Communication Theory: Media & Society - Innovation Diffusion, Agenda Setting, Framing, Essays (university) of Mass Communication

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MCM 733:

Communication Theory

Chapters 10, 11, 12

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

CH 10: Media and Society

• Agenda Setting Theory:

• (^) Communicators don’t 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, gov’t and the citizenry reciprocally influence one another in areas of public policy

CH 10: Media and Society

• Elements of Agenda Setting Theory:

• (^) Mass comm has a huge effect on setting people’s priorities
• (^) Vividness of presentation
• (^) Position of a story
• (^) priming

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

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

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

Ch 11: Media and Culture Theories

• (^) Applications of Symbolic Interactionism
  • (^) People’s 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.”

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.

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

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 today’s society
• (^) Audience consciousness is cultivated by keying into basic assumptions about the “facts of life” and “common sense” rather than “high concept” ideas
• (^) TV’s 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 it’s stable contribution that matters (Ice Age Hypothesis)

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 : television’s contribution to the creation of a culture’s 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

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.

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