Week 1 Reading: Chapter 1
1) Object of study:
- Nothing outside of media anymore: all experiences are connected to media
- Sonia Livingstone (2011: 1472): “Everything is mediated - from childhood to war,
politics to sex, science to religion - and more so than ever before [...] Nothing
remains unmediated
- (mass)communication has always been constitutive of society, fundamental
to all human action
- Expanding media technologies have amplified and accelerated human
communication on an unprecedented scale
- “Mediation of everything”: media have permeated not only the world but
also the ways in which we have access to, act in, and make sense of that world
- The role of media has increased significantly in these recent years, making theorists
have to rethink and re-theorize the profound role media and mass communication
play in every day, in politics, and in the construction of reality itself
- The “double hermeneutics” typical of the field: media scholars interpret a reality
that has already been interpreted by the senders and receivers of media: both theory
and practice are changeable
- Fundamental assumptions in the study of media and mass communication (Lang,
2013):
- Media and mass communication are pervasive and ubiquitous
- Media and mass communication act upon (and are acted upon by) by people
and their social environment
- Media and mass communication change both the environment and the
person
- The primary goals and questions of media and mass communication
researchers are to: demonstrate the various elements
(production-content-reception), roles, influences, and effects of media and
mass communication, and, explain how they come about
- Mass communication: refers to messages transmitted to a large audience via one or
more media. Media are the means of transmission of such messages. Media theory
, considers how these messages mean different things to different people as
determined by the different channels used to communicate them.
- It is crucial to appreciate the role that the specific media play in bringing
about certain meanings and impact
- The term “mass communication” was coined and born into the context of the early
20th century: an age of mass migration into cities and across frontiers and also of
the struggle between forces of change and repression and of conflict
- The key features of mass communication since the 20th century:
- The capacity to reach a large swath so of the population rapidly
- The universal fascination they hold
- Their stimulation of hopes and fears in equal measure
- The presumed relation to sources of power in society
- The assumption of great impact and influence
- Mass self-communication: self-directed in the elaboration and sending of the
message, self-selected in the reception of the message, and self-defined in terms of
the formation of the communication space:
- The political realm becomes accessible to a variety of actors
- Culturally: the media is the main channel of cultural representation and
expression and the primary source of images of social reality and materials
for forming and maintaining social identity
- Media have become a playground/battleground
- There is no absolute line between what is private and what is public, and a key
observation about our current media environment must be that: “It used to take
effort to be public. Today, it often takes effort to be private”
2) Themes and Issues in Media and Mass Communication
- Time:
- Communication takes place in time and it matters when it occurs and how long it
takes
- Increased the speed at which a given volume of information can be transmitted
from point to point
- Stores information for recovery at a later point in historic time
- Places
- Communication is produced in a given location and reflects features of that context
- It serves to define a place for its inhabitant and to establish an identity
- Connect places, reduce distance
- A delocalizing effect/Establish a new global ‘place’
, - “Placeless place”
- Power
- Social relationships are structured and driven by power
- Communication serves as an invariable component and a frequent means of the
exercise of power
- Combat and enhance existing social inequalities
- Social reality
- We inhabit a ‘real’ world of material circumstances and events that can be known
- Media provides people with reports or reflections of this reality, with
varying degrees of accuracy
- The notion of ‘truth’: applied as a standard but blurred by fake news and
disinformation
- “Mediation of everything” as collapsing the boundaries of online and offline life,
between public and private communication, between mediated and non-mediated
lived experiences
- MIXED REALITY
- Meaning
- Most theories of mass media depend on some assumption being made about the
meaning of what they carry
- An endless potential for dispute and uncertainty
- Causation and determinisim
- Concern and ask for explanations that link observations or by directing inquiry to
determine whether one factor caused another
- Not only reflected on individuals but also on the society and history etc.
- Mediation
- Consider the media to provide occasions, links, channels, arenas, or platforms for
information and ideas to circulate
- Meanings are formed and circulated during such processes
- The process of mediation influences or changes the meaning received
- An increasing tendency for ‘reality’ to be adapted to the demands of media
presentation rather than vice versa
- Identity
- Refer to both an individual sense of wholeness and a shared sense of belonging to a
culture, society, place, or social grouping
- The mass media are associated with different aspects of self- and social-identity
formation, maintenance, and dissolution
, - Drive/reflect social changes and lead to either more or less integration
- Cultural difference
- How much the workings of mass communication and media institutions are
affected by differences in culture at the level of individual, subgroup, nation etc.
- Governance
- All the means by which the various media are regulated and controlled by laws,
rules, customs, and codes, and market management
- Relations with politics and the sate
- Political campaigns and propaganda
- Citizen participation and democracy
- Media role in relation to war and terrorism
- Influence on the making of foreign policy
- Serving or resisting sources of power
- Cultural issues
- Globalization of content and flow
- Promoting the quality of cultural life and cultural production
- Effects on cultural and social identity
- Social Concerns
- The definition of reality and mediation of social experience
- Links to aggression, crime, and violence
- Relation to social order and disorder
- Promotion of information and media-literate society
- The use and quality of leisure time
- Social and cultural inequality
- Normative questions
- Freedom of speech and expression
- Social and cultural inequality: class, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality
- Media norms, ethics, and professionalism
- Media accountability and social responsibility
- Economic concerns
- Degree of concentration
- Commercialization of content
- Privacy and surveillance capitalism
- Global imperialism and dependency
3) Manner of Treatment
4) Limitations of Coverage and Perspective
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