Mass Media Analysis Essay Example For Students

Mass Media Analysis Essay ***Uses and Gratifications Theory History Early in communication research, an approach was developed to study the gratifications that attract and hold audiences to the kinds of media and the types of content that satisfy their social and psychological needs. Researchers Jay G. Blumer and Elihu Katz introduced the Uses and Gratification Theory not asking the question of What do media do to people? rather asking, â€Å"What do people do with media? The Uses and Gratification Theory A theory of Mass Communication that places the needs, motives and gratifications of media users in the center of interest and sees media users playing an active role in the media consumption process. It presents the use of media in terms of gratification of social and psychological needs of an individual. Categories of the Uses and Gratification Theory * Cognitive needs People use media for acquiring knowledge, information and understanding. The audience gains understanding of the world around by consuming media text. * Personal Integrative needs People use media to treasure their status, gain credibility and stabilize social condition. Often people identify a part of themselves in media characters or in presented circumstances. There must be value reinforcement or reassurance; self-understanding and reality exploration. * Social Integrative needs People create personal relationship with the characters in the media. It encompasses the need to socialize with other individuals. * Tension release needs Media allows the user to relieve the tension by offering an escape to reality and creating a break from daily routines and problems. Entertainment Consumed purely for entertainment purposes, there are no other gratifications. Assumptions Uses and gratifications theory attempts to explain the uses and functions of the media for individuals, groups, and society in general. There are three objectives in developing uses and gratifications theory: 1) To explain how individuals use mass communication to gratify their needs. â€Å"What do people do with the media†. 2) To discover underlying motives for individuals’ media use. 3) To identify the positive and the negative consequences of individual media use. At the core of uses and gratifications theory lies the assumption that audience members actively seek out the mass media to satisfy individual needs. Criticisms James Lull (2002) criticized the main assumption that people seek out media to satisfy a personal need, especially to entertain themselves. Lull suggested that audiences don’t always accept the content of the media and that not all media are meant to prove gratification or satisfy the need for entertainment. Audiences don’t always benefit from the use of the media and don’t take on in media assumption willingly and independently. Ien Ang criticized that the theory only tends to focus on individual needs and disregarding social content. ***Spiral of Silence Imagine you and some other people are sitting around at dinner talking about a movie you had just seen. You dont know these people all that well so youve just been listening to the conversation. You loved the movie, but they all keep talking about how much they hated it. You cant understand why, but dont want to express your views in front of all of them. Later you start talking to one of the other people at dinner and learn that they too liked the movie. History and Orientation Neumann (1974) introduced the â€Å"spiral of silence† as an attempt to explain in part how public opinion is formed. She wondered why the Germans supported wrong political positions that led to national defeat, humiliation and ruin in the 1930s-1940s. Core Assumptions and Statements The phrase spiral of silence actually refers to how people tend to remain silent when they feel that their views are in the minority. The model is based on three premises: 1) People have a quasi-statistical organ, a sixth-sense if you will, which allows them to know the prevailing public opinion, even without access to polls 2) People have a fear of isolation and know what behaviors will increase their likelihood of being socially isolated, and 3) People are reticent to express their minority views, primarily out of fear of being isolated. The closer a person believes the opinion held is similar to the prevailing public opinion, the more they are willing to openly disclose that opinion in public. Then, if public sentiment changes, the person will recognize that the opinion is less in favor and will be less willing to express that opinion publicly. As the perceived distance between public opinion and a persons personal opinion grows, the more unlikely the person is to express their opinion. Conceptual Model Scope and Application It is related to the mass media, in such a way that mass media influences public opinion. Shifts in public opinion occur commonly and therefore this theory is used to search an explanation for behavior (speak up or stay silent). The theory has also been criticized for ambiguity and methodological weakness, but the idea has persisted. Evidence of the spiral effect is usually small but significant. Example * The 1991 Gulf War the U. S. support for the war was measured. Either it is a consensus view or did media coverage contribute to a spiral of silence that dampened opposition to the war? In a survey that asked about people’s opinions, respondents were clearly less supportive of the war than the popular support depicted by the media. Those who watched television and perceived that the public supported the war, were more likely to support the war themselves. This study supports the spiral of silence and suggests that people are swayed by bandwagon effects rather than fearing social isolation. * Adolf Hitler is known for his skillful speeches, but his propaganda also helped the party get a large amount of support from the citizens. There is a clip of footage of an example of the Nazi propaganda from 1939, which shows German military maneuvers of tanks, troops, and combat planes. It suggests that the Nazi party is superior to other countries and displays their great source of power. It says that their combat planes can even fly under bad weather conditions. It also describes that people are watching the sky with some fear, but at the same time they are smiling for hope and faith. The film is made with brave music and emphasizes the Nazi’s military strength. Also, it shows German tanks moving in to attack the Soviet Union. Nazis used not only films, but also other media such as newspapers, radio and magazines. The magazine â€Å"Signal† was a magazine which was published by the Nazi party from 1940 to 1945. It published about 2,500, 000 copies and was about German’s with a modern blend of articles and pictures about stories from the battlefield. cloning and stem cell research EssayWells’ â€Å"War of the Worlds† on October 30, 1938. On Halloween Eve, radio programming was interrupted with a news bulletin and the listeners heard that Martians had begun an invasion in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. About one million of the 12 million who heard it actually believed that a Martian invasion was at hand. Hysteria filled the streets, interrupting religious services, causing traffic jams, and clogging communication systems. People stormed groceries and started panic buying. This broadcast was the best example of how the theory worked. It showed how the media can manipulate a gullible and passive public. ***Interdependence Theory Interdependence implies that mass media and society are continually interacting and influencing each other. The media respond to the demand from society for information and entertainment and, at the same time, stimulate innovation and contribute to a changing social-cultural climate, which sets off new demands for communication. The French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, writing about 1900, envisaged a constant interviewing of influences. Technological developments made newspapers possible, newspapers promote the formation of broader publics, and they, by broadening the loyalties of their members, create an extensive network of overlapping and shifting groupings’ (Clark, 1969). Today, the various influences are so bound together that neither mass communication nor modern society is conceivable without the other, and each s a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition for the other. From this point of view we have to conclude that the media may equally be considered to mould or to mirror society and social changes. ***Cultivation Analysis Television shapes concepts of social reality. * Cultivation theory (sometimes referred to as the cultivation hypothesis or cultivation analysis) was an approach developed by Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pe nnsylvania. It is derived from several large-scale projects concerned with the effects of television programming (particularly violent programming) on the attitudes and behaviors of the American public (Miller, 2005, p. 281) * This theory was developed to study whether and how watching television may influence viewers ideas of what the everyday world is like. * Cultivation theorists argue that television has long-term effects which are small, gradual, indirect but cumulative and significant. Core Assumptions ; Statements Cultivation theory suggests that television is responsible for shaping, or ‘cultivating’ viewers’ conceptions of social reality. * The combined effect of massive television exposure by viewers over time subtly shapes the perception of social reality for individuals and, ultimately, for our culture as a whole. * Gerbner argues that the mass media cultivate attitudes and values which are already present in a culture: the media maintain and propagate these value s amongst members of a culture, thus binding it together. Cultivation theory presents television as not a window on or reflection of the world, but a world in itself. * The cultivation effect of television viewing is one of levelling or homogenizing opinion referred to as mainstreaming effect. * The cultivation effect is divided into two order: 1. First-order cultivation effects refer to the effects of television on statistical descriptions about the world 2. Second-order cultivation effects refer to effects on beliefs about the general nature of the world * There is also a distinction between two groups of television viewers: light viewers – views television for less than 2 hours * heavy viewers – views television for more than four hours * People who watch a lot of television are likely to be more influenced by the ways in which the world is framed by television programs than are individuals who watch less * The difference in the pattern of responses between light an d heavy viewers (when other variables are controlled), is referred to as the cultivation differential, reflecting the extent to which an attitude seems to be shaped by watching television. ‘Resonance’ describes the intensified effect on the audience when what people see on television is what they have experienced in life. This double dose of the televised message tends to amplify the cultivation effect. Steps in Cultivation Research 1. Content Analysis In 1969, Gerbner and his colleagues began to chart the content of prime-time and weekend childrens television programming, and Gerbner et al. (1986, p. 25) noted that 2,105 programs, 6,055 major characters, and 19,116 minor characters had been analyzed by 1984. Significantly, Gerbner et al. pp. 25 26) noted the following patterns: * Men outnumbered women three to one on television * Older people and younger people are underrepresented on television * Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented on television * Seventy perc ent of television characters are middle class * Crime is 10 times as rampant in the television world 2. Cultural indicators analysis The process of assessing individuals beliefs about what the world is like; this analysis involves surveys of individuals using factual questions about the world Miller (2005) says a separate measure (often at a different point in time) would be used to assess the overall viewing habits of the individual 3. Cultivation analysis A comparison between light television viewers and heavy television viewers: If heavy television viewers tended to provide answers that were more in line with the television response, researchers would have support for the cultivation hypothesis. Conceptual Model Scope and Application * Gerbner and Gross (1976) say elevision is a medium of the socialization of most people into standardized roles and behaviors. Its function is in a word, enculturation (p. 175). * Cultivation research looks at the mass media as a socializing agent and investigates whether television viewers come to believe the television version of reality the more they watch it. Example: In a survey of about 450 New Jersey schoolchildren, 73 percent of heavy viewers compared to 62 percent of light viewers gave the TV answer to a question asking them to estimate the number of people involved in violence in a typical week. The same survey showed that children who were heavy viewers were more fearful about walking alone in a city at night. They also overestimated the number of people who commit serious crimes. This effect is called ‘mean world syndrome’. One controlled experiment addressed the issue of cause and effect, manipulating the viewing of American college students to create heavy- and light-viewing groups. After 6 weeks of controlled viewing, heavy viewers of action-adventure programs were indeed found to be more fearful of life in the everyday world than were light viewers.