INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION
STUDIES
Professor Jan Loisen
New Media and Society in Europe
2019-2020
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
,Table of contents
Introduction to communication studies – 1. Introduction ............................................................................... 5
o Introduction: ............................................................................................................................................. 5
o Why is it called a Mickey Mouse discipline?.............................................................................................. 5
o Multiplicity of Communication Studies: .................................................................................................... 6
o Open borders of the discipline................................................................................................................... 6
Introduction to communication studies: 2. Approach – Paradigm ................................................................... 7
o A bird’s eye view on communication studies:............................................................................................ 7
o Focus on mediated communication .......................................................................................................... 7
o Multidisciplinary:....................................................................................................................................... 7
o Importance societal and historical context (in which these different theories have been raised): ........... 8
o Scientific and critical approach ................................................................................................................. 8
Paradigmatic battles and theoretical diversity ................................................................................................ 9
o Paradigm ................................................................................................................................................... 9
o Paradigm shift ......................................................................................................................................... 10
o Mainstream paradigm (=dominant paradigm) in communication studies ............................................. 11
o Alternative critical paradigm in communication studies......................................................................... 14
o Theory ..................................................................................................................................................... 15
o Approach 1: ............................................................................................................................................. 16
o Approach 2: ............................................................................................................................................. 16
o Classifying paradigms and theories ........................................................................................................ 17
o Classifying theories: structure-agency .................................................................................................... 17
o Classifying theories: consensus-conflict .................................................................................................. 18
o Classifying theories: matter-mind ........................................................................................................... 18
o Structure.................................................................................................................................................. 19
o Central and recurring themes ................................................................................................................. 21
Introduction to communication studies: 3. Media history ............................................................................. 29
o Media history: A social history ................................................................................................................ 29
o Print ......................................................................................................................................................... 30
o Newspapers: origins ................................................................................................................................ 32
o Photography: origins ............................................................................................................................... 35
o Film: origins ............................................................................................................................................. 36
o Telecommunication / origins of the telegraph ........................................................................................ 38
o Telephony: origins and context ............................................................................................................... 39
o Registration of sound: origins and societal context ................................................................................ 39
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, o Radio: origins .......................................................................................................................................... 40
o Television: origins .................................................................................................................................... 41
o Digital communication ............................................................................................................................ 42
o Conclusions concise media history .......................................................................................................... 42
Introduction to communication studies: 4. Coming of age ............................................................................ 43
o Context mass communication research begin 20th century .................................................................... 43
o MASS communication ............................................................................................................................. 43
o Context mass society theory ................................................................................................................... 44
o Sociological inspirations .......................................................................................................................... 45
o Psychological inspirations ....................................................................................................................... 46
o Mass society theory ................................................................................................................................ 48
o Propaganda theory according to Lasswell .............................................................................................. 51
o Critical propaganda studies .................................................................................................................... 53
o Rise of a new paradigm........................................................................................................................... 55
o Institutionalization of communication studies (as a discipline) .............................................................. 56
o A ‘new’ discipline (dominant mainstream paradigm) ............................................................................. 57
o Simultaneously: development of alternative critical paradigm .............................................................. 57
o Administrative vs. critical research ......................................................................................................... 57
Introduction to communication studies – 5. The mainstream paradigm ........................................................ 58
o Growth of the mainstream paradigm ..................................................................................................... 58
o Functionalism and functionalist media theory ........................................................................................ 59
o Action oriented approaches .................................................................................................................... 62
o Congruence theory (source of inspiration: phycology) ............................................................................ 64
o The mainstream paradigm: main focused theories ................................................................................ 65
Introduction to communication studies – 6. Critical paradigm....................................................................... 73
o Alternative critical paradigm .................................................................................................................. 73
o Marxist origins (as a social scientific perspective) .................................................................................. 74
o Critical theory/ Frankfurter Schule .......................................................................................................... 77
o Political economy of communication ...................................................................................................... 83
o Semiotics and representation.................................................................................................................. 86
o Cultural studies ....................................................................................................................................... 90
o Post-approaches.................................................................................................................................... 100
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,Introduction to communication studies – 7. Medium theories .................................................................... 106
o New technology, new media, new theory? ........................................................................................... 106
o Research on new media and communication technologies .................................................................. 106
o Medium technology approaches ........................................................................................................... 107
o Toronto school: H. Innis......................................................................................................................... 108
o Toronto school: McLuhan – media are extensions of man .................................................................... 110
o Toronto school: McLuhan – the medium is the message ...................................................................... 111
o Toronto school: McLuhan – the medium is the massage ...................................................................... 112
o Toronto school: McLuhan – hot & cool media....................................................................................... 112
o Toronto school: McLuhan – social change ............................................................................................ 113
o Critiques medium focused theories ....................................................................................................... 114
o Wrap up: ............................................................................................................................................... 114
Introduction to communication studies – 8. Gatekeeping and media economics......................................... 115
o The gatekeeping concept ...................................................................................................................... 115
o Origins and development of the gatekeeping concept ......................................................................... 116
o News values and selection factors ........................................................................................................ 117
o Critiques on gatekeeping concept ......................................................................................................... 119
o Media economics – basic principles: use and exchange value .............................................................. 119
o Basic principles: two-sided market ( ..................................................................................................... 121
o Basic principles: semi-public/ semi-collective goods ............................................................................. 123
o Basic principles: risky business .............................................................................................................. 124
o Basic principles: media cost structure of many media products ........................................................... 125
o Basic principles: economies of scale and scope ..................................................................................... 125
o Responses and strategies: audience maximization ............................................................................... 126
o Responses and strategies: formatting, scarcity and control ................................................................. 127
o Responses and strategies: concentration and integration .................................................................... 127
o Responses and strategies: horizontal concentration/integration ......................................................... 128
o Responses and strategies: vertical concentration/integration ............................................................. 129
o Responses and strategies: diagonal concentration/integration ........................................................... 130
o Responses and strategies: internationalization .................................................................................... 131
o New media economy: Laws of Moore and Metcalfe ............................................................................. 132
o New media economy: power to the user (?) ......................................................................................... 132
o New media economy: the long tail........................................................................................................ 133
o New media economy: multi-sided markets ........................................................................................... 134
o New media economy: revolution or continuity? ................................................................................... 134
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,Introduction to communication studies – 9. Content .................................................................................. 135
o Content.................................................................................................................................................. 135
o Representation, images and media....................................................................................................... 135
o Importance of media images ................................................................................................................ 136
o Categorization or typing ....................................................................................................................... 136
o Stereotyping – stereotypes.................................................................................................................... 136
o Importance of media images: example of ‘gender’............................................................................... 138
o Framing (concept that you may encountered already a few times and especially in debates) ............ 138
o Genre ..................................................................................................................................................... 140
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,Introduction to communication studies – 1. Introduction
o Introduction:
- Communication studies= Mickey Mouse discipline?
• Cartoon of two fathers: son studies communication sciences -> there is no future
if your kids study this discipline (it is a terrible disgrace to the family)
• Cartoon of family: son is watching television all day
o Why is it called a Mickey Mouse discipline?
- Not considered to be a real science
- Trivial subject matter: it covers THE media, but what exactly is THE media?
- ‘Adopting’ or stealing insights from other (older) disciplines (like philosophy, sociology)
->
- Container discipline
- Lightweight: it is not that old compared to other disciplines such as philosophy and
sociology
- No future:
• Trivial
• Unattractive to employers
- A-historical
• Focus on the hype of the day (media changes rapidly) -> by extension
communication sciences is only a hype
• Medium or technology oriented
- General ignorance and misrepresentation (most people who say it is a Mickey Mouse
discipline often do not have a clue of what it is they are talking about)
- Increasingly pervasive in society and everyday life
• Mediatization (in our daily lives) (but also other sectors: politics where politicians
are present in media to attract a broader public)
- Media as the starting point for investigating societal questions and challenges (looking
into the links of media of campaigns, politics, …)
- Complexity and multiplicity:
• Material component (something almost tangible; media companies, people
working in the media, people physically putting on their television and opening the
door to media, economic dimension) (this can have an impact on intangible
component)
• Intangible component (ideas, narratives, messages, … that are being convened
via media)
- Multi- and interdisciplinary
- Dynamic and (self-) critical (new innovations)
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, - Historical reflex and future oriented (most communication studies and research very
much take into account the history of what they are studying)
- Ample job opportunities (often the idea that after having studies communication
studies, you have more difficulties at finding a job)
o Multiplicity of Communication Studies:
- A more historic and esthetical evolution of the Mouse
- Walt Disney: has been accused of being anti-Semite in the 1930s -> showed in the
cartoons that were shown
- Investigate Walt Disney company: how do they continue to make money?
- Representations: how are particular groups or individuals represented?
- Book: How to read Donald Duck -> Stories in cartoons are not unproblematic (they try
to convey a message)
- Influence people: the image of a mouse, can influence how people perceive certain
aspects in society
o Open borders of the discipline
- Diversity
- Fragmentation
• There are many sub-disciplines in communication studies (therefore not as
delineated as for example economy)
- Lack of integration of different subfields
• Not well-established old, firm, clear body of a discipline; it is much more diverse
and fragmented -> some argue that there is a lack of integration
- Weakness: very young scientific discipline (at the fringes of academia)
- Flexibility: looking at other disciplines -> opens spaces for creativity and
interdisciplinary (they look into other disciplines, but reason they do this is because it
lack a clear body of thought within discipline itself) and therefore it is ‘incontournable’
(it is here to stay, because of increasing mediatization of society!)
- Academically marginal?
• Because of the enormous scope and diversity within the discipline itself
- Humble/ Humbling: being confined to the fringes, makes discipline and scholars
humble and open to insights/ scholars from other disciplines
- Intellectual creativity, Dynamic and interdisciplinary
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,Introduction to communication studies: 2. Approach – Paradigm
o A bird’s eye view on communication studies:
- Institutionalization and development of the discipline
- Focus on mediated and mass communication
• Mediated: always intervention of a medium
• Mass communication (20th Century): message starts in one point and afterwards
send to many people in the audience (radio, film, television, etc.) -> 21st Century:
because of digitalization processes increasingly becoming one on one
relationships again (Facebook, Twitter, ...)
- General social sciences theories (that have inspired the media-focused theories) and
media-focused theories
- Authors, schools, theoretical traditions
- Research topics and questions (that have come to the fore in the 20th Century)
o Focus on mediated communication
- Proceed via technological medium (discussing mainly the 20th Century)
• Focus on mass communication also
- Want to understand increasing mediatization of society (which role media and different
technologies play in societal development)
- Not interpersonal face-to-face communication (always intervention of technological
medium; mediated communication)
- Look into television, newspapers, radio, devote interest for end 20th C -> new
technologies and increasing digitalization
o Multidisciplinary:
- Media communication takes place within a complex network of processes: historical,
social, political, psychological (when we talk about audience for example), cultural, ...
processes (media communication doesn’t take place in a vacuum; it is always one
element in a complex network or web of interrelated processes)
- This makes that we should look beyond borders of communication sciences and look
into other social sciences (Insights from economics, law, historical, social, psychology,
philosophy, anthropology…) (multidisciplinary) => look into different disciplines, but
always with a focus on ‘what does this mean for understanding the role of media in
society?
- Integration/ combination in communication studies (interdisciplinary; not always easy,
but combining insights from different disciplines will give us better understanding of
the role of media in society)
- Pros and cons
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,o Importance societal and historical context (in which these different theories have been
raised):
- Importance of context
• Placing concepts, theories, authors, traditions, … within their historical and
societal context
• Understanding underlying view on man and society of the authors that have
raised important theories in the discipline
§ Context of picture Vietnam: children running away from Napalm attack and
when the world saw the picture there was a lot of awareness among people
that this happened in Vietnam War => picture might have contributed to a
certain mentality shift among US citizens (what are we doing there, is this
war worth it?)
• Importance of Historical Perspectives on media and communication
o Scientific and critical approach
- Critical approach to media and communication
- By means of knowledge on scientific research
- Via use of (abstract) theories and concepts
- Examples
- Complexity of media and communication
- Impossible to investigate and/ or speak of media completely neutral/ value free
- No definitive answers (scholars look at same subject, but in different ways; importance
of contextualization)
- Make presuppositions explicit
- Critiques and self-criticism
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, Paradigmatic battles and theoretical diversity
o Paradigm
- Thomas S. Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions (1962) (focuses on exact
sciences)
• He investigated: ‘how does science develop?’ -> often there is this idea that
science develops step by step, increasing our knowledge of the world the whole
time, on the basis of contributions by different scientists
§ Kuhn questioned this idea: said that it is not a step by step natural evolution
of increasing knowledge of the world; argued for different kind of
development -> focusing on the exact sciences (physics and so on)
• +/ - university shared model of what needs to be investigated, which questions
are considered essential (meaning that other possible questions are not
considered to be essential or not considered at all), how to tackle these
questions methodologically, and how to interpret research results on the basis
of theoretical frameworks
ð More or less universally shared model by different scientists, different
scholars across the world; they can all be situated in the same or similar
paradigm
• Guiding worldview (of how scholars look at the world, what they think are
important question with regard to the field they are investigated, shared
understanding of which methodologies are the best to investigate this, sharing
of theoretical frameworks to base their investigations on and to interpret results
of their empirical research, …)
- Knowledge of the world is not accumulated step by step, but sciences develops on the
basis of ruptures (hence title of his work)
• Normal science (but then there will be a revolution, a new paradigm, a giant leap
forward in the development of e.g. physics)
-> puzzle-solving (doing research within a certain paradigm; this guiding
worldview, universally shared model with preference for certain questions,
methods, concepts and theoretical frameworks) (on certain point, this puzzle-
solving won’t work perfectly)
-> Paradigm -> Anomaly (sometimes these anomalies cannot be rectified; they
build and build and build, there is something fundamentally wrong with this
guiding world view, with the existing paradigm
-> Crisis (scientific development enters a phase of crisis)
-> Revolution (there is a competition between different paradigms and
eventually there is a winner: ‘new’ paradigm)
-> ‘new’ paradigm (based on insights in physics of e.g. Einstein) (then in exact
sciences, the old paradigm is largely left aside according to Kuhn) / (enter)
normal science (but on the basis of this new paradigm) / puzzle solving -> …
- Scientific revolutions – paradigm shift (one paradigm and then the other)
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