MCM 733: Communication Theory

MCM 733: Communication Theory

Chapters 10, 11, 12

CH 10: Media and Society• Information/Innovation diffusion theory: explains how

innovations are introduced and adopted by various communities– First, awareness raising– Second, adopted by early adopters (people who adopt

techs early, without all the consumer info)– Third, opinion leaders adopt it based on early adopters

experiences– Fourth, opinion leaders spread it to their constituencies– Fifth, laggards adopt it– Change agents: those wo directly influence the adoption

process

CH 10: Media and Society

• Media System Dependency Theory:– The more people use media, the more they

become dependent on it and the more influence the media will have in their lifes

• Knowledge Gap Theory:– There are systematic gaps between better

informed and less-informed members of a population. This is a demonstration of the power of systems theory


• Agenda Setting Theory:– Communicators don’t tell people what to think,

rather they encourage them to prioritize their values.

– Priming: media draw attention to some aspects of political life at the expense of others

– Agenda Building: collective process in which media, gov’t and the citizenry reciprocally influence one another in areas of public policy


• Elements of Agenda Setting Theory:– Mass comm has a huge effect on setting people’s

priorities– Vividness of presentation– Position of a story– priming


• Framing Theory: the idea that people use sets of expectations to make sense of their social world and media contribute to those expectations

• Second-order agenda setting: media set the public’s agenda at a second level or order – the attribute level, where the first order was the object level.

• Frame: a specific set of expectations used to make sense of some aspect of the social world in a specific situation and time

CH 10: Media and Society• Spiral of Silence Theory: people holding views

contrary to dominant views are moved to keep them to themselves for fear of rejection

• Three factors that lead to Spiral of Silence:– Ubiquity: the media are virtually everywhere as

sources of information– Cumulation: the various news media tend to repeat

stories and perspectives across their different individual programs, or editions, across the different media themselves

– Consonance: the similarity of values held by newspeople influences the content they produce

CH 10: Media and Society• New Production Research: the study of how the

institutional routines of news production inevitably produce bias or distorted content– Personalized News: most news stories center around

people– Dramatized News: storylines dominate– Fragmented news: news is made up of a lot different

fragments– Normalized News: adding th threat of disaster to a

sense of normalcy– Objectivity rituals: rituals that ensure objectivity but

reinforce the status quo


• Media Intrusion Theory:– The idea that the media have taken over politics

to the extent that politics have become subverted.

• Social Capital– Membership in certain social groups confers

status and prestige to an individual

Ch 11: Media and Culture Theories

• Symbolic Interactionism: people give meaning to certain things and those meanings end up controlling them

• Social behaviourism: view of learning that focuses on the mental processes and the social environment in which learning takes place


• Applications of Symbolic Interactionism– People’s interpretation and perception of the

environment depend on communication– Communication is guided by and guides the concepts

of self, role, and situations. These concepts generate expectations in and of the environment

– Communication consists of complex interactions “involving action, interdependence, mutual influence, meaning, relationship, and situational factors.”


• Social Constructionism: individuals’ power to control or change their environment is limited

• Social construction of reality: we construct meaning together in an on-going fashion because people share a common sense of its reality

Ch 11: Media and Culture Theories• Some concepts for social interactionism and

constructionism:– Signals: artificial signs that produce predicable

responses– Signs: something represents something else

• Artificial signs: made by people• Natural signs: thunder, lightning, etc.

– Symbols: artificial signs for which there is less certainty of response

– Typifications: mental images that allow people to quickly classify objects and actions and then structure their own actions in response.

Ch 11: Media and Culture Theories• Framing and Frame Analysis

– Framing: people use expectations to make sense of everyday life

– Social cues: info in the environment that signals a shift or change of action

– Frame: a specific set of expectations used to make sense of a social situation at a given point in time

– Downshift and upshift: to move back and forth between more or less serious frames

– Hyper-ritualized representations: media content constructed to highlight only the most meaningful representations

– Primary reality: the real world in which people obey conventions and laws


• Cultivation Analysis: media cultivates a reality, that may be untrue, but becomes reality because people believe it to be so

• Violence Index: annual content analysis of a sample week of network television to measure amount of violence contained in it

Ch 11: Media and Culture Theories• Cultural Indicators Project: periodic examinations of

television programming and the conceptions of social reality cultivated by viewing– Television is different from all other forms of mass media– TV is the central cultural arm of today’s society– Audience consciousness is cultivated by keying into basic

assumptions about the “facts of life” and “common sense” rather than “high concept” ideas

– TV’s major cultural function is to stabilize social patterns, to cultivate resistance to change

– The observable, measurable independent contributions of television to the culture are relatively small. It is rather it’s stable contribution that matters (Ice Age Hypothesis)


• Products of Cultivation Analysis– Message systems analysis: detailed content analysis of TV

programming to assess recurring and consistent messaging

– Cultivation: television’s contribution to the creation of a culture’s frameworks or knowledge and underlying general concepts

– Mainstreaming: the process, especially for heavier viewers, by which TVs symbols monopolize and dominate other sources of info and ideas about the world

– Resonance: when viewers see things on TV that are congruent with their own everyday realities


• Mean World Index: a series of questions about the incidence of crime and violence, the answer to which can be used to differentiate heavy and light viewers

• The Three B’s of TV:– Television blurs traditional distinctions of people’s

views of their world– TV blends their realities into TV’s cultural mainstream– TV bends that mainstream to the institutional

interests of television and its sponsors

Ch 11: Media and Culture Theories• Commodification of Culture:

– When elements of everyday culture are selected for repackaging, only a very limited range is chosen and important elements are overlooked or consciously ignored

– The repackaging process involves dramatization of those elements of culture that have been selected

– The marketing of cultural commodities is undertaken in a way that maximizes the likelihood that they will intrude into and ultimately disrupt everyday life

– The elites who operate the cultural industries are generally ignorant of the consequences of their work.

– Disruption of everyday life takes many forms – some disruptions are obviously linked to consumption of deleterious content, other are subtle and take a long time.

Ch 11: Media and Culture Theories• Media Literacy Movement– An awareness of the impact of the media on the

individual and society– An understanding of the process of mass

communication– The development of strategies with which to analyse

and discuss media messages– An awareness of media content as a “text” that

provides insight into our contemporary culture and ourselves

– The cultivation of an enhanced enjoyment, understanding and appreciation of media content

Ch 12: The Future of Media Theory and Research

• The End of Mass Comm Theory and the Beginning of Media Theory– Web 2.0– iPhone/Blackberry– Virtual reality– Artificial intelligence– Cognitive neuroscience– Globalization

MCM 733: Communication Theory

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