Media & Communication Science Flashcards

Question

Recap Chapter 2: sign, semiology, semiotic, denotation, connotation, communication process, dufferent forms of communication

Answer 1

* The sign: “the smallest component of every act of communication”. * Semiology: European origin → Linguistic dimension of the sign Sign = Signifier + signified … Referent * Semiotic: American origin → Philosophical and psychological perspective Sign = Representamen + interpretant + object * Denotation: the first degree of the intelligible → related the signifier * Connotation: meanings that require practical knowledge or cultural knowledge to be understood → related to conception of the signified * The Communication process: Sender, Encoder, Channel, Noise, Decoder, Receiver, Feedback * Different forms of communication: Intrapersonal communication, Interpersonal communication, Mass communication, Non-verbal communication

Answer 2

For Marshall McLuhan ([1964] 1994), “each major historical era took its overall cognitive style from the medium used most widely at the time” ➢ It means that there are interconnection between human development, culture, social events and technology in a context of media and communication. ➢ New technological developments go hand in hand with social developments, and vice versa.

Answer 3

Oral cultures → visual or symbol based language → phonetic alphabet → And then, beginning of mass media McLuhan saw alphabet based scripts as “the first true cognitive revolution in human history.” → An occidentalized and criticized point of view…

Answer 4

These are: * certain communicative purposes, needs, or uses; * technologies for communicating publicly to many at a distance; * forms of social organization that provide the skills and; * frameworks for production and distribution; * organized forms of governance in the ‘public interest’.

Answer 5

* Time and place (natural factors) * Social circumstances * Cultural conditions “In general, the more open the society, the more inclination there has been to develop communication technology to its fullest potential, especially in the sense of being universally available and widely used ” (McQuail , 2005). → That means that it’s important for a society to be opened to other societies to develop communication technology

Answer 6

▪ The invention of the first printing press is traditionally linked to the name of Johannes Gutenberg (1400-1468). ▪ However, printing technology has roots that go back to the sixth century… because the Chinese were already working with woodblock printing, which was further perfected by the use of individual letters from 1045 ▪ Paper was also invented in China: why printing is still largely seen as a western technology, and not as a Chinese one? ▪ Related in part to the dominant western perspective in historical overviews of media and communication (Mc-Quail, 2010, p. 25)

Answer 7

McLuhan (1962) : the invention of printing heralded the start of an historic era that he described as The Gutenberg Galaxy. ➢ This galaxy succeeded oral and written culture, and was itself later followed by the electronic age of media and communication. ➢ For him, there was huge social change in the centuries after Gutenberg, and book printing played an important role in this change, in combination with other social factors and developments. ➢ The printed press contributed to (and was in turn reinforced by) social trends such as individualisation, secularisation, democratisation, capitalism and nationalism.

Answer 8

McQuail → books are the beginning of mass media. The book as a medium means: (McQuail, 2005:27) * Technology of movable type * Bound pages, codex form * Multiple copies * Commodity form * Multiple (secular) content * Individual in use * Claim to freedom of publication * Individual authorship, etc.

Answer 9

* Relation, first published in 1609. * Early newspapers were marked by its regular appearance, commercial basis, public character and multiple purposes. * The written press has not changed much since then in terms of basic principles * It is relatively recent that non-partisan and independent press coupled with investigative journalism (and it depends on the journalistic culture!).

Answer 10

* La Gazette, launched in 1631 by Théophraste Renaudot, was the first periodical (France) to provide political, literary and artistic news. * Distribution facilitated by postal services and takeover and translation agreements throughout Europe. * In 1758, during the ill-fated Seven Years' War, up to 15,000 copies of the Gazette were printed, including 3,000 in Paris. * After the creation of the Journal de Paris in 1777, daily newspapers proliferated during the Revolution. * The term ‘advertising’ (publicité) first appeared in the 1630s, at the same time as the press, its main medium. ➢ It referred to the action of bringing information to the attention of the public.

Answer 11

* The press has been financed largely by advertising since its inception. * But revenues from press copy have been declining since the advent of the Internet.

Answer 12

* Newspaper readership has also fallen over the years * The spread of radio, television and, later, the Internet, dealt a blow to press audience figures. * The periodical (weekly or monthly) magazine appeared in great diversity and with wide circulations from the early eighteenth century onwards : “it eventually developed into a mass market of high commercial value and enormous breadth of coverage.” (McQuail, 2010)

Answer 13

* Regular and frequent appearance * Commodity form * Reference to current events * Public sphere function * Urban, secular audience * Relative freedom

Answer 14

* Trend to free newspapers started with Metro International 1995 in Stockholm. * Worldwide online newspapers grew significantly during the last half of the 1990s (Le Monde, 1995; NYT, 1996). * At the end of the 1990s start of online newspaper archives. * The peak of newspaper circulation (in Europe) in the mid1980s (after The Thirty Glorious Years) * Since 2007 the iPhone and other smartphones enforced increased mobile access to news.

Answer 15

(McQuail, 2010) * Began at the end of the 19th century as a technological novelty * New means of presentation and distribution: stories, spectacles, music, drama, humour and technical tricks for popular consumption. * The ‘Americanization’ of the film industry and film culture in the years after the First World War * Private experience from the coming of television and the separation of film from the cinema (television broadcasting, cable transmission, videotape and DVD sale or hire, satellite TV and now digital broadband Internet and mobile phone reception) * Related to technological innovations * Focus on needs of the audience (escapism: provides an escape from reality or everyday matters)

Answer 16

* Audiovisual channels of reception * Private experience of public content * Predominantly narrative fiction * International in genre and format * Subjection to social control * High cost of production * Multiple platforms of distribution

Answer 17

Similarities of radio and TV: * Radio is around a century old, TV is younger (1950s) * Both emerged from pre-existing technologies (e.g., telephone, telegraph, photography, sound reporting) * Based on new technologies, rather a response to a demand for content * Content and format derived from existing genres and topics (e.g., film, theatre, sports, news) * Centralized pattern of distribution from urban sources of supply * High degree of regulation and licensing by public authorities * Closeness to power, little political independence

Answer 18

▪ Heinrich Hertz first proved in 1879 the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's ▪ Guglielmo Marconi: succeeded in sending the first electronic signal over radio waves for a distance of three kilometers in 1895 ▪ Turn of the 20th century: the new medium was slowly gaining in popularity with lobbyists and amateurs, who built their own transmitters ▪ BBC: first radio broadcasting networks (a news bulletin at 6 pm the 14 November 1922), leading pioneer in the field

Answer 19

▪ Radio was the first medium capable of reaching the masses without the need to know how to read and write ▪ Radio reached its peak in terms of social impact before and during the Second World War (e.g.: news from the front, inspiring broadcasts by the American president Roosevelt or the propaganda messages of Hitler, etc.) ▪ Rise of television in the 1950s: radio lost its place as the most important prime-time channel for relaxation and information. ▪ Radio became a secondary or complementary medium

Answer 20

* Flexible and economic production * Flexible in use * Multiple contents * Relative Freedom * Individualized use * Participant potential (telephone)

Answer 21

* First television broadcasters: between the wars under the wings of existing radio stations, such as the BBC in 1936. * But it was only after the Second World War that television made its real breakthrough. * 1960s: TV occupied a central position in the living rooms of millions of Europeans and North Americans and progressively replaced other media like film and radio (for information, relaxation entertainment, etc.) * The consumer society: television soon became the channel of preference for 'commercials’ advertising * 1970s: the arrival of cable television * 1990s: satellite television * New trends: liberalization and globalization of the broadcasting system, with new commercial stations. * Television became the most “ ‘massive’ of the media in terms of reach, time spent and popularity” (McQuail, 2010) * Still considered the main source of news and information for most people and the main channel of communication between politicians and citizens, particularly during election periods (McQuail, 2010)

Answer 22

Television Key features (McQuail, 2010) * Very large output, range and reach * Audiovisual content * Complex technology * Public character and extensive regulation * National and international character * Very diverse content forms * Real-time character, live reporting * Medium of mass entertainment Two key roles: ▪ Public information function ▪ Education function

Answer 23

Mc Luhan: communication processes and new technological developments go hand in hand with social developments, and vice versa. McQuail: four main elements in the wider life of society: communicative purposes, technologies, social organization, production and distribution, governance. McLuhan (1962) : the invention of printing → The Gutenberg Galaxy → The printed press contributed to social trends such as individualisation, secularisation, democratisation, capitalism and nationalism. History of mass media: ▪ Newspaper = circulation peak (in Europe) in the mid-1980s (after The Thirty Glorious Years) ▪ Radio = the first medium capable of reaching the masses without the need to know how to read and write ; peak in terms of social impact before and during the Second World War ▪ Television = the channel of preference for 'commercials’ advertising in the consumer society ; still considered the main source of news and information for most people and the main channel of communication between politicians and citizens

Answer 24

* Information and communication sciences: different phases, different scientific contributions and proposals * The multidisciplinary nature → many influences from other sciences, which have shaped its theories, models and research methodology. * For each historical step questions have emerged on the relationship between the media and their audiences: the fall of the Western monarchies, socialism and communism, propaganda during the two world wars, capitalism, the birth of democracy, Internet, etc. * Post-war: development of communication sciences, first major wave of empirical research in communication sciences. * The main methodologies were quantitatives at this period → because of the influence of other sciences and wanted to produce so-called reliable and generalisable knowledge.

Answer 25

* The 'dominant paradigm’: a combination of a vision of powerful mass media in a mass society and research practices typical of the emerging social sciences, in particular social surveys, socio-psychological experiments and statistical analysis. * Normative society vision: a 'good society’ → “democratic (elections, universal suffrage, representation), liberal (secular, free market conditions, individualistic, freedom of expression), pluralist (institutionalised competition between parties and interests), consensual and orderly (peaceful, socially integrated, just, legitimate), and also wellinformed” McQuail (2010). * This “orthodox” vision of society has strongly influenced scientific research and the social sciences, from economics to communication sciences. → Idealized representation of western societies * The contradictions of this vision of society and its distance from social reality have very often been ignored. * Early research on media and communication in developing countries was driven by this Western bias and was based on the assumption that these societies would gradually converge towards the same Western model (more advanced and progressive), different from the less liberal Communist model.

Answer 26

Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, elected President of the United States in 1932: mobilise the population around Welfare State programmes to get out of the economic crisis (New Deal). Behaviourist movement (psychology) laid the foundations for a theory of propaganda. Opinion polls became the basis for day-to-day management of the masses. ❑ The thesis of the power of the media and propaganda to dominate the minds of the masses was developed by this current (behaviourism) just before the Second World War ➢ Ivan Pavlov (Russian psychologist) developed the theory (translated into English in 1927) that reactions acquired through learning and habit become reflexes when the brain makes the links between the stimulus and the action that follows (stimulusresponse). ➢ Serge Chakhotine (a Russian living in France) was the first to talk about propaganda and the media in his book “The Rape of the Masses by Political Propaganda” (1939). ❑ The American functionalist movement wanted to break the diffusionist pattern of linear transmission of information. ❑ The functionalist model is a kind of mutation of behaviourism through the emergence of cybernetics (of Norbert Wiener, who proposed the feedback in addition to Shanon and Weaver's basic transmission model → Cf. the 2nd Session on the building blocks of Communications Studies )

Answer 27

From 1950s → Golden years for functionalism: Society is a social system, composed by a subsystems (like the economy, politics, the army, education, culture, etc.), who function to maintain or reinforce of the global system A functionalist media theory → How do media and communication function - specifically in the sense of media systems and organizations - in the production, perpetuation and/or change of well-known social formations, such as a social system? The theoretical building blocks of the dominant paradigm have not been largely borrowed from other sciences, including sociology, psychology and applied information science studies, with a North American hegemony

Answer 28

In 1948, Harold Lasswell was the first to formulate clearly the “functions” of (mass) communication in society in his model i.e. the tasks essential to its maintenance. → ➢ Surveillance function: mass media inform and observe the public ➢ A consensus or correlation function: mass media link providers of the society components ➢ A socialization or transmission function: media reflects our own beliefs, values and norms In his view, communication helps to perpetuate an integrated and orderly society, despite the fact that mass communication can lead to dysfunction.

Answer 29

* A liberal-pluralist ideal of society * The media have certain functions in society * Media effects on audiences are direct and linear * Group relations and individual differences modify effects of media * Quantitative research and variable analysis * Media viewed either as a potential social problem or a means of persuasion * Historically, behaviourist and quantitative methods have primacy

Answer 30

➢ When people are facing new information or experiences, they classify them according to their preexisting attitudes, perceptions and beliefs ➢ If the new information does not fit in with their pre-existing assumptions, dissonance may occur. ➢ To try to eliminate the dissonance, people modify attitudes, perceptions or behaviours, so that all three are consistent. e.g.: A smoker who understands that smoking can cause cancer will continue to smoke, telling himself that one or two cigarettes a day are not so harmful.

Answer 31

➢ Language influences cognition and thought and can change a person's view of the world. ➢ Two theories: * Linguistic determinism: language use determines or defines thinking and perception. * Linguistic relativism: language use can influence thought but does not define it. ➢ Critics: reduces culture and reflection to language, not transferable to all languages (no word, no understanding?), cannot be proven in terms of causality.

Answer 32

❑ A transmission model ❑ A ritual or expressive model ❑ A publicity model ❑ A reception model

Answer 33

➢ Communication as the process of transmitting a fixed quantity of information, i.e. the message as determined by the sender or source ➢ e.g., Shannon & Weaver, 1949: cf. session 2 on building blocks. A transmission model (e.g.: Hypodermic needle theory or magic bullet theory) ➢ A media message can be shot directly into the brains of its passive audience ➢ Examination of media and its affects in the First World War by Harold Laswell (1927) ❑ A transmission model (e.g., Westley & MacLean,1957) ➢ Communication starts when a person responds selectively to his/her physical surroundings Example: o In the context of mass communication, A may be a news reporter, C may be a newspaper or television channel that presents the news, and B may be the public. o X1, X2 and X3 are information, (f) is Feedback ❑ A transmission model (e.g., Schramm, 1954) ➢ Circular communication Process ➢ Both actors are communicator and receiver (reciprocal model)

Answer 34

➢ Communication is a process of maintaining culture ➢ Alternative view of communication as a ritual ➢ Based on act of representation of shared beliefs, emotions and values ➢ Potential social integration effect ➢ Element of performance in the religious, artistic and cultural fields

Answer 35

➢ To catch and hold visual or aural attention ➢ one direct economic goal: to gain audience revenue (e.g.: paid newspapers) ➢ and an indirect one to sell audience attention to advertisers (e.g.: ads in television) ➢ “The media audience is more often a set of spectators rather than participants or information receivers. The fact of attention often matters more than the quality of attention (which can rarely be adequately measured).” (McQuail, 2010)

Answer 36

Cf. Encoding and decoding, session 2 on Building blocks ▪ Communicators = encoders ➢ Encode messages for ideological or institutional purposes ➢ Manipulate language and media for their ends ➢ Encoding based on ‘meaning structure’ of mass media organization, usually conforming to dominant powers, shared language systems and conventional media genres ▪ Receivers = decoders ➢ Can resist ideological influence by differential readings according to their perspective and world view ➢ Able to read between the lines and reverse intended messages

Answer 37

The dominant paradigm: from behaviorism to functionnalism (great influence) → How do media and communication function - specifically in the sense of media systems and organizations - in the production, perpetuation and/or change of well-known social formations, such as a social system McQuail four models of mass communication: a transmission model, a ritual or expressive model, a publicity model, a reception model

Answer 38

▪ The signals simply don't reach the receivers, or not the ones intended ▪ Messages are not (always) understood at the time they are sent (there may also be ‘noise’ in the channels, which distorts the message). ▪ There is almost no mass communication without an intermediary: mass media are generally filtered through other channels, social and cultural considerations or personal contacts. → In fact, it has always been difficult to prove any substantial (direct) effect of mass media: other factors (sociological, political, educational, cultural, linguistic, etc.) can determine the audiences attitudes and perceptions

Answer 39

* A different vision of society: does not accept the dominant liberal-capitalist order as just or inevitable, or as the best that can be hoped for in the fallen state of humanity. * Doesn’t accept the rational-calculative, utilitarian model of social life as adequate or desirable, nor the commercial model as the only or best way of managing the media. * An alternative ideology, idealistic and sometimes utopian, with sufficient common ground to reject the hidden ideology of (a supposed) pluralism (dominated by the market interests) and conservative functionalism.

Answer 40

→ Socialism or Marxism, postmodernism, feminism, and postcolonialism was the original ideological inspiration to defy the logic of capitalism ▪ Questions of media ownership, representation, manufacturing consent, power elites ▪ The Frankfurt School, the political economy of communication and cultural studies as elements of the alternative, critical paradigm ▪ More sophisticated notion of media content, which allowed researchers to ’decode’ the ideological messages of the mass media. ▪ Re-examination of the economic and political character of mass media institutions. ▪ Turn towards more qualitative research (e.g., culture, discourse, ethnography, etc.)

Answer 41

▪ The “émigrés” from the Frankfurt School (Frankfurt Institut für Sozialforschung) → German Jewish philosophers trained under the Weimar Republic, most of whom were forced to emigrate to the USA in 1934 (after Geneva in 1933): they to promoted an alternative view of the dominant commercial mass culture (origines: philosophy, art theory, music sociology, media theory) ▪ A cultural and political critic of the mass communication process: they underline the liberal error of pluralist control that open to a domination operated by the market needs (and not obligatorily what people really need) ▪ It’s during the 1960s and 1970s, that the alternative paradigm really took shape → the influence of the ‘ideas of 1968’ (students' movements in Western countries defending more democracy, feminism and anti-imperialism), combining anti-war and liberation movements of all kinds with neo-Marxism ▪ The overriding concept of this theory is that of “Kulturindustrie”: a culture industry → understood as an industry that commodifies cultural products of third parties according to the laws of the market, with the following consequences (e.g., standardization, uniformization, etc.)

Answer 42

▪ In 1962, the German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas described from an historical perspective different forms of publicness using the concept of the 'public sphere’ ▪ The Public sphere = an autonomous social space between the State and society in which public opinion is formed. ▪ The access to this space is guaranteed to all citizens of the State, including through the freedoms and rights enshrined in the constitutions of liberal democracies (freedom of association, of expression, of the press, freedom and equality of the individual, etc.) ▪ Citizens can monitor and control the activities of the state in the interest of the general good through a process of rational discussion ▪ The function of the media in this construction is to contribute to the process of public debate. ▪ A normative model: can be questioned! whether or not it ever truly corresponded with social reality

Answer 43

* Definition: “the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of communication resources” (Mosco, 2009, p. 24) * The political economy of communication calls into question the critics of the culture industry formulated by the Frankfurt School, especially the Francophone and Quebec current. * They are critical of the concept of “Kulturindustrie”, coined by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer: the industrial production of culture proceeds the same logic, forming an undifferentiated whole. ▪ They also distance themselves from Marxist orthodoxy, which is incapable of dealing the question of the industrialisation of culture because of a mechanistic view of the relationship between material infrastructure (production and relation of production) and ideal superstructure (ideology). ▪ They prefer a dialectical perspective that considers, in a single movement, the specific characteristics of each sector (recorded music, books, audio-visuals, cinema, etc.) and the common characteristics of the whole that justify the retention of the term “Cultural industries“ (now in the plural).

Answer 44

▪ Interdisciplinary (sociology, anthropology, politics, history, economics, philosophy, literature, communication, etc.) ▪ Examines how meaning is created in social structures according to class, ethnicity, gender, race, ideology, nationality, etc. Scholars in the United Kingdom and the United States ▪ The British version (influenced by Marxism): under Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies of the University of Birmingham). → This included overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as 'capitalist' mass culture; absorbed some of the ideas of the Frankfurt School critique of the "culture industry" (i.e. mass culture). ▪ The American version: understanding the subjective and appropriative side of audience reactions to, and uses of, mass culture ▪ Now, the distinction between American and British strands has faded

Answer 45

▪ To some extent, cultural studies are seen as a continuation of the work of the Frankfurt School, although they also represent a strong form of critique of their predecessors. ▪ Influenced by the branch of Marxist thought that sees culture and ideology as being central but also reject (more than political economy) the previous approaches that placed the role of media and culture in a central position ▪ → Because they do not accept the manner in which earlier schools (the Frankfurt School for instance) viewed the role of culture considered as the best that has been thought and said in the world (culturally elitist, and related to the industry) ▪ Cultural studies theoreticians critiqued also the communicator-oriented linear transmission models → principally the media message and its reception: the individual receiver is not necessarily passive, but actively interprets media messages according to the context and environment in which he or she lives (Encoding and decoding of Stuart Hall) ▪ The media content and its consumption cannot be expressed in figures. More qualitative approaches are needed to involve the individual in the analysis and better understand the reception aspect of the communication process.

Answer 46

Ziauddin Sardar (in Introducing Cultural Studies): the five main characteristics of cultural studies: 1. Cultural studies aims to its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. 2. It has the objective of understanding culture in all its complex forms and of analysing the social and political context in which culture manifests itself. 3. It is both the object of study and the location of political criticism and action. 4. It attempts to expose and reconcile the division of knowledge, to overcome the split between tacit (cultural knowledge) and objective (universal) forms of knowledge. 5. It has a commitment to an ethical evaluation of modern society and to a radical line of political action.

Answer 47

▪ Critical view of society and rejection of value neutrality ▪ Rejection of the transmission model of communication ▪ Non-deterministic view of media technology and messages ▪ Adoption of an interpretative and constructionist perspective ▪ Qualitative methodology ▪ Preference for cultural or political-economic theories ▪ Wide concern with inequality and sources of opposition in society

Answer 48

▪ “… that a medium is not just an applied technology for transmitting certain symbolic content or linking participants in some exchange. It also embodies a set of social relations that interact with features of the new technology. New theory is only likely to be required if there is a fundamental change in the forms of social organization of media technologies, in the social relations that are promoted, or in what Carey (1998) terms the ‘dominant structures of taste and feeling’” (McQuail, 2005, 136) ▪ The mass media have already changed very much → they are social and economic as well as technological reasons for this shift ▪ Since 1990, we assisted to the convergence of all existing media forms in terms of their organization, distribution, reception and regulation, with technological tools ▪ We have witnessed the emergence of a new type of society, quite distinct from mass society, characterised by complex interactive communication networks. → We need to reassess the main thrust of media social-cultural theory, taking Internet logics and its economical structures into account

Answer 49

▪ Digitalization and convergence of all aspects of media ▪ Increased interactivity and network connectivity ▪ Mobility and delocation of sending and receiving ▪ Adaptation of publication and audience roles ▪ Appearance of diverse new forms of media ‘gateway’ ▪ Fragmentation and blurring of the ‘media institution’

Answer 50

Five main categories of ‘new media’ ▪ Interpersonal communication media ▪ Interactive play media ▪ Information search media ▪ Collective participatory media ▪ Substitution of broadcast media → They sometimes are mixed Fortunati (2005): parallel tendencies of ‘mediatization’ of the Internet and ‘Internetization’ of the mass media as a way of understanding the process of mutual convergence

Answer 51

* Interactivity * Social presence (or sociability) * Media richness * Autonomy * Playfulness * Privacy * Personalization

Answer 52

The alternative / critical paradigm: → The Frankfurt School, the political economy of communication and cultural studies as elements of the alternative, critical paradigm → does not accept the dominant liberal-capitalist order as just or inevitable ; reject the hidden ideology of (a supposed) pluralism (dominated by the market interests) and conservative functionalism → More qualitative studies The Frankfurt School: → “Kulturindustrie” = a culture industry → understood as an industry that commodifies cultural products of third parties according to the laws of the market, with the following consequences (e.g., standardization, uniformization, etc.) → industrial production of culture (and culture itself) proceeds the same logic, forming an undifferentiated whole The political economy of communication: → “the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of communication resources” (Mosco, 2009). → Also a dialectical perspective (of culture production) that considers the specific characteristics of each sector and the common characteristics of the whole; that justify the retention of the term “Cultural industries“ The cultural studies: overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as 'capitalist' mass culture. → Studies on audience reactions to, and uses of mass culture. → seen as a continuation of the work of the Frankfurt School: but doesn't accept their definition of “mass culture” (too culturally elitist, and related to the industry) New media, new theories: → The mass media have changed very much since 1990 → convergence of all existing media forms in terms of their organization, distribution, reception and regulation, with technological industries → of ‘mediatization’ of the Internet and ‘Internetization’ of the mass media (Fortunati, 2005) → Ongoing process → Main changes: Digitalization and convergence, Interactivity and network connectivity, Mobility and delocation, Adaptation of publication and audience roles, diverse new forms of media ‘gateway’, Fragmentation and blurring of the ‘media institution’.

Answer 53

In studies (principally in Journalism studies) and theories about the communicator → The concept of 'gatekeeper’ (Gatekeeping theory of Kurt Lewin and David Manning White) is frequently employed to describe an individual who exercises control over the process of information selection, reworks the selected information into a media message, and then transmits that message through a particular medium (McQuail, 2010). Newspaper editors and journalists → examples of gatekeepers, but the term can also be applied to anyone who communicates and thinks (un)consciously about what they want to say or not say.

Answer 54

Researches on the communicator: strongly influenced by a journalistic approach, with a particular focus on the communicator as a journalist who selects, produces and disseminates news and information. Journalism studies: particular attention to the journalist as a communicator and gatekeeper → that is based on the idea that journalism in essence can be simply defined as 'the collecting, selecting, writing, and editing of news and information for media, such as newspapers, television, websites, and the like’ (Sogaard, 2013) However, there’s no universal definition of journalism

Answer 55

We can differentiate three types of definitions and scientific approaches of journalism: ❑ Normative ❑ Empirical ❑ Structural

Answer 56

▪ Focus on the societal function of journalism within the democratic political system (e.g., watchdog function, public information function, service function) ▪ Ideal scenario with focus on professional values and ethics of journalistic practice ▪ Closely linked to ‘journalism ethics’

Answer 57

▪ Focus NOT on individual journalists ▪ Empirical accounts of the role of journalism within the greater societal and media system (media in its co-relation to society and state) ▪ E.g., Luhmann’s system theory or Rühl’s perception of newsrooms as organized, autonomous social system

Answer 58

▪ Structural characteristics of the profession ▪ Abundance of professional activities and job titles ▪ Journalism highly depends on the social and historical context including a variety of influencing factors

Answer 59

“While the field came out of normative research by German scholars on the role of the press in society, it gained prominence with the empirical turn, particularly significant in the United States, was enriched by a subsequent sociological turn, particularly among Anglo-American scholars, and has now, with the globalcomparative turn, expanded its scope to reflect the realities of a globalized world.”

Answer 60

* Hanitzsch, T., Hanusch, F. Ramaprasad, J., & de Beer, A. S. (2019). Worlds of Journalism: Journalistic Cultures Around the Globe. New York: Columbia University Press. * Data from 27.500 journalists across 67 countries of the world (2012-16). For more information visit: https://worldsofjournalism.org * Project focusses on how journalists perceive journalism as an institution, e.g., questions of editorial autonomy, journalistic ethics, trust in social institutions, changes in the profession. “Results show that democracy and press freedom are negatively correlated with journalists’ institutional trust” (less journalists’ institutional trust means less democracy and less freedom)

Answer 61

▪ The comminicator: → Journalism → The concept of 'gatekeeper’ : an individual who exercises control over the process of information selection, reworks the selected information into a media message, and then transmits that message through a particular medium (McQuail, 2010). ▪ Newspaper editors and journalists → examples of gatekeepers, but the term can also be applied to anyone who communicates and thinks (un)consciously about what they want to say or not say. ▪ There’s no universal definition of journalism… : normative, empirical and structural ▪ Worlds of Journalism studies

Answer 62

→ The most used and most popular research method in social sciences, particularly in media and communication studies. The are many different approaches of content analysis. Different objectives: - Description and/or comparison of media messages (contents) - Have deeper insides into how the contents reflect social or cultural norms, - How they can distort social realities

Answer 63

▪ Describing and comparing media output ▪ Comparing media with ‘social reality’ and media content as reflection of social and cultural values and beliefs ▪ Audience analysis (message potential impact on audience → but difficult to establish the effective co-relation) ▪ The study of media biases ▪ Tackling questions of genre, textual and discourse analysis, narrative and other formats: how the text ‘works’ to produce effects desired by authors and readers ▪ Rating and classification of content: e.g. for regulation or media responsibility (harm or offence, violence, sexual, etc.)

Answer 64

Berelson (1952) content analysis is a “research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication.” → Berelson focused on quantitative analysis What kind of content? What form of analysis? Quantitative, qualitative or both?

Answer 65

* Corpus of texts, * articles, * reports, * press releases, * music, * programs (audio, visual, audiovisual), * podcasts, * news editions, * films, ▪ Tweets, ▪ Comments, ▪ News letters, ▪ Interviews, ▪ Social media walls, ▪ Front pages, ▪ Photos, ▪ Legends, ▪ Etc.

Answer 66

'The systematic and replicable examination of symbols of communication, which have been assigned numeric values according to valid measurement rules, and the analysis of relationships involving those values using statistical methods’ (Riffe, Lacy & Fico, 1998, p.20.) ➢ Mesurable manifest characterisctics of a message. ➢ Objective, systematic, with quantifiable data description ➢ High statistical character methods ➢ Subject, key words and actors frequencies or mean in a message ➢ Systematic, generalizable and replicable results (same measuring instruments and same coding process = same results) ➢ Related to the dominant paradigm vison of information process

Answer 67

Patton (2002) qualitative content analysis is “any qualitative data reduction and sense-making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings.” ➢ Goes deeper, to search latent or underlying characteristics ➢ An interpretative description form of research that devotes much of its attention to representation and 'subtle underlying meanings, in a way usually ignored in [quantitative] content analysis' (van Dijk, 1988,) ➢ Also analyses the relationship between the media text and the meaning(s) that the audience gives to that text, according to the contextual and social factors (cultural studies) → then viewed as more subjective ➢ Other qualitative content studies: Discourse analysis, film analysis, narrative analysis

Answer 68

▪ Altheide, Hijams, Krippendorff, Shoemaker & Reese interpret content analysis as a mixed method. → Shoemaker & Reese (1996): “reducing large amounts of text to quantitative data … does not provide a complete picture of meaning and contextual codes, since texts may contain many other forms of emphasis besides sheer repetition.” ▪ You can combine these two methods, regarding the benefits of each one and the objectives of your research ▪ No approach is superior to another

Answer 69

▪ Originated in linguistics ▪ Interested in the forms and modes of expression of media, political, public and organisational messages in relation to social frameworks (the historical context, the media, the political party, the government, the company, etc.). ▪ Based on linguistics, but emphasises the link between discourse and the social, between the verbal and the institutional, between words, figures and arguments and those who express and interpret them. ▪ Widely used in political science ▪ For example, you can explain the dominant discourse or use of language in relation to the migration and refugee during the recent European election…

Answer 70

The film and narrative analysis: Film and narrative analyses are often in the same research designs Film analysis: ▪ First developed in the field of film studies. ▪ Unravel the meaning of images and sounds and of a film or a programe through the study of both the technical/ cinematographic and the narative imagery ▪ Analyze the possible intentions of a director with regard to, for example, a particular type of lighting, sounds, camera angle, image size, editing technique, etc. Narrative analysis: ▪ Based on the idea that significant meaning is contained in the way a story is structured and developed ▪ This requires researchers to reconstruct and interpret the narrative plot (storyline) piece by piece ▪ To do this, the relevant film or television programme is divided into different segments, to assess how and why the main elements of the story line progress from segment to segment

Answer 71

▪ Heterogeneity of media content ▪ Media content is continuously changing ▪ Universal findings are difficult to formulate ▪ Results cannot be generalized easily ▪ Research topic, theoretical and methodological ▪ Approach determine scope and limitations of findings ▪ It is difficult to draw conclusions from media content to media effects (even though one might think there are logic relations)!

Answer 72

What is the study about? * Journalists frequently use Twitter and other social media for different purposes of research (e.g., finding topic ideas, statements by eyewitnesses, sources for further investigation, monitoring of prominent sources, …). * This changes the relationship of journalists with their sources. * Social media are rarely referred to as sources. * Elite sources are the most dominant sources cited from social media. * RQ1: How are media types related to the use of Twitter as a source in published news? * RQ2: How are media types related to the use of elite and non-elite sources in published news? * RQ3: How are news topics related to the use of Twitter as asource in published news? * RQ4: How are news topics related to the use of elite and non-elite sources in published news?

Answer 73

➢ Scraped RSS (Rich Site Summary) feeds from 10 German news media with national distribution in September 2015 (21.823 articles) ➢ Keyword search (7 keywords) for Twitter-related words (founded in 1.222 articles)→ 5,6% ➢ 197 originated from live tickers and were excluded from analysis and half of the remaining articles (513 =1.025 / 2 ) were randomly selected for content analysis to comply with their coding resources ➢ Developed codebook, intercoder reliability test Exemplary results for RQ 1: RQ1: How are media types related to the use of Twitter as a source in published news? ▪ Only 1,7 of the articles references to Twitter as an information source/article; 1.9 for tabloids; 1.6 for quality dailies ▪ ¾ of all quotes in the tabloids = embedded tweets; ½ quotes of broadcasters = direct quotes ▪ Topics: Politics/economy: 30,7%; human interest/gossip: 27%; science/culture = 11,4%; crime/disaster: 11% What kind of coding categories have been developed for RQ1? * Media type * Topic * Style of reference to Twitter (embedded tweet, direct quote, indirect quote)

Answer 74

▪ Content research = The most used and most popular research method in social sciences, particularly in media and communication studies. The are many different approaches of content analysis ➢ Quantitative content analysis : Measurable characteristics of a message, quantifiable data description, High statistical character methods, Subject, key words and actors frequencies or mean in a message, etc. ➢ Qualitative content analysis: Goes deeper, to search latent or underlying characteristics, interpretative description, analyses the relationship between the media text and the meaning(s) that the audience gives to that text, according to the contextual and social factors, etc. ▪ Other types od content analysis : The discourse analysis, The film and narrative analysis

Answer 75

”Audiences are both a product of social context (which leads to shared values, understandings and information needs) and a response to a particular pattern of media provision. Often they are both at the same time, as when a medium sets out to appeal to the members of a social category or the residents of a certain place. Media use also reflects broader patterns of time use, availability, lifestyle and everyday routines.” (McQuail, 2005, 396)

Answer 76

* Place * People * Type of medium or channel * Content * Time, * Etc.

Answer 77

In the communication sciences, there is some consensus… →"audience" should refer to the complex totality of receivers - listeners, readers, viewers and television viewers - who (physically or virtually) can be amalgamated on the basis of their shared consumption of a (wide range of) media messages →in a particular context of time and space Loisen & Joye (2017)

Answer 78

With Digitalization, social media and the growing interactivity of media consumption → We assist to a fragmentation of the public that become a network of individual actors → With greater focus on the active receiver as both a consumer and producer Gaines (2013): audience as a dynamic and constantly developing concept that cannot be viewed in isolation from changes in the field of media and communication technology: '[t]he changing nature of the media alters the conditions for reception of media messages' Loisen & Joye (2017, 422)

Answer 79

The view of the audience can be diametrically opposed to each other depending on how much power an author attributes to the media and whether the audience is seen as active or passive. ➢ Media effects paradigm (dominant paradigm) ➢ Culturalists approach (Critical paradigms)

Answer 80

Audience research = different approaches for analyzing the role of the public in interpreting or allocating meaning to messages disseminated via the media. Audience research has different goals: Media-centred goals: ➢ Measuring actual and potential reach for purposes of book-keeping and advertising (sales and ratings) ➢ Managing audience choice behaviour ➢ Looking for new audience market opportunities ➢ Product testing and improving effectiveness Audience-centred goals: ➢ Meeting responsibilities to serve an audience ➢ Evaluating audience motives for choice and use ➢ Uncovering audience interpretations of meaning ➢ Exploring the context of media use

Answer 81

Methodology key points: ▪ 47 countries, 4 regions (Europe, Americas, Asia-Pacific, Africa) ▪ Approximately 2,000 people in each country ▪ Research was conducted by YouGov using an online questionnaire at the end of January/beginning of February 2024 ▪ Nationally representative quotas for age, gender, and region in every market. ▪ Education quotas were also set in all markets except Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Peru, and Thailand. ▪ Political quotas based on vote choice in the most recent national election in around a third of the, markets including the United States, Australia, and much of Western Europe.

Answer 82

‘…in many of the countries covered in our survey we find the news media increasingly challenged by rising mis and disinformation, low trust, attacks by politicians, and an uncertain business environment.’ ▪ Decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks, in many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States ▪ News use across online platforms = 10% of respondents (2% a decade ago) : YouTube (31%) WhatsApp (21%), TikTok (13%), X (10%). ▪ Video is becoming a more important source of online news, especially for younger groups : short news videos are viewed by 66%, longer formats by 51% ; and the main locus of news video consumption is online platforms (72%) rather than publisher websites (22%) ▪ Platforms, including social media, search, or aggregators are still the main gateway to online news. Only 22% identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news (down 10 percentage points on 2018) ▪ Information sources: an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok. But in social networks like Facebook and X, traditional news brands and journalists still tend to play a prominent role ▪ What is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to online news: 59% saying they are concerned ; 81% in South Africa and the 72% United States (elections this year in these countries) ▪ Trust in the news: 40% (four points lower overall than it was at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic ; Finland = the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), 23% for Greece and Hungary (the lowest levels) → political and business influence over the media. ▪ News subscription: 17% saying they paid for any online news in the last year, across a basket of 20 richer countries ; North European countries such as Norway (40%) and Sweden (31%) have the highest proportion of those paying ; Japan (9%) and the United Kingdom (8%) amongst the lowest. ▪ News podcasting: → attracting younger, well-educated audiences but is a minority activity overall. 20 richer countries: 35% access a podcast monthly; 13% accessing a show relating to news and current affairs… Many of the most popular podcasts are now filmed and distributed via video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok

Answer 83

Toff, B. (2023). Selective Trust in News in the Comparative Context. Global Media Journal - German Edition ▪ He argues for an approach to the study of trust in news that focuses not only on average levels of trust but variation when it comes to the different sources of news in a given media market ▪ Drawing on large-scale survey data collected by the Reuters Institute in 2021 (approximately 93,000 respondents in 46 media markets) → three quarters of audiences are, in fact, selectively trusting toward some news outlets and distrusting toward others. → this “selective trust in news” occurs systematically in some markets more so than others. → While trust in news in general is positively correlated with rates of press freedom, brand-level trust is not, and some of the most highly trusted brands are in places with low press freedom.

Answer 84

❑ Audience in Media and communication Sciences Consensus: should refer to the complex totality of receivers - listeners, readers, viewers and television viewers - who (physically or virtually) can be amalgamated based on their shared consumption of a (wide range of) media messages, in a particular context of time and space → Digitalization, social media and the growing interactivity of media consumption: fragmentation of the public that become a network of individual actors ; active receiver as both a consumer and producer. ❑ Audience studies goals → Media-centred: book-keeping and advertising (sales and ratings), to manage audience choice behaviour, for new audience market opportunities, for product testing and improving effectiveness, etc. → Audience-centred goals: meeting responsibilities to serve an audience, to evaluate audience motives for choice and use, to explore the context of media use, to uncover audience interpretations of meaning, etc.

Media & Communication Science Flashcards

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