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Media Practice Model


The Media Practice Model is a media effects model used within the area of mass communication. This model was developed by Jeanne R. Steele and Jane D. Brown in 1995, and it takes a practice perspective which means that it focuses on everyday activities and routines of media consumption. This theoretical framework was developed to better understand what drives teenagers to pick one media source over another, and what factors play a role in this decision. The Media Practice Model emphasizes the constant interaction between consumers and the media, and focuses on the dialectical aspect of this interaction, suggesting that it is the adolescents’ individual characteristics, environment and daily practices that allow the media to have stronger or weaker effects on them (Steele & Brown, 1995).

The model was developed based on a study that progressed from 1987 through 1993, and used a variety of methods such as daily journals, in-depth interviews, self-administered questionnaires and “room touring” to understand, as the Steele and Brown call it, the adolescents’ “room culture.” This environment was chosen based on the facts that adolescents’ bedrooms are usually cluttered with different media materials and sources, as well as the fact that this is a place where adolescents spend a good part of their day. This is also a place that provides an intimate environment where adolescents can experiment with possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986). The Media Practice Model was based on the findings of this first study, and the incorporation of other media effects theories such as Selective Exposure Theory, Uses and Gratifications, Framing, Cultivation theory, and Emotional Conditioning.

The Media Practice Model proposed by Steele and Brown has the concepts of selection, interaction and application as the three main components, but also takes into account one’s identity and lived experience. Identity formation is the key component of this model and it represents the main task of adolescent formation (Steele & Brown, 1995). It is believed that adolescents’ sense of who they are influences their interactions with the media, and those interactions in turn influence their sense of who they are, in what Steele and Brown call an ongoing process of cultural production and reproduction. The theoretical perspective of “lived through experience” (Vygotsky, 1978), also takes into account the developmental stage, the sociocultural differences based on gender, class, and race, as well as other factors such as religious beliefs, interactions within one’s neighborhood, school, family, friends circle, and so on. This concept of “lived experience” emphasizes the idea that adolescents’ interaction with the media does not happen in a vacuum. It is argued that the continuous dialectal relationship between the other four components of the Media Practice Model, selection, interaction, application, and identity, all occur within the context of “lived experience (Steele & Brown, 1995).”


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