Media Dependency Theory

Media Dependency Theory is a media effect theory first proposed in 1976 by Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin Defleur. It stems from the Usage and Gratification Theory.

The UG theory is an idea proposed that society chooses what media to focus on based on what needs the media provides (information, social interaction etc). This came after a realization that perhaps media wasn't controlling society and the ways people think about things. Perhaps, instead, it is society's choice what media they utilize and how much influence they allow it to have over them.

Dependency theory, basically, is the idea that the more dependent a person becomes on the media to fulfill their needs, the more important and influential that media becomes to them.

A really excellent and interesting example of this is the effect that Google is having on our memories. Psychologist Daniel Wegner has proposed that humans have what is called transactive memory. Transactive memory is the idea that humans have sort of a shared memory. Let's say that you have a spouse. If they know what day your child's dance recital is, you yourself don't have to remember that information and vice versa. Humans basically rely on one another for shared information. You may not know when the recital is, but you know that your spouse knows and you can always ask them later.

Our society is beginning to develop this sort of dependency relationship with media such as Google. Betsy Sparrow from Columbia University conducted a series of experiments to see the effects that Google had on our memory. One of the experiments involved 60 students reading 40 trivia statements and then typing them into a computer. Sparrow found that the students remembered fewer of the statements if they were told the computer would save them than the students who were told the statements would be erased. If they knew their work could be accessed later, they didn't feel the need to remember it. “Since search engines are continually available to us, we may often be in a state of not feeling we need to encode the information internally. When we need it, we will look it up,” says Sparrow.

This a great example of Dependency Theory. People are using media like Google to fill their informational needs, and are actually beginning to remember things less and become more and more dependent on Google for that information. Media isn't forcing itself upon them, rather it's being selected and used by society.