Princ.Mass Media Ch 1

An Inability to Appreciate Fine Art

Claims that popular culture distracts students form serious literature and philosophy, thus stunting their imagination and undermining their ability to recognize great art.

Tim Berners Lee

Credited with the world Wide Web

-The depreciation of fine art - the exploitation of high culture - the disposability of popular culture -the driving out of high culture -the deadening of our cultural taste buds

Critics have developed at least five areas of concern about so-called low culture:

Innovation and the Attraction of "What's New"

Cultural Adventure; We seek new stories and new places to go- those aspects of culture that demonstrate originality and complexity.

Low Culture

Culture as a hierarchy: If imagined like a skyscraper, this model is the bottom floor or basement. Examples: soap operas, rock music, radio shock jocks, video games. Associated with "questionable" tastes of masses who enjoy "junk" circulated by the mass media, such as reality TV, celebrity gossip web sites, and violent action films.

High Culture

Culture as a hierarchy: If imagined like a skyscraper, this model is the top floor. Examples: Ballet, symphony, art museums, and classic literature. Identified with good taste and higher education; supported by wealthy patrons and corporate donors. Associated with fine art.

Mass Media

Culture industries (the channels of communication) that produce and distribute songs, novels, TV shows, newspapers, movies, video games, Internet services, and other cultural products to large numbers of people

Cross Platform

Describes a business model that involved consolidating various media holdings, such as cable connections, phone services, television transmissions, and internet access, under one corporate umbrella.

Plato

Developed the classical view of art: it should aim to instruct and uplift.

Unknown

How much the media shapes society is ___

Problem with the Linear Model of Communication

In reality, Media Messages- especially in the digital era- do not usually move smoothly from a sender at point A to a receiver at point Z

Oral and Written Eras in Communication

Information and knowledge was first circulated slowly through oral traditions passed on by poets, teachers, and tribal storytellers. alphabets and written words emerged. Manuscript culture served the ruling class. Working people were generally illiterate- there was a gap between rulers and ruled. Roughly 1000 B.C.E.. Early tensions between oral and written communication played out among ancient Greek Philosophers and writers.

Google

Internet's main organizer and aggregator because it finds both old and new media content and delivers that content to vast numbers of online consumers. makes its money from ads

Amazon

Made its name by selling the worlds oldest mass medium-the book- on the worlds newest medium- the internet.

Unacceptably commercial and sensationalistic

Many people see popular media culture as _____

Emergence, Entrepreneurial, Mass Medium, Convergence

Media Innovations typically go through four stages:

Digital Era

New technologies, particularly cable TV and internet, developed so quickly that traditional leaders in communication lost some of their control over information.

Gatekeepers

News editors, executive producers, and other media managers. Make the decision about what messages actually get produced and particular receivers.

Mass media Channel

Newspapers, books, magazines, radio, television, or the internet

The goal

Not necessarily to offer consumers more choice on their media options, but to better manage sources and maximize profit.

Challenging the Nostalgia for a Better Past

Some critics of popular culture assert- often without presenting evidence- that society was better off before the latest developments in mass media. this impulse to criticize is driven by fear of change.

Narrative

Story-telling

Engagement

Taking some action that connects our critical perspective with our role as citizens to question our media institutions, adding our own voice to the process of shaping the cultural environement

A Diminished Audience for High Culture

The concern that popular culture has inundated the cultural environment, driving higher forms of culture and cheapening public life. "Prevents the public from experiencing genuine art"

Communication

The creation and use of symbol systems that convey information and meaning (e.g. languages, Morse Code, motion pictures, and one-zero binary computer codes)

Mass Communication

The process of designing cultural messages and stories and delivering them to large and diverse audiences through media channels as old and distinctive as the printed book and as new and converged as the Internet

Critical Process

The process whereby a mega-iterate person or student studying mass communication forms and practices employs the techniques of description analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and engagement.

Culture

The symbols of expression that individuals, groups, and societies use to make sense of daily life and to articulate their values

A Throwaway Ethic

This argument is saying that high forms of culture have staying power. The low forms of culture are unstable and fleeting. They follow rather than lead public taste.

Literacy Rates

What rose due to the mass production of text

Socrates

accused of corrupting young minds, worried that children exposed to a popular art form and story "without distinction would take into their souls teachings that are wholly opposite to those we wish them to be possessed of when they are grown up." he believed art should uplift us from the ordinary routines of our lives.

Media Literacy

attaining an understanding of mass media and how they construct meaning. Developing this requires following a critical process that takes us through the steps of description, analysis, interpretation, evaluation, and engagement. Enables a person to become more engaged as a citizen and more discerning as a consumer of mass media products

Modern Period

beginning with the industrial revolution of the 19th century and extending until about the mid-20th century.

Rise of Internet and Social Media

complicated the traditional roles in both the linear and cultural models of communication. Anyone can be a "sender" these days.

Convergence

describing all the changes that have occurred over the past decade, and are still occurring, in media content and within media companies. Two meanings: one refers to media content and one to business. It describe changes that have a great impact on how media companies are charting a course for the future.

Postmodern Period

from roughly mid 20 century to today- are identified by a confusing array of examples: email, video games, blogs, youtube, iPads, reality TV etc. Some critics argue that this culture represents a way of seeing- a new condition, or even a malady, of the human spirit.

Digital Communication

images, texts and sounds are converted (encoded) into electronic signal s(represented as varied combinations of binary numbers- ones and zeroes) that are then reassembled (coded) as precise reproduction of say, a TV picture, a magazine article, a song, or a telephone voice. On the internet, various images, texts and sounds are all digitally reproduced and transmitted globally

Media

latin plural form of the singular noun, "medium" meaning an intervening substance through which something is conveyed or transmitted.

Postmodern Style Blurred border of culture

mixing high and low culture

When Information Age transformed to Digital Age

old and new media began to converge, this dramatically changing our relationship to media and culture

Selective Exposure

people typically seek messages and produce meanings that correspond to their own cultural beliefs, values, and interests

Receivers

readers, viewers, and consumers

cultural model

suggests the complexity of the process of a message getting to a receiver from a sender and the lack of control that senders often have over how audiences receive messages and interpret their intended message and intended meanings

A Tendency to Exploit High Culture

the concern that popular culture exploits classic works of literature and art. for example, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818. Today it appears as a simplistic horror story, a comedy spoof, etc. It loses its powerful theme of the abuse of science and judging people on the basis of appearances.

diligence of investors, social, political, and economic circumstances.

the development of most mass media is intimated not only by the diligence of ___________________

In the map model

this is where we judge forms of culture as good or bad based on a combination of personal taste and the aesthetic judgments of a moiety makes at particular historical times.

A Wide range of Messages

we have complex cultural tastes, needs, and interests based on different backgrounds and dispositions. Because of that, our cultural treasures contain a variety messages.

Four key contributions to communication by the telegraph

(featuring dot-dash electronic signals) 1. it separated communication from transportation, making media messages instantaneous 2.transformed "information into a commodity, a 'thing' that could be bought or sold irrespective of its uses or meaning" By the time of the civil war, news had become a valuable product 3. made it easier for military, business, and political leaders to coordinate commercial and military operations, especially after the installation of the transatlantic cable in late 1860s 4. led to future technological developments, such as wireless telegraphy (later named radio), the fax machine, and the cell phone which ironically resulted in the telegraph's demise. final message was sent in 2006

Emergence Stage

1st stage of Media Innovations. Also known as Novelty stage; inventors and technicians try to solve a particular problem, such as making pictures move, transmitting messages from ship to shore, or sending mail electronically.

Entrepreneurial Stage

2nd stage of Media Innovations. Inventors and investors determine a practical and marketable use for the new device.

Mass Medium Stage

3rd stage of Media Innovations. Businesses figure out how to market the new device or medium as a consumer product.

Efficiency, individualism, rationalism, progress

4 major features or values that resonate best with changes across media and culture

Convergence Stage

4th stage of Media Innovations. Stage in which older media are reconfigured in various forms on newer media. For example, you can still get the New York Times in print, but now we can get it on our phone.

Progressive Era

A period of political and social reform that lasted roughly form the 1890s to the 1920s.

Dulling Our Cultural Taste Buds

According to this view, popular media may inhibit not only rational thought but also social progress by transforming audiences into cultural dupes lured by the promise of products. "popular culture undermines democratic ideals and reasoned arguments"

Evaluation

Arriving at a judgment about whether something is good, bad, or mediocre, which involves subordinating one's personal taste to the critical "bigger picture" resulting from the first three stages

Interpretation

Asking and answer "What does that mean?" and "So what?" Questions about one's findings

Senders

Authors, producers, and organizers

Electronic Era

By the 1920s and 1930s most families moved to urban areas. the city had taken over the country as the focal point of national life.Began with the development of the telegraph in the 1840s.

Stories that circulate in the media

Can shape society's perceptions and attitudes

Analysis

Discovering and focusing on significant patterns that ermine from the description stage

The Linear Model of Mass Communication

Explains how media messages and meanings are contrasted and communicated in everyday life. -Senders transmit Messages though a media channel to large groups of receivers. In the process gatekeepers function as a message filter. Then feedback is given.

Populism, Diversity, Nostalgia, Paradox

Four Major features or values that resonate best with change across media and culture

Print Revolution

Paper and block printing developed in China around 200 C.E. and 1045, respectively, what we recognize as modern printing did not emerge until the middle of the 15th century. At that time in Germany, Johannes Gutenberg's invention of movable metallic type and the printing press ushered in the modern print era. Quickly spread across Europe. Books used to be very expensive. Books eventually became the first mass-marketed products in history because of the way the printing press combined three necessary elements. Maine duplication replaced hand-copied texts, it was quick, and because so many could be reproduced so fast and easily, the cost of books could go down for less-affluent people. Ideas were now traveling faster than every before. used to maintain social order.

Description

Paying close attention, taking notes, and researching the subject under study

Feedback

Process in which citizens and consumers return messages to senders or gatekeepers through phone calls, email, web postings, talk shows, or letters to the editor.

Message

Programs, texts, images, sounds, ads

The Comfort of Familiar Stories

Pulling audiences toward the security of repetition and common landmarks on the cultural map.