This is a comprehensive and detailed note for Fam 1001f.
These notes covers the different approaches to media studies, such as the Frankfurt School and content analysis. They also summarise some of the main points from prescribed course .
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1: The Frankfurt school
Group of Marxist scholars: first to analyse media and see it as industries.
Analysed role of media in Europe and Germany (1930s), then in the USA (‘40s + ‘50s).
Saw the political dangers of the media in Nazi Germany.
Believed popular media is a ‘consciousness industry’: controlled the minds of the masses while
making money.
2: Effects research
Carried out extensively, but results are often contradictory because effects of media are difficult to
measure.
Conclusion: it’s impossible to measure media’s direct effects because it’s just one component of an
infinitely complex chain of factors (upbringing, social class, education etc).
Main focus: how does the media influence the way we think, feel, and behave?
3: Communication models
Significant field of media research: focuses on forms of media communication.
Semiology: analyses how communication works through signs + symbols.
Structuralism: shows how the ways in which stories are told (their formal structures) are part of their
meaning.
Harold Innis: argues that the means of mediating and transmitting information shaped history.
Marshall McLuhan: ‘the global village’: the globalisation of communication media has brought the
whole world closer together.
Walter Ong: Looked at how Western culture has changed from oral culture to written culture (‘the
medium is the message’: the medium is just as important as the content)
4: Content Analysis
Developed alongside effects research.
Provides a systematic way to make inferences about patterns of images, words, verbal data etc in
order to interpret their consequences.
Can be used to reveal cultural patterns + identify trends in the media, and identify where audiences
focus their attention.
Noam Chomsky (linguist + philosopher): does a content analysis to support his view that the US
media acted politically in the interests of the government by not reporting events that took place in
Indonesia.
5: Political Economy of the media
, Explains how the media are determined by economic, social and political factors, particularly the
ownership and control of the media.
Derived partially from Frankfurt school.
Focuses on how industrial mechanisms + imperatives surrounding production, distribution and
exhibition affect the kind of media created, the kinds of audiences reached, and the messages they
send.
Often used to show how mass media embodies capitalist ideologies.
American ‘cultural imperialism’: imperial domination of the world, partly through dissemination of
American cultural products. Argues that the globalisation of media results in the domination of
traditional cultures and the intrusion of Western culture + values like consumerism.
Rupert Murdoch: chairman + CEO of News Corporation: owns more and more media outlets.
Looks at political control on media: how limited is the media output?
More channels than ever, but the ownership shrinks at the same time: media homogenisation:
financial pressures + other forces lead all media products to become similar, standard + uniform.
Internet: allows different social groups to be heard. Access is wide and cheap.
The audience helps determine what gets produced, and can make their own meanings out of media.
They don’t necessarily have to be brainwashed by what they consume.
6: Structural organisation of the media
Structural organisation of the media affects the way they present info.
‘Agenda setting’: process by which the media producers set up the issues that they’ll focus on, and
that the audience will subsequently perceive to be important. Raises its public profile.
Different TV channels + newspapers watch what their rivals are doing and feel compelled to take up
similar stories and agendas so they don’t feel like they’re missing out on something.
Snowball effect: media give extensive coverage to sensational issues + events. Makes it seem that the
issue is of great importance since it’s getting so much attention.
‘Gatekeeping’: process of controlling what gets included and whose voices are heard (esp. in the
news)
Media often give more weight to the viewpoints of official institutions rather than alternative
viewpoints. The news is meant to be objective.
Many broadcasters reply on news-gathering organisations to supply the stories (to keep costs low).
Limited time + need to maintain popular ratings simplification + sensationalisation of events.
Audiences rarely receive a complex understanding of events with explanations that cover long-term
causes: focus is on what happened today and how the situation changed hourly (news bulleting will
have something more immediate).
Use of striking headlines + good pictures.
‘News value / newsworthiness’: elements of an issue / event that make it important enough to
report on in the eyes of journalists (eg: conflict, novelty, magnitude).
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