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How we build experiences
We tell stories that allow for us to build off of past experiences.
This has allowed for us to advance faster as we do not have to continually reinvent things such as the wheel.
Went from cave drawings to print a digital media
Biggest Forms of Mass Media
- Super Bowl
- World Cub
These forms are able to convey messages to millions at once
Mass Communication
Reach mass audiences, not an individual
Is mediated (print, radio, etc have control over what people hear)
We watch more and more TV over time
Mass Communication Controversies
- Who has the right to collect data?
- Who owns people's data?
Mass Communication Abilities
Mediation becomes part of our experience of real things
Shapes our perceptions and expectations
The Personalization Myth
The Media try's to create the image that it personal but in reality it is not; it is personalized.
Ie facebook appears to be personal
Modes of Communication
Interpersonal
Mediated
Mass Communication
Interpersonal Communication
Two people have a conversation.
Causes a feedback loop.
ie you only talk to the same group of people so the same ideas are continually repeated
Mediated Communication
Two people talk to each other on the phone or via instant messaging
Mass Communication
An anchor talks to a camera and his/her image and voice are transmitted to a large number of viewers
Flow:
Information Source -> MESSAGE -> Transmitter -> SIGNAL -> Noice Source (Channel) -> RECEIVED SIGNAL -> Receiver -> MESSAGE -> Destination
Manipulation in Mass Media
Media controls what information we have access to therefor controls discourse
Effects of media
Conceptualizing communication as a cause that produces effects
Ie Different countries play things like Sesame Street to educate its population
Accelerated Our View of Things
ie Dramatic scenes of today are much faster than in the past
Media can make us do things
ie After the grays hospital scene where a doctor was shot, the same thing happened in real life
Types of Media Effects
Cognitive
- Makes you think
Affective
- May develop affect or diseffect towards groups
Physiological
- Heart beating faster during scary movie
Attitudinal
- Your attitude towards abortion will likely not change
Behavioral
- If exposed to violent content, will I become more violent?
Magic Bullet of Mass Media Theory
Media was thought to infuse people with messages they could not resist
People were worried the media was too powerful
- Stemmed from the growth of new media
- Stemmed from people moving and therefor becoming disconnected form their social networks
- Stemmed from world wars when people were scared of the spread of propaganda
Radio panics idea
Media and Voting Behaviors
- Study of how media influences the electoral process
- Political predispositions
- Found out that most people reinforced their beliefs rather than changing them due to selective exposure
Two Step Flow of Communication
20% of people listen to the media and spread it to the other 80% of the population
Media Effects Historical Perspective Main Points
A media effect is a cognitive, affective, physiological, attitudinal or behavioral response to media content
Early studies found little support for magic bullet notions of media effects, they found effects but they tend to be contingent and limited
Led to a limit in the effects of views
Story Telling Systems
Humans inhabit a world of stories that are told and retold. Most of what we experience has not been experienced directly.
TV centralized this system, coordinate by the advertising market
Today, television tells the largest number of stories to the largest amount of people of all time
Cultivation does not privilege the impact of one specific show or its production quality nor audience contingent interpretations of it
TV is understood as a message system that exposes a community to an aggregate and repetitive system of images that a community can adopt over time.
A singularity of this story-telling system is that it operates outside the democratic system of political decision making.
Cultivation
The primary proposition of cultivation theory states that the more time people spend 'living' in the television world, the more likely they are to believe social reality aligns with reality portrayed on television.
We learn about experiences via TV
Antecedents of the Cultural Indicators Project
Cultivation has different effects depending on the person
Ie watching violent TV may make people scared rather than violent
The Cultural Indicators Project
-institutional analysis (how are messages produced and distributed)
-message system analysis (what is recurring media content)
-cultivation analysis (how television exposure molds perceptions about the "real" world)
Watching TV
Passive Activity
- Critical of selective exposure
- Critical of rating is what show was on before
TV World vs Real
- Characters are young, energetic and appealing
- Older people are rare and often portrayed as sick or dying characters
- Women make up a smal amount of lead characters
- Violent action happens to almost all characters
- Villians are usually male, lower-class and foreign
- Lower class mostly invisible
World of Heavy TV Viewer
- Overestimates crime
- Underestimates number of old people in society, things they are not healthy
- Believe in traditional women roles
- Stronger consumption oriented
- Knows less about environment
Mean World Syndrome
People who watch TV think the world is more violent than it really is
They say that the world is having more crime when in reality the amount of crime in the United States is decreasing.
Cultivation of Global Attitudes
- Australians exposed to U.S. TV perceive Australia
as a more dangerous place to live.
-South Koreans and Japanese heavy viewers of
U.S. TV have more liberal values about women
and families.
-Heavy viewing of U.S. TV in India resulted in
feelings of deprivation and dissatisfaction.
-Israeli viewers of American television gave
estimations of occupations according to TV
portrayal.
Cultivation Main Points
- Media cultivate in viewers interpretations of the world in line with the TV world.
- Heavy doses of violence in television result in a mean-world syndrome.
- Among heavy TV users political attitudes tend to converge.
- New interactive settings may enhance the cultivation of attitudes.
- But, do we continue to have a centralized story-telling system?
Agenda Setting
Agenda-setting is the creation of public awareness and concern of salient issues by the news media.
- We then analyze the news to get a good idea about how it is biasing people
-- Almost identical agendas for both public and news media
The media chooses what's important for us to think about
Medias Reality
-mix of reality and media agenda creating a public perception of reality
The publics perception of reality is a mix of true reality and media reality (media agenda)
Experimental Manipulations of the Public's Agenda
Next major study conducted in a laboratory setting where researchers manipulated versions of newscasts presented to different groups of viewers.
How is the news agenda set?
1. Powerful political and social actors and their agents
2. Sociological factors related to news organizations
3. Professional norms
4. Ideological factors (owners and practitioners)
Limits to the agenda setting function of the news
1. Obtrusiveness of the issue
2. Political conversation
3. Personal goals and motivations
4. Declining trust in news
Potential challenges to the agenda setting function of the press
- New media environment with Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and News
- Issue Publics
Agenda Setting Main Points
- Media focus attention signaling what is important
- Forces shaping media's agenda include:
-- Powerful external actors
-- Media routines and organization
-- Professional norms and ideology
- Obtrusiveness of issues, political talk, personal interests and declining trust can limit agenda setting capabilities of media
- New communication environment, emergence of issue publics and partisanship, challenge media's agenda setting role
Political Knowledge
Political Knowledge is based on their media consumption
-- Media systems work different in different countries
-- Some citizens in certain countries its more important to pay attention
US political knowledge has remained constant over time
- Why doesn't it go up?
- Cyber-optimists
-- Like the media, use it
- Cyber-pesimists
-- Dislike the media, don't use it
Do we learn political knowledge from the news?
Personal interests effect what we learn
We like politics, we will watch/learn from it
Knowledge Gap Hypothesis
states that as new information enters society, wealthy and better-educated members acquire it at a faster rate than poor and less-educated people.
Justification:
- Communication skills
- Stored information
- Relevant social contracts
- Selective exposure, acceptance and retention
-- What are you interested in?
-- Rich schools
--- Educated politically active
-- Poor schools
--- Visa versa
-- News paper effect
--- Larger gains from news with more education
-- Educational TV
--- Makes kids smarter
--- Gives another channel for knowledge
uses and gradification theory
Uses and gratifications theory is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs.
How people use media vs how media effects people
Paradigm shift from content to audience
- Channel proliferation
- Recognition of the importance of individual differences
Theoretical Assumptions
- Individual differences lead to select content
- Individual differences influence message interpretation
Differences with Previous Media Effects Research
1. Focus is no longer on the message/sender side of the equation
2. Do not assume direct influence from content
3. Audience is no longer considered passive
4. Can't explain media effects unless you first understand audience
i. Characteristics
ii. Motivations
iii. Content selection
iv. Involvement with content
Assumptions of the U & G approach
1. Communication as goal directed
2. Social and psychological factors filter and mediate media-behavior relationships
3. Instead of being used by media, people select and use media to satisfy needs.
4. Media compete with other forms (functional alternatives) to satisfy needs (however, dependency can arise from patterns of use)
Individual Needs that Media Can Satisfy
1. Cognitive needs
i. Acquiring information, knowledge and understanding
2. Affective Needs
i. Emotion, pleasure, feelings
3. Personal integrative needs
i. Credibility
ii. Stability
iii. Status
4. Social integrative needs
i. Family and friends
5. Tension release needs
i. Escape and diversion
Uses and Gratifications Main Points
1. People are different and these differences affect media use, message interpretation and effects
2. Audiences can be active and this impinges their processing of information
3. Effects are not necessarily uniform, but contingent on predispositions and use
4. Sometimes we are not as active users
Priming Activation
- When exposed to a decision/judgment people do not take all relevant information and weigh all outcomes
§ Instead, we rely on mental shortcuts
- Exposure to communication activates related thoughts stored in the mind of audience member
§ The content triggers concepts, thoughts and moods already acquired
- Message content is reinforced by the related thoughts and concepts it brings to mind
- Messages are connected to these concepts, thoughts or moods making them part of our evaluation process
- Typically short term media effects, but over time patterns of messages can result in establishing more permanent associations between concepts
How the brain works
Information enters short term memory, some is decayed, some is rehearsed. What ever is rehearsed is more likely to go towards long term memory
Priming Activation Examples
- Thinking depressing thoughts can cause feelings of depression
- Exposure to aggression can produce feelings of anger
- Watching a love scene can awaken memories of similar emotions
- Explicit versus implicit measurement
- Example
-- Violent TV primes those with trait aggressiveness to behave more violently in a hockey game. Object used in the violent show triggers increased aggressive behavior (Josephson, 1987).
-- Exposure to stereotypical portrayals of men and women in music videos reduces perceived dominance of females in subsequent evaluations.
Challenges Faced by Priming
1. Network activation dissipates relatively fast
2. The role of secondary appraisals that can override priming effects (this serves to explain why priming does not always result in behavior)
3. Moderately sophisticated viewers more easily primed by media than the most or least sophisticated ones
Priming Main Points
- To make judgments we don't reply on all available information but rather on information that is accessible
- Media messages can activate neural networks that make us evaluate in a certain way and not in others
- Priming activation is ephemeral and thus requires repetition or chronic activation
- Priming activation can be balanced through reasoning
- People who were more intelligent politically, were more susebtible to priming
Evolution of Media Research
- Powerful media effects era
-- Prior to 1960s
-- Fear about mass manipulation
- Limited Effects Era
-- 1960-1980
-- Realization that powerful effects are rare
- Modern Media Effects Perspective
-- Effects on cognitions and emotions are more powerful than attitudes and behaviors
-- Complex, conditional effects (not the same for all people)
Examples of cognitive media effects
- Agenda Setting
-- Media don't tell us what to think, they do tell what to think about
-- It's the economy stupid
- Priming
-- Message exposure effects the future experiences
-- Primed encoding - what we pay attention to
- Framing
-- The influence of emphasis: how a story is told effects theory
Framing
The influence of emphasis: how a story is told effects theory
What are framing effects?
- Messages emphasize a certain way of thinking about events and issues
- That emphasizes shapes audience understanding of events
- Different frames lead to different audience reactions in terms of:
-- Opinions and perceptions related to the story
What is a frame?
- An organizing framework for news stories
-- Assembling information into a coherent message
-- A particular way of understanding events and issues
-- Different stories of the same event may emphasis different things
Message Framing Effects
Episodic vs Thematic Frames
Strategy vs Issue Frames
Riot vs Debate
Individual vs Collective Frames
Episodic vs Thematic Frames
Episodic - Story About What Happened
Thematic - Bigger picture/themed story; the issue behind what happened
Strategy vs Issue Frames
Strategy - Campaign Strategy
Issue Frames - Underlying issues at play
Riot vs Debate
Riot events; rioters
Debate underlying issues; activists
Individual vs Collective Frames
Individual - He over dosed
Collective - How many opioid deaths in a year
Cues
- Labels that emphasize particular understandings
- Frames, stories is equivalent to cues, words
-- Both bring meaning to messages
- ex pro-life vs anti-abortion and liberal vs SJW
Frames and Cues Interact
- Specific story frames call for cues that align with that frames
-- Debate-frame cues
--- E.g. advocates issues, positions implications
-- Riot frame cues
--- Demonstrates, police, clash, violence
- Frames and cues work together to regulate the effect of the messages to people at home
Framing and framing effects
- The construction of news stories - Begins with the Journalist
- Gathering information and constructing messages
- Framing effects
- Effects of the message as it is delivered to audience
Frames and the House Analogy
Journalist build stories the way contractors build a house:
- "Blueprinting" (top-down)
- frame choices => themes => assertions => cues
- "Construction" (bottom-up)
- cues => sentences => arguments => narrative • (bricks => walls => rooms => houses)
- All of these choices shape the way:
-- A reader understands events and issues
-- A visitor experiences the house
Frame effects and Cognitive Processing
- Framing effects are not uniform
-- Different for different people
- Message frames interact with:
-- Audience predispositions
-- E.g., ideology, values, knowledge, past experiences, social networks, etc.
- Individual predispositions shape the nature of framing effects
-- Effects differ in strength and direction
Unified Message Effect Model
See image in notes under the evolution of media effects
Real world effects of framing
9/11 -> Patriot act
iPhone unlock controversy
The Stealth Media
A research experiment on how different entities influence U.S. elections
Goal:
The first, large scale, systematic empirical analysis of groups and targets behind divisive issue campaigns on Facebook
Dark Posts:
Some Ads specifically target individuals on their private pages, not on public pages
Results:
- 5 million add over 10,000 participants
- Most did not say who was sponsoring the ad
- 1/6 suspicious groups were found to be Russian, the rest are unknown
Findings:
- More than 50% of the groups were suspicious
- 2% of the population cares about more than two issues
- 1/6 groups were linked to Russia
- Volume of ads by suspicious groups were 60% larger than those of the FEC groups
- The Volume of Ads Generated by Anon groups (suspicious groups, Astroturf, nonprofits did not file a report to the FEC) was four times larger than other groups
Income Relation:
- Low income households were exposed to more immigration and race ads
-- Anti-immigration
- Medium income individuals received more nationalism ads
-- America first
Race Relation
- White users were targeted 45% more with immigration and nationalism ads than non-white users
Multi-level Loopholes
- Citizens united opened the door for election campaign interventions by any individual or group including nonprofits, corporations--and as an oversight, even foreign entities
- FECSs inconsistent disclaimer guidelines
- Currently, no law adequately addresses digital political advertising
Spiral of Silence Experiments
- Violation of social norms
- Elevator
-- If a bunch of people do one similar thing in an elevator, the other people will likely do the same thing to fit the norm such as facing the wrong way
- Smokey room
-- In a room with one person, when it started smoking the person instantly went to check it out
-- When there were a bunch of people, however, no one moved to check out the smoke
Spiral of Silence Theoretical Argument
- Noelle Neumann theorized that members of a group engage in a constant evaluation of the prevailing climate of opinion in the group.
- This to avoid the possible social isolation that could result from expressing an opinion that is contrary to the majority opinion.
- Fear of isolation is so strong that a person would be willing to silencetheir opinion, to express an opinion that they do not really share, or even to modify their initial opinion in order to maintain fluid social ties.
Spiral of Silence Main Findings
- Individuals are more willing to express their opinions when they think other hold similar options but this empirical relation albite significant is small
- If a minority opinion is perceived to be on the rise, being ion the minority does no inhibit expression
- We are bad at identifying political climate
- Social media gives us a sense that we think we know what the people around us think
- People think that they are the minority which makes them less likely to voice their opinion
Spiral of Silence
tendence of people to remain silent when they feel that their views are in opposition to the majority view on a subject.
Presumed Influence Negative vs Positive Media
Negative Media:
- The media will not effect me but it will everyone else
Positive Media:
- Ie anti-drunk driving ad
- The media will effect me but not others
Friendship and Presumed Influence
The further away socially someone is from you, the further the effect of the media will be on them from yourself
Perception vs Effect
- The thought that it will not effect others as much does not really actually matter unless it has an effect
Why does Presumed Influence Occur?
- Ego enhancement/biased optimism
- Differential media effects "theories
Consequences of Presumed Influence
- Pro media censorship attitudes
Presumed Influence Behavior outcome grouped into three categories
- Prevention
-- Willingness to censor media
- Corrective Actions
- Accommodation
-- Compliance
-- Withdrawal
Presumed Influence Corrective Action
Third-person perceptions:
- Online:
-- Express political views
-- Sending campaign information
-- Posting comments online
-- Commenting on online news
- Offline:
-- Attended a political rally
-- Participated in a public protest
-- Signed a petition
-- Tried to persuade others to vote
Presumed Media Influence Main Points
- Media can have effects that are not direct but rather indirect (because we think they are having an effect).
- Third-person perceptions are ubiquitous and can lead to attitudes and behaviors.
- Presumed influence of media on others may lead us to change our behaviors.
- Most of us live in worlds of perception not fact. Thus the importance of perceptions...
Change in Perception vs Change in Effect
I.e. if a patient is exposed to media about how hard nurses work, they may perceive that they want to treat them better but it is not for sure if they actually will
Biased interpretation of Information - Assimilation Bias
We have a tendency to interpret factor and recall information that confirms what we believe already
Biased Processing of Information - Was the moderator biased?
- People think moderator is biased against their side
- We think the media affects one side
- Big gab between hillbillies and hippies
Biased Process of Information
- Is the media balanced or are we biased
- With media there seems to be a reversal of biased assimilation
- Biased news or biased public
Hostile Media Phenomenon
- Two different formats, the same information
-- Exact same information in a news paper article and a paper
-- Asked to see if the articles were biased
--- There was more bias seen when they told the readers that one was written by a student and the other by a journalist
--- Student essay people saw little bias
--- The article version, on the other hand, both sides saw extreme bias
Hostile Media Phenomenon Main Points
- Publics may be more biased than media and interpret content in a biased way.
- The stronger/extreme issue positions are, the more susceptible we are to experiencing the media as hostile.
- Relative hostile media
- Can we overcome HMP?
Four Theories of the Press
- Authoritarian Press Model
- Libertarian Press Model
- Communist Press Model
- Social Responsibility Model
Authoritarian Press Model
- Helped government guide people
- Social harmony rather than highlighting conflict
- Showed goals of the leaders
Libertarian Press Model
Media helps people exercise their freedom from government
Communist Press Model
- Media was a state apparatus
- Promotes the goals of the state and this was unquestionable
- Business of politics not news
Social Responsibility Model
- Hybrid system between the libertarian and the communist model
-- Press was not 100% independent from government
-- Goal of helping society
Dimensions of a Media System
- Development/structure of media market
- Levels of political parallelism within the country
- Degree and nature of state intervention in the media system
- Journalistic Professionalism
Development/Structure of Media Market
- Structure of the Media Market
-- Rate of newspaper circulation
-- Audience (elite vs mass)
--- Typically, the more people that read the paper the more democratic a nation is
-- TV news versus newspapers
Levels of political parallelism within the country
- Politically oriented content and partisanship of audiences
- Connections to political organizations
- Rotating door between news and government
- Advocacy versus objective reporting
Degree and nature of state intervention in the media system
- Exerting censorship or other types of pressure
- Economic subsidies to media
- Ownership of media organizations
- Regulating media in the public's interest
Journalistic professionalism
- Autonomy
- Distinct professional norms
- Public service orientation
Media System Typology
- Liberal Model
- Polarized Pluralist
- Democratic Corporatist
Liberal Model
- Market dominated
- Mass circulation
- Neutral journalism
- Strong professionalism
- USA
Polarized Pluralist Model
- Strong state intervention
- Elite circulation
- Advocacy journalism
- Weak professionalism
Democratic Corporatist
- State intervention (independence)
-- State has some sort of power over the media
- Mass circulation
- Neutral journalism
- Strong professionalism
Triumph of the liberal/commercial model
- American influence
- Technology as a common ground
- Modernization
-- Professionalization
- Secularization
-- Decline of political orders based on traditional institutions
- Commercialization
-- From the world of politics to the world of commerce
-- Focus on private life, growth of infotainment
Counter tendencies to homogenization
- Advocacy journalism persists in Europe and might be growing in the United States
- Professionalism was based on separating the journalist from the commercial logic of the media industry, but current practices undercut this separation
- Having gained autonomy from the political system, media seem to be loosing autonomy with the economic system
Press Freedom Index
Pluralism
- representation of opinions in the media
Media independence
- from authorities
Environment
-in which journalists work
Legislative framework
-effectiveness
Transparency
-procedures that affect news
Infrastructure
-that supports the production of news
Violence against journalists
