What is Mass Communication?

Communication is the transmission of a message from source to receiver.

Harold Lasswell described communication as answering the following questions: Who? Says what? Through which channel? To whom? With what effect?

Source --> Medium --> Receiver = Effect of some kind

Cybernetics introduced idea of feedback.

Communication is reciprocal and ongoing process of creating shared meaning. All participants must encode and decode the message. Encoding happens when a message is transformed into an understandable sign and symbol system.

What about noise?

Encoded messages carried by the medium. If messages go to a large number of people, it’s called a mass medium.

Mass Communication is the process of creating shared meaning between media and their audiences. But in mass communication, feedback is most likely inferential, e.g. television executives wait days, weeks, even months for the ratings of new programs.

What is media theorist James W. Carey's cultural definition of communication? (see pg. 8) How does it differ from other definitions of the process? It brings culture into it, i.e. the learned behaviors of the social groups. Name some cultural characteristics from your hometown or area of the state that others would not know? How does it define us?

CULTURE

 Culture is the world made meaningful; it is socially constructed and maintained through communication. It limits as well as liberates us; it differentiates as well as unites us. It defines our realities and thereby shapes the way we think, feel and act.

When you look at ads such as the one on p. 382, what are they really selling? Examples of other ads. What does it tell us about our culture?

However, every day we openly challenge the dominant culture as most people do not fit the standard image of beauty. People are defined by their culture – American, Arkansan, Monticellonian – and the subset can be called bounded cultures. While bounded cultures are usually a good thing, occasionally it can be bad. Can you think of an example?

EXAMINING MASS COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE

The average person spends approximately 3,700 hours annually (65 percent of waking hours) consuming media content.

But who controls what’s seen and heard? Follow the money and you’ll find money makes audiences products rather than consumers. The growing concentration of ownership and conglomeration can be seen by the merger of Comcast Cable and AT&T Broadband, which created the world’s largest cable operation. Yet some telecommunications officials argue concentration and conglomeration are necessary in an increasingly fragmented and internationalized telecommunications environment.

The erosion of distinctions among media, aka convergence, refers to the disappearance of lines among media, which is also called synergy.

Why is this bad? Journalists know where their interests lie and aren’t likely to write bad stories about their bosses.

Does it matter? Audiences are becoming fragmented and media pander to that fragmentation through narrowcasting, niche marketing and targeting.

Hypercommercialism is the mass media’s increased attention on commercial aspects, including the quest to sell more and more advertising as well as increasing the mix of commercial and noncommercial media content, e.g. Revlon cosmetics have been written into the storyline of “All My Children.”

ORAL or PRELITERATE CULTURE

In cultures without written language, elders dispensed knowledge by word-of-mouth through stories and myths. But when alphabets developed independently around the world, humanity could pass on knowledge and save it.

Literacy means that people can comprehend and communicate using written symbols. Aliteracy refers to those who can but don’t read. What is media literacy? The ability to effectively and efficiently comprehend and use any form of communication

People use multiple points of access to approach media content from a a variety of directions and derive multiple levels of meaning. Movies like Pulp Fiction require this sophisticated skill from media literate people. See “Elements of Media Literacy” (p. 24)

Elements of Media Literacy

1. being aware of media impact
2. understanding the processes of mass communication (knowing it allows it to serve us rather than us to serve it)
3. strategies for analyzing and discussing media messages (e.g. why did Gen. George MacArthur always want his picture taken from below? Why was FDR hardly ever photographed where his handicap would show?)
4. understanding media content as text that provides insight into our culture and lives
5. ability to enjoy understand and appreciate media content by using multiple points of access (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow: sci-fi film loaded with special effects? melodramatic disaster movie? political statement about Kyoto? or immigration?)
6. understanding of the moral and ethical obligations of media practitioners (what pressures do they face? time constraints? budgets?)
7. development of appropriate and effective production skills

1. making a conscientious effort to understand, pay attention and filter noise
2. understand and respect power of media messages (sometimes disregarded through third person effect, i.e. media influences others but not us)
3. ability to distinguish emotional from reasoned reactions when responding to content and acting accordingly
4. development of heightened expectations of media content
5. a knowledge of genre conventions and ability to recognize when they're mixed (Is "The Davinci Code" fact or fiction? Compared to "The Perfect Storm")
6. Ability to think critically about media messages, no matter how credible the source
7. A knowledge of the internal language of various media and ability to understand its effects, no matter the complexity

We’ve become an information society and have in turn become media literate

Media History in short: printing press, penny press brings everyday people into mass dialogue, Radio and Movies allowed entertainment and taught immigrants how to speak the language, TV made everyone closer together (e.g. 9-11); CPU's, office now at home - when can you quit working?