International Encyclopedia of Communication Online

Extract

Beyond one's own direct experiences of the world, humans rely on communication to form impressions about the rest of reality. This fact makes communication a key to how people form their perceptions of reality. There is a rich literature grounded in communication dealing with the role of mass communication in forming individual-level judgments as well as public opinion about conditions in the world (→  Media and Perceptions of Reality ; Social Perception ). This literature, which ranges over the areas of entertainment, news media, media effects, and various social indicators, is impressive in its breadth and depth (e.g., Bryant & Zillmann 2002 ). The main models employed in research on perceived reality typically focus on inaccurate or misleading perceptions of social reality. Studies usually involve various attributions about the world that are known, relatively uncontroversial, and normatively useful for citizens to remember accurately, such as the proportion of people working in law enforcement, or the incidence of violent crime. People's answers about these matters are then compared to media portrayals of these phenomena and the differences are calculated and explained, often with reference to media-use preferences and habits. Studies done in real-world settings will introduce various controls through multivariate equations in which the effects of demographics, education, ... log in or subscribe to read full text