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Week 1 Lecture -Intro to Mass Communication

Philip Gan Chee Keat, School of Communication

FIC 0114 July 2013 Semester

Learning Activities

Lectures3 x hoursThursdays 1pm – 4pmLT 3

Tutorials2 x hrsTutorial 1 – Mondays, 10am – 12pm, D7.01Tutorial 2 – Tuesdays, 10am – 12pm, D7.01

Online Learning3 x Blended Learning – Small Group Discussion at EdmodoOnline Tutorial Exercises on Edmodo / TIMeSThese sessions will be announced the week before. It is also stated in your module outline.

Assessment

Category

Learning Outcomes

TGC Wtg (%) Due Date1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0

Individual Assignment

 

1, 2, 4 √ √ √ √       √10 30 Aug

Group Assignment

 

1, 2, 3, 4 √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √

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Group Presentation – 31 Oct

Group Essay submission – 22 Nov

Continual Assessment (Blog/Vlog Postings)

 All √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √

10

Every Sat, 5.00pm beginning 3rd Aug

Last post – 23 Nov

Submission – 28 Nov 

Online Quizzes

 

 

1, 2, 3

√ √ √       √  

20Quiz 1 – 26 Aug

Quiz 2 – 28 Nov

Final Exam

 

1, 2, 3, 4 √ √ √       √  40 9 – 13 Dec

Total    100

Accessing Edmodo

1. Go to www.edmodo.com

2. Select ‘I’m a Student’

3. Key in group code ‘0qgsjv’ and complete the rest of your details. Please enter your name as per your enrolment details.

TextbookDominick, J.R. (2013). The dynamics of mass communication: Media in Transition, (12th ed.); McGraw-Hill; Boston.

Baran, S. (2013). Introduction to mass communication: Media literacy and culture (8th ed.); McGraw Hill; Boston.

Available from EMO Books @ Taylor’s & Taylor’s Library

L1 Chap1

Communication: Mass and Other Forms

By Philip Gan Chee Keat

Taylor’s School of Communication

• Recognise and explain the elements of a communication process

• Understand different types of communication settings

• Explain the definition of mass media and its transitions

• Understand the cultural impact on mass communication

• Explain the importance of media literacy

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Let’s look at these cases…

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1912 NYT report of the sinking of Titanic Boston Marathon

Bombing in April 2013

March 2013 – Bangsar dessert shop FB fiasco

*Transmission of a message from a source to a receiver.

*One way communication–effect added (Harold Lasswell 1948).

SENDER

"RIP Madonna. You aren't dead, but you're career is.”

Message Sender

Message receiverPerson who understands (analyses, perceives)

•Each person acts as both sender and receiver and hence use interpretation.

•Process of encoding, interpret and decoding is simultaneously happening.

•Semantic noise occurs when sender and receiver apply different meaning to the same message.

Medium

Communication is the process of sending and receiving a message with another person through a medium/channel.

Transmitting the Message•Source: the initiator of a thought or idea who starts the process. •Encoding: the activities that a source goes through to translate thoughts and ideas in a perceivable form.

•Message: the actual physical product that the source encodes.

•Channels: the ways the message travels to the receiver.

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Receiving the Message•Decoding: consists of activities that translate or interpret physical messages.

•Receiver: the target of the message

•Feedback: responses of the receiver that shape/alter the subsequent messages of the source.

•Noise: interference of message delivery–Semantic–Mechanical–Environmental

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• Individual or group communication, without the aid of a mechanical device

– Physical presence required– Variety of channels are available for use– Messages hard for receiver to terminate– Private or public– Immediate feedback– Noise: semantic or environmental

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SOURCE

-- machine --

RECEIVER

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TimeSpace

• Source and receiver– May be individuals or groups; may be machine

• Encoding– Stage 1: Thoughts/ ideas from source– Stage 2: Machine encodes it for transmission

• Channel– One or two only; eg. email-sight

• Messages– Customised; eg. info on blog-text or podcast– Private or public– Inexpensive to send

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• Decoding similar to encoding

– Machines: electrical energy light patterns

– Receiver: words or symbols thoughts

• Feedback

– Immediate or delayed; may be impossible

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Occurs when a complex organization, with machine aid, produces and transmits public messages to large, heterogeneous, scattered audiences.

(Dominick 2010, p.10).

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The process of creating shared meaning between mass media and their audiences

(Baran 2006, p.6).

• Source–Pre-Internet: Source was typically a group of

individuals who acted in predetermined roles in an organizational structure (eg. the product of a group’s effort, Oprah Winfrey’s talk show)

– Internet: Source can be one person, who becomes a mass communicator (eg. a blogger to his readers, an organisation’s FB page to their customers/fans)

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• Encoding/ sending

–Involves many stages

–More than one machine is sending message; eg. satellite-tv

• Decoding/ Receiving

–Message is public

–Multiple decoding stages; eg. tv decodes sight & sound waves

• Receiver

–Large audience & ananoymous to each other

–Self-defined audience (choose to consume media)

–Heterogenous

–Spread over a wide geographic area

• Feedback

–Delayed/ immediate

• Noise

Schramm’s Model of Mass CommunicationSource: From The Process and Effects of Mass Communication. Copyright (c) 1954

Eg. Tv executives obtaining ratings a week after a tv program was aired and they must infer what to do next.

Organisation owns tv, newspapers & radio entities.

•Schramm’s mass communication model represents feedback by inferential feedback—indirect rather than direct.

• It may take long periods for a mass medium to discover whether it has been effective.

• Imposed by technology (then, there was no internet)

– communication conservatism (message constraints); feedback too late for alterations.

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•Medium is channel through which message travels from source to receiver.–“Medium” is singular; “Media” is plural–Print; Internet; Broadcast

•Mass media are channels for mass communication, and the institutions that transmit the messages.

•Media vehicle: single component of mass media; newspaper, radio station, magazine.

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*Technology

*Economics

*Social Trends

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• Websites:– The Web will become more important for interpersonal

and social functions, e.g. the proliferation of social media.

– Interpersonal & machine-assisted communication on the Web (blogs, Wikipedia, Skype, FB, etc) facilitates communication of individuals/ small groups (communities).

– Mass media content will be distributed over the Net (eg. online papers, video downloads, e-books, etc).

– The Internet has necessitated fresh models to describe the communication process.

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•The traditional model of mass communication was a “one-to-many” model.

•Media organizations encoded information from the environment, and reproduced it many times over using the appropriate channel.

–Little direct interaction between sources and receivers

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-content by organisations & individuals

-communication flows inwards (computer-mediated environment); not a one way model

-Message that flows to individuals are not identical (pull model).

-Feedback is easy.

•A new arrangement, allowing multiple levels of communication:–One-to-one (email)–One-to-many (CNN.com)–Few-to-few (chatrooms, blogs)–Many-to-many (YouTube, eBay)–Audience competition not always a factor

•Messages not linear; content provided by organizations and users.

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*Mass communication is produced by complex and formal organizations based on business models.

*These organizations have multiple gatekeepers.

*Need a great deal of money to operate.

*Exist to make a profit.

*Highly competitive18

*Mass media typically have well-defined organizational structure.

*Generally involves specialization and division of labor.

*Generally a bureaucracy.

*Channels of communication with organization are generally formal.

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•Gatekeeper: Any person/group controlling what material eventually reaches the public.

•More complex organizations = more gatekeepers.

•Gatekeepers are far less numerous on the Web, but that doesn’t mean they’re nonexistent e.g. YouTube has several people who screen videos for copyright violations or that are deemed inappropriate.

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• Costs millions of dollars to buy and maintain a mass media organization e.g. News Corp’s purchase of Dow Jones & Co. for $5 billion.

• The Internet has reduced start-up and operating costs, however Web operations need cash in order to grow and prosper.

• Current trend: consolidation of media ownership.– Time Warner, Walt Disney Company, Sony, News

Corporation, Vivendi, Comcast, Bertelsmann

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• Most mass communication organizations in US exist to make a profit.

• Profit usually made by selling audiences to advertisers.

• Mass communication organizations compete to attract audiences.

• Web sites, too, mostly exist to make a profit.

• The Internet has forced us to reexamine the way we traditionally think about mass communication and mass communicators.

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*As media continue to evolve, several trends have become apparent

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*Media audiences: less mass, more selective.*Audience fractionalization or segmentation

*Reduced audience for any single media vehicle

*Definition of mass communication still applies; audiences still large, organizations still complex.

*Specialization is evident, but potential to reach mass audience still exists.

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*Convergence means coming together or uniting in common theme or focus.

*Corporate Convergence: Companies acquire assets extending range of activities.

*Operational Convergence: Owners of several media properties combine operations.

*Device Convergence: One mechanism contains functions of two or more devices e.g. the iPhone .

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• Audience members can control what they see and hear, and when.

• Technological advances (VCR, DVR, VOD) give more power to consumers.

• More sources of information, including blogs

• More flexibility in consuming products (download single track vs. buy full album)

• Create own classifieds/ ads -Craigslist41

*A strategy making content available via a number of different delivery methods to a number of different receiving devices.* Example: Music videos started on cable/satellite

networks, went to websites, to iPods, to cell phones.

* Television content, newspaper content, magazine content, all are repackaged for multiple devices.

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*User-generated content (peer production): people share and collaborate on content.

*YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia

*Reflects Web 2.0

*Web 2.0 = communities, people, uploading

*Web 1.0 = companies, pages, downloading

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*Small screen devices allow media to become increasingly mobile

*iPads & tablets

*Cell phones

*Laptop computers

*iPods

*Significant milestone in development of communication

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*Online communications that use special techniques that involve participation, conversation, sharing, collaboration, and linkage.

*At the start of 2011, Facebook had more than 500 million users; that would rank the Website third largest in the world if it were a country.

*Businesses & politicians are turning to social media to market their products.

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Cultural definition of communication

•Communication is foundation of our culture.

• James W. Carey: “Communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed.”

• Socially acquired traditions and lifestyles

• Culture is learned behaviour of members of a given social group.

• Culture is the world made meaningful; it is socially constructed and maintained through communication. It limits and also liberates us; it differentiates and also unites us. It defines our realities and thereby shapes the ways we think, feel and act (Baran 2013, p.14).

Function:Helps us categorise & classify our experiences.

Helps us define our world & our place in it.

Story (eg. content of a tv drama; newspaper article)

Storytellers (Mass media)

Audience

Media practitioners (journalists, editors, film directors, advertisers)-must be ethical and professional in telling a “story.”

TV viewers, newspaper readers-besides being entertained, we must:

•question the interpretation of the storytellers.

•interpret “stories” in relation to important cultural values & truths.

•reflect on the stories’ meaning & relate to our society’s behaviour & culture.

*It is the primary forum for the debate about our culture.

*The most powerful voice shapes our definition & understanding.

*Newspapers/ magazines: op-ed columns, reviews, cartoons.

*TV/ Radio: Talk shows, documentaries.

*Internet: blogs, FB, Twitters

Positives:

–Repetitive ways of thinking, feeling and acting

–Limits our options and provides guidelines.{eg. no vulgar words on national tv}

Negatives:

–Culture’s limiting effects can be negative through dominant culture/mainstream culture.{eg. thin beautiful models=ideal; how about

plus-size?}

–BUT…the dominant culture can be challenged; we create our opinion to challenge existing patterns.

–Eg. there are positive ideals of beauty; i.e. Jennifer Lopez, Susan Boyle, Drew Barrymore, et cetera.

•We are defined by our own cultures (eg. Malaysian)

•Within large, national culture (eg. Malaysian), there are smaller, bounded cultures (co-cultures)-eg. Malaysian Chinese.

•Pluralism/ diversity. Shared in media products.

•When we are defined differently by others-stereotyping happens. This is not good.

*Ability to effectively and efficiently comprehend and utilize any form of mass media content (Baran 2004, p.51).

*Media literacy is about understanding the sources and technologies of communication, the codes that are used, the messages that are produced, and the selection, the interpretation, and impact of those messages (Rubin cited by Baran 2004, p.51).

* The process of interacting with media content and critically analyzing it by considering its particular:

PresentationTechnological assets and limitationsUnderlying political or social messagesOwnershipRegulationOther social expectations/ values

* Possessing the knowledge to be competent in assessing messages carried by the mass media (Vivian 2010, p.6).

* Being able to read (traditional literacy).

* Understanding how to navigate a web site or send an email attachment (computer literacy).

* Realizing a scary part of a movie is coming up when the background music changes (visual literacy).

*Media consumer should question what they see, hear or experience when receiving or interacting with mediated communication.

*Some of the questions that a critical media consumer should ask:

* Developing media literacy is an ongoing process, not a goal.

* It is always possible to improve your level of media literacy and thus be a wiser consumer.

* Critical thinking in their consumption of media content so they can better control their actions and not be controlled by media messages.

What characteristics must an individual have?

1. An awareness of the impact of media.

2. An understanding of the process of

mass communication.

* How do the various media industries operate?

* What are their obligations to us?

* What are the obligations of audience?

3. Strategies for analyzing and discussing media messages.

* Need a foundation (eg. knowledge-media grammar/ concepts) to base our thought & reflection.

* Eg. understand the intent and impact of film and video conventions like camera angles and lighting, or the strategy behind the placement of photos on a newspaper page.

4. An understanding of media content as a text that provides insight into our culture and our lives.

5. The ability to enjoy, understand and appreciate media content.

• Use multi points of access to approach media content from a variety of perspectives and derive from it many levels of meaning.

6. An understanding of the ethical and moral obligations of media practitioners.

7. Development of

appropriate and

effective production

skills.

• Media literate

individuals must

develop production

skills to create useful

media messages (eg.

creating websites/

blogs).

Media literate consumption requires specific skills:

1. Ability & willingness to make an effort to understand content, to pay attention & filter noise.

2. An understanding of and respect for the power of media messages.*Don’t assume it has no power on

yourself, only on others! (Third person effect)

3. Ability to distinguish emotional from reasoned reactions when responding to content and act accordingly.

4. Development of heightened expectations of media content.

5. Know genre conventions & recognise when they are being mixed.

6. Ability to think about media messages despite of their source credibility.

7. Knowledge of various media grammar & understand its effects.