Week 5 Communication as Mass Media Flashcards
Why does voting matter?
- Allows for possibility of positive change
- Whether voter turnout is high or low, someone is still elected and they end up with the power to make decisions that affect us all
According to the last census, Millennials and Gen Z will comprise of _____ of all American voters in 2024
44%
What is journalism?
- American journalism is a cultural enterprise lodged inside a business enterprise
- Digital journalism is the networked production (by social media and newsroom, etc.), distribution, and consumption of news and information about public affairs
Functions of Journalism (Schudson)
- Information
- Investigation
- Analysis
- Social empathy
- Public forum
- Mobilization
Information
- The news media can provide fair and full information so citizens can make sound political choices
- Why is it important?
- What is happening?
- How to tell people about this?
Investigation
- The news media can investigate concentrated sources of power, particularly governmental power
- e.g. watergate
Analysis
- The news media can provide coherent frameworks of interpretation to help citizens comprehend a complex world
Social empathy
- Journalism can tell people about others in their society and their world so that they can come to appreciate the viewpoints and lives of other people, especially those less advantaged than themselves
- Show marginalized communities and highlight the overlooked
- e.g. hunger crises
Public forum
- Journalism can provide a forum for dialogue among citizens and serve as a common carrier of the perspectives of varied groups in society
- Creating publicity
- Curating experience
Mobilization
- The news media can serve as advocates for particular political programs and perspectives and mobilize people to act in support of those programs
- Activism
Limitations of journalism
- Gatekeeping
- Framing
- Agenda-setting
- Priming
Distortions in the flow of information and discussion
Journalism and politics
- Information: prevents authoritarianism and populism
- Watchdog function: control and discourage public officials
- Analysis: highlight background and underlying structures
- Social empathy: illustrates styles of life
- Public forum: facilitate conservation
- Mobilization: standpoint vs. bias
Accountability journalism
- Put reality first
- Follow the story
- Tension
Storytelling
- Offers identification
- Creates empathy
- Focuses on personality
News values and news sense
“The most opaque structures of meaning in modern society. All ‘true journalists’ are supposed to possess it: few can or are willing to identify and define it” (Stuart Hall)
Darnella Frazier
- Recorded video of George Floyd experiencing police brutality for 10 minutes and won a 2021 Pulitzer Prize for highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice
- “If it weren’t for my video, the world wouldn’t have known the truth. I own that. My video didn’t save George Floy, but it put his murderer away and off the streets”.
Black Witnessing
- Assumes an investigative editorial stance to advocate for African American civil rights
- Co-opts racialized online spaces to serve as its ad hoc distribution service
- Social media as empowering tool
- Relies on interlocking black public spheres
Bottom line of black witnessing
- Black witnessing challenges conventional ways of news report, yet also builds on media infrastructures
- Black activism, mobile technology, social change, changing media environment
- Social change affects media and vice versa
What activists want or feel
- A desire to revise news narratives
- A sense of responsibility to bear witness
- A belief that their reports could redress police brutality
- An abiding love or fond regards for their community
- A retrospective appreciation for predecessor activists
- An acknowledgement of personal risks they faced by engaging in activism
- An unresolved rage against racism and the ongoing lack of police accountability
- A desire to see the movement (and victims of fatal police shootings) redeemed in mainstream media
- A feeling or mourning of requiem for the victims
- A sense of regret, at times, for joining movement so visibly
- A sense of how their religion did (or did not) influence their decision to bear witness
Public opinion “refers to _______ and controls of ________ that the public exercises informally as well as formally during periodic elections” (Habermas)
functions of criticism; organized state authority
Public sphere mediates between what 2 things?
State and society
Public sphere is critical ideal of _______, _________, and __________ discussion
inclusive, rational, undistorted
The public sphere is condition for ______
democratic self government
How did the public sphere evolve?
- Feudal ruler: representative publicness
- 18th century: bourgeois elite displaces aristocracy and discusses the issue of common concern in coffee houses, newspapers, books, etc.
- Late 19th century and 20th century: demise of the critical public sphere and emergence of “manufactured publicity”
Who is excluded from criticism?
- Working class
- Women
- Ethnic and racial groups
- Intersectional identities
Challenge I: Refeudalism
Public communication shaped by political organizations and lobbies, performed in front of an audience instead of enacted
Challenge II: social exclusion
Dominated by white, affluent, male elites
“The main point of difference between Habermas and his ‘exclusion critics’ is whether the power structures that lead to social exclusion are ‘always there,’ unavoidable and ever-present, or whether Habermas contends, exclusion can be redressed through _________ in order to come closer to the ideal version of public debate”
- Wessler
self-transformation
Commercialism degrades journalism (Picard)
- Starting point: commercial media in the US are structurally flawed because they prioritize profits over public value
- Main idea: ownership determines news content
Effect of commercialism on degrading journalism
- Less information
- More distraction, manipulation, inequality
- Impoverished public sphere
Systematic market failure
- Clickbait
- Sponsored content
- Behavioral advertising
- Corporate surveillance
Monopoly power
- Meta and Google capture nearly all of digital advertising revenue
- Lack of regulation
Role of regulatory agencies
Market libertarianism, pro-industry agenda, corporate interest
VS
Regulation, public value, equitable access
What is the public sphere? (Habermas)
- A domain of our social life in which such a thing as public opinion can be formed
- Access is open in principle to all citizens
- Citizens can act as a public when they deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion; thus with the guarantee that they may assemble and unite freely, and express and publicize their opinions freely
- Larger public; means of dissemination and influence (media)
- Political public sphere: public discussions about objects that concern the state
Rise of Narrowcasting
- 1970s: 5-6 TV channels (7.6% had cable)
- 1980s: 34 TV channels (33% has cable)
- 1997: hundreds of TV channels (70% had cable)
- High choice media environment; narrowcasting
Consequences of narrowcasting
- Affective economics: appealing to loyal, passionate segment of the audience instead of mass audience
- Combined with political polarization = Fox news
Fox news’ marketing strategy
- Re-brand competition as elitist and biased
- Backlash against marketing that focused on “Slumpy’s” (socially liberal, urban-minded professionals)
- Anchors came from outside of journalism’s reputable sectors
Profile of Fox News
- Exploiting “affective polarization”: in-group vs out-group, tribalism, identity politics
- Positioned as “authentic”, “blue collar”, focused on “social continuity, tradition, and recovery of place-bound identity in a fast moving era”
- “each time, CNN and other news organizations excluded Fox News from the circle of “serious” news organizations, they unwittingly helped affirm Fox’s narrative about liberal bias and equally important, strengthened as a symbolic association that Murdoch found immensely desirable: the association between right-wing politics and working class taste”
Populist tradition
- “Thin ideology”
- Democracy
- Institutional corruption
- Popular will
Tabloid tradition
- Commercial entertainment
- Spectacle
- Aesthetics
- Titillation
- Melodrama
Populism meets tabloids
- Analytical: Subjective, personalizing vs authoritative, professional
- Presentational form: affective forms of communication
- Public sphere imaginary:
- Antagonistic, illiberal
- Fox news: exploits class differences based on taste and education, and partisanizes these differences
