MCM 733: Communication Theory

1
MCM 733 Communication Theory

• Chapters 10, 11, 12

2
CH 10 Media and Society

• Information/Innovation diffusion theory explains
  how innovations are introduced and adopted by
  various communities
• First, awareness raising
• Second, adopted by early adopters (people who
  adopt techs early, without all the consumer info)
• Third, opinion leaders adopt it based on early
  adopters experiences
• Fourth, opinion leaders spread it to their
  constituencies
• Fifth, laggards adopt it
• Change agents those wo directly influence the
  adoption process

3
CH 10 Media and Society

• Media System Dependency Theory
• The more people use media, the more they become
  dependent on it and the more influence the media
  will have in their lifes
• Knowledge Gap Theory
• There are systematic gaps between better informed
  and less-informed members of a population. This
  is a demonstration of the power of systems theory

4
CH 10 Media and Society

• Agenda Setting Theory
• Communicators dont tell people what to think,
  rather they encourage them to prioritize their
  values.
• Priming media draw attention to some aspects of
  political life at the expense of others
• Agenda Building collective process in which
  media, govt and the citizenry reciprocally
  influence one another in areas of public policy

5
CH 10 Media and Society

• Elements of Agenda Setting Theory
• Mass comm has a huge effect on setting peoples
  priorities
• Vividness of presentation
• Position of a story
• priming

6
CH 10 Media and Society

• Framing Theory the idea that people use sets of
  expectations to make sense of their social world
  and media contribute to those expectations
• Second-order agenda setting media set the
  publics agenda at a second level or order the
  attribute level, where the first order was the
  object level.
• Frame a specific set of expectations used to
  make sense of some aspect of the social world in
  a specific situation and time

7
CH 10 Media and Society

• Spiral of Silence Theory people holding views
  contrary to dominant views are moved to keep them
  to themselves for fear of rejection
• Three factors that lead to Spiral of Silence
• Ubiquity the media are virtually everywhere as
  sources of information
• Cumulation the various news media tend to repeat
  stories and perspectives across their different
  individual programs, or editions, across the
  different media themselves
• Consonance the similarity of values held by
  newspeople influences the content they produce

8
CH 10 Media and Society

• New Production Research the study of how the
  institutional routines of news production
  inevitably produce bias or distorted content
• Personalized News most news stories center
  around people
• Dramatized News storylines dominate
• Fragmented news news is made up of a lot
  different fragments
• Normalized News adding th threat of disaster to
  a sense of normalcy
• Objectivity rituals rituals that ensure
  objectivity but reinforce the status quo

9
CH 10 Media and Society

• Media Intrusion Theory
• The idea that the media have taken over politics
  to the extent that politics have become
  subverted.
• Social Capital
• Membership in certain social groups confers
  status and prestige to an individual

10
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Symbolic Interactionism people give meaning to
  certain things and those meanings end up
  controlling them
• Social behaviourism view of learning that
  focuses on the mental processes and the social
  environment in which learning takes place

11
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Applications of Symbolic Interactionism
• Peoples interpretation and perception of the
  environment depend on communication
• Communication is guided by and guides the
  concepts of self, role, and situations. These
  concepts generate expectations in and of the
  environment
• Communication consists of complex interactions
  involving action, interdependence, mutual
  influence, meaning, relationship, and situational
  factors.

12
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Social Constructionism individuals power to
  control or change their environment is limited
• Social construction of reality we construct
  meaning together in an on-going fashion because
  people share a common sense of its reality

13
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Some concepts for social interactionism and
  constructionism
• Signals artificial signs that produce predicable
  responses
• Signs something represents something else
• Artificial signs made by people
• Natural signs thunder, lightning, etc.
• Symbols artificial signs for which there is less
  certainty of response
• Typifications mental images that allow people to
  quickly classify objects and actions and then
  structure their own actions in response.

14
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Framing and Frame Analysis
• Framing people use expectations to make sense of
  everyday life
• Social cues info in the environment that signals
  a shift or change of action
• Frame a specific set of expectations used to
  make sense of a social situation at a given point
  in time
• Downshift and upshift to move back and forth
  between more or less serious frames
• Hyper-ritualized representations media content
  constructed to highlight only the most meaningful
  representations
• Primary reality the real world in which people
  obey conventions and laws

15
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Cultivation Analysis media cultivates a reality,
  that may be untrue, but becomes reality because
  people believe it to be so
• Violence Index annual content analysis of a
  sample week of network television to measure
  amount of violence contained in it

16
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Cultural Indicators Project periodic
  examinations of television programming and the
  conceptions of social reality cultivated by
  viewing
• Television is different from all other forms of
  mass media
• TV is the central cultural arm of todays society
• Audience consciousness is cultivated by keying
  into basic assumptions about the facts of life
  and common sense rather than high concept
  ideas
• TVs major cultural function is to stabilize
  social patterns, to cultivate resistance to
  change
• The observable, measurable independent
  contributions of television to the culture are
  relatively small. It is rather its stable
  contribution that matters (Ice Age Hypothesis)

17
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Products of Cultivation Analysis
• Message systems analysis detailed content
  analysis of TV programming to assess recurring
  and consistent messaging
• Cultivation televisions contribution to the
  creation of a cultures frameworks or knowledge
  and underlying general concepts
• Mainstreaming the process, especially for
  heavier viewers, by which TVs symbols monopolize
  and dominate other sources of info and ideas
  about the world
• Resonance when viewers see things on TV that are
  congruent with their own everyday realities

18
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Mean World Index a series of questions about the
  incidence of crime and violence, the answer to
  which can be used to differentiate heavy and
  light viewers
• The Three Bs of TV
• Television blurs traditional distinctions of
  peoples views of their world
• TV blends their realities into TVs cultural
  mainstream
• TV bends that mainstream to the institutional
  interests of television and its sponsors

19
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Commodification of Culture
• When elements of everyday culture are selected
  for repackaging, only a very limited range is
  chosen and important elements are overlooked or
  consciously ignored
• The repackaging process involves dramatization of
  those elements of culture that have been selected
• The marketing of cultural commodities is
  undertaken in a way that maximizes the likelihood
  that they will intrude into and ultimately
  disrupt everyday life
• The elites who operate the cultural industries
  are generally ignorant of the consequences of
  their work.
• Disruption of everyday life takes many forms
  some disruptions are obviously linked to
  consumption of deleterious content, other are
  subtle and take a long time.

20
Ch 11 Media and Culture Theories

• Media Literacy Movement
• An awareness of the impact of the media on the
  individual and society
• An understanding of the process of mass
  communication
• The development of strategies with which to
  analyse and discuss media messages
• An awareness of media content as a text that
  provides insight into our contemporary culture
  and ourselves
• The cultivation of an enhanced enjoyment,
  understanding and appreciation of media content

21
Ch 12 The Future of Media Theory and Research

• The End of Mass Comm Theory and the Beginning of
  Media Theory
• Web 2.0
• iPhone/Blackberry
• Virtual reality
• Artificial intelligence
• Cognitive neuroscience
• Globalization