COMM100N:

Lesson 2 Overview

 

Introduction

Chapter 1 of Croteau, Hoynes, and Childress’s text on media and society in a digital world (2022) describes the media environment we live in as humans in the 21st century. The media is everywhere we turn, integrated into all sectors of society and into every piece of information we encounter. This explains the diversification that accompanies the evolution of the media in a digital age and the ways that it saturates the social, economic, and political world. 

With the presence of media in our everyday lives, it is evident that media and society are fused so that an action in one affects the other almost simultaneously (and, in some cases, indirectly). Given the inseparable connection between these two structures, we realize the importance of media in any and every place, activity, and entity. The fluidity of media changes our perception of the conventional mass media model to a simpler model that incorporates both traditional mass media and internet-based communications in a social world. 

This more-dynamic sociological media model defines the structure, human agency, and social relations in human interactions and in institutions like education, government, and scientific research—all of which indicates the shift in media usage for numerous purposes, such as

• gaming,
• social connectivity,
• entertainment,
• advertising,
• programming,
• information dissemination,
• learning and development, and
• business and political aspirations.

“To best understand media, we need to see it as a social institution comprising various elements that constantly interact,” influencing and reflecting the broader interests of actors and larger institutions (Croteau et al., 2022, p. 14).

Objectives

After completing this lesson, you should be able to do the following things:

• Describe the adoption of media technology and content.
• Explain how the media is central to people’s lives and to our society.
• Explain the significance of the ever-increasing globalization of media.
• Discuss the sociology and sociological perspective of media.
• Discuss the push–pull interaction between structure and human agency in media.

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.

 

Consider This

Let us recall one of the popular chants of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2020: “We can’t breathe.” It was amplified by social media and mainstream media during the spikes in the movement caused by the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd.

Unlike the earlier civil rights movement, which relied mainly on mainstream media, a 21st-century activist movement like BLM depends on new media technology and less on traditional mass media. As BLM took advantage of the internet, a new wave of media users emerged in the global media industry. They are a fragmented audience who actively consume, create, and circulate media content that reaches broader non-media and media users or actors. This audience gave rise to the BLM hashtag on Twitter, also drawing attention to the wider, systemic racial injustice that birthed countermovements like All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, and White Lives Matter.

In essence, media in the digital age means that users and the media industry can produce and share content faster and across several outlets. As you progress through this lesson, think deeply about any aspect of your life or society that functions without the media, that is immune to its influence. Are you able to identify any?

The Role and Adoption of Media in Today’s Society

The early wave of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic represents an unprecedented period of increased media adoption. It was a difficult time for people, families, and businesses globally as nations went into lockdown to curtail the spread of the virus. During this period, individuals relied more heavily on media for anything and everything, including, but not limited to:

• grocery shopping,
• remote work,
• banking,
• entertainment,
• contact with loved ones,
• news,
• education,
• skill acquisition, and
• art production.

 

The proliferation of the internet has changed the nature of media: According to Croteau and colleagues' text (2022), in 2018, 95% of American teenagers had access to a smartphone, desktop, and laptop, while many homes relied on virtual multichannel video devices for entertainment, news, and so on. This increasing media adoption rate among individuals and households indicates how our lives, society, and media intertwine. The world is now at our fingertips because of the widespread information flowing through the media. Nonetheless, this was not always the case. 

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, radio broadcasting grew rapidly in America. In the 1950s and 1960s, the media industry welcomed the use of print and television in many households, resulting in the popularity of mass media. Presently, we have witnessed a switch to internet-enabled media ranging from cable television to smartphones to video game consoles to social media to digital home assistants (Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana, Amazon's Alexa, and more) to non-linear television like Amazon Prime, Netflix, HBO Max, Roku, Disney+, Hulu, and other streaming services.

Models of Communication Media

 

In the past, distinctions between communication models were limited to interpersonal communication versus mass media. In fact, this influenced the design of the traditional mass media model, which constituted a mediated communication from a sender to a passive receiver, along with connecting elements such as a message and a medium. This was a one-way communication with little or no interaction between the sender and receiver. For example, an author is the dominant voice a reader listens to while reading a book, but the reader has no privilege of engaging the author in a conversation. The same applies to traditional mass media such as radio and television, where fragmented audiences serve as receivers of a message shared by producers or broadcast organizations. See Figures 1.3 and 1.4 of Croteau, Hoynes, and Childress (2022) for graphical representations of this model (pp. 9–10).

Due to the advent of the internet, some elements from the traditional models have changed. For example, the internet has blurred the lines between interpersonal communication and mass media, converting the roles of sender and receiver to "media users" and "industry," creating varied forms of content, and expanding communication channels into a broader range of technologies. These adjustments have led to a simplified interconnected communication model, as presented in Figure 1.5A of Croteau, Hoynes, and Childress (2022). It is "embedded within a vital element—the social world," which is a mix of social forces and non-media actors (p. 12).

The simple model has no top–bottom approach; it is a circular process, with all components affecting each other. The media industry replaces the sender in the old model as the producer of content. It consists of all personnel, organizations, and structures that make up the media. Users are substituted for receivers, representing everyone influenced by media content, capable of constructing meaning from such content, and involved in a role formerly reliant on the industry, like developing and distributing content. Users play a crucial role in this model.

Likewise, previously identified as the message, content is all-encompassing, as it includes every form of information created, produced, and shared. Technology is that channel through which media content is exchanged. Although technology strongly affects users' experiences, its introduction, direction, and adoption are equally affected by whether or not users decide to utilize it.

Sociological Understanding of Media

Since it is difficult to overestimate the importance of media, a sociological perspective helps us locate the media in a wider social context, which allows us to explore how it relates to other actors and social institutions and what its relationships with various institutions and the public look like.

Structure and agency concepts are crucial to understanding the sociological approach to media. Structure "describes any recurring pattern of social behavior" (Croteau et al., 2022, p. 14). There are various forms of social structure, such as

• the family,
• school,
• religious bodies,
• friendship circles,
• athletic teams,
• support groups,
• employees, and
• a community.

These structures contribute to our identities and to the purposes for which we use media. According to Croteau, Hoynes, and Childress (2022), sociologists and social science scholars explain structure alongside human agency because agency is believed to influence the social structure and reinforce one model of communication media over another, depending on the situation.

Essentially, these concepts help explain three major relationships in the media system:

• relationships within the media industry (the internal workings of mass media organizations and processes of socialization),
• relationships between the media and other institutions (the social, economic, and political systems within which the media exists and operates), and
• relationships between the media and the public (how media technology impacts users and how the users influence content production and the media industry).

Lesson 2 Wrap-Up

 

Summary

In this lesson, you learned about the prevalence of the internet in the media industry and how it transformed the media landscape in the 21st century. By now, you should have a detailed knowledge of what constitutes the media, its role in society, and how its communication models have evolved over the years to produce informed and active users. Further, when considering the interplay between media and the social world, you should now be familiar with the three major relationships present. Finally, while there are debates about how the presence of media in the digital age has robbed us of face-to-face communication and genuine connections with people, it is clear that the media is here to stay and has become a formidable part of our lives.

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 discuss the evolution of media technology and how it might have enabled social change in the media industry.