Paper 4 Media

03 March 2023 19:06

i. MEDIA

Sociological Perspectives on Media

Key Terms:
a. Media: channels of mass communication through which information is sent and received
b. New Media: contemporary channels of communication characterised by interactivity, individualisation, and
network capabilities

A. Pluralist -- Media Information Diversity

Main Argument: Media is diverse, content reflects interests of audience and society

1) Range of views possible despite highly concentrated ownership of old media

▪ Enhancement of diversity through development of new media{how} (growth of media outlets
from ease of setting up and less costly distribution in present day)
▪ Related to Choice: media, views, consumers

2) Relationship between media consumers to media and ideology

▪ Discipline of the marketplace, driven by owners compete to win market share and profit
▪ Owners and controllers innovate to improve product and win consumers >> gives audience
important position in media (active role)
- Buy what they want, ignore what they don’t
▪ McQuail et. Al. --Uses and Gratifications model
- Media as a tool utilised (media and messages are used by audience to fulfill a range of
gratifications)
- How: (refer to uses and gratifications model)

▪ Galbraith -- technocratic managerial elite (MAIN ARGUMENT)

- How: Controllers not owners are what is directly creating media content, driven by goals to
produce profit creating media content demanded as per consumer interests

▪ Staiger -- audience increasingly perverse spectators (uncertainity principle)

- Use media in their own way, for their own means through activated meanings created by
how they interact with media.
EVIDENCE???

▪ THEREFORE -- media reflects the range of views representing the interests of ordinary people

B. Marxist and Neo Marxist -- Media as Powerful Ideological Institution

- Traditional Marxism

Main Argument: Media is manipulative and Influential

1) Althusser -- Ideological State Apparatus (MAIN ARGUMENT)

▪ Assert interests of the ruling class through interlocking relationship between political and
economic members
▪ Owners and controllers: manipulate how society sees the world -- false consciousness
- How: Propagate values supporting the capitalist system making people believe that society

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 - How: Propagate values supporting the capitalist system making people believe that society
work in the interests of all rather than few.
- Working class co-operates with ruling class in their own exploitation against their own
interests.

➢ Evidence: UK -- global financial crisis of 2008

- Main view broadcasted: recovery can only be from austerity, everyone working together to
pay national debt
- Alternative views: not reported or depicted as negative, irresponsible
 "austerity discourse" -- serves interests of the ruling class by creation of 'false
consciousness'
 Control of type and quality of information = determining how people think

- Neo Marxism

1) Hegemony uniting the ruling class -- also accepted by working class through (Althusser: ISA)
▪ Owners and controllers common interest: core values(faith in capitalist systems)
- Common cause in promoting said core values through media
- How: Owners pick controllers that reflect their values as they enjoy relative autonomy
 As long as output is legal, profitability remains key principle
2) Noam Chomsky and Edward S Herman -- Propaganda Model
▪ Role of media in democracies: ensuring people support the state and capitalism
▪ How -- report of only narrow range of opinions and marginalising radical alternatives
▪ Five filters of news:
- Ownership: filtering those that endanger corporate interests
- Advertising: attract affluent audience and direct them to advertisers
- Sourcing: media reluctant to offen sources(politicians, corp, trade org.)
- Flak: negative response to news stories which endanger corp.
- Ideology of fear: fear and hatred for groups that represent threat (e.g. communism following
the Cold War)
EVIDENCE??

C. Postmodernist -- social change and diversity

Main Argument: we live in a media saturated society -- impossible to distinguish between reality and media

1) Baudrillard -- Hyper Reality

▪ Different narrative accounts interweave and conflict, in a constantly changing pattern, of
representations built on representations
▪ Eventually -- forming a reality that is stronger than it claims to describe
▪ How: (simulacra) each reality constructed on how people pick and choose ideas to suit own ideologies
and beliefs
2) Mc Luhan and Power -- media are the message, not simply mediating the message
▪ Changed relationships between those involved in media creation
▪ How: Information flows between different points and networks, making it impossible to distinguish
consumer from producer
EVIDENCE???

Different Models of Media Effects

A. Direct Models -- strong media, weak audience

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 i. Bandura et. Al. -- Hypodermic Syringe Model
▪ Media messages like drug injected in audience's mind, therefore media determine audience perceptions
of the world in a directly measurable causal fashion
▪ How(1): Messages transmitted to change or reinforce their ideas and behaviour
▪ Audience as passive recievers of media messages
▪ Due to: socially isolated nature of society, limits links to wider communites offering alternative
messages -- depend on media for informaton
▪ How(2): vulnerable audiences in primary socialisation
▪ Limited social experienced and tendency to copy behaviour -- susceptible to direct effects
▪ Evidence: Bandura et. Al. Bobo Doll Experiment

ii. Cummulative Model

▪ Belson -- exposure to TV leading to more tendency of violent behaviour (research of London boys)

iii. Transmission model

▪ Two stages of media transmission of messages
1. Information source
2. Transmission source
▪ Media has different sources, which determine how message is received

Evidence: Bandura et al. Bobo Doll Experiment

Limitation --
➢ Gauntlett and media literacy even with younger audience
➢ Gauntlett and how empirical evidence for direct effects is weak (under artificial conditions and anecdotal
evidence)
➢ Hagell and Newburn -- disproves Belsons theory on how TV exposure is directly proportional to violent
behavior, as younger generation has general lack of interest in TV

B. Indirect Models -- weak media, strong audience

(normative models)

i. Katz and Lazarfield -- Two-step flow model

▪ From media to opinion formers >> from opinion formers to their social network
▪ Behavioural changes result from how messages are interpreted, discussed, reinterpreted within primary
groups
▪ How?:
▪ Perception -- noticed
▪ Exposure -- choosing based on interest
▪ Expression -- listen to people important to them
▪ Retention -- remember things that fit in their beliefs
▪ Selection -- some messages never relayed

ii. Klapper -- Reinforcement Theory

▪ Focus on context of media use
▪ Peoples beliefs are related to their social groups (primary groups)
▪ Secondary groups (media) -- reinforce, positively or negatively, on beliefs already formed
iii. Mc. Quail et. Al -- Uses and Gratifications Model
▪ Pick and choose media and messages for a range of gratifications
▪ Audience control the media (related to technocratic managerial elite)
▪ How?: four primary uses and gratifications:
▪ Entertainment

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 ▪ Entertainment
▪ Social Solidarity
▪ Identity
▪ Surveillance

Evidence: Notion of Mass Panic following fictional alien invasion broadcast

-- (end of normative models)

i. Chandler, Gerbner -- Cultural Effects

Main Argument: media have slow, long-term, cummulative effects -- media has ability to become a part of
audiences cultural background
Role of Media: cultural, ideological institution -- promote and police cultural values

➢ Neo-Marxist hegemonic theory of control

▪ Role: Agent of social control
▪ How: propagate decisively influence people's behaviour over a long period of time
- Exercise control: actions as socialising agency, adviding, guide -- exercising hegemonic role
- Althusser (ISA)
1) Chandler -- inducing of general mindset
▪ Media induces general mindset around particular areas of social life
▪ How: taking on hegemonic role
▪ Gradual, long term effects built through:
- Consistent promotion
- Marginalisation
- Repetition of ideas -- until taken for granted
2) Gerbner et al. -- continual repetition of patterns (myths, ideologies, "facts", relationships) serve to
define the world and legitimise social order

ii. Hall -- Audience Reception Theory (part of cultural effects)

Main Argument: media messages having different meanings and interpretations

1) Hall -- encoding and decoding

▪ Encoding: ideas author wants an audience to grasp
▪ Decoding: how audience interprets or decodes the message
- Audience Receptiveness is based on: personal and social factors
▪ How? -- 3 Main Ways media message is interpreted
a. Hegemonic Codes -- shares assumption/interpretation
b. Negotiated Codes -- broadly share, modify their interpretation with own knowledge/beliefs
c. Oppositional Codes -- antagonistic to media message, rejects or attempt to challenge
➢ Limitation:
▪ Agenda Setting
▪ Framing
▪ Myth Making

Impact of Media Behaviour on Violence and Violent Behaviour

➢ View A: Media is related to violence and violent behaviour

1) Bandura at al. -- Imitation

▪ Argue: immature and vulnerable audiences simply imitate what they see in media.
▪ How: portrayal of behaviour shapes audience behavior in early stages of socialisation, where core
values, identity, and role hasn't been shaped.

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 2) Belson -- exposure and violence (cummulative effects + hypodermic)
▪ Exposure to television increase tendency for violence
□ Indicates connection between repetition, exposure, and tendency to copy behaviour.
▪ Based on 1565 teenage boys in London (high exposure commit 49% more acts of violence than low
exposure)

3) Gerbner -- mythical realities (cultural effects)

▪ Argue: powerful and pervasive media create mythical realities for audiences
□ Heavy media consumers find it difficult to distinguish media myth from reality
▪ How:
□ Violence presented as glamorous solution
□ Desensitisation to violence - Acceptance of real world violence
 Both to individuals and cultures

EVIDENCE: UK murder of two-year-old James Bulger (1993) by two 10-year olds. Crime similar to scene
depicted in Child's Play

➢ View B: Media has no direct relationship with violence

1) Huessman and Miller-- complex two way relationship between media and audience
- Argue: People whose early socialisation lead to acceptance of violence more likely to exhibit
violence
□ People who consumer violent media has been socially programmed to enjoy violence
□ Consumers of violent media are therefore implied to be people with higher tendency to
employ violent behaviour.
2) Mc Quali et al. -- Uses and Gratifications model
- Violent media used as relief (cathartic)
- Media used as a tool to release frustration and anger in harmless ways
3) Cultural Model: Stanley Cohen (mass panic) -- sensitisation
- Depictions of violence lead to people avoiding and rejecting violence
- Mass Panic: society-wide feeling of panic about a particular issue or group
□ How?: senstionalised and exaggerated reporting (conforming to news values), prediction of
future trouble, and symbolisation
□ Creation of 'folk devils' -- linking appearance or behaviour to a particular issue/group.
□ Applies to particularly news reporting where seeing acts of violence lead to people being
more aware and try to reduce violence

EVIDENCE: Parkland Florida Shooting in 14 February 2018

- Broadcasted and exposed mostly from media coverage
- Lead to greater demands of gun control in USA

Media Deviance Amplification

1) Wilkins -- Deviance Amplification

- Theory of deviance argues that a range of social reactions, particularly those put together through
the media in terms of moral panics, have the effect of creating more serious forms of crime
- Each group, deviant and control, feed off of the actions of others to create a spiral of deviance.
- How? -- Moral Panic

2) Stanley Cohen -- Moral Panic

- Moral panic: media coverage creating a society-wide feeling of panic about a particular issue or

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 - Moral panic: media coverage creating a society-wide feeling of panic about a particular issue or
group
- How?: senstionalised and exaggerated reporting (conforming to news values), prediction of future
trouble, and symbolisation
- Creation of 'folk devils' -- linking appearance or behaviour to a particular issue/group.

Perspectives on Moral Panics

A. Interpretivist -- arising from public concerns

= media focuses public concern and lead to control agencies such as the police taking action
= moral panic develop spontaneously out of general public concern towards behaviour threatening
social order

➢ Cohen: moral panics reinforce established moral values in 2 ways:

1. Setting moral boundaries for acceptable behaviour
2. Creating a sense of social and moral solidarity at a time of change an uncertainity
= media is a channel that amplifies, not create, public concern
= media audience: critical, active, consumers
= should audience ignore media concern, spiral of deviance would not occur

B. Neo-Marxist -- moral panics created contributing to creation of hegemony

= moral panic: political phenomena (defending certain type of moral order defined by ruling class)
= exercise control
=some are created by media sensationalism by some are merely taken advantage of

➢ Hall -- opportunities of moral panic comes at times of economic, political, and ideological crises
in capitalist society
□ Function: distract public from real causes towards easily identifiable scapegoats (mostly
powerless)
 State then deals firmly with the fok devils, displaying authority and control
 Controlling the whole population that dissent will not be tolerated

EVIDENCE: Cohen's case study

- Focus of moral panic of two teenage groups(folk devils), standing for everything wrong in the UK in
the 1960s
- Later teenage subcultures + other groups(immigrants and welfare claimants)
- This lead to panic demands to police, politicians and others to act strongly against the folk devils

Media Sensationalism

➢ Sensationalism -- exaggerated reporting of news stories in ways that make the audience excited or
worried (one of the factors of reporting that leads to moral panics)
- How: involves bias, distortion, exaggeration
- Purpose: provoke feelings

➢ Stereotyping: affects both those stereotyped and audiences receiving the stereotype
- Audience will be influenced by the stereotypes and may assume they are accurate
- Stereotypes can exaggerate and distort

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