Mass Communication Midterm

Marshal McLuhan

"The Medium is the Message" and important that you are watching tv rather than what you are watching

Big Five

Radio, television, newspapers, magazines, and film

Technological Determinism

the notion that developments in technology provide the primary driving force behind social change

The Bias of Communication

Harold Innis

Time Bias

media that emphasize TIME are those that are durable in character, such as parchment, clay, or stone

Space Bias

Media that emphasizes SPACE are apt to be less durable and light in character, such as papyrus and paper

Oral Culture

-Base in speech

-interaction is face-to-face or generation-to-generation

- meaning in language is local and specific, memory is crucial, poetry plays a central role, myth, and history are intertwined

Written Culture

-met with distrust

- two kinds, ideogramic and syllabic/phonetic

-language becomes more uniform

-crosses distance and time

-memory, history, and myth are recordable, and rationality over poetry

Ideogramic writing

a writing system in which each symbol represents a concept rather than a sound

Syllabic/Phonetic Writing

symbols that represent sounds/syllables

Print Culture

-moveable type

-Gutenberg Revolution (1446)

-Protestantism

-reading becomes less a luxury and more of a necessity

-standardization and perseverance of knowledge, ideology

Electronic Culture

-Separation of communication from transportation

-Altered human sense of space and time

-Altered language

-Changed the nature of information- news becomes a commodity

-Previously unprecedented speed of production and organization

-A new brand of imperialism

Digital Culture

The knowledge, beliefs, and practices of consumers in an online context

Technological Sublime

horror and awe

Tetrad of Media Effects (McLuhan)

-Enhance: what does it amplify

-Reverse: how does it flip when pushed

-Retrieve: what does it bring back

-Obsolesce: what does it obsolesce

Transmission Model

-picturing communication as a transfer of meaning by a source sending a message through a channel to a receiver

-linear, sender focused, efficiency and clarity centered, denotational, techno-centric

Ritual Model

-meanings circulate around different cultural texts or artifacts

-culture-centered; historical; dialogic; meaning is liminal; meaning is flexible

Hock Kultur/High Culture

-culture as a way of life

-culture as a prison house of language

-culture as community

-culture as a site of struggle

Zeitgeist

-the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time

-modern: individualism, rationalism, efficiency, progress

-postmodern: populism (rejecting hierarchy), nostalgia (recycling culture), diversity, paradox

Postmodern Sentiments

Cynicism, Excess, Fragmentation, Pastiche

Glocalization

relative to the past, we are becoming more attached globally and less attached locally

Pastiche

-Mix of incongruous parts; artistic work imitating the work of other artists, often satirically

-loss of faith in original

Jean Baudrillard - Postmodernism

-Hyper-reality: lost touch with the "real"

-Simulacra: a copy with no original

Jean-Francois Lyotard

-anti-metanarrative: the fragmentation of the human subject - you can be here and not here all at the same time.

Signifying

Henry Louis Gates, a repetition with a difference, consumption into production

Hypodermic Needle Model

a model of media effects, also called the "magic bullet," that claims media messages have a profound, direct, and uniform impact on the public

Propaganda Analysis

Propaganda Technique in the World War - Harold Lassell

"If the mass will be free from chains of iron, it must accept its chain of silver."

Public Opinion Research

How can the media help to create an informed public? (voting)

Walter Lippmann (public opinion)

-His Public Opinion assumed powerful media effects in 1920s

-"Disenchanted Man"

- "unseen facts intelligible to those who have to make decisions"

-better experts

John Dewey

"Till the Great Society is converted into a Great Community, the Public will remain in eclipse. Communication alone can create a great community."

-more communication

Social-Psychology Studies

Payne fund motion picture studies (1933)

Marketing Research

-Proprietary research

Private research done for profit e.g. Nielsen, coca cola

-Public research

Not for-profit, will research what propriety might now care about.

Minimal Effects Model

- Selective exposure and selective retention

- We select what we want to be exposed to

- Reinforcing your world view

Agenda Setting

"The press may not be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling people what to think about." - Bernard Cohen

Salience

How important an issue seems to be based on how much is covered

Uses & Gratifications

-Asks not what media do to people but what people do with media.

-The audience is conceived of as active

-Media use is seen as a goal directed

-Believes that links between need gratification and media use depend on audience choice

-Assumes that the media compete with other sources of need satisfaction.

-Assumes people are good judges of their own media use and need gratifications.

-Believes researchers should suspend value judgements about media usage.

Two Step Flows

-(1) Media to opinion leader and people, (2) opinion leader to people

-Most influential what opinion leader thought

Sleeper Effect (Carl Hovland)

-Perceived high credibility source - more persuaded

-Perceived low credibility source - less persuaded

-Over time as people forget where they learned something it becomes more persuasive

Cultivation Theory

-What kinds of attitudes do the media cultivate over time?

-George Gerber

-Study - people who watch a lot of violent media

"Mean World Syndrome"

-People who watch a lot of violent media think the world is more violent than those who don't watch.

-Violence was going down in reality but not in media

Quantitative Research

e.g. lab experiments, controlled conditions, numbers & statistics, centered, empirical

Qualitative Research

e.g. ethnography, natural contexts, language & symbols, centered, interpretive

Independent Variables

manipulated by researcher "casual" variable

Dependent Variables

measure of response or outcome "effect" variable

Experimental Group

exposed to manipulated independent variable

Descriptive Survey

document current conditions

Analytic Survey

examine relationships between variables

Ethnography (qualitative)

Participant observation - going with participants, talking and watching

Focus Groups (qualitative)

Talking to a group of people, have them talk to each other

Textual Analysis (qualitative)

Exploring written text

Historical Analysis (qualitative)

Primary sources to put together history

Karl Marx

base & superstructure

Base

-mode of production, way that a group of people or society sustain itself

- e.g. hunter gatherer, agricultural, industrial capitalism

Superstructure

-structure of social relationships

- e.g. family, work, media

base determines superstructure

mode of production -> certain set of social relationships

Louis Althusser

How does the State get people to behave?

Repressive state apparatuses (RSAs)

-functions primarily through force or violence

- e.g. police

Ideological state apparatuses (ISAs)

-function primarily through persuasion and are relatively autonomous

- e.g. religion, education, family

Interpellation

-transforms individuals into subjects

- always-already a subject

-pre-existing social-structures like a tube

Hegemony

-A process of winning consent equilibrium.

-"If the trains are running, then they won't revolt"

Incorporation

Raymond Williams

-residual and emergent culture

-makes resistant cultures safe

Residual Culture

anti-dominant ideology

Emergent Culture

new culture that are at odds to dominant culture

Utility

What is this thing and how will you use it, in general stores

Brand Identity

-Selling ideology - consumption and value of certain appearance

-Reflect ideologies of the time (zeitgeist)

-Creating and amplifying ideologies

Market Research

How they should advertise something

Demographics

income, age, religion, ethnicity (features)

Psychographics

values (people who like outdoors)

VALS (values and lifestyles)

Innovators, thinkers, achieves, experiences, believes, strivers, makers, and survivors

Famous-Person Testimonial

-Trying to associate brand identity with brand of person

-e.g. Gatorade and Michael Jordan

Plain Folks Pitch

-This is something that regular people do

-e.g. Chevy truck and firefighter, farmer, working class men

Snob Appeal Approach

-Exclusive and different about product, for wealthy

-e.g. friend was a king - radio (spent a lot of money, quality)

Bandwagon Effect

-Make it feel like everyone has or buys this

-e.g. khakis and a lot of people having them, normal reliable

Hidden Fear Appeal

e.g. Listerine and bad breath - never get married if breath is bad

Irritation Advertising

-Something annoying that stays in someone's head

-e.g. Quiznos subs and song with rat singing

Gender Advertising - Erving Goffman

How women are represented

Dismemberment

-Women are represented as parts of their body. Idea that women are not whole people.

-e.g. see someone's hand, mouth, torso, just a part of someone's body, leg scissors

Clowning

-Men are serious and women are represented as being silly (can't be taken seriously)

-e.g. women smiling and smoking, eating salad

Canting

-Bent - women bent over and posing (not serious, not human, and objectifying)

-e.g. standing bent, yoga in jeans pose

Domination

Images of women recreate and abuse affection cycle (dominate women)

Semiotics

study of signs

Sign

-signifier and signified

-arbitrary and agreed on by cultural convention

Signifier

word or image (cat or see image) /kaet/

Signified

concept (cat-ness)

Text

-A collection of signs

-e.g. alcohol - corona on beac

First Amendment

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof: or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press"

The Jeffersonian Ideal

- "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, go with 2nd.

-Free press criticism to government and information to people ->voting

John Peter Zenger Trial

-1735 William Cosby

Governor of New York Province

New York Weekly Journal - used to criticize William Crosby

-If what you say in newspaper is true it is legal to defame (seditious libel)

Partisan Presses

Arm of some political party in the past

Rational-critical debate

The Rise of Objectivity

-telegraph

-commercialism

-middle-American objectivity

-photographic realism

-yellow journalism

Yellow Journalism

-sensationalism, exaggerated headlines

-investigation

American journalistic professionalism

"objectivity"

Inverted Pyramid

-Most important, newsworthy, or dramatic information-answer who, what, where, when, why, and how questions

-Key quotes, supporting evidence & details

-Supporting facts & explanations

-Supporting quotes and alternative explanations

-Least important details

Interpretative journalism

- Responsibilities of the press (Walter Lippman)

- "to make a current record"

- "to make a running analysis of it"

- "on the basis of both to suggest plans"

New journalism

-Approach like creative writing, like novel or short story

-4 Characteristics of New Journalism

Scene by scene construction

-Realistic dialog - what was it like, what were people feeling

-Manipulation of point of view to put readers inside the mind and emotional reality of characters

-Recording of everyday gestures, manners, habits, and other symbolic details

Tom Wolfe

Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (book)

Joint Operating Agreement

-fewer multi-paper towns

-merging newspapers

-loss of diversity

The Newshole

what's left after putting in all the advertising, caused by economic pressure

Elite->Mass->Specialized

A brief history of magazines

Elite Magazines

-The Spectator (1711) - Joseph Addison, Richard Steele

General Interest Magazines

-Democratization of education

-Late 19th century

-Rising literacy rates