Critical Media Effects Framework: Bridging Critical Cultural Communication and Media Effects through Power, Intersectionality, Context, and Agency

Srividya Ramasubramanian,Omotayo O Banjo

doi:10.1093/joc/jqaa014

Srividya Ramasubramanian, Omotayo O Banjo

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqaa014

Copy DOI

Abstract

Abstract In this essay, we advance the Critical Media Effects (CME) framework as a way of bridging two major subfields of communication that seldom speak to one another: media effects scholarship and critical cultural communication. Critical Media Effects is situated within the dominant mode of social scientific theorizing within media effects scholarship and draws on four key interrelated concepts from critical cultural communication: power, intersectionality, context, and agency. Critical Media Effects advocates for greater reflexivity, rigor, and nuance in theorizing about media effects to better respond to the complexity and dynamicity of emerging global sociopolitical mediated contexts. Recommendations, salient examples, and future directions for co-creating a shared research roadmap for CME are discussed. Through this work of bridging, we hope to promote more collaborative partnerships, productive engagement, and mutual solidarity across these two important subfields to address the most pressing social issues and challenges of the world today.

Highlights

For about 50 years, tensions between critical cultural and social psychological approaches to studying the relationship between media and audiences has persisted, and in some cases has fueled volatile debates between scholars of these two different paradigms (Fink & Gantz, 1996, Morgan, 2007; Splichal & Mance, 2018)
As critical social scientists who are trained in the media effects tradition and who study identity-related questions, we have found ourselves often caught up in methodological polarization and theoretical divides about ontological and epistemological
As media landscapes become more dynamic, audiences become more complex, and sociopolitical contexts evolve rapidly, we advocate for media effects research to take a multiperspectival approach to effectively address the most pressing research issues of today by drawing from subfields such as critical cultural communication

Summary

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Critical Media Effects Framework: Bridging Critical Cultural Communication and Media Effects through Power, Intersectionality, Context, and Agency. We advance the Critical Media Effects (CME) framework as a way of bridging two major subfields of communication that seldom speak to one another: media effects scholarship and critical cultural communication. Critical Media Effects is situated within the dominant mode of social scientific theorizing within media effects scholarship and draws on four key interrelated concepts from critical cultural communication: power, intersectionality, context, and agency. As critical social scientists who are trained in the media effects tradition and who study identity-related questions, we have found ourselves often caught up in methodological polarization and theoretical divides about ontological and epistemological

Critical Media Effects

The Case for Critical Media Effects