Chapter 14: The Media Flashcards
Media Use
media industries = major businesses that own, or own interests in, radio and tv production and broadcasting; cell phone and other personal digital assistants; film, movie theatres, music companies; newspaper, magazine and book publishing; and internet services and content providers
= worldwide reach and influence
“In our current Canadian cultural context, democracy, consumption, and media have become inextricably linked.” (Kendall: 291)
Media Ownership and Control
Media Concentration = clustering of media industries with the goal of enhancing profitability
Concentration of ownership (eg. television + radio stations + film studios + publishing houses) influence over the news, the quality of information, and public opinion
Forms of Media Control
Concentration of ownership within one industry
Cross-media ownership = more than one type of media
Conglomerate ownership = includes non-media businesses
Vertical integration = media content + its distribution
Canadian Media Concentration Research Project
In 2015, the “big 5” television groups—Bell, Shaw (Corus), CBC, Rogers and Quebecor— collectively owned 217 TV services = over 86.2% of the total TV market by revenue
Bell is the largest communications and media conglomerate in Canada, single handedly accounting for 28% of all revenues.
Canada stands unique amongst countries in that telecoms operators own all the main television services, except the CBC.
Canada stands out relative to the rest of the world in terms of its extremely high levels ofdiagonalintegration between different “platform media” (e.g. mobile wireless, internet access, broadcast distribution) (essentially, telecoms operators), andverticalintegration between telecoms operators and TV (other media content). (Winseck, 2016)
Consequences of Media Concentration: Consequences related to consolidation of power
Higher subscription rates
Management of demand, competition, and prices across each of their platforms
Turning market power into gate-keeping power
Influencing public opinion
Collection, retention, and disclosure of personal information to commercial and government parties
prioritizes news for profit vs news for the public interest
Lowers the quality of journalism
diminishes international news
discourages public debate
biased perspective
racial, ethnic and gender stereotyping (Kendall, 299-300)
Violence and the Media
violence sells newspapers, tv
programs, movies, music, etc.
“…The poses and postures of advertising are often borrowed from pornography, as are many of the themes, such as bondage, sadomasochism, and the sexual exploitation of children…”
Long term impact of media concentration
Three Scenarios:
“Apartheid”
Cultural Imperialism - s the process and practice of promoting one culture over another. Often this occurs during colonization, where one nation overpowers another country, typically one that is economically disadvantaged and/or militarily weaker.
Global Village (Hedley 1999, cited in Ravelli 2005. - coined by Canadian-born Marshall McLuhan, popularized in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (1962) and Understanding Media (1964). It is a metaphoric shrinking of the world into a village through the use of telecommunications. Global village is also a term used to express the relation between economics and sociology throughout the world.
Functionalism
Functions of media: provides news and information facilitates public dialogue on social issues passes on culture to newcomers entertains confers celebrity status provides a forum for opinion
Dysfunctions of media:
undermines social stability and social institutions like the family by undermining face-to-face communication
Conflict Theory
capitalism is responsible for media concentration
controlled by power elites who exercise hegemony
confers legitimacy on the status quo
warns against implications of media concentration, eg. news for profit instead of for the public interest; stories are simplified; news is diminished in quality and depth; conservative views are promoted and critical views are silenced
Interactionism
1) hypodermic needle theory = viewers are inoculated with content
2) theory of limited effects = with information and motivation, people make up their own minds about media content
3) use and gratification theory = people make conscious decisions about what they will watch and they are aware of the limitations of media
4) social learning theory = viewers may follow role models, but there is no simple cause-effect relationship between media and behaviour
5) audience relations approach = people use their cultural understandings to interpret media content
Feminism
critical of how media contributes to power imbalances, the normalization of violence, the objectification of women, and stereotyping of various groups
media bias affects not only gender, but gender intersecting with class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, age, religion, etc.
Political Economy of media
2013 - in the US fewer than 10 US corporations controlled most of the publishing, recording, television, film and theme park business
Many factors lead to the development of big media
Limited market demands for the information and entertainment provided by the newspaper and the length of time it took to get the product to consumers
History of Media in canada
1919 - first broadcast license
1922 - radio
1995 - web
Media Ownership and Control
The development of satellites in the 1970s made it more possible for cable television through the development of sophisticated space satellites.
This interconnectedness made it possible for the development and contributed to the success of cable networks.
Media concentration
Refers to the tendency of the media industry to cluster together in groups with the goal of enhancing profitability
Media ownership is highly concentrated in canada - almost anywhere in the industrialized world.
Media Concentration definition Shirley Biagi (2012)
Media owned by peoples who’s interests is making money.
Profits in this sector are high in comparison to manufacturing
1) concentration of ownership when one industry - Toronto star
2)cross media ownership - Quebecour and Rogers
3)Conglomerate ownership - rogers and bell
4)Vertical integration - Shaw communications and Rogers
Synergy
Describe the process used in capitalizing on a product to make all the profit possible.
Ex. Corporation acquires the production studio and the television network, synergy is created.
Problems Associated with Convergence
Involve the amalgamation of businesses but also the strategies to streamline media systems
Strategies like asking journalists to report on several different stories each day as opposed to one well research story
Concerns over the quality of journalism
Convergence has reduced the message pluralism
Analyzed suggest Congergence problems
1) decline in journalism as a public service
2) constant pressure for all journalistic endorsers to be profitable
3)significant decrease in the quantity of international news available to Canadian audiences
4)the quashing of public debate on social issues
media Imperialism - dominates another countries culture
Framing
Refers to how news content and the accompanying visual images are linked together to creat certain audience perceptions and give specific impressions to viewers and readers
Media bias in the form of structural media bias refer to the areas of life not covered in the media and can distort how people view the world.
Potential Media Effects
Violence in Media
racial Ethnic Stereotyping
Gender stereotyping
Racial and Ethnic Sterotyping
1) Perpetuating images appear to be positive in nature and this flatttering to members of a specific racialized group
2) exaggerated physical attributes
3) creating Racialized characters who have undesirable attributes
4) Using statements and images to link to crime and drug dealing
5) underrepresenting people in relation to their % in the population
Cathartic Hypothesis
Viewers will feel aggressive too
This has been disproven it actually desensitized people to violence
Gender Stereotyping
1) intertwining of age and gender as it relates to women
2) traditional roles perpetuated
3) Impulsive conduct by women in professional roles
4) women in positions of power abusing their roles
5) women overwhelmed by their work
Interactionist Perspective: hypodermic Needle Theory
Passive individuals who injected with the message and directly affected by the message of people as people are by a drug.
Study of WWII soldiers shown movies of enemies designed to increase moral showed little change in the moral levels
Interactionist Perspective: Theory of limited Effcts
States that the media have a minimal effect on the attitudes and perceptions of individuals
Those who are informed the media has little effect on, those who are not the media has a ton of effect on
Interactionist Perspective: Gratification Theory
suggests that people are active audience about they will watch, listen to, read, and surf on the internet
This assumes that people are using different media sources
Social Learning Theory
Based on the idea that people will act out what they see on tv
Bandura (1977) many factors influence aggressive behaviour in children including their relationship with their parents, how much formal education their parents possessed, and the personality of the children
Interactionist Perspective: Audience Relations Approach
People use their own cultural understandings to interpret what they hear
Influenced by how much they know Abbott the suBject
Functionalist Perspective: functions
focus on the function and dysfunction media has on society
1) media provide news and information
2) facilitate public discourse
3) pass on cultural traditions
4) confer status on individuals - celebrity
5) emergence of social media
Functional Perspective: Dysfunction
misinformation like weapons of mass destruction that contributed to the war in Iraq
conflict Perspective: hegemony
The use of media and other cultural institutions to represent the interests, values, and understandings of the capitalist class and other powerful groups as natural and universal
Hegemony Theory
the view that the media are instruments of social control and are used by members of the ruling class to create "false consciousness" most view the ownership and economic control as determining what kinds of messages are disseminated around the globe built in bias of the media reflect dominant ideology
hegemony theory: media Manipulation
1) sponsors control broadcasting
2) information may be suppressed
3) a story may be attacked or reporting may not represent a balanced view
4) negative labels - stereotypes
5) stories may be framed to convey a particular connotation
Feminist Perspective
2nd wave feminsim focused on visual representation of women’s oppression
ex. normalization of violence against women
the gaze
presentation of women in the public and private sphere
today feminists looked at lived experienced and the role media has in shaping the life conditions and choices of people
