Hypertext
the eff ects of the mass media, the hypodermic
needle ‘model’ has formed a point of general
reference in crediting the media with power over
audiences. Th e basic assumption is that the mass
media have a direct, immediate and infl uential
eff ect upon audiences by ‘injecting’ information
into the consciousness of the masses.
Th e audience is seen as impressionable and
open to manipulation. Like other early models
of communication flow from the media, it
overlooks the possible eff ects of intervening
variables (ivs) in the communication process,
and presents the masses as being unquestioning
receptacles of media messages. Th is sense of the
all-powerfulness of the media is a central feature
of early mass-society research. It is now regarded
as crude and simplistic. See audience: active
audience; commercial laissez-faire model
of (media) communication.
Hypothesis Th e fi rst step of the research cycle
is the formulation of an hypothesis. Th is will
usually be based on an idea or hunch gained by
the researchers from their own reading of earlier
studies and/or their own observations of society.
Starting with this basic idea, a researcher usually
proposes a working hypothesis that will guide the
research. Th e hypothesis proposes a relationship
between certain social phenomena: for example,
that people from a higher-education background
are more likely to read what is regarded as the
quality press.
Not all hypotheses are expressed as formal
statements: some can be a general collection
of ideas about particular social phenomena.
All hypotheses, though, must be capable of
empirical testing; that is, they must be capable
of being proved or disproved by facts and argu-
ment. Th e hypothesis will determine the nature
of the research design – the method of collecting
the information that will prove or disprove the
hypothesis.
Once this information has been collected and
analysed, the hypothesis is reviewed. It may be
proved, disproved or amended; indeed, in many
cases the original hypothesis may have been
modifi ed during the data collection stage of the
research. Alternatively it may be decided that
further evidence is required before any conclu-
sion is reached. See media analysis.
Hypothesis of consonance See news values.land as having taken realities to a point where
they achieve hyperreality – a substitute that
supplants, even erases the original and replaces
it with the ‘reality’ of simulation. In short, that
which is imitating is more real, more signifi cant,
than that which is imitated.
Baudrillard, in Selected Writings (Polity Press,
1988), edited by Mark Poster, refers to the ‘society
of the image’ in which the real is subsumed by ‘all
the entangled orders of simulation’. Eco does not
go so far as to say that the hyperreal supplants
the real, but in Travels in Hyperreality (Picador,
1986) he states that imitations are indeed coming
to be preferred, by those who create them and
those who consume them, to the original. He
refers to such fakes as deriving from ‘a present
without depth’. He classifi es Disneyland as the
home of the ‘total fake’. However, the real, he
believes, can be reasserted through a sense of
history that ‘allows an escape from the tempta-
tions of hyperreality’.
Hypertext Electronic text on computer, inter-
faced with links or pathways to other, related
texts. For example the text of a novel might be the
primary text while a web of supplementary texts
- background notes, critiques, biographies – can
be instantly consulted and cross-referenced.
Hyphenized abridgement Herbert Marcuse
(1898–1979) uses this term in One-Dimensional
Man (Sphere Books, 1968) to describe the
practice of the press of concentrating informa-
tion by bringing two or more descriptive facts
together by using a hyphen. Thus: ‘Georgia’s
high-handed-lowbrowed governor ... had the
stage set for one of his wild political rallies
last week.’ Marcuse argues, ‘Th e governor, his
function, his physical features and his political
practices are fused together into one indivisible
and immutable structure’ by the press employing
this device, ‘which in its natural innocence and
immediacy, overwhelms the reader’s mind. Th e
structure leaves no space for distinction ... it
moves and lives only as a whole’.
Hyphenized abridgement, used repeatedly and
assertively, ‘imposes images while discouraging,
on the part of the reader, conceptualization; that
is, it beats him/her with images, but impedes
thinking; and thus the media defi ne for us the
terms in which we are permitted to think’. See
determiner deletion; effects of mass
media; frankfurt school of theorists;
pseudo-context; tabloidese.
Hypodermic needle model of communica-
tion More a metaphor representing a view of