Hypodermic Needle Theory [Magic Bullet Theory of Communication]
Ayesh Perera
B.A, MTS, Harvard University
Ayesh Perera, a Harvard graduate, has worked as a researcher in psychology and neuroscience under Dr. Kevin Majeres at Harvard Medical School.
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Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
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The hypodermic needle theory is an approach to studying the effects of the media on behavior. It believed that the media ‘injected’ its content into the audience’s lives directly, subsequently influencing their behavior. The theory views the audience as passive, homogeneous, and impressionable.
Key Takeaways
- The term ‘hypodermic needle’ engenders the image of a planned, strategic, and direct infusion of messages into a person (Croteau & Hoynes, 1997). The theory notes that passive recipients are immediately impacted by the media messages directly injected into them.
- Alternatively, as its other appellation ‘the magic bullet theory’ implies, media messages, resembling bullets, are fired into the receiver’s ‘head’ from the ‘media gun’ (Berger, 1995).
- According to this notion, the vulnerable public is akin to a ‘sitting duck’ incapable of escaping the oncoming barrage of media indoctrination. Consequently, the theory holds that the creators of media content can readily manipulate an intended audience and significantly shape its conduct. It has therefore been criticized for seeing individuals as passive in the process.
History and Development
The hypodermic needle theory (known as the magic bullet theory, transmission-belt model, or the hypodermic-syringe model) is a communications theory that suggests that media messages are immediately received and fully accepted by the audience (Lowery, 1995).
The hypodermic needle theory evolved as a model upon the observations of the use of mass media by the Nazis and the impact of Hollywood around the same time. It has its roots in behaviorism and its origin in the Propaganda Technique in the World War by Harold Lasswell (1927).
Lasswell studied Nazi propaganda movies to pin down the means of persuasion utilized by the Nazis to secure the people’s support for Hitler’s atrocities.
Sometime later, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, who had fled Germany and arrived in the United States, began noting similarities between the Nazis’ propaganda industry and Hollywood, or what they termed the ‘Culture Industry’ of America.
They likened American popular culture to a manufacturer of standardized messages employed to manipulate people. Horkheimer and Adorno further noted that such content fabricated psychological needs which only the products of capitalism could meet.
Thus, according to this view, the culture industry’s chief objective was to turn the recipients of media into avid consumers who would sustain capitalism.
The War of the Worlds
The most notable incident that is cited as evidence for the hypodermic needle theory comprises The War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 and the widespread panic it created.
This was a fictional account of Martians invading the earth and massacring many people. The show resembled a typical evening radio programming format containing periodic news bulletins.
Some listeners, who started listening to the show after the introduction, thought that they were receiving actual news reports. They were thrown into panic by what they heard, and they packed their vehicles and escaped to the country.
The Bobo Doll Experiment
The relationship between viewing violence in media and acting violently in real life is a topic that never ceases to elicit attention.
The experiment conducted by the Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura on children in the early 1960s shed much light on understanding this connection (Bandura, Ross & Ross, 1961).
Three groups of children were shown real, cartoon and film examples of someone beating a bobo-doll with a mallet. Another group saw no violence at all. All the children were then brought to a room brimming with toys.
However, they were informed that they could not play with them. Thus, the conditions were made conducive to their being frustrated.
Afterwards, the children were brought to a room which had a bobo-doll and a mallet.
Those children who had viewed violence (regardless of whether it was film, cartoon or real) emulated what they had viewed by beating the bobo-doll. However, those who had not been exposed to any violence did not engage in this type of conduct.
The experiment seemed to provide strong evidence that children could be heavily influenced by the violence they view in media.
Desensitization
Following the brutal murder of the 2-year-old James Bulger in 1993 by two 10-year-old boys, Professor Elizabeth Newson of the University of Nottingham, an expert in child development released a report titled ‘Video Violence and the Protection of Children’ (Newson, 1994).
She noted that the impact of violence portrayed in the media upon children is gradual and subtle. According to her, ongoing exposure to such content over a long period of time could desensitize youngsters to violence.
Such children would consequently come to see brutality as the norm and a way of resolving issues.
She further contended that violence on television was more likely to encourage its viewers to identify with the perpetrators of brutality rather than with the victims.
The hypodermic model, despite its seeming popularity, has not failed to elicit immense criticism.
In the 1940s, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, Hazel Gaudet and Bernard Berelson mounted a serious challenge to this theory through their research study of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election in 1940 (Lazarsfeld, Berelson & Gaudet, 1948).
They analyzed the relationship between political power and media, and discovered that interpersonal outlets were more potent than Roosevelt’s media propaganda.
While the messages on the media were not without effect, the results of the study indicated that the voters were not helpless and gullible consumers of campaign propaganda.
Today’s realities, far different from those of the mid/early 20th century, seem to have further abated the hypodermic theory’s explanatory power.
The superabundance of media outlets may readily mitigate the effects of propaganda by providing countervailing viewpoints.
Moreover, today’s audiences are more literate overall, than those of the 1930s, and therefore, it is reasonable to expect that they would more critically engage in various media content than their predecessors did nearly a century ago.
Further Information
- Nwabueze, C., & Okonkwo, E. (2018). Rethinking the bullet theory in the digital age. International Journal of Media, Journalism and Mass Communications, 4(2), 1-10.
- Bineham, J. L. (1988). A historical account of the hypodermic model in mass communication. Communications Monographs, 55(3), 230-246.
Bandura, A.; Ross, D.; Ross, S. A. (1961). “Transmission of aggression through the imitation of aggressive models”. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63 (3), 575–582. doi:10.1037/h0045925
Ball-Rokeach, S. J. (1985). The origins of individual media-system dependency: A sociological framework. Communication Research, 12 (4), 485-510.
Berger, Arthur (1995). Essentials of Mass Communication Theory . doi:10.4135/9781483345420. ISBN 9780803973572.
Croteau, D. & Hoynes, W. (1997). Media/society: industries, images, and audiences . Pine Forge Press. ISBN 9780803990654.
Finn, S. (1997). Origins of media exposure: Linking personality traits to TV, radio, print, and film use. Communication Research, 24(5), 507-529.
Lasswell, H. (1927). Propaganda Technique in the World War . New York, P. Smith.
Lasswell, H.D. (1970). Propaganda technique in world war I . Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press.
Lazarsfeld, P.F., Berleson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1944). The people’s choice . New York: Columbia University Press.
Lowery, Shearon (1995). Milestones in Mass Communication Research: Media Effect s (en inglés). USA: Longman Publishers. ISBN 9780801314377.
Newson, Elizabeth (1994). Video violence and the protection of children, Journal of Mental Health, 3 (2), 221-227, DOI: 10.3109/09638239409003802
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, Hazel Gaudet (1948). The People”s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign . Columbia University Press.
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