UCLA Comms 10 FINAL - Jones

Mediated

The exchange of information, ideas, or messages through a technological or physical medium rather than face-to-face interaction.

• Media transmit political messages

Meditization

The media is not just a tool for communication but has fundamentally reshaped social life, culture, and institutions.

• Media reshape how politics works

fundamental assumptions of media and mass comm

1. Pervasive & Ubiquitous

2. Acted upon/act upon people

3. Change people's environment (& individual behaviors)

Mass communication

Messages transmitted to a large audience via one or more media.

Media

The technological and formally organized means of transmission of such messages.

One-to-many communication

When a single sender transmits a message to multiple recipients simultaneously. —> allows for efficient distribution

Propaganda

The deliberate spreading of biased, misleading, or one-sided information to influence public opinion and promote a specific cause.

Gatekeeping

Limit of classic mass comunication

• Old: editors, publishers, producers that filter info

• New: Algoriths, feeds, networks

One-way flow

• Where the leader or broadcast station is sending a signal to the masses, but there is little opportunity for audience response 

  • Makes it very effective as it removes any kind of feedback

Limited participation

• Due to limited response, there is limited participation 

mass self-communication

A digital-age communication model where individuals independently generate content and broadcast it to potentially global audiences. Self-selected, self-directed. Ex. Youtube

War of position

• A slow, long-term way to instill cultural dominance within society

• Instead of directly confronting state power, revolutionary forces must gradually build influence through institutions like media, education, religion, and intellectual discourse

War of Maneuver

Direct, confrontational struggle against the ruling class, often involving insurrection, revolution, or direct military or political action to seize power.

Cultural hegemony

How common sense is manufactured in modern societies. Hegeomy = power. how to individuals beliefs changed through consumerism. The phenomenon of why a group accepts what simply is.

Media ownership - means of production

The conditions of the worker/ producers of the media. The specific conditions of teh works and hwo the work is produced. The relationship between the workers and those that provide the funds.

Mass media

• The construction of reality through the manipulation of media 

1. Communicative purposes, needs, or uses

2. Technologies for communicating publicly to many at a distance

3. Forms of social organization that provide the skills and frameworks for organization, production, and distribution

4. Forms of regulation and control

Homogenization of news

Infotianment

History of media

Started with the creation of the printing press.

• Printers transformed from tradespeople into publishers

• Emergence of a market and the transformation of the book into a commodity

• Government and Church applied censorship to printed matter

• Newspapers were invention of a new literary, social, and cultural form.

• Extension of the state, church, or political party

Imagined communities

Nations are socially constructed through shared cultural experiences

• Newspapers helped create them by enabling groups to share comon experience of reading the same news at the same time

Public ownership

Own by the givernment pay by taxes or funds form government - Voice of america (radio) -

• Advantages: Free from commercial pressures; funded by tax dollars

• Concerns: Potential for government bias and political pressure/interference

Private ownership

• Media outlets owned by individuals, families, or corporations

• Therefore shaped by markets, advertisers, investors, profit incentives

semipublic ownership

Organizations that are partly but not fully funded by the government - PBS

• Mixed public/private financing and operation

• Subsidies to support educational and public service content

• Vulnerabilities: Purse-string control and funding instability

Independents (private ownership)

• Single-outlet owners (becoming rare)

Media chains (private ownership)

Multiple outlets under one corporation (Gannett owning USA today etc.)

Cross media ownership (private ownership)

• Companies owning outlets across various platforms (NBC producing news, shows, and movies)

conglomerates (private ownership)

•  Large firms with diverse (sometimes non-media) interests (GE, Disney)

Watchdog function of media

When the press's function as an independent guardian of the public interest.

• Holds government accountable (exposing waste, corruption, overreach) 

• A free press matters because it gives the public information needed to monitor power

The impact of decline in local news

• Reduced competitiveness in local elections 

• Increased incumbency advantage

• People often get more political information from national outlets and social media

Impact of decline in political news coverage

Leads representatives to be less responsive

• Politics becomes more symbolic, national, and identity-based

The effects of hedge funds and other corporations buying up distressed media companies

Often prioritizes extraction over long-term civic value

• Staff cuts

• Less local reporting

• More syndicated content

• Weaker watchdog journalism

Benefits of big business control

• Economies of scale

• Investigative resources

• Legal protection

• Production/distribution capacity

Costs of big business control

• Homogenization

• Less localism

• Commercial pressure

• Risk aversion

• Fewer independent voices

Prestige (what gives media influence?)

Elite outlets set agendas and professional norms

Competition/fragmentation aka market position (what gives media influence?)

Competition affects content & strategy

Market size aka Reach (what gives media influence?)

Large audiences create cultural & political influence

Demographics/data (what gives media influence?)

Media target audiences based on location, identity, behavior, value to advertisers

Digital disruption

• Advertising moved away from newspapers & broadcasters to digital platforms

• Audiences fragmented across websites, apps, streamers, podcasts, social media

• Financial model shifted to subscriptions, paywalls, memberships, philanthrophy, branded content

Financial models (pre-digital media)

Newspapers and Broadcast

Financial models (post-digital media)

Shifted to subscriptions, paywalls, memberships, philanthropy, and branded content

Regulation and its effects

• Positive: Keeps news local and shows different viewpoints.

• The Negative: Can limit business growth and free speech.

Deregulation and its effects

• The Positive: Lowers costs for companies and creates bigger networks.

• The Negative: Big corporations buy everything, making news identical everywhere.

Net neutrality

The principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must treat all online communications and data equally, without blocking, throttling, or favoring specific content.

Media-society-culture connection

• Media is both a social institution influenced by economics and politics and a cultural force shaping values and narratives 

  • E.x., Kardashian influence shaped aesthetic 

  • Beauty standards have evolved 

    • In the 80s, the beauty ideal was thin and less curvy 

    • We look to media to figure out who is attractive and how to become it 

    • Now we have seen a shift toward curvier women 

    • Media has shifted 

Veritable punnet square

This diagram outlines four theoretical approaches to the relationship between media, culture, and social structure, based on two central questions of influence.

Idealism

• Media content drives social change

  • Content like “Roots” 

  • Sitcom called Soap, that had the first prominent gay character

    • Your entire attitudes toward gay people would be from media  

Interdependence

• media and society continuously influence each other

Autonomy

• media operates independently of social structures

Mass society theory

Media centralization leads to mass conformity, reducing individual agency and fostering social control

• Ex. Tiktok trends, Stan culture, Algorithmic outrage

• We have the potential for unrest that can lead to violence 

  • Luigi Magione killing CEO 

  • A rising sentiment of angry attitudes about inequality 

Political economy theory

Media is controlled by economic elites, shaping content to serve their interests and maintain power

Who owns your attention? 

• What apps do you use the most?

• Who owns them?

• How do those companies monetize your attention?

Functionalist theory

Media serves essential social functions, e.g. providing information, reinforcing norms, ensuring social stability.

Critiques:

• Assumes stability is good

• Can ignore inequality

• Can naturalize existing power structures

Social construction/ social constructionism

Rather than reflecting reality, media constructs reality by shaping public perceptions and social norms.

• Ex. Beauty standards & ideals

• Crime coverage shaping fear

• “Success”

• Political framing

• Masculinity/femininity

• Celebrity culture

Technological determinism

• Communication technologies shape society and human interactions, often driving social revolutions. 

  • We tend to pay attention to shorter media rather than longer, more complex media  

  • The form of media changes how people think, not just what they think about

Information society theory

Argues that:

• What we perceive as increasingly important as a society is data 

• Modern societies are increasingly structured around information and data rather than traditional industrial production.

• Rise of digital platforms, automation, and the widespread influence of data-driven decision-making.

• Rise of digital platforms, automation, and the widespread influence of data-driven decision-making.

• Data becomes a resource or commodity, just like oil.

Mediatization theory

Argues that:

• Media is not just a tool for communication but has fundamentally reshaped social life, culture, and institutions.

• Practices have been adjusted to fit media logic, meaning that organizations and individuals structure their activities around media visibility, engagement, and storytelling.

• Much of modern life is now designed for media visibility

Medias impact on social change

Media can both drive and resist social change, depending on economic and political contexts.

Drive: The Me Too movement was only possible in a media ecosystem where women can talk to each other and be heard

• It illustrates ways that power can be toppled 

Resist: BLM Fist is popular in the Western media as it is a form of resistance

• The reproduction of the image makes the idea of resistance possible on a large scale 

Medias impact in space and time

• Digital media collapses spatial and temporal barriers, enabling instant global communication. 

  • EX. Kendrick Lamar at the previous Super Bowl halftime 

    • Became a lightning rod for both celebrations and critique 

    • You have the biggest stage in the world, and you used it to send political messaging under the radar 

    • Also seen as commercialism under the disguise of political critique 

Base

The economic foundation ( The material conditions of the society)

• How a society materially produces and organizes economic life

• How goods are produced

• Who owns resources, labor relations, and the economic system

• Shapes people’s everyday constraints and possibilities.

  • Ex. Gig economy and Influencers

Superstructure

• The institutions and ideas built on top of the economic base 

• The set of cultural, political, and ideological systems that grow out of (and often reinforce) that economic foundation

  • Politics, law, education, religion, media, art, and dominant beliefs 

    • A broad framework of how we learn what to trust 

  • These help maintain or justify the existing economic system

Where media power resides (different perspectives)

Content - To what degree does content influence audiences 

Users - You see fake news online, and you tell your friends, making you a vector of misinformation

Systems - The technology itself is a driving force

Hyperdermic Needle Model aka Bullet Model

Intentionally simplistic simple idea of how media effects operate. The idea is that I expose to a media signal and everyone would react the same/ be effected by it teh same way. Media brings out emotions, but humans are more complex than that.

Uses & Gratifications Theory

A theory that suggests people actively seek out media to satisfy specific needs and desires, such as entertainment, information, or social interaction. Why did we choose that media?

Cultivation Theory

Media content systematically shapes perceptions of social reality

Heavy viewers:

• Overestimate violence

• Develop Mean World Syndrome

• Internalize TV’s symbolic structure

Mechanisms:

• Accessibility

• Mainstreaming

• Resonance

Media Ecology

• The media doesn't simply carry content, but reshapes attention, discourse and cognition.

  • “media is the message”

• The form of media changes how people think, not just what they think about

• Print culture: linear reasoning, sustained attention, logical argument

• Television culture: fragmented attention, narrative shortcuts, emotional cues 

Ideological Reproduction

• A set of belief that is internalized to make sense of our society and its rules  of “Common sense”

• Media: 

  • Reinforce status quo

  • Reproduce and naturalize inequality

  • Normalize injustice

Platform Affordances

• What are the structural features of a given platform or technologies 

  • See how many views and likes there are

  • How fast can you speed up the media 

  • Persistence → If you post something, it can be there FOREVER (a new concept) 

  • Scalability → What we say can be seen ALL OVER THE WORLD 

  • Profiles → We can make ourselves into ideas 

  • How the structural features of a platform influence how we behave on the platform 

Materialism

• The ideas that we get are shaped by the underlying economic structure 

Context collapse

• We evolved to understand how we take context, shaping your responses. However, now that we can post online so that other audiences can see it, we are constantly forced to make sense of different contexts 

  • Ex. We are slightly different from different people you talk to, constructing identity differently based on who you’re talking to

    • Multiple audiences collide

    • Identity becomes performance

    • Structural reorganization of social life

Agenda-Setting Theory - Cognative

• The more attention media give to an issue, the more important/salient the public perceives that issue to be

  • If something is being increasingly discussed in the media, we feel the need to show our opinion on it 

  • Everyone is talking about it, so it must be important

Different media environments produce different perceptions of reality

Issue Salience

The first level of agenda setting:

•  How do we know what the important issues matter in our community?

  • Media tell us

    • What problems matter

    • What counts as “the crisis”

    • What’s urgent

    • What deserves attention

• If immigration dominates coverage, it becomes “the issue.”

Attribute Salience

The second level of agenda setting:

• How do media sources talk about this issue?

• In addition to making issues important, media also influence which aspects of those issues people focus on 

  • Running a story that either paints immigrants as essential or dangerous 

• Shapes how people think about issues, candidates, events

How media structures political reality (cognitive level)

• Media shape what seems important

How media structures political reality (institutional level)

• Media shape how politics operates

How political messaging adapts to media

• Politicians craft tweets for virality

• Debates are designed for soundbites

• Campaigns focus on visuals

• Press conferences are performances

• Policy announcements are timed for news cycles

Political Elites - Intermedia

A relatively small, select group of individuals who hold a disproportionate amount of political power and influence within a society.

Come together with others to determine what receives attention

Influencers - Intermedia

An influencer is as the name suggest a important and effective media influence. Shows their audience what is new and in style

Partisan media - intermedia

News outlets, commentators, and platforms that openly support a specific political party, ideology, or candidate.

Framing Theory

Proposes that how information is presented (the "frame") influences how audiences interpret and process that information.

Political communication (4 compnents)

• Comes through media

• Is filtered

• Is selected

• Is framed 

Interplay model

• Three key players: 

  • Political leaders 

  • Media institutions

  • Public 

• Influence flows in all directions 

• Agenda-setting is dynamic rather than linear 

Micro Effects on politics

• Individual attitudes

• Emotions

• Candidate evaluations

Macro Effects on politics

• Public opinion trends

• Institutional change

• Democratic legitimacy

Misinformation

False, inaccurate, or misleading information that is shared unintentionally.

3 Explanations of the spread of misinformation

• People can usually tell what’s true and false

• Bias doesn’t play a major role

• Social media environments direct attention away from accuracy & toward other goals

  • Outrage

  • Engagement

  • Identity signaling

  • Social rewards

The effects of moral outrage on the spread of news/misinformation

• Anger + disgust at perceived violations of moral norms

• Captures attention

• Triggers emotional reactions

• Signals group loyalty

Use of misinformation to signal identity

haring online content can function as:

• Moral signaling

• Political signaling

• Identity signaling

Communication ≠ sharing information

Communication = showing which side you’re on