Social Uses of Media (Media Effect Matrix) Flashcards
Domains
cognitive, affective, and behavioral
Units
individuals, organizations, institutions, and culture
Time frame
- short vs. long term - temporary vs. permanent
Scope
universal vs. contingent
- Contingent media: will have an effect on only a segment of the population
- Ex) Advertisements for a weight loss pill will only effect those who want to reduce their weight.
Sources
content-dependent vs. content-irrelevant
criteria
intentional vs. unintentional outcomes (different (media) will have different kinds of effects on different people in different situations)
- Ex. Viewing a skinny model in a magazine may give a teenage girl an eating disorder, but a homeless man will be unaffected.
Valkenburg & Peter’s DSMM
Proposition 1:
- Dispositional: people have different personality dispositions that determine their susceptibility to media effects
Proposition 1:
- -Developmental: people are at different developmental stages
- Social
- Situational conditions
Prop. 2: Mediating mechanisms are cognitive, emotional, and physiological
Prop. 4: Reciprocal causal dynamics.
- The causal direction is bidirectional
- People incorporate and respond to media in a way that is a reflection of who/what they are.
- Replacing causal agency with that of the individuals.
‘Television’ by Neil Postman
- Presents the world in a nonlinear pattern which is different from the presentation of the Enlightenment era.
- Need a commercial break.
- Logical reasoning needs to be light.
- Expectation for entertainment.
- Destroys media that is text-based
*
The media is the message.
Hot media
appeals more directly to one sensory channel, doe snot require much audience involvement
Ex: film is ‘hot’ media, TV is ‘cold’
The medium theory.. never goes away: Television
Televsion (electronic media)
- Removing barriers
- Exposing ‘secrets’ (Ex. learning about sex early on)
- Fostering the expectancy of ‘seeing’, that most people have seen something
- Simulating proximity
The medium theory.. never goes away: ‘No Sense of Place’ by Joshua Megrowitz
TV medium/electronic medium breaks time-space barriers
The medium theory.. never goes away: “The Rise of Network Society” by Manuel Castells
- Society as a hierarchal structure made of interdependent parts
- Invidiuals are like ‘nodes’ on the network, highly interconnected
“The contemporary society may be describes as.. ‘replacing the antiquated metaphor of the machine with that of the network’”- Castells
‘Understanding Media’ by Marshall McLuhan
- The media is the message.
- Media shapes the way in which we present/receive messages and understand the outside world.
- Film is a ‘hot’ media, tv is a ‘cold’ media
- Media attributes as casual agents
The medium theory.. never goes away: Media Richness Theory (Robert2)
- Media varies in communicative capacity
And that media should allow us to:
- Ability to handle multiple informational cues simulatneously.
- Ability to facitate rapid feedback.
- Ability to establish a personal focus.
- Ability to utilize natural language.
Thus, face to face communication should be ideal because we utilize all 5 senses.
- It is instantaneous, reciprocal, and synchronizable
James Gibson’s affordance theory
- Affordance refers to the interaction between actor and her enivronment via perceptions
- “the affordance of anything refers to combo of properties of its surfaces taken with reference to an animal, implies complementarily of the animal & environment”
- “Combination of features of media technology & ability of using those features in a media context”
Gibson’s theory: Social affordances
- Potentials or possibilities for social interactions
- “greet-ability”
- “emotion-ability”
- “coordinate-ability”–> coordinate subsequent activity
Determinants of Affordance
- Affordance: a property of relationships determined by 3 sets of factors:
- Technological attributes of media
- Experiences/literacy of users
- Contexts (cultural norms/physical configuration)
Boase on Social Uses of Media (2008)
- Based in social affordance
- Central prop.: Individuals will use particular types of commun. media when there is a congruency between the opportunities that they provide and the characterstics of the ties with whom they are used to communicate.
- Central question: “To what extent does the use of each communication medium vary with personal network composition
- Methods: Asked the number of people in kinship ties, work-related, neighbors, and others.
-
Results: The greater degree of network tie density, the more frequently you engage in personal interaction.
- Email is not a preferred method.
Relational Uses of TV
- Communication facilitation
- Affiliation/Avoidance
- Social Learning
- Competence/dominance
Structural Uses of TV
- Environmental
- Regulative
Communication facilitation (Relational uses of TV)
experience illustration, common ground, conversational entrance, anxiety reduction, agenda for talk, value clarification
Affiliation/Avoidance (Relational Uses of TV)
physical and or verbal contact/neglect, family solidarity, family relaxant, conflict reduction, relational maintenance
Social learning (Relational Uses of TV)
decision-making, behavioral modeling, comon ground, conversational entrance, legitimation, info dissemination, substitute schooling
Competence/dominance (Relational Uses of TV)
role enactment, role enforcement, substitute role portrayal
Environmental (Structural Uses of TV)
background noise, companionship, entertainment
Regulative (Structural Uses of TV)
punctuation of time and activity, talk patterns, spatial markers
Social Uses of Media: What do we use media for?
- Choices and constraints
- Reasons or goals
- Satisfaction/gratification
Contraints Upon How much we use social media: The Geographics
- Most of the time we are moving around in small geographic area
- 93% average predictably in user mobility
Contraints Upon How much we use social media: The Demographics
Young people phenomen in use of social media
Summary (Social Uses of Media)
- Media vary in opportunities and possibilities.
- We are ‘anchored’ and confined’ geographically through social networks.
- We choose adn use
- We ‘integrate’ realizing ‘affordances’ of the media
- Social uses: in and for social networks, by and for social goals; sociality-centric
Elihu “Map” of Media Effects
- ‘Media effects’- some aspects of some medium may operate as causal input, responsible for some outcome
- Kinds of communication studies:
- Single unit
- General unit
- Economic & social structure of medium
- General technological nature of medium
- (elaborate on this)
*
Valkenburg & Peter: DSMM Study Design
- Media is a mediator between individual difference variables and outcomes of media use
- Cognitive: extent to which users invest cognitive effort to understand media content
- Emotional: reactions to media content
- Excitative: degree of physiological arousal in response to media
- Assumed media effects are most long lasting and evident when these ^ 3 things are high
- Hypothesis: media that is congruent with your predispositions is more likely to have an effect.
