MASS COMM FINAL CHUNK

Communications Act of 1934

• Section 312

  • Radio and TV stations must allow candidates to purchase “reasonable amounts of time” for ads

    • Interpreted to mean that political ads should be the same length as regular ads

• Section 315

  • Equal Access: must sell time to all parties for about the same price and about the same time of day

    • Can’t pick favorites

Tornillo Opinon

• Extends equal access to print

• News coverage does not have to provide equal time to all candidates in news coverage, but they do in advertising

Fairness Doctrine

• Used to cover news content, mostly opinion content

  • Opinion pieces that were in favor of one issue, you must give equal time to the other side of the issue

• Abandoned since the 80s

Walter Lippmann

• Pulitzer-prize winning Journalist

• One of the founders of media studies in the US

• Book “Public Opinion” called the American public a “bewildered heard” that needs to be shepherded by an intelligent elite

• Very much believes in powerful effects models because he believes that he is smarter than everyone. okay!

Harold Lasswell

• Created the hypodermic needle model

Paul Lazarsfeld

• Created the Two-Step Flow Model

• Studied political opinion and how they are formed

Found that media messages were not the most important thing in determining opinion, but the people in our lives we respect are (opinion leaders)

Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw

Developed the idea of agenda setting

George Gerbner

• Used cultivation analysis to create the theory of Mean World Syndrome

• Conducted a study over the course of multiple decades about peoples’ television viewing habits

  • Found that people who watched a lot of TV, especially the news, and have lower media literacy, believe that the world is more violent than it actually is

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann

• Conducted interviews with "acquaintances" and found that if people have an opinion they believe is unpopular, they don’t bring it up with other people

• Spiral of Silence 

• Wrote for a Nazi Newspaper! yikes!

Jay Blumler and Elihu Katz

• Developed Uses and Gratification Theories

Frankfurt School

• Theodor Adorno

• Max Horkheimer

• Walter Benjamin

Stuart Hall

• British scholar who helped develop critical/cultural media theory

• Encoding/decoding

• The idea that people are actively working with the media when we watch it

  • Battling the older idea that we are passively consuming things

Marshall McLuhan

• Argued that different mass media can do different things, and that you write different kinds of messages for different media platforms

• The medium is the message!

• Media ecology

Cultural Studies Models

• Reject strong/direct media effects models

• They ways people produce, use, and interpret media are always affected by our position in culture/our identities

• Media studies must always be concerned with making the world a better place

• EVERYTHING IS POLITICAL

  • How do we use the media to make things better for people?

Hypodermic Needle Model

•  a model of mass communication regarding WWII propaganda

  • Common topic among media theorists

  • Has been expanded to include all mass communication

  • Who (communicator) says what (message) in which channel (written, radio, tv?) to whom (audience) with what effect? (what happens?) 

    • If anything changes, the entire message changes

Two-Step Flow Model

• Voters are motivated by opinion leaders rather than the media

  • Personal contact is more important than media content

• Nowadays, it’s a Multi-Step flow

  • Podcasters, friends, family, talk show hosts, influencers, etc

• The most important touchstone we have are other people

Cultivation Analysis

• Watching a lot of television, over a long period of time, can have effects

• The creation of sedimentary rock:

  • The effects are not the same and are unpredictable

• Mean World Syndrome

Spiral of Silence

• People are hesitant to express ideas they believe are unpopular because they fear social consequences

• People think their opinion is in the minority, but it’s really not, because no one talks about it!

Uses and Gratification Theories

• How do people use the media, and what gratification do they get out of it?

• People are active consumers of the media— we choose what we watch, and if we want to pay close attention to it or not

  • Hate watching? Favorite thing?

• Four general uses and gratifications

  • Entertainment

  • A substitute for personal connections (in some cases, but can also deepen personal connections!)

  • Personal identity (both as we are forming it and having it being recognized)

  • Surveillance (learning about the world)

Encoding/Decoding

• Creators are actively encoding messages, and the audience is actively decoding (interpreting) those messages

• Many factors involved in this— noise!

  • Cultural context

  • Foreign films/tv are interpreted differently

  • Level of education, ethics, political beliefs, gender, race, etc.

Political Economy

• Includes ideas of media ownership, politics, and economics in the study of media

• Reminds us that mass media is an industry, and that business decisions will impact the content we see

  • Not pure art, there is a money side!

Catalytic Theory

• Minimal effect model

• Media violence can be one factor among other factors that cause violence, but other influences include:

  • Whether the media violence is rewarded (is it the good guy doing the violent thing, and is it shown to be a good thing?)

  • Does this person have lots of media exposure?

  • Whether a violent person fits other profiles

    • Income, education, class, intelligence, parenting

  • Whether media violence is

    • Realistic and exciting

    • Succeeds in righting a wrong

    • Includes characters or situations relatable to the viewer

W. Philips Davidson

Third-Person Effect

Frankfurt School

• Post WWII writers at Columbia who were primarily German Jews who had to flee

• Examined intersections of media, culture, capitalism/industrialization, politics, art, etc.

• How did the Nazis use the mass media to make their ideology popular?

• Believed in strong media effects

• All Marxists, because it was the opposing party to fascists 

Media Ecology

• The medium is the message!

Seymour Feshbach

Cathartic Effect of Violence

Wilbur Schramm

• For some children under some circumstances, some television is harmful

• For most children under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly helpful

Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998

• Disney wrote this law, and Sonny Bono sponsored it

• Extends copyright to the life of the author, plus 70 years (for individuals)

• 120 years after creation, or 95 years after publication (whichever is earlier) for corporate works

• Big media companies love it

1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act

• Criminalized some copyright violations (previously a civil offense), such as breaking DRM (digital rights management) and illegally disseminating copyright works

• At 7 copyrighted audiovisual works and 100 sound recordings, this becomes a felony offense

• Made it illegal for individuals to make a copy of a movie/show for individual use

Mutual Film Corp v Ohio (1915)

• “Mutual Decision”

• Films don’t have 1st Amendment protections, because it’s a business, not an art

• States can have boards of censorship (+ cities)

Joseph Burstyn Inc v Wilson (1952)

• “Miracle Decision”

• Gave film some 1st Amendment protections

  • Film is art

  • Film can be political

Schenck v US (1919)

• Overturned later by the Fighting Words Doctrine— are you saying things just to get people to act in illegal ways, and now?

TPM Standard

• You can’t limit the content of speech, but you can limit the time, place, and manner

• Ex. protest zones— not limiting the ability to protest, but when and where, and whether you can use a bullhorn or not

• Can limit TPM as long as it’s neutral

Prior Restraint

• When the government prevents something from being published to the public

Near v Minnesota (1931)

• Government can only enact prior restraint if it poses a threat to national security— are you putting us (citizens) in danger?

• If not, you have to let them say this

• Raises the bar on limiting speech!

Pentagon Papers (1971)

• During Vietnam, the US military did a study on their effectiveness in Vietnam, and decided not to publish negative findings

• Determined that hiding the study was a threat to national security— people are dying!

  • Daniel Ellsburg

Zenger Decision (1735)

• Set “defense of truth” standard: if what you are saying is true, it cannot be libel in the US

New York Times v Sullivan

• “Actual malice” standard

• NAACP accused people in a newspaper of anti-civil rights act, and it was false

• SC said you have to prove “actual malice” — they are also doing it to wreck your reputation

• “Reckless disregard of the truth”

• Used to protect political speech/criticism of government

Miller v California (1973)

• Whether the average person would claim the media (as a whole) had “prunient interest” under contemporary community standards

  • Not an expert

  • Depends on the location! Local, not national

  • Cannot take part of it out of context

• Whether the work depicts, in an offensive way, excretory functions and sexual content. Specifically defined by applicable state law

• Whether the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value

• I know it when I see it!

FCC v Pacifica

• Indecent speech has a much lower bar

• FCC has the ability to regulate broadcast media

• Has to promote the public good!

FTC

• False and deceptive advertising (not political ads)

• Internet privacy

• Scammy stuff on the internet

Deontological Ethics

• Virtue ethics involve doing the right thing for the right reason

• Good intentions

• Usually involves a set of rules

  • Ex. The Ten Commandments

Categorical Imperative

• Immanuel Kant

• Act as if your action were going to become part of universal law

  • As if it is the right thing to do 100% of the time

Discourse Ethics

• Jurgen Habermas

• We communicate with what Habermas called the “public sphere”

• When we communicate in the public sphere without bias or coercion, it becomes ethical communication

Teleological Ethics

Rather than thinking about a solid set of rules, you are thinking about what you want to happen

Pragmatics

• John Dewey

• If the results of the action are good, then the action is good

• You have to think through your situation carefully, you have to know all the factors

Utilitarianism

• John Stuart Mill

• Act in ways that maximize happiness and minimize suffering for the greatest number of people

• Tyranny of the majority

Veil of Ignorance

• John Rawls

• When you’re a journalist, you have to ignore the potential rewards/penalties that could come to you/your company, and instead think of the potential help/harm to society that your work is introducing

Potter’s Box

• A way to define which ethical system to use

• Define your situation, values, ethical principles, and loyalties