FAM2000F Flashcards
Reese 2001: ‘A Hierarchy of Influences”
1 Society
2 News organization
3 Individual journalist
(ways in which the individual journalists’ work is constrained)
Sociology of news production
Locates the individual journalist within a web of organizational and ideological constraints.
helps explain how news is constructed and what forces shape the media.
Lewin 1947 Gatekeeping.
“Overall process through which social reality is transmitted by the media” - the process of culling and crafting countless bits of information into the limited number of messages people receive each day.
Herman and Chomsky 1988 ‘Manufacturing consent’
The political economy of the mass media. FOUND:
- corporate control
- infotainment
- Over simplification
- Media imperialism
- Pro- government/ Power
Definition of bias
The elevation of certain viewpoints / angles over others in coverage of a story.
Misleading definitions, terminology, imbalances reporting, lack of content, selective omission.
Definition of objectivity
- separation of fact from fiction
- a balanced account of a debate
- recognition of proffessional norms
McCombs and Shaw 1972
The agenda-setting function of mass media
Asked voters what they considered to be the top issues in the 1968 campaign between Humphrey and Nixon. Compared data and found it matched media content.
Thus it showed a strong correlation between the media agenda and the public agenda.
“We judge as important what the media judges as important”
“Mass media have the ability to transfer the salience of items on their agendas to the public agenda”
Essentially: the media tells us what to think about
Definition of priming:
- second order agenda setting
(Content suggests to audiences that they ought to use specific issues as a benchmark for evaluating ) - essentially the consequences of agenda-setting
Example: Healthcare may not be seen as a issue relating to the presidential campaigns. A communication campaign can put it on the agenda (Agenda setting). And then …. MAKE IT A SALIENT issue by repeatedly reporting it (Priming)
Framing
The way an issue is characterized in the news can influence the way it is understood by audiences.
the term refers to modes of presentation
TANKARD: selection emphasis exclusion and elaboration.
AUDIENCE THEORIES:
1 ACTIVE
2PASSIVE
Active: audiences interact with the texts to create meaning
Prosumer (coined by Toffler 1980) = an active audience that modifies and participates online.
JOHN FISKE 1992: Audiences can create their own meaning which are often far removed from those intended by the source.
Passive- texts have an effect on the audience.
Stuart Hall 1973: Encoding and decoding - the gap between the producer and receiver
Greater power on the side of the sender (hegemonic)
Ordering and simplifying allows the producer to encode a preferred reading.
HABERMAS : Public sphere theory.
- news media as an important means of formulating opinion and exercising ‘communicative power’
- this opens up a role for an informed audience capable of transmitting influence (but in order to influence they have to be heard).
________________________________
News acts as a buffer against corporate power - worried that new media destroyed this by focusing too much on soft news.
also outlined the difference between a consumer and a citizen.
RECEPTION THEORY
texts encoded by the producer are then decoded by the audience and not always in the intended way. 3 WAYS of DECODING: 1 - dominant or preffered reading 2 - negotiated reading 3 - oppositional reading
decoding depends on the individual and their cultural knowledge and position in society.
USES AND GRATIFICATION THEORY
Katz Blumler and Gurewitch 1973
Audiences USE news for 1 inofrmed or educated 2 identify with the characters 3 simple entertainment 4 enhance social interactio 5 escapism
CIVIC JOURNALIM
Common goal is to recapture journalism as a truly democratic practice
- favor issues and events that are important to ordinary people.
- Newspapers and journalists are active participants in community life rather than detached spectators.
- focus on issues that are vital to the recievers (not sources)
- a deliberate move away from objectivity - biased towards citizens`
