COMM100:

Lesson 2 Overview

 

Introduction

Chapter 1 of Shirley Biagi’s text is the recommended reading for Lesson 2. Her selected title, Mass Media and Everyday Life, is appropriate. In the chapter, she takes the reader through a copious discussion of the pervasiveness of the mass media and the way in which this form of communication, with the capability to reach multiple audiences in dispersed geographical locations at the same time, has changed over 5,500 years to its current state. In the current state, end users, audiences of and/or subscribers to mass mediated communication outlets, now enjoy instant communication. To understand the way in which the changes that culminated in today’s mass communication occurred, you have to appreciate the roles of wireless communication and the resultant outcome of media convergence, both at the technological and at the business-merger levels. Technological aspects of the changes enabled new ways of producing, delivering, and consuming media messages. It should be easier, then, to attempt to figure out whether or not the technological capabilities pushed media business mergers or vice versa. Whichever side of the push-pull between technological innovations and business mergers you are on, you should not miss the fact that certain factors remain constant, in spite of all these changes.

First among the constant factors is that fact that the mass media, regardless of our many social, political, and cultural expectations of them, remain profit-centered businesses. As such, the mergers that mentioned above must at all times make business sense. In addition, the mechanics of who pays the bills for the overhead and profit margins of media businesses has remained constant. Shirley Biagi makes it abundantly clear that advertisers and consumers continue to foot the bill for the operations and sustenance of mass media industries.

A second constant factor is the influence that the mass media will continue to have on the context, or societies, within which they operate. Scholars have in the past, and will in the future, continue to measure new ways in which the mass media influence society via politics, social life, and culture.

A third constant factor, which draws directly from one of the reasons why this course has explicit value, is the need for those who take it to appreciate and understand the nature and influences of the mass media. This overriding factor will explain the focus of the Supplemental Notes for Lesson 2 on Media Literacy. While Media Literacy was necessary in 1960, the need has become increasingly so in today’s era of media pervasiveness. You should partake in, and appreciate, an exercise in the creation of a “media diet” included in the Supplemental Notes.

Objectives

Here are the Objectives for this lesson:

• Recognize the pervasiveness and wireless nature of mass communication.
• Understand the communication process.
• Identify the Mass Media Industries and how they have converged.
• Understand impacts of technologies on Mass Media message delivery and consumption.
• Appraise symbiotic relationship between media and society.

Lesson Readings and Activities

By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Lesson 2 Course Schedule.

 

Mass Media and Everyday Life Supplemental Notes

 

Across generational gaps – between parents and children or between professors born in the 20th century and students raised in the 21st century – do we agree that the mass media influence society in progressive ways?

A careful reading of Shirley Biagi’s first chapter underscores one central and constant fact; the mass media have experienced rapid changes within the last 20 years. Each one of them [newspapers, magazines radio, and television especially] has had to take on a new character and conduct business in different ways. In that space of time and by implication, the interactions between the mass media and society have taken on new dimensions. The following questions about the traditional media enable us to assess their status in contemporary times.

How many of us still read, buy or subscribe to hard copies of newspapers and magazines? There is ample evidence that newspaper and magazine readers either migrated to other news sources, or have opted to consume news and other information via online platforms. Our multidirectional migrations have drastically reduced newspapers and magazines’ circulation. As a result, advertisers who previously subsidized print forms of media followed our eyeballs’ migration to the locations from where we now access news. When advertisers’ subsidies left the print media, many newspapers died. Surviving ones drastically cut overhead. They continue to explore ways in which they can remain relevant to migrant readers. Students of print journalism in our midst know this first hand. Internships at newspapers have mostly disappeared and so have many of the entry level jobs that fresh graduates go after.

Do you have a favorite radio station, as your parents and grandparents did when they were your age? Where do you go to gain access to the kinds of information that radio used to provide? Perhaps the better question is this: are you interested in the caliber of services that traditional radio provided? Some of my students tell me that Pandora offers the type of “radio” that they are interested in. Pandora enables them to personalize and customize access to favorite musicians. These students unapologetically shared their disinterest in so much talk and/or the interruptions of advertising. Others swear by Rhapsody. Yet others yoked to Spotify. The central cord across the board of these alternatives to traditional radio is music of the listener’s choice.

Many moons ago, I was interrupted while watching TV by an advertisement paid for by Hulu. The message was simple: “come TV with us”! Though I rarely paid attention to advertising, the critical observer in me kicked into gear and I sat up in my chair. What does that “come TV with us” mean? Is that proper use of the English language? When did TV convert from a noun to an adjective? Using a laptop that sat nearby, I took a quick trip to the advertised website to assess the offer. Hulu promised access to shows plus movies anytime, anywhere. The site offered something for everyone from adults to kids. I began to consider the advantages of cutting ties with my cable company and how much I might shave off my monthly bills.

The realization hit me. We now have that capability to migrate away from traditional newspapers, find another way to customize radio and now TV. We live in the age of personalization and customization. In this new dispensation, citizens may no longer read the same newspapers, listen to the same radio or watch the same TV as was the case just a few years ago. This age of personalization and customization, spell decentralization. Centralization was a key feature of how mass communication functioned. As a class focused on studying Media and Society, we should therefore ponder: what does mass communication mean when audiences can personalize and customize messages? What is mass communication when there is no mass audience? In what ways have these developments shifted our engagements with other levels of communication, that is the interpersonal and the intrapersonal? How do we hold conversations on public affairs when some of us choose not to expose themselves to traditional news and current affairs? How does one American who is stuck on a conservative medium converse with an acquaintance who is engrossed in a liberal outlet?

Do the opportunities for personalization and customization equal positive progress? I look forward to reading your thoughts on the issues examined in this supplemental note.

Questions to Ponder

• Do you still read, buy or subscribe to hard copies of newspapers and magazines?
• Do you have a favorite radio station, as your parents and grandparents did when they were your age?
• Are you interested in the caliber of services that traditional radio provided?
• Pandora, Rhapsody, and Spotify – do they mean anything to you?
• Can there be mass communication in the absence of a mass audience?

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Reference

Shirley Biagi (2017). Mass Media and Everyday Life. Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media, 12th edition. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

On Writing an Essay

by R. Thomas Berner

NOTE: This essay about writing essays will help you construct weekly short and lengthier essays for your Text Reaction Reports, Review Questions, and Supplemental Notes Discussions. Berner’s essay is useful to return to from time to time until the recommendations become second nature.

If memory serves, George Orwell once wrote an essay titled "Shooting an elephant." I'd rather write an essay than shoot an elephant. I don't like to kill; I do like to write. So here is a brief essay on writing an essay, intended to help you write your weekly essays.

An essay, my dictionary says, is "a short literary composition on a single subject, usually presenting the personal view of the author." You should take two points from that definition: Single subject and personal view.

"Single subject" has been taken care of for you. You're writing an essay every week about mass communications and while you should be comparing and contrasting the weekly topics with previous topics, that doesn't mean you're not writing about a single subject.

"Personal view" requires some explanation because many people, when they see such a phrase, believe it to mean what they think or feel. That's incorrect. Personal view does not mean your uninformed opinion merely strewn across the screen. It does mean your analytical view based on research, perhaps some additional insight gleaned from The New York Times or some other database. To avoid the mix-up between feelings and analysis, write in the third person rather than the first. Don't tell us what you think. "I think" is a crutch, not an analytical tool. If you write "I think," delete it from the sentence and see if the sentence isn't stronger. If it's not, then you haven't really presented an informed analysis. (You don't see "I think" and "I believe" in this essay, do you?) 

A good essay is composed of three parts: a beginning, a middle and an end. The beginning and the end are usually no more than one paragraph. However short they may be, the beginning and the end must meet certain criteria. The beginning should boldly state your point in two or three sentences. We've already read the same chapters so we don't need a recapitulation. That would be a book review. Let us know in calm, clear sentences what the essay is going to be about. And be sure that is what the essay is about. I've read many an essay that should have started with the final paragraph and gone on from there. In other words, the idea worth developing was at the end of the essay. 

The middle is the longest part. That's where you analyze the topics of the week and bring in examples. Don't regurgitate what we've already read ourselves. Again, analysis, critical thinking, new insights—all are the stuff of a good essay. 

And the ending must logically flow from the middle. It should summarize the essay and bring it to a sensible close. Don't raise new ideas in the conclusion. Finally, you should critically examine what you've written. Stop run on sentences. Repair mechanical faults. Ensure the integrity of paragraphs. Examine the essay's beginning to see that it makes the point you want to make. Re-check your examples. Cast a critical eye everywhere. Reflect and revise. That's how you write an essay. 

Mass Media and Everyday Life Review Questions

Answer your assigned Review Question in the Discussion Forum on the next page. Copy your question number and question in the text box, then place your 75 to 100 word answer below your question, using original language, current examples, and citing your sources. Be sure to respond to at least two of your classmates answers.

This assignment is worth 5 points total. Your initial Review Question answer is worth 3 points. Each response to a classmate's Review Question answer is worth 1 point, up to 2 points.

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1. Are there clear advantages and disadvantages that you can identify if the Internet of Things were to become a reality? List one of each.

2. What does “mass media are everywhere you are” mean to you?

3. Shirley Biagi cites statistics that show that on average, Americans spend more waking time each day with the mass media than without them. Show that you understand the claim. Place yourself within the statistics by explaining your daily dosage of mass media consumption.

4. Do you engage in intrapersonal communication? If so, explain with one clear example.

5. There is a general assumption that the art of “good” interpersonal communication is decreasing in the 21st century. What is your position on this?

6. Do you agree with Shirley Biagi’s definition of “mass communication”?

7. Speaking of the key elements of mass communication, what do you see as the value of feedback?

8. The mass media industries have eight members. Describe your own relationship with any two members of these industries.

9. Name the newspapers in your town/city. Who owns those newspapers and in which ways [share two] would you say that these papers contribute to public discourse in your town/city?

10. Review Impact Money [Illustration 1.3] on page 8. Based on information shared, describe in your own words the ways in which U.S. mass media industries have changed.

11. How do you TV? Compare with and discuss the experiences others in your network [friends, family, co-workers].

12. Consider the following statement: “The mass media are profit-centered businesses.” Are you are aware of this assertion? What does foregoing statement mean?

13. Name and describe ways in which technological developments have influenced (a) delivery and (b) consumption of the mass media.

14. About 80% of all U.S. adults have Internet access. What factors in your informed opinion must be keeping 20% of U.S. adults away from the Internet?

15. What do you know about “concentration of ownership” of media businesses? Do you consider “concentration of ownership” problematic?

16. Do you understand “vertical integration”? If you do, please explain who between media companies and media audiences do you think benefit the most from this business model.

17. How many dimensions to the phenomenon known as “convergence” do you understand? Do you consider the phenomenon valuable to contemporary society?

18. What in your informed opinion qualified today’s age of communication to be called the “third information communications revolution”?

19. Explain the difference between a “dumb” and a “smart” communication appliance.

20. Explain in your own words the ways in which mass media reflect politics, society and culture.

21. Explain in your own words the ways in which mass media influence [or affect] politics, society and culture.

22. Give two different reasons why you and I should be interested in the impacts of the mass media on everyday life.

23. Who pays for the cost of mass media and how?

24. Some have claimed that the book – an invention that has been with us since Johannes Gutenberg’s Bible (c. 1455) will soon die as a medium. What is your informed opinion on the near-extinction of the book?

25. Describe two distinct roles of the Federal Communications Commission [FCC]. Should the mass media be regulated?

Lesson 2 Wrap Up

 

Summary

Between reading Chapter 1, the Supplemental Notes, and completing the Review Questions assigned, you should come out of Lesson 2 fully equipped to engage in a semester-long conversation about the evolving nature of mass communication, specifically the way in which that evolution has been motivated primarily by developments in technology. Implicit in the engagement between the mass media and society is the way in which the individuals who are on the receiving end, as end-users, audiences, and/or subscribers, cope. It can be argued that the individual’s ability to cope with the onslaught of media messages, media convergence,  concentration of ownership, new demands of interactivity, constant arrival of new gadgets and apps, and the need to abandon the old, will be dependent on how savvy he or she is in deciphering when and how to engage and disengage. 

Double Check

By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Lesson 2 Course Schedule.

Looking Ahead

In the next lesson, we will explore the history of book publishing, from 1620 to the present, and the factors that continue to influence the inner workings of the publishing industry.