Hypodermic Needle Model
(aka Magic Bullet Model, Propaganda)
The Hypodermic Needle model is probably the first communications theory model describing the propagation of a message from a source such as the mass media to the consumer. While the theory has been largely debunked, the concept keeps reappearing based on speculation of practitioners from other fields unfamiliar with communications theory.
Although Harold Lasswell originally introduced the concept in his 1927 book Propaganda Technique in the World War, the term was coined later. The model is linear, suggesting mass media can influence opinion through messages that reach people individually, or in other words, messages are “inserted” into the brains of passive and homogeneous audiences just like a hypodermic needle inserts a medicine which immediately affects the body, or similar to a “media gun” firing a “magic bullet” into the viewer’s “head.“
Note the forcefulness of the language. At the time, some ascribed immense power to this theory as it appeared the state Propaganda during the First World War was very effective. Even the United Kingdom created the Ministry of Information to coordinate messaging. While in modern times, it is obvious the model’s assumptions are flawed, back then, people had a very positive bias towards media; there were limited sources of information, and minimal counter messages, which increased the level of acceptability of the message. From a modern perspective, this lack of diversity of opinion creates an echo chamber that is more likely to explain the message propagation effects.
Furthermore, the effects of propaganda in totalitarian states, such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is widely misunderstood. In those two societies, people behaved in alignment with the state message, not because the propaganda was convincing but because parallel enforcement mechanisms ensured compliance – namely, imprisonment, concentration camps, and extrajudicial killings. So, propaganda merely served to inform what the norms are rather than convince.
Another example of false confirmation of the theory was the infamous CBS broadcast of The War of the Worlds on Halloween 1938. The supposed music broadcast was repeatedly interrupted by what appeared to be news updates regarding an alien invasion of Grovers Mill, NJ. It was reported that close to one million listeners believed the story was true to a certain extent, although many misunderstood the nature of the invasion. Orson Welles made the broadcast more believable through a series of devices, such as high specificity of numbers of casualties, actual places names, and the mixing of individuals identified as experts, scientists, and government officials.
Immediately after the broadcast, CBS management was disturbed by its effects and was concerned about liability and potential FCC investigation. They commissioned a group of researchers, including Paul Lazarsfeld and Hadley Cantril, to investigate the matter. When the dust settled, it turned out the 1 million people were less than 10% of the listeners at the time of the broadcast, and as mentioned, many of them misunderstood different parts of the story.
The Hypodermic Needle Model was never based on actual social metrics and instead was based on assumptions from behavioral psychology. Only few years after the CBS broadcast, Lazarsfeld debunked it in his work on the messaging during the FDR presidential election in his book The People’s Choice. In this work, he debunked the model and proposed a new one – the Two-Step Flow of Information model. And on a fun closing note, if you hear about alien invasion on the news remember the War of the Worlds!