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Intro2 Mass Media Spr2007 Sn02

Reading Due Today: Chapter 1, Introduction. Don't forget to bring in two questions, written on one side of an index card, from the reading.

Think Assignment: What experience have you had in the mass media that has most effected who you are? What medium? What experience? What effect?

Journal: Turn in your journal based on last weeks class and reading: Intro2MassMediaSpr2007Sn01. The mini-lecture at the end of class (A brief history of media) should probably be the focus of any observations you make.

Blackboard assignment: Log into Blackboard and leave a note in the class discussion. I've left some instructions on getting started with blackboard here in BlackboardTutorial.

Agenda

Collect Questions and Think Assignments
Mini-lecture: Models of the Communication Process
Take attendance
Discussion based on Questions
10 minute break
Mini-lecture: An introduction to Mass Media
Discussion based on Think Assignments
Assignments due next week: Intro2MassMediaSpr2007Sn03

Superbowl commercials: http://video.yahoo.com/
Changing interplay/measurement: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070205/20070205006057.html?.v=1

Models of the Communication Process

Human Communication is built using
- human senses and modalities
- media
- language
- messages
Harold Lasser summarizes this in what is probably the most commonly used text model of communication:
- Who
- says what
- in which channel
- to whom
- with what effect
Alexander Graham Bell summarizes these elements in another way:

By today's standards Bells model describes what we think of as an intercom
The real invention is the microphone and the speaker
But the fundamentals of the model are pretty much the same:
- Somebody talks
- Somebody else listens
- There is a mechanism (a channel) that carries the message from one person to another
- There is at least one noise source (the battery)

Claude Shannon labels and extends Bell's drawing:

This model is the beginning of the today's field of communication
- And other fields in Engineering and Computer Science
- Abstracts Bell's model into its fundamental components
- Helps us to take apart (decompose) the process of communication
This model is frequently referred to as the linear model of communication
- It can be reasonably criticized on at least two grounds:
  1. It treats communication as a one way process.
  2. It presumes that messages will reach the destination

The first of these issues is addressed in two other models
- Norbert Weiner's cybernetic model adds feedback:

Feedback provides a kind of a short cut mechanism that allows:
- receivers to respond to messages
- senders to react to receiver feedback
But one should note that feedback is another kind of message
- The actually mechanism of feedback is not a shortcut
- Its a channel that is also subject to noise
- It may be the same set of channels the sender has available
- And it may be a completely different set

The first of these variants is addressed in what is commonly called the transactional model:

Which leaves out a lot of the detail of the other models, but accentuates the reality
- that senders are often also receivers
- that receivers are often also senders

The second problem with the linear model is addressed on another model, which will be an organizing metaphor for this course:

This model:
- handles feedback in a different way
  - by simply noting that the role of source and destination are fluid
  - we trade off in that role
  - feedback is just another kind of message
- collapses much of which stands between the source and destination into a larger construct
  - The medium
Incorporates other elements that are critical to understanding persuasion
- Language
- Relationships
- Imagination and Invention
- Interpretation, Attribution, Learning, and Socialization
And specifically recognizes that destinations don't receive messages, but consume them
- Everybody ignores messages
- Its not always psychological noise
- Its a decision

Introduction: Mass Media in a Changing World

The Convergence Generation
- Millennials
- Adept with digital technology
- Billions of facts at fingertips
- Don't use libraries
- Short attention spans (grasshopper minds)
- Poor writers?
Media Literacy
- understanding and making productive use of media in your life
- Variant: Media Criticism
  - Effects of media and their messages
  - Consumption focused
  - Often challenging, especially to our assumptions
- Variant: Career Preparation
  - How to use media
  - Career focused
  - Pragmatic
- The Critic versus the Practitioner
  - Both approaches matter
Basic Terms
- Source/Sender/Transmitter/Creator
- Message/Information
- Channel
- Feedback
- Noise
- Receiver/Destination/Consumer
- Medium/Media
- Mediated Communication
- New Media
- Mass Communication
  - Large audiences
  - No direct feedback
  - Gatekeepers/Intermediaries
  - Wide impact
- Mediated Interpersonal media
- Convergence
  - Technologies
  - Industries
  - Content
- Impact/Effects
  - On Self
  - On Communities
  - On Organizations
  - On Societies
  - The Global Village
Media History: Some key dates
- 1456 Gutenberg's Printing Press
- 1690 Publick Occurrences: First Newspaper in America
- 1741 First American Magazines
- 1791 First Amendment guarantees free press and speech
- 1830's Industrial Revolution
- 1833 The Penny Press begins era of mass circulation newspapers with The New York Sun
- 1869 First modern ad agency: N.W. Ayer and Son
- 1877 Edison invents Phonograph
- 1889 Edison invents Motion Picture Projector
- 1896 Marconi patents Radio Telegraphy
- 1900 First public relations agency: Boston Publicity Bureau
- 1907 Lee ?DeForest invents the Vacuum Tube, making both amplification and television cameras and receivers possible
- 1909 The first newsreels
- 1920 First commercial radio station
- 1922 The first radio ad
- 1927 First talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer
- 1937 The Hindenberg explosion changes the way we think of broadcast news
- 1938 The War of the Worlds broadcast demonstrates the dangerous line between news and broadcast fiction
- 1939 First U.S. Television broadcast demonstration
- 1948 The Golden Age of Television begins
- 1982 Compact discs
- 1990s Internet enters wide use
- 1992 Digital editing and special effects become commonplace
- 1997 MP3 files
- 1999 Tivo and ReplayTV introduce the DVR
Understanding Today's Media Industries
- American Dominance of World Media
  - "The American Empire"
    - A source of controversy: Cultural Imperialism
    - Exporting our culture can be seen as an attack on other cultures
  - Built on
    - Freedom of Expression
      - A source of controversy for violence, pornography, and crass materialism
    - Audience Diversity
      - Improvement required, but much has been accomplished in representing that diversity on the screen
    - Big Media Business that can build big budget content
      - A source of controversy
- Foreign Media in the U.S.
  - Content
  - Adaptation
  - Ownership
Big Media
- A source of controversy
  - The power to sway public opinion
  - Conflict of interest
- Reasons for Corporate Media Growth
  - Economies of Scale: layoffs and other economies
  - Synergy: the whole is more than the sum of its parts
    - Cross merchandising/Repurposing
  - Global competition
- Patterns of Ownership
  - Groups and chains
    - Owning the same medium in lots of places
  - Conglomerates
    - Vertical Integration
      - Owning the production chain for a single medium
      - Antitrust and locking out competitors
    - Horizontal Integration
      - Owning many types of media businesses
  - Oligopoly
    - Control of an industry by just a few companies
  - Monopoly
    - Control of an industry by just one company
  - Entrepreneurial startups
    - Where many companies, and some media, start
Economic/Regulatory Models for Media around the World
- Public
  - Government ownership
  - Private ownership, government control
- Private
  - Private ownership, government regulation
    - The U.S. Model
      - Private ownership
      - Government regulation where bandwidth is limited "in the public interest"
  - Libertarian: United States comes closet
- Censorship can be an issue in any system
  - Formalized censorship
  - Self censorship
- Reporting in the public interest: The fourth estate
  - Adversarial relationships
  - Issues: covering elections
    - Covering controversy in preference to issues
    - Negative ads
    - Declaring winners
Media and the Audience
- Audience as arbiter of meaning
- Consumers have Economic Clout, which makes them a commodity for advertisers
- Consumers decide which new media matter
- Organized audience members can make a difference
Media Controversies
- Impact Issues and Media Influence
- Legal Issues and Media Law and Regulation
  - The First Amendment
  - Prior Restraint
- Ethical Issues and the Morality of Media
- Interrelationships of Impact, Legal, and Ethical Issues

See the top of next weeks discussion notes for the assignments due next week: Intro2MassMediaSpr2007Sn03

-- Last edited November 19, 2010

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