Media system dependency theory
[1] The theory is grounded in classical sociological literature positing that media and their audiences should be studied in the context of larger social systems.
[1][5] For instance, in modernized countries like the United States, there are many media outlets and they serve highly centralized social functions.
As such, the media have a greater opportunity to serve needs and exert effects in contemporary America than in a third world country.
When there is a war or large-scale public protests like during Vietnam or the Arab Spring, a national emergency like the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001,[6][7] or a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina, people turn to media to help understand these important events.
Consequently, the media have a greater opportunity to exert effects during these times of social change and conflict.
Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur suggests that the cognitive, behavioral and affective consequences of media use are premised upon characteristics of both individuals and their social environment.
Media exposes us to completely new people, such as political figures and celebrities, not to mention physical objects like birth control pills or car safety mechanisms that we come to form attitudes about.
Media can create a kind of "enlargement" of citizen's beliefs by disseminating information about other people, places, and things.
These beliefs meet with and are incorporated into an existing value system regarding religion, free enterprise, work, ecology, patriotism, recreation, and the family.
Such a position can be painful to articulate because it can force a choice between mutually incompatible goals and the means for obtaining them.
Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur mentions several possible affective media effects that are more likely to occur during times of heightened dependency.
The second broad category of behavioral effects is called "deactivation", and refers to instances in which audiences would have otherwise done something, but don't do as a consequence of media messages.
[5] The media depend on a society's economic system for 1) inculcation and reinforcement of free enterprise values, 2) establishing and maintaining linkages between producers and sellers, and 3) controlling and winning internal conflicts, such as between management and unions.
In turn, the media is dependent on a society's economic system for 1) profit from advertising revenue, 2) technological developments that reduce costs and compete effectively with other media outlets, and 3) expansion via access to banking and finance services, as well as international trade.
Finally, the military system depends on the media for value inculcation and reinforcement, waging and winning conflicts, and specific organizational goals such as recruitment and mobilization.
The responsiveness of micro MSD relations to environmental conditions and the ecological constraints on media production and consumption are important features.
U&G theorists emphasize the role of interpersonal communication in the distortion of media messages and of networks as interpretive communities.
In this conception, interpersonal networks are regarded as a safety way against the cultural apparatus of the media and its partners.
U&G theorists in the psychological tradition think of the media system as creators of tentative texts subject to multiple reconstructions.
MSD shares the macro functionalists' view of the media's interdependence with other social and cultural system.
Those differences are reflected most clearly in (a) the logics of hypothesis formation (b) item and scale construction (c) modes of data analysis, and (d) interpretation of findings.
The MSD researcher essentially wants to know the micro and macro determinants of stability and change in micro MSD relations to learn something about their cross-level consequences for individuals and their interpersonal networks-the dynamics of their inner worlds and how they live in their social worlds.
[11] Particularly, there are many MSD studies in online social networking sites ranging from MySpace[12] to Facebook and Twitter.
