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Before we delve into the voluminous theoretical and empirical research on these questions, it might behoove us to try to unearth the origins of the terminology we will be using. Where did the idea of “media effects” come from? Who coined the term? What were the conditions of the birth of the idea? There are key readings and moments from the history of social science, and from our own social history, that can help us pin down its origins.

The growth of sociology, psychology, and political science as scientific disciplines was bound to eventually mean a turn toward media questions. The development of media technology has always been a key component in terms of how society has evolved (Innis, 1951; McLuhan, 1964); acceleration in the media sphere was a big part of how overall social change proceeded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Across this period, in relation to emerging media, we can identify two issues that became of prime importance in how researchers would look at media effects: (1) the question of opinions (later also called beliefs and attitudes), and (2) the question of the mass nature of mediated communication.