Introduction to media studies

Early foci

• Mass communication– Journalism– Print– Radio/TV/Film– Propaganda/political communication– Information campaigns

More recent foci

• Ideology/Framing• Popular culture/cultural change• Advertising/consumerism• Identity/Disadvantaged groups• Meaning making

McQuail’s list of themes and issues

• Time• Place• Power• Social reality• Meaning• Causation and determinism• Mediation• Identity• Cultural difference

Let’s apply them to a few concerns of media studies

• Political communication– The Healthcare debate– The death of Ted Kennedy

• Gender communication– Pornography/Erotica– Treatment of female athletes on

television• Online video– Hulu– YouTube

McQuail’s ‘kinds of theory’

• Social scientific theory• Cultural theory• Normative theory• Operational theory• Everyday or common-sense theory

Alternative traditions

• Structural• Behavioural• Cultural

“Elements that produce distinctive configurations of application and significance in

the wider life of society”

• Certain communicative purposes, needs, or uses;• Technologies for communicating 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’

Media features

• Senses engaged• Industry structure• Audience characteristics• Uses and gratifications• Economics• Regulation

Terms of media debate

• Power of the new media• Social integration or disintegration

they might cause• Public enlightenment

Mass society

• Disintegration of social bonds as a result of industrialization– Working conditions• Factory structure

– Urbanization– Immigration

• Move from bonds of personal affiliation to bonds of legal responsibility

Mass society

• Alienation– End of ties to work, production of entire

article– Rootlessness– Anomie (normlessness)

‘Mass communication’Mass communication process Mass audience

Large-scale distribution and reception

Large numbers

One-directional flow Widely dispersed

Asymmetrical relation Non-interactive and anonymous

Impersonal and autonomous Heterogeneous

Calculative or market relationship

Not organized or self-acting

Standardized content An object of management or manipulation

Lasswell’s outline

Schramm’s basic communication model

Schramm’s conversation

Schramm’s model of mass communication

Schramm’s conditions of success

What position is privileged in Schramm’s analysis?

Hall’s Encoding/decoding model