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Introduction to Communication Science (ICS) Notes
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Notes about all content for the Introduction to Communication Science course at UvA.
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Introduction to Communication ScienceBeliefs
Cultivation Theory
Behavior
Social Learning Theory:
The Symbolic Environment
Media Ecology:
Uses and Gratifications
Elaboration Likelihood Model
VOCAB & DEFINITIONS
BLOCK 2
News and Media
Agenda-Setting Theory
News Framing
Public Opinion
Cultural Studies
Forming Interpersonal Relationships
The Future of Communication
Literature Questions (Block 2)
Introduction to Communication Science
● Communication: relational process of creating and interpreting messages that elicit a
response
○ Messages
○ Creation of messages
○ Response to a message
■ response is different from an interpretation (consequence of interpretation
is e.g. change in attitude)
○ Relational process:
■ Process:
● Communication can only be described with reference to what went
before and what is yet to come
■ Relational (about relationships)
● Communication always affects the nature of the
connection/relationship among the people engaging in the
communication
,● Communication science is research on the sender (production, distribution), message, and
receiver (use, interpretation, effects)
● Media being used as message (historically):
○ Introduction of printing press in 15th-20th century sparked mass communication
○ Communication in media developed drastically beginning in the 1st half 20th
century with intro of film tv and radio, and then video games, computer/internet,
and mobile media
■ example: war of the worlds radio broadcast, ppl thought it was real
● But the newspapers blew up the mass hysteria much more
● Powerful media:
○ Reaches everyone
○ Audience is defenseless and passive
○ Strong effects (notably bad)
○ Uniform effects - everyone is affected by it the same way
● Theory = a set of systematic, informed hunches about the way things work
○ Systematic: specifies and explains relationships between concepts
○ Informed: takes evidence into account and rules out alternative explanations
○ Leads to testable predictions
○ Necessary to grasp ‘the world’
○ Can be seen like a net that grasps ‘the world’ (though it’s naive to think that
theories can snag everything humans think say or do)
■ Also some ethical issues with determinism?
○ Can be used like a lens:
■ Influence how we see certain things and emphasize certain aspects
○ Can be used like a map: to guide us, show how things work and how they’re
related
● 2 main perspectives:
○ Objective - similar to empirical-analytical approach
■ Seeks one objective truth
■ Focuses on causes and effects
■ Testable theories + empirical evidence
■ Behavior is determined by predictors
○ Interpretive
■ Looks into meaning of text and language (within a certain context)
■ Not one objective truth, e.g. media effects are more subjective
■ Record and organize behavior
■ Free choice of behavior in response to something
○ Theories are often not purely objective/interpretive
○ Neither perspective is more important or scientific than another (they’re
complimentary)
,––––––––––––––––––––––––––Effects of Media on:–––––––––––––––––––––––
Beliefs
Cultivation Theory
● Developed by George Gerbner in 50s-60s, when TV was growing in popularity
○ Saw TV as a “centralized system of storytelling”
○ Where TV serves an acculturation and shared socialization role
○ Based on two assumptions:
■ 1) overall pattern of media shows us a certain reality
■ 2) this changes our view of the world
● Theory that our worldview/perceptions of social reality are shaped by the media
(specifically TV) that we consume
● Cultivation Research stems from three prongs:
● 1) Institutional Process Analysis: why do media companies produce the messages they
do? (institutional process analysis)
● 2) Message System Analysis (content analysis): using quantitative content analysis to
know exactly what messages TV is transmitting and how much
○ Aim: to identify patterns in tv content
○ 1 week every year, they would take a sample of TV-drama in the US and noted
any patterns
○ Gerbner mainly focused on dramatic violence (expression of physical force
compelling action against one’s will on pain of being hurt…)
○ Often misrepresentation of reality (e.g. on TV, women are victims more often than
men which is inaccurate to the real world)
○ “Gerbner’s analysis of the world of television recorded that 50 percent of the characters are white, middle-class males, and women are outnumbered by men 3 to 1. Although one-third of our society is made up of children and teenagers, they appear
as only 10 percent of the characters on primetime shows. Two-thirds of the United States labor force have blue-collar or service jobs, yet that group constitutes a mere 10 percent of the players on television. African Americans and Hispanics are
only occasional figures, but seniors are by far the most excluded minority group. Less than 3 percent of all dramatic roles are filled by actors over the age of 65. If insurance companies kept actuarial tables on the life expectancy of television
characters, they’d discover that the chance of a poor, black grandma’s avoiding harm for the entire hour is almost nil. In sum, Gerbner’s content analyses reveal that people on the margins of American society are put in symbolic double jeopardy.
Their existence is understated, but at the same time their vulnerability to violence is overplayed. When written into the script, they are often made visible in order to be victims. Not surprisingly, these are the very people who exhibit the most fear of
violence when they turn off the TV.”
● 3) Cultivation Analysis: how TV’s content affects the viewers
○ “Research designed to find support for the notion that those who spend more time
watching TV are more likely to see the “real world” through TV’s lens.”
○ Possible explanations:
■ accessibility principle
● When ppl make judgments about the world, they’ll use information
that is most accessible to them - i.e. TV for those who watch it a
lot
■ Priming: all sorts of concepts in our memory are interconnected
● If we use a concept, the associated concepts are activated
, ● Activation recency hypothesis: Recent experiences make
concepts in our memory more accessible
● Activation frequency hypothesis: the more often the category is
activated, the more likely it is to be accessible
○ Leads to ‘chronic accessibility’ of information
● Strength of priming effect is dependent on:
○ Duration and frequency of prime
○ Strength (intensity) of prime
● Usually short term and unconscious effects, unless activation
frequency hypothesis occurs, making it long term/chronically
accessible
○ Mainstreaming: “process by which heavy TV viewers, who may initially be very
different, eventually develop a common outlook through constant exposure to the
same images and labels”
■ In broadcasting one thing to such a wide range of people, TV
homogenizes its audience
■ TV is a shared form of socialization
○ Resonance: viewers whose real-life environment is like the world of TV (or who
thought it was) are especially susceptible to cultivation
■ Determines how strong the cultivation effect is
○ Gerbner doesn’t like the use of experiments to research cultivation analysis
because he believed it couldn’t encapsulate the changes that occur over a long
period of time as a result of cultivation theory
● Cultivation differential: the difference in the percentage of people believing the “TV
reality” within groups of light and heavy TV viewers
● Two kinds of effects:
○ First-order effects: estimation of probability of something occurring is skewed
(e.g. most planes crash bc we only see plane crashes in the news)
○ Second-order effects: the beliefs one holds about the way people are, the world
works, etc. are altered
■ “Mean world” belief
■ Or due to a lot of fiction having a “good defeats bad” plotline, a “just
world” belief is cultivated
● Critique:
○ Difficult to establish causality
■ Relationship could very well be correlational
■ Bc e.g. it’s hard to find people who have never watched television so there
can’t be a ‘before and after’
○ Longitudinal studies can be used to determine cause and effect (if participant has
never watched tv before), but this takes a lot of time and therefore not many exist
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