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Communication and mass media
Evolutionary stages in communication: Have been primary appeared on the progress in speaking and writing. Not much is known about the precise origin of speech and language but scientists assumed that communication among prehistoric period resembled animal communication (basic information for example danger, food, water). The information was exchanged first through senses, through gestures, postures, facial expressions and meaning codes. Oral culture began gradually when basic sounds evolved into meaningful words somewhere between 60.000 and 100.000 years ago. The arrival of writing (400 b.C.) marked the possibility by which information and oral tradition could now be stored and passed on to the future generations without having to rely on human memory. However, from its very beginning reading and writing were accessible only to a church-educated elite. Particularly in MIDDLE AGES, scribes acted as gatekeepers of tradition. It was GUTTEMBER PRINTING PRESS, with the first published around 1451\53, which permitted the spread of mass literacy. Thanks to developing techniques, the circulation of newspaper in the 17 th^ and 18 th^ rapidly increased and were addressed to a large number of literate readers working in the developing industrial cities born in Europe and America. In the 19 th^ the advent of telegraphy opened up a new era which freed communication from space and time. However, by the end of the 19 th^ the telegraph was gradually replaced by new technologies such as the telephone, fax machine… In modern times the arrival of the RADIO, the TV, and the INTERNET has compressed the whole planet into MCLUNAN’S NOTIONS’ GLOBAL VILLAGE.
Mass communication theories an outline The more influential theories of mass communication are the “HIPODERNIC NEEDLE”, the “TWO STEP COMMUNICATION”, the “FUNCTIONAL THEORY” and the “SPIRAL OF SILENCE THEORY”: THE HIPODERNIC NEEDLE
- Developed in the period between the two world wars in the US and it proposes an assimilation of mass communication to propaganda. According to this theory, mass media has a great power of persuasion that can determine the behavior of the individual who is considered as a blank sheet.
TWO STEP COMMUNICATION
- According to this theory, the communicative flow is constituted by two steps, one characterized by the transmission of the information through the use of the media and the other during which the social context and the opinion leaders (socialized in specific subjects and topics) filter the news and assume a fundamental role in the interpretation of messages by the receivers.
THE FUNCTIONAL
- According to this approach, the media assumes a social function both in relation to the individual (encourages social empathy, gives prestige to the persons to which it gives attention, is a possibility of socialization) and to society (gives information relatively to the community and the world, indicates relationships, creates consensus, produces and strengthens values on which society is based.
- Negative effects > a tendency toward conformism, increase anxiety, excessive information causing disorientation and confusion.
THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE THEORY
- Elaborated by Elizabeth Neumann sustains that human beings are induced to express opinions that they expose personal ideas that could not be accepted by the rest of the group. This generates conformism, largely accepted since the system of the media contributes to generate dominant and prevailing information in the social context. Public opinion would tend to conform to what is transmitted by the media. Different opinion rather than being expressed get lost in a spiral of silence.
MEDIA INFLUENCE ON THE SOCIAL CONTRUCTION OF REALITY
SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS
Whose concept was elaborated in 1961 an European psychologist Moscovic constitute a reference system through which it is possible to give meaning to events, to situations, to unexpected circumstances in the world they are the social product of a community, a form of knowledge socially shared, and they aim is to elaborate and generate a common reality. As a consequence, the means of mass communication appear as an element that assumes as an enormous value because they are responsible for sharing a lot of information that contribute to the discovery of numerous aspects of reality. Therefore, with the introduction of the mass media, reality is never given, but it is a continuous process that is created every day often reality is known only in the way in which the media presents it. MASS MEDIA FOR MASS COMMUNICATION Technologies employed in mass communication are not simply either electronic or digital tools but they are profoundly embedded in culture, its ideologies, discourses and meaning- making processes. In the everyday use of language and sings we combine several kinds of physical media in communicating and making meaning, for ex. We can talk or write about a movie, watch tv news, write email, listen to music, all at the same time. However, new communication technologies have enabled people to “communicate”, to speak to others far away, to hear messages, and to see images that would be unavailable without the so called MASS MEDIA. Such tools permit the spread of information rapidly from one broadcaster to an undifferentiated public, enabling mass communication. One main characteristic of mass
News reporting is a mode if rhetoric- an ideologically determined discourse with a dear potential to influence the media audience’s assumptions and beliefs about the way the world is and the way it ought to be.
Nonetheless, journalist claim for impartiality and maintain that news itself is presented objectively and without any bias.
However, over the years, thanks to CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (CDA), it has been shown that not only neutrality should not be expected in news media field, but that claimed impartiality and objectivity in these fields are illusory and unattainable.
As a matter of fact Van Dijk and Fowler claim that news is not a natural phenomenon emerging straight from reality but a product, whose linguistic features, on a pragmatic level, can acquire ideological meaning.
THE POPULAR PRESS AND THE H1N1 VIRUS
The H1N1 influential virus, as reported by the New York times in June 2009, emerged in Asia in pigs, then travelled to north America in a human and it very quickly crossed borders and oceans, spreading to different countries and continents. Despite the nickname, the swine flu, cannot be caught by eating well cooked pork product. Therefore, to indicate the virus the WHO advise to use the following nomenclature: AH1N1PDM09 or more simply H1N virus.
Its symptoms were similar to regular seasonal flu and only lab tests could confirm infection, but these tests were reserved only for patients with severe symptoms and facemasks, vaccination and frequent hand cleaning were highly recommended.
By midsummer, 2010 there was only a case of H1N1 infections and the WHO director- general declared an end to the epidemic global alert and that the virus has moved.
However, swine news caused alarm, danger and panic, especially because specialized press was to technical and difficult to understand so that PP represented the real and only source of information for common people.
The SUN for example use of direct speech catastrophe-oriented lexical choice, statistics and mystifying disinformation caused unjustified panic about the virus.
How the sun spread ad the swine flu: a linguistic analysis The sun is a daily popular newspaper published by news international in the UK and Ireland and a separate Scottish sun is published and printed in Glasgow. It seeks to create mood about special topics and it’s very nationalistic so its articles often try to find a link between the British way of life and the British pride. It is Europe second biggest newspaper and has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the UK.
This investigation is based on the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data drown from a corpus of 100 articles published by the sun through the years 2009 and 2010 exclusively concerning H1N1 virus.
AF permits us to analyze rhetorical strategies whose underlying values and beliefs are meant to shape readership’s opinions.
Appraisal framework theoretical tools The appraisal framework was developed between 1990 and 1995 by Jim Martin and his team based at the University of Sydney. It covers all evaluative use of language, whose two core concerns are:
- How speakers\writers indicate positive\negative attitude
- How they negotiate these and other types of positioning with actual or potential dialogic partners.
AF consequently deals with media commentary and journalistic voice, where it appears to be particularly useful to explore objectivity and subjectivity in journalistic discourses.
The system of appraisal framework includes 3 large interactive subsystems:
- Attitude
- Gradation
- Engagement
Popular press, quality press and specialized journals The press offers a variety of distinct genres which differs not only in content but also in presentation on the basis of readerships’ class and education
The main distinction is generally between QUALITY:
- Journalism
- The times
- The guardian
- The daily telegraph
- The independent
POPULAR
- Press or tabloids
- The daily mirror
- The daily express
- The daily star
- The sun
JUDGMENT: referred to meanings which serve to evaluate human behavior positively and negatively by reference to a set of institutionalized norms. It can be either explicit or implicit. APPRECIATION: relates to positive and negative assessment of material objects. It can be explicit because the words used straight forwardly communicate a positive or negative sense. Or it can be implicit so not easy to locate but the reader’s particular sets of belief and expectations will lead him to interpret and consider the writing as un-true, un-acceptable, un-attractive…
- Bednarck considers the EMOTER (who experiences the emotion), the EMOTION and the TRIGGER (the entity, situation or event that causes the emotion). He notes that analyze depends on the presence\absence of either the emoter, the trigger, or an overt expression of emotion.
GRADATION: graduation is concerned with values which act to provide grading or sealing, either in terms of interpersonal FORCE (which may be raised or lowered in terms of intensity) or in terms of the preciseness of FOCUS (which can be sharpened of blurred)
FOCUS: - blur> kind’v; sort’v
- Sharpen > true, literally
FORCE: the most updated key option list,
- Graders (adv,adj) : slightly, a bit, slight, severe
- Measure: small, narrow, light
- Color: a bloody awful day
- Metaphor: prices skyrocketed
- Evaluator: formidable opponent
ENGAGMENT: all utterance are dialogistic, speaker\writer engage in a dialogic to the extent that they respond to other speakers\writers or anticipate possible responses. Engagement allows us to explore text-type to uncover inter-subjective positioning and the rhetorical potential of texts, which can be expressed by means of various different resources including:
- Modals of probability: perhaps, it may, I think
- Reality phrase: it seems
- Attribution: scientists have found evidence…
- Proclamation: in fact, I’m about to conclude, it’s true we do have…
- Expectation: of course
- Counter-expectation: amazingly
COMMITMENT: can be expressed by either endorsed or disendorsed utterances
- In endorsement, the writer directly\indirectly supports or approves the statement, making it factual\reliable trustworthy and worthy or consideration. This is generally achieved by quoting verbs such as to claim and allege.
- Through disendorsment the writer distances himself from the content by indicating disagreement or hinting at its unreliability. It marks the utterance as unexpected or surprising and it can reach the point of absolute rejection or denial of the attributed proposition.
SELECTED EXAMPLES: AN IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION
In the sun, emotional responses are raised on writer’s EMOTIONAL COMMUNICATION. Journalists in fact often give personalized comment on the victim that are not relevant to the news but their meant to stir some passion: “p. 92 became a nightmare” or “p.95 is devastating” this is intentionally used to amplify the predictable distress of family and friends, while nightmare activate in the reader’s mind a semantic area of grief, danger and alert. The determiner is almost exclusively which stands for define but also for “known” “given” STEREOTYPED SCENARIO The ideological significance of such lexicalization comes to the fore when we realize to what extent these potential reoccur to build up a dramatic metaphorical context, which, in turn, conjure up to spread panic. Elements used to create this stereotyped scenario are:
- Nouns and modifiers belonged to the semantic area
- Numbers and statistics to evoke an apocalyptic catastrophe
- Verbs of emotion
- Verbs suggesting people’s moving towards an unescapable danger
- Adv. - Adj.
GRADIND INTENSITY
-The most obvious means for intensifying a quality is a pre-modifying intensifier (very, quite, more…). Assessments of degree of intensity can be activated over qualities (slightly interesting) over processes … They are used to convey the belief of a possible worsening of the whole situation
- numerals can be considered peculiar examples of intensifiers because they indicate very large quantities in this case
- verbs or nouns derives from verbs designating changes in numbers (double, rise, spread)
IMPLICIT ATTITUDINAL MEANING
As a consequence, the effectiveness of vaccine and their serious side effect the waste of public money and the accusation to laboratories of having exploited the virus for making money were topics that went viral. RHETORICAL POTENTIAL OF LANGUAGE STRATEGIES IN NEWS REPORTING The apparently unavoidably danger is presented in the sun in a number of distinctive ways which exploit the rhetorical potential of language:
- H1NI virus spread as a global epidemic with the attitudinal language fitting all the categories of alert…
- Individual cases with melodramatic connotations, even when the H1NI virus is not the verified real cause use of detailed, unnecessary information and particular reference to children’s cases.
- Some articles announce that being immune could not be automatic guarantee to everyone, due to the extremely high number of people affected by the virus.
- The issue is presented as a matter of health as an event whose collective implication appears to deeply affect the social ill of the nation.
- And people change their habits
- Apocalyptic scenarios
CONCLUDING REMARKS
This investigation suggests that the newspaper and in particular the sun, performed a very active role constructing and developing the swine scare.
Referring to the three main subtypes of journalistic argument genres, the sun might be well inscribed into the first one, given its effective function in orientating its readership’s opinions about event reported.
This sort of manipulation of the addressee’s emotions has been referred to as “emotion management”
MAIN SUBTYPES OF JOURNALISTIC ARGUMENT GENRES
- TEXT TYPE: media exposition, media challenge, media discussion
- FUNCTION: to persuade to\that, to question\to argue\to challenge, to survey\to canvass
