Mass Communication

1
Mass Communication

• John A. Cagle

2
Innis, McLuhan, and Carpenter Communication,
Technology, and Culture

• History is directed by the dominant media at each
  age.
• Communication media are tools which extend human
  faculties.
• Hot media are filled with information and we
  become passive observers. Print.
• Cool media require audience to fill-in
  information and we become involved. TV.
• The medium is the message.
• Media affect the ratio balances among the senses.

3
Walter Lippmann othersAgenda Setting

• Society responds to the pseudo environment
  created by media, creating the perception of what
  the environment around them is.
• Agenda-setting establishes the salient issues or
  images in the minds of the public.
• Agenda setting occurs because the press is
  responsible for what we as a people are allowed
  to hear.
• In order for an agenda to be set, there is a
  three-part linear process that must occur.
• First, the media agenda must be set next, the
  public agenda is created then, finally, in
  response, the policy makers/political leaders
  must make a policy agenda.
• In the simplest model, the media agenda directly
  affects the public agenda which directly affects
  the policy agenda.

4
George Gerbner Cultivation Analysis

• Cultivation analysis is a theory dealing with the
  total impacts of mass communication on cultures
  over time.
• Television, through commercials, the news, drama
  and comedy, send common images to the viewing
  masses.
• Gerbner explains television as a "homogenizing"
  or "mainstreaming" agent, because it sends
  general images and presents a common way of
  viewing things.
• Cultivation analysis is concerned with the total,
  not individual, impacts of communication through
  television. Where people used to learn
  socialization and cultivate their
  predispositions from experience, they now obtain
  through television. The danger lies in the fact
  that television does not generally present a
  realistic view of the world.