MEDIA

Significance of mass media

• People are not always passive consumers of the mass media.

  • We filter, interpret, and might resist what we see and hear 

• Interaction between audiences and media sources, the media sources usually dominate.

• Most of the mass media are recent inventions

• Most of the electronic media are creations of the twentieth century.

  • Ex. WIFI, world wide web 

3 factors on the rise of mass media

1. Modern industries required a literate and numerate workforce. 

2. They also needed rapid means of communication to do business efficiently.

3. The mass media turned out to be a major source of profit in their own right.

The Protestant Reformation (Circa. 1517)

1. Martin Luther encourages ppl to read the bible for themselves

2. Pushed creation of printing press

Democratic movements

1. citizens of many countries demanded and achieved representation in government in the 18th century

2. People wanted to become literate and gain access to previously restricted centres of learning.

3. Democratic governments depended on an informed citizenry → gave rise to literacy and free press

Functionalism

• Mass media perform important functions, including the following:

1. Coordinate the operation of industrial and postindustrial societies. 

2. Act as agents of socialization . 

3. Engage in social control by helping ensure conformity. 

4. Provide entertainment.

Conflict theory

• Disproportionate benefits: 

1. Mass media broadcast beliefs, values, and ideas that create widespread acceptance of the basic structure of society, including its injustices and inequalities. 

2. Ownership of mass media is highly concentrated in the hands of a small number of people and is highly profitable for them.

Media ownership

• There are just five multimedia giants in Canada: 

  • (1) BCE, (2) Rogers, (3) Telus (4) Quebecor, (5) CBC/Radio Canada. 

Media concentration

• Degree and form of media concentration have changed overtime

  • Concentration of the privately owned media has increased.

  • “vertical integration” became much more widespread as opposed to horizontal integration before the 90s 

    • More generations as opposed to one generation 

Media bias

• Concentration of mass media in fewer and fewer hands gives rise to the following: 

  • Deprives the public of independent sources of information. 

  • Limits diversity of opinion. 

  • Encourages the public to accept their society as it is

Biasing mechanisms

subtle mechanisms help to bias the news in a way that supports powerful corporate interests and political groups

Advertising

1. Fear of losing business may lead news carriers to soften stories that big advertisers might find offensive. 

2. Advertisers buy information on internet activity and demographic characteristics so they can target specific market segments

Sourcing

1. Most news agencies rely heavily on government and corporate sources that routinely slant information to reflect favourably on their policies and preferences. 

Flak

1. Journalists who depart from official and corporate points of view are attacked.

Interpretive approaches

• Cultural studies

• popular interdisciplinary area of research. 

• Studies focus on the cultural meanings producers try to transmit, and also on the way audiences filter and interpret mass media messages in the context of their own interests, experiences, and values.

two-step flow of communication

• Communication between mass media and audience members involve:

  • Respected people of high status and independent judgment evaluating media messages

  • Other members of the community being influenced to varying degrees by these opinion leaders

Encoding/decoding

• British sociologist Stuart Hall argues:

  •  We need to take into account both the production and the consumption of media products. 

• Intended and received meanings may diverge

  • Audience members may interpret media messages in ways other than those intended by the producers.

3 kinds of reception in encoding/decoding

• Dominant

• Negotiated

• Rejected 

Feminist approaches

• 1970s, feminist researchers focused on representation— or misrepresentation— of women in mass media.

• Most of the early feminist research assumed that audiences are passive. 

• In the 1980s and 1990s, feminist researchers started to focus on how audience members selectively interpreted media messages and sometimes even contested them. 

• Janice Radway – Reading the Romance

  • What women are doing when reading romance

Poststructuralism

• Mass media such as TV and movies simulate or imitate reality. 

• These simulations have begun to define reality. 

  • The simulations provided by mass media become more real than reality itself. 

  • People experience a much weakened capacity to comprehend reality as it actually is

Influencers and the Attention Economy

• The capacity to gain, hold onto, and spread attention. 

  • Operates alongside social and cultural capital to generate economic capital. 

• The line between content creator and influencer is somewhat indistinct. 

  • Creators who gain a large following are a valuable asset to advertisers and are usually referred to as influencers.

Control and resistance on the internet

• The Internet offers more opportunity for audience influence than do the traditional mass media. 

• Gives consumers new creative capabilities than traditional mass media.

• By partially blurring the distinction between producer and consumer, the Internet has the potential to make media somewhat more democratic.

Access

• Primarily individual users must pay for the Internet’s expensive infrastructure. 

• In Canada, households that are richer, better educated, urban, and younger are most likely to enjoy Internet access. 

• Internet access is not evenly distributed globally as well.

Content

American domination is another striking feature of Internet content

Media imperialism 

• Domination of a mass medium by a single national culture and the undermining of other national cultures.

Algorithms

• Rules that computers follow and which drive the Internet and social media. 

  • Algorithms have incorporated biases. 

  • One expert in the field labelled such biased algorithms “weapons of math destruction.”

Net neutrality

• The principle that Internet service providers should not restrict access to any online content. 

  • Advocates claim that unrestricted access maximizes freedom of expression, innovation, and user choice. 

  • Also provides access to online materials (education, information, entertainment) to people who would otherwise not be able to afford these benefits.

Identity

1. Offer people opportunities to manipulate the way they present themselves

2. Explore aspects of their selves that they may suppress

Social relations

1. People tend to use social media to augment telephone and face-to-face communication, not to replace them.

2. Social media tend to increase interaction and build community

Social activism

1. New ways of engaging in social change.

2. People advocate and spread awareness of a wide variety of causes 

3. Use social media to mobilize others for demonstrations, petitions, meetings, support concerts, and fundraising

Internet is mass medium

• Provides opportunities for user autonomy, creativity, and resistance

• Also increases opportunities for organizations to engage in homogenization, surveillance, and possible control of users