Download Snímek 1

Theory of media influences
L3
Ing. Jiří Šnajdar
2014
Marshall McLuhan is the most widely read literary
theorist and is best known for his claim "the medium
is the message".
McLuhan believed that we should observe not only
the media itself but 'the ways in which each new
medium disrupts tradition and reshapes social life' .
McLuhan believed that the social impact of the
media was that they became 'an extension of our
senses, and alter our social world‚.
In his book The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) he argued
that when new media technologies were introduced
into society, the balance of our senses were
reworked, highlighting some at the expense of
others.
For example, print intensified the visual and
separated it from our other senses; in particular
sound. "McLuhan even argued that print media
helped create a sensory environment that produced
Western capitalist societies - an environment that
was bureaucratic and organized around mass
production, an ideology of individualism, and a
commitment to the nation-state as the fundamental
social unit."
Medium theory has always been criticized by its
Technological determinism. Raymond Williams is
one of the most ardent critics of this concept.
He believe that technological determinism 'emerges'
from Technical study and experiments and then
changes the sector or society in which it emerged
from.
Which means that we adapt towards the new
technologies that arise because it is the new modern
way of doing it.
Although McLuhan strongly believes that the
introduction to any new media will change the way
we live, Williams argue that the new technology in
itself has no real significance to social value unless it
has been adapted to existing social and economic
conditions.
Mass communication is the study of how individuals
and entities relay information through mass media to
large segments of the population at the same time. It
is usually understood to relate to newspaper,
magazine, and book publishing, as well as radio,
television and film, as these mediums are used for
disseminating information, news and advertising.
Mass communication differs from the studies of other
forms of communication, such as interpersonal
communication or organizational communication, in
that it focuses on a single source transmitting
information to a large group of receivers.
The study of mass communication is chiefly
concerned with how the content of mass
communication persuades or otherwise affects the
behavior, attitude, opinion, or emotion of the person
or people receiving the information.
Mass communication is "the process by which a
person, group of people, or large organization
creates a message and transmits it through some
type of medium to a large, anonymous,
heterogenous audience."
Mass communication is regularly associated with
media influence or media effects, and media studies.
Mass communication is a branch of social science
that falls under the larger umbrella of communication
studies or communication.
The history of communication stretches from
prehistoric forms of art and writing through modern
communication methods such as the Internet.
Mass communication began when humans could
transmit messages from a single source to multiple
receivers.
The study of mass communication is often
associated with the practical applications of
journalism (Print media), television and radio
broadcasting, film, public relations, or advertising.
With the diversification of media options, the study of
communication has extended to include social media
and new media, which have stronger feedback
models than traditional media sources.
While the field of mass communication is continually
evolving, the following four fields are generally
considered the major areas of study within mass
communication.
Communication researchers study communication
through various methods that have been verified
through repetitive, cumulative processes.
Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been
used in the study of mass communication.
The main focus of mass communication research is
to learn how the content of mass communication
affects the attitudes, opinions, emotions, and
ultimately behaviors of the people who receive the
message.
The public is bribed with popular radio, television
and newspapers into an acceptance of the biased,
the misleading, and the status quo.
The media are not, according to this approach, crude
agents of propaganda. They organize public
understanding.
However, the overall interpretations they provide in
the long run are those most preferred by, and least
challenging to, those with economic power.
Theorists such as Louis Wirth and Talcott Parsons
have emphasized the importance of mass media as
instruments of social control.
In the 21st century, with the rise of the internet, the
two-way relationship between mass media and
public opinion is beginning to change, with the
advent of new technologies such as blogging.
It is this which led Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s to
say that "the medium is the message", and to
suggest that mass media are increasingly creating a
"global village".
For example, there is evidence that Western media
influence in Asia is the driving force behind rapid
social change.
Although a sizable portion of mass media offerings –
particularly news, commentaries, documentaries,
and other informational programmes – deal with
highly controversial subjects, the major portion of
mass media offerings are designed to serve an
entertainment function.
These programmes tend to avoid controversial
issues and reflect beliefs and values sanctified by
mass audience. This course is followed by
Television networks, whose investment and
production costs are high.
The relation of the mass media to contemporary
popular culture is commonly conceived in terms of
dissemination from the elite to the mass.
The concentration of ownership and media control
has led to accusations of a 'media elite' having a
form of 'cultural dictatorship'.
Thus the continuing debate about the influence of
'media barons' such as Conrad Black and Rupert
Murdoch.
Modern politics are increasingly shaped by the
dynamics of public communication. As a
consequence, the success of governments that
historically are interconnected to the State in
general, is to a large extent dependent on their
ability to communicate effectively to the broader
public. In significant are the EU Publicity and
Promotion Community Directives, which oblige the
national governments to increase their
communication with the Public/ the citizens.
The Media are now playing an active part in the
political field.
Political communication is perhaps the most
“encephalic combination of art and science”.
Countries all over the world are becoming the land
of the “politics overbuying” (Keriakakis, 2000). The
offspring of the latter is the notion of political
communication to be always current.
The study of political communication is a branch of
contemporary communication studies that began at
the turn of this century.
Although this notion is not an invention of the 20th
century and its origins can be traced back many
centuries e.g. Aristotle’s and Plato’s works in
ancient Greece, as a cross-disciplinary field of study
it began to emerge in the 1950s.
Traces of the evolution of political communication
and a greatest amount of scholarship can be found
in the all the areas of the world, America; Europe;
Britain and Germany, and Asia; China, Hong Kong,
Taiwan, Korea, Japan.
Political communication has emerged as a focal
point to scholars in political science,
communications, and allied social sciences.
The label political communication first appeared to
describe an intervening process by which political
institutions and citizens interact with each other and
political influences are mobilized and transmitted.
Over the past 30 years, there has been a
widespread sense among political communication
scholars and researchers, and so, have the
mounting evidence presented, that “political
communication is undergoing rapid, perhaps
profound changes in many countries of the world
and that the character of these changes might be
worrisome” (Swanson, 1999).
In general terms, many of the earliest contemporary
communication studies were generated by analyses
of propaganda / persuasive messages, mass media
effects on voting and public opinion of political and
social issues. (Lee Kaid, 2004)
Politics, as an ongoing conversation about social
issues, encompass a broad scope of political
communication and demonstrate the ubiquity of
political communication in contemporary life and in
non-electoral periods.
Internal and external political communication
channels are the nerves of government.
Political system can not function without effective
networks of such channels capable of transmitting
political messages.
Hence, there is much concern about political
communication such as an inactive and uninformed
public at the societal level, as most political action
and power relationships operate at that or other
systemic levels; the latter leads to the seeking of a
more properly functioning democracy.
Moreover, this new DNA of political communication,
clearly a product of the second half of the 20th
century, with television situated in the centre of
today’s politics, is the reason for many to support
that today’s “politics have entered a world, which
usurps cultural values, a world that changes its face
like a chameleon, which peculates miscellaneous
identities”. (Kathimerini Newspaper, 2000)
The objective of public communication is to transmit
messages targeting the public and enabling it to
have an overall view, while at the same time is able
to retain its distance from the general strategy and
the central messages being transmitted by
government so that to achieve its goals and policies.
This way allows the public to discover the
connection between the politics of the Ministries and
other public institutions or organizations and the
central politics of government; regardless it
impresses it as either positive or negative.
The public space includes the state and semi-state
owned institutions, whereas the private refers more,
to the economic and market oriented organizations.
Communication practices and technologies have
come to dominate media – government relations.
This systematic professional control of strategic
public communication applies to democracies on
both sides of the Atlantic. (Blumler & Kavanagh, 1999)
Media control is widely thought to be essential for
governing. Politicians and officials use publicity to
make news, to get the attention of other
policymakers, to set agendas, and to help persuade
others into action.
This link between governing and publicity in all
political institutions has news media as the facilitator
for enabling politicians to accomplish their policy
goals. (Cook, 1998)
Moreover, more sophisticated news management
operations that enable officials to retain control of
key political messages, restoring the media –
government balance in favor of government, arise.
So, there is more to the story of media –
government relations and the political content of
news media than simply that the media are
dependent upon official sources.
(Bennett & Livingston, 2003)
Political action is apprehensible and tangible
through the relationship among political institutions,
the public and the media.
The media constitute a societal carrier for managing
politically the public sphere.
They act politically within the framework of the
broader societal system, and today their
interposition in the polity’s operation with the
development and the constant evolvement of the
technology, is powerful.
A fundamental element of the centrality of the media
to today’s politics is the near-instantaneous delivery
of political events and issues by television and
Internet.
By any objective standard, the media are critically
important to government and politics.
Most significant is the extent to which politicians use
various methods to communicate with their
constituencies, which renders the media to a linkage
institution.
The media may be key elements, or objectively
important to government and politics since they
constitute a vast economic power.
This concentration of economic power is likely to be
accompanied by political power as well.
(Leighley, 2004)
Moreover, the media have a critical role in the
communication of the government with the public.
Thus, considering they might shape public opinion,
they have a share also in the shaping of the political
will.
The media have several responsibilities within a
democratic society. Among others are:
a) to inform and educate the public accurately and
completely and
b) to independently investigate claims made by
biased sources, most notably the government.