social scientists have long studied the effect of mass media on children, especially television. They have found that stereotyped images proliferate in children's programs and that children who watch televised fare heavily hold the most stereotypical views. Many experts argue that the relation between media and its effect on children is not clear to prove, and that these stereotypes are also affected by other social factors in children's lives: family, school, and church, for example. Nevertheless, a consensus exists that mass media do have an influence on their audience.

The reflection hypothesis was often used to argue against the notion that mass media, especially those cultural products broadcast to younger audiences, led them to harmful behaviors, including drug use, violence, and crime. This has been a controversial field of debate, since a wide abundance of audience studies have been done to try to prove the effect of media on young people. Some supporters of the media as manipulators point to young delinquents who have blamed their crimes on heavy use of media with violent content, such as certain genres of music or video games. Others have claimed that these are usually strategies that individuals may use to deflect blame, and recent studies suggest that there is no significant effect on players of violent video games, for example, at least as pertains to their daily behavior or an increased tendency to commit violent acts.

In fact, it could be argued that such products serve the function of defusing hostility by allowing individuals to channel their aggressiveness through media products rather than in "real life." The latter, for example, could be an instance in which the reflection hypothesis might be deployed. In that sense, it would seem to support that most media products exist within pre-existing behaviors; young people value aggression and demand violent video games in order to enact their violent impulses, subliminally, because the values of law-abiding civility override these and lead them to seek acceptable venues for the expression of their violent impulses. There would be no video games if no demand for them existed.

On the other hand, the majority of media scholars argue, along various theoretical frameworks, that all media exist within pre-existing values and beliefs, and these include the values and political and economic interests of media producers. An extreme version of the latter view is known as the manipulation hypothesis, which argues that the influence of mass media is extraordinary—capable of brainwashing—and in a society saturated with media, its influence is inescapable and overwhelming.

Finally, some complex theories of reflexivity argue for a middle ground. An endless loop exists between media and audience, in which media managers create content that is laden with their interests and ideas, and the audience integrates these to different degrees—depending on factors such as age, gender, and background—and feeds it back to media managers by way of surveys, comments, and other systems of interaction. Media producers take these views into account and shape their next products accordingly. It also includes the idea that whatever the media is offering, the audience will still see its values reflected in them, and their interpretation will align the product with their views.

Further Insights

Media expert Paul Lazarsfeld's book The People's Choice (1948), based on his research on Democratic voters, presented a different model of mass communication flow than that which was in vogue at the time. His model was called the two-step flow. His research team had discovered that voters made a political decision based on information shared with them personally by opinion leaders, people in their daily lives whom they looked up to. These opinion leaders tended to be active media users, and they interpreted the information gathered by the media to others. Since the media's message reaches the opinion leader first, and his followers second, it is known as the two-step flow. Lazarsfeld's work was important because it spearheaded research that led to the theoretical field known as limited effects theory, a set of theories supporting the idea that the influence of mass media on individuals is negligible or very superficial. Lazarsfeld's work was wide-ranging, as he was interested in examining how societal ideas influenced all sorts of cultural products, from Civil War-era novels to the impact of televised programs aimed at housewives.

After Lazarsfeld, researchers continued to find evidence of the distinctive nature of media effects on audiences and to identify a wide array of important variables, such as psychological and demographic factors and the idiosyncratic ways in which consumers use media products. Among these thinkers was Joseph T. Klapper, a Lazarsfeld follower who developed a series of seminal theories, the first ones of which were published in his book The Effects of Mass Communication (1960). Klapper objected to the then-popular idea among scientists that audiences were passive recipients of mass media content. These argued that massive media campaigns aimed at manipulating attitudes were very effective, and that people were not active media consumers, that is, did not become actively involved in making sense of the broadcast content received.

Klapper concluded that the media's effect on audiences was very limited, that it takes time and works subtly, because it is mediated by many variables, which include a person's values and primary groups: family, school, church, and political party, among others. Although the views of media effects theorists such as Lazarsfeld and Klapper do not posit directly that societal values are reflected in media products, their theories did respond to the same imperatives of the reflection hypothesis, which challenged the idea that the media can brainwash a completely passive audience.

Other theorists argue that it is not possible to understand the media without first looking at the economic structure that supports it. An effective analysis must mediate between media products, such as television shows, and the industrial technologies that support them, the economic and political interests involved, and the financial processes used to mobilize them; in other words, it is necessary to examine the means of production. In this sense, media industries shape the content produced, the information disseminated—news broadcasting, advertising, films, and so on—with myriad corporate interests in mind, including branding, ratings, and profit.

Media analysis is complex, and it includes understanding the social realities in which it occurs. Societies are not homogeneous, and neither are audiences. In all societies, people are divided into social, economic, and cultural classes, as well as by gender, age, ethnicity and race, religion, and so on. These limit the ways in which people can share, universally, the same experience when they consume a media product. In fact, even as mass media may strive to "manufacture consent" among a population, different audience groups will respond differently to the product.

This leads to the question of the manufacturing of realities, or of the ideas that shape the ways people think. Is it that media feeds the public manufactured ideas, or are the ideas produced by different groups gathered, appropriated, reproduced, and disseminated by the media back to the public? Many experts think that this interaction is closer to reality. It is also important to consider that the media is composed of different corporations, each with its own interests.

Critics of the reflection hypothesis point out that, were there any truth to it, the unreal and impossibly perfect representations of women manufactured by film, advertising, fashion, and other cultural industries would be the aggregate values and desires of the women in the audience. In truth, it does not reflect the realities of most women worldwide and sets standards impossible to achieve. In fact, these images are often at odds with other important societal values, such as independence and good health. What can be taken away from the reflection hypothesis, however, is that audiences are not passive vessels awaiting to be filled with the information media outlets want to pour into them. Moreover, increasingly experienced and sophisticated audiences have a better understanding of how the media work and are less trusting than twentieth-century audiences. Many scholars argue that audiences are highly selective, already know the type of information they want and need, and seek it across various platforms. Therefore, the media's power of persuasion may remain strong, but it is also constrained by savvier users who use a wide array of media and are more exacting about their media consumption needs.

Issues

Heavy viewers, people who watch a great deal of television, are more vulnerable to being influenced by the ways in which television presents the world to them. Thus, heavy viewers of news broadcasts that emphasize negative views of the world will be more fearful and more likely to believe that crime rates are suddenly rising rather than having been in a steady decline for many years. Heavy viewers tend to use fewer media outlets for their information, as well. Light viewers of television, on the other hand, tend to have more sources of information and be better able to compare the information they receive. These facts, repeatedly supported by empirical evidence, demonstrate the complexity of audiences in general and the growing difficulties media outlets face in reaching a broad audience to foster a homogeneous ideology in society. If social and cultural patterns are added to the mix, it is easy to see how difficult it is for a whole audience to watch the same programs and draw the same meanings, even as its role, according to limited effects theorists, is to reinforce societal values and maintain social stability.

Numerous studies on the effects of media on people—and of people on media—have been conducted, and continue to be, because the audiences of decades ago were vastly different from contemporary audiences. Future audiences will differ from present-day audiences, but past hypotheses and theories remain valuable and can be adapted to new realities. For example, Klapper found that individuals may draw different conclusions from the same message, depending on how each is preconditioned and chooses to retain the message. His findings remain useful to twenty-first-century audience analysts.

A study on advertising content, conducted by Stefano Tataglia and Chiara Rollero (2015), was designed to determine whether social values influence culture or whether culture influences social values. They examined gender roles in advertising included in Italian and Dutch publications, in which women were depicted in traditional gender roles. Given the cultural values and cultures of each country, the study showed that the advertising reflected general cultural values in Italy, where women continued to ascribe to traditional gender roles, but given the rapidly changing mores of Italian society, the results were borderline inconclusive. Conversely, in the case of the Netherlands, the findings challenged the reflection hypothesis because traditional gender roles have long been eschewed in the Netherlands, even though they still live on in advertising. In other words, the reflection hypothesis might be applicable—or not—depending on the context and culture of a specific demographic.

Finally, despite all the research on media effects, the debate remains strong, and the evidence overall remains inconclusive. Perhaps it is better to say that there is more consensus that, even though mass media cannot change society by itself, it can certainly influence it. Although the media's tendency is to create as homogeneous an audience as possible, it is obvious that global and cultural influences worldwide have had a significant impact on the media, a phenomenon that will only continue to expand.

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