Media and comms science (Soalla)09.09.24

Question 1

Define Medium (or a media)

Answer 1

“…a tool, a technique, an intermediary - that enables people to express themselves and to
communicate to others…” (Balle, 2020)

Question 2

Define Communication

Answer 2

a connection between two communicating parties (communicators)

Question 3

Define Mass Communication

Answer 3

“The organized means of communicating openly, at a distance, and to many in a short space of time” (McQuail , 2005)

Question 4

Define Mass media

Answer 4

Media with “capacity to reach the entire population rapidly and with much the same information, opinions
and entertainment” (McQuail , 2005)

Question 5

Define Communication Sciences (Studies)

Answer 5

multi- and interdisciplinary sciences that study communications and media
processes and effects in society

Question 6

Define Journalism Studies

Answer 6

very young, derived from Communication Sciences and focused on journalism activities and their
impacts in social life

Question 7

The sign

Answer 7

“the smallest component of every act of communication”.

Question 8

Semiology: European origin

Answer 8

Linguistic dimension of the sign

Sign = Signifier (physical appearance) + signified (mental concept) + Referent (object itself, the actual smth)

–> Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) was a Swiss linguist and one of the founding figures of modern linguistics and semiology (the study of signs). In terms of semiology, Saussure is best known for his theory of the linguistic sign, which laid the groundwork for understanding how meaning is constructed through language.

Here are some key points about Saussure’s contribution to semiology:

–> Sign, Signifier, and Signified: Saussure introduced the concept of the linguistic sign, which consists of two parts:

–> Signifier: The form of the sign (e.g., a word, sound, or image).
–> Signified: The concept or meaning associated with the signifier. Saussure emphasized that the relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary; there is no inherent connection between the sound of a word and its meaning.

Question 9

Semiotic: American origin

Answer 9

Philosophical and psychological perspective

The American origin of semiotics is largely attributed to Charles Sanders Peirce

–> Peirce’s semiotic theory differs from Ferdinand de Saussure’s approach by being more complex and comprehensive, encompassing not just linguistic signs but all forms of communication and representation

Sign = Representamen (material form of sign) + interpretant (meaning of the sign) + object

–> His theory is based on the idea that a sign is anything that communicates meaning, and it consists of three interconnected components:

1) Representamen (Material Form of the Sign): This is the form that the sign takes; it is the tangible or perceivable part of the sign, such as a word, image, sound, or gesture. It’s the equivalent of Saussure’s “signifier.”

2) Interpretant – the CONCEPT that arises in the mind of the interpreter as a result of the sign. It’s the effect or the sense that the sign generates in the interpreter’s mind. Unlike Saussure’s “signified,” the interpretant is DYNAMIC and CAN EVOLVE based on context and interpretation.

3) Object: It is the actual thing or concept that the representamen stands for. Peirce further subdivides objects into:

– Immediate Object: The object as represented within the sign itself.
– Dynamical Object: The actual object in the external world to which the sign refers.

!!! The process of semiosis (signification) involves the interaction of these three elements, creating a continuous loop of interpretation

Question 10

Denotation (Обозначение)

Answer 10

the first degree of the intelligible → related the signifier

Question 11

Connotation

Answer 11

Meanings that require practical knowledge or cultural knowledge to be understood → related to conception of the
signified

Question 12

The Communication process

Answer 12

Sender, Encoder, Channel, Noise, Decoder, Receiver, Feedback

Question 13

Different forms of communication

Answer 13

Intrapersonal communication, Interpersonal communication, Mass communication, Non-verbal
communication

Question 14

McLuhan about communication process, and McQuail about 5 main elements in the society

Answer 14

McQuail: 4 main elements in the wider life of society:

These are:
1) certain communicative purposes, needs, or uses;

2)technologies for communicating publicly to many at a distance;

3) forms of social organization that provide the skills and frameworks for organizing production and distribution;

4) forms of regulation and control.

The relationship between communication technologies and societal needs is not fixed and varies with time and context. Some technologies meet pre-existing needs, like printing replacing hand-copying, while others, like film or radio, emerge before a clear demand exists. The adoption of these technologies depends on material factors and the social and cultural environment. A key condition for the development of media, especially print, has been a degree of freedom in thought, expression, and action, though this freedom was not necessary for the initial invention. For instance, printing techniques existed in China and Korea long before Gutenberg’s European invention.

–> There is no reason why
mass media need follow only one path in the future, always converging on the western model.

McLuhan: communication processes and new technological developments go hand in hand with social developments, and vice versa.

McLuhan (1962) : the invention of printing → The Gutenberg Galaxy → The printed press contributed to social trends such as individualisation, secularisation, democratisation, capitalism and nationalism.

❑ History of mass media:
▪ Newspaper = circulation peak (in Europe) in the mid-1980s (after The Thirty Glorious Years)

▪ Radio = the first medium capable of reaching the masses without the need to know how to read and write; peak in terms of social impact before and during the Second World War

▪ Television = the channel of preference for ‘commercials’ advertising in the consumer society ; still considered the main source of news and information for most people and the main channel of communication between politicians and citizens

Question 15

The Dominant paradigm

Answer 15

The dominant paradigm views society as a “good society” that is democratic, liberal, pluralistic, consensual, orderly, and well-informed. From this perspective, social inequality is not seen as problematic if conflicts are resolved through existing institutions.

The theoretical elements of the dominant paradigm were not invented for the case of the mass
media but were largely taken over from sociology, psychology and an applied version of
information science/transmission:

1) Functionalist framework for analyzing media. Lasswell (1948) identified the key functions of communication in society as essential tasks that maintain social integration, continuity, and order.

2) Behaviorism, with its focus on stimulus-response theory, provided a way to study the influence and effectiveness of mass media in changing attitudes and persuasion. This approach aligned well with the needs of the transmission model of communication.

Early communication research was shaped by the belief that the liberal, pluralist society was threatened by totalitarianism (e.g., communism), where media were used to suppress democracy. This awareness reinforced the values of the “western way of life,” with media seen as key supporters of these values.

Question 16

The Alternative/Critical paradigm (Concepts and models of mass communication)

Answer 16

The alternative / critical paradigm:

❑ The Frankfurt School:
→ Their critique was
both political and cultural.
→It was during the 1960s and 1970s that the alternative paradigm really took shape, under the influence of the ‘ideas of 1968’, combining anti-war and liberation movements.

Understood a culture industry as an industry that commodifies cultural products of third parties according to the laws of the market, with the following consequences (e.g., standardization, uniformization, etc.)

→ that serves market needs, but not consumers needs (doesn’t reflect social reality)
→ The first is a much more sophisticated notion of ideology in media content which has
allowed researchers to ‘decode’ the ideological messages of mass-mediated entertainment
and news
→Secondly, the economic and political character of mass media organizations and
structures nationally and internationally has been re-examined.

❑ The political economy of communication: → “the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of communication resources” (Mosco, 2009).

→ they critised Frankfurt school “Cultural industries“; preferred dialectical views and there are separate industries

❑ The cultural studies (Br and Am appr):
– interdisciplinary approach that includes history, literature, politics, etc.
– Examines how meaning is created in social structures acc to class, ethnicity, gender, ideology, nationality, etc.
–> critises the Frankfurt School: but doesn’t accept their definition of “mass culture” (too culturally elitist, and related to the industry)
–> BRitish approach = overtly political, left-wing views, and criticisms of popular culture as ‘capitalist’ mass culture.

Question 17

Main changes in mass media

Answer 17

The mass media have changed very much since 1990→convergence of all existing media forms in terms of their organization, distribution, reception and regulation, with technological industries → of ‘mediatization’ of the Internet and ‘Internetization’ of the mass media (Fortunati, 2005)

Main changes: Digitalization and convergence, Interactivity and network connectivity, Mobility and delocation, Adaptation of publication and audience roles, diverse new forms of media ‘gateway’, Fragmentation and blurring of the ‘media institution’.

Question 18

Define “the communicator”

Answer 18

The communicator: → Journalism → The concept of ‘gatekeeper’ : an individual who exercises control over the process of information selection, reworks the selected information into a media message, and then transmits that message through a particular medium (McQuail, 2010).

❑ Newspaper editors and journalists → examples of gatekeepers, but the term can also be applied to anyone who communicates and thinks (un)consciously about what they want to say or not say.

Question 19

Audience in Media and communication Sciences

Answer 19

Consensus: should refer to the complex totality of receivers - listeners, readers, viewers and television viewers - who (physically or virtually) can be amalgamated based on their shared consumption of a (wide range of) media messages, in a particular context of time and space.

→ Digitalization, social media and the growing interactivity of media consumption: fragmentation of the public that become a network of individual actors ; active receiver as both a consumer and producer.

Question 20

Content research - define and discuss objectives of this type + McQuail point of view

Answer 20

1) Content research
- The most used and most popular research method in social sciences, particularly in media and communication studies. The are many different approaches of content analysis.
Different objectives:
- Description and/or comparison of media messages
(contents)
- Have deeper insides into how the contents reflect social
or cultural norms,
- How they can distort social realities.

Why? (McQuail)
▪ Describing and comparing media output
▪ Comparing media with ‘social reality’ and media content as reflection of social and cultural
values and beliefs
▪ Audience analysis (message potential impact on audience → but difficult to establish the effective co-relation)
▪ The study of media biases
▪ Tackling questions of genre, textual and discourse analysis, narrative and other formats:
how the text ‘works’ to produce effects desired by authors and readers
▪ Rating and classification of content: e.g. for regulation or media responsibility (harm or
offence, violence, sexual, etc.)

Question 21

Media content research
Berelson (1952)

Answer 21

Content analysis is a “research technique for the objective, systematic and quantitative description of the manifest content of communication.”→Berelson focused on quantitative analysis

Question 22

Quantitative content study

Answer 22

‘The systematic and replicable examination of symbols of communication, which have been assigned numeric values according to valid measurement rules, and the analysis of relationships involving those values using statistical methods’ (Riffe, Lacy & Fico, 1998, p.20.)

➢ Mesurable manifest characterisctics of a message.
➢ Objective, systematic, with quantifiable data description
➢ High statistical character methods
➢ Subject, key words and actors frequencies or mean in a message
➢ Systematic, generalizable and replicable results (same measuring instruments and same coding
process = same results)
➢ Related to the dominant paradigm vison of information process

Question 23

Qualitative content study

Answer 23

Patton (2002) qualitative content analysis is “any qualitative data
reduction and sense-making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings.”

➢ Goes deeper, to search latent or underlying characteristics
➢ An interpretative description form of research that devotes much of its attention to representation
and ‘subtle underlying meanings, in a way usually ignored in [quantitative] content analysis’ (van Dijk,
1988,)
➢ Also analyses the relationship between the media text and the meaning(s) that the audience gives
to that text, according to the contextual and social factors (cultural studies) → then viewed as more
subjective
➢ Other qualitative content studies: Discourse analysis, film analysis, narrative analysis

Question 24

Quantitative + qualitative content study (both). Define main findings and adepts of this joint approach.

Answer 24

Altheide, Hijams, Krippendorff, Shoemaker & Reese interpret content analysis as a mixed
method.

→ Shoemaker & Reese (1996): “reducing large amounts of text to quantitative data … does not provide a complete picture of meaning and contextual codes, since texts may contain many other forms of emphasis besides sheer repetition.”

▪ You can combine these two methods, regarding the benefits of each one and the objectives of your research
▪ No approach is superior to another

Question 25

The Discourse analysis

Answer 25

Originated in linguistics

▪ Interested in the forms and modes of expression of media, political, public and organisational
messages in relation to social frameworks (the historical context, the media, the political party,
the government, the company, etc.).

▪ Based on linguistics, but emphasises the link between discourse and the social, between the
verbal and the institutional, between words, figures and arguments and those who express
and interpret them.

▪ Widely used in political science

▪ For example, you can explain the dominant discourse or use of language in relation to the
migration and refugee during the recent European election…

Question 26

The film and narrative analysis

Answer 26

Film and narrative analyses are often in the same research designs
Film analysis:
▪ First developed in the field of film studies.
▪ Unravel the meaning of images and sounds and of
a film or a programe through the study of both the technical/ cinematographic and the narative imagery
▪ Analyze the possible intentions of a director with regard to, for example, a particular type of lighting, sounds, camera angle, image size, editing technique, etc.

Narrative analysis:
▪ Based on the idea that significant meaning is contained in the way a story is structured and developed
▪ This requires researchers to reconstruct and interpret the narrative plot (storyline) piece by piece
To do this, the relevant film or television programme is divided into different segments, to assess how and why the main elements of the story line progress from segment to segment

Question 27

Define challenges of media content research

Answer 27

Heterogeneity of media content
▪ Media content is continuously changing
▪ Universal findings are difficult to formulate
▪ Results cannot be generalized easily
▪ Research topic, theoretical and methodological
a pproach determine scope and limitations of findings
▪ It is difficult to draw conclusions from media content to media effects (even though
one might think there are logic relations)!

Question 28

The cognitive dissonance theory of Leon Festinger (1957)

Answer 28

When people are facing new information or experiences, they classify them according to their pre- existing attitudes, perceptions and beliefs
➢ If the new information does not fit in with their pre-existing assumptions, dissonance may occur. ➢ To try to eliminate the dissonance, people modify attitudes, perceptions or behaviours, so that all
three are consistent.
e.g.: A smoker who understands that smoking can cause cancer will continue to smoke, telling himself that one or two cigarettes a day are not so harmful.

Question 29

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis or Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis

Answer 29

Language influences cognition and thought and can change a person’s view of the world.

➢ Two theories:
* Linguistic determinism: language use determines or defines thinking and perception.
* Linguistic relativism: language use can influence thought but does not define it.

➢ Critics: reduces culture and reflection to language, not transferable to all languages

Question 30

McQuail (2005): four models of mass communication

Answer 30

❑ A transmission model
➢ Communication as the process of transmitting a fixed quantity of information, i.e. the message as
determined by the sender or source
➢ Communication starts when a person responds selectively to his/her physical surroundings
➢ Both actors are communicator and
receiver (reciprocal model)

❑ A ritual model (e.g., James Carey)
➢ Communication is a process of maintaining culture

➢ Alternative view of communication as a ritual
➢ Based on act of representation of shared beliefs, emotions
and values
➢ Potential social integration effect
➢ Element of performance in the religious, artistic and
cultural fields

❑ A publicity model
➢ To catch and hold visual or aural attention
➢ one direct economic goal: to gain audience revenue (e.g.: paid
newspapers)
➢ and an indirect one to sell audience attention to advertisers
(e.g.: ads in television)
➢ “The media audience is more often a set of spectators rather
than participants or information receivers. The fact of attention often matters more than the quality of attention (which can rarely be adequately measured).” (McQuail, 2010)

❑ A reception model

▪ Communicators = encoders
➢ Encode messages for ideological or institutional purposes
➢ Manipulate language and media for their ends
➢ Encoding based on ‘meaning structure’ of mass media organization, usually conforming to
dominant powers, shared language systems and conventional media genres
▪ Receivers = decoders
➢ Can resist ideological influence by differential readings according to their perspective and
world view
➢ Able to read between the lines and reverse intended messages