In the wake of the War Era of the 20th Century, it seemed to communication researchers that the mass media must have particularly strong effects on people. Propaganda had been everywhere during World War II, and the Great War before that. The violence during that time had dwarfed everything that had come before, and it raised questions for many researchers about the darker side of human nature, and why it is that apparently normal people can sometimes do horrible things.

New forms of mass media were then coming across the transom and to researchers at the time, they seemed like prime suspects in the search for powerful influences on human behavior. The notion that media can exert direct control over what we think and do eventually became known as the “hypodermic model” of media influence. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), decades of further research have largely disproved it. The mass media don’t affect us quite that directly. But that doesn’t mean they have no effect at all.

This section discusses some of the ways that television portrayals in general and medical shows in particular might exert an influence on how we think the world and about healthcare.