Reality and Media Messages

Communication Theories and Media Literacy

Year II Semester I
•We live in two worlds.
•The Real World

•The Media World

The Real World…
•Is too limited.
•Can not get all the experiences.
•Can not get all the information.
•To get all the experiences and information, need to
enter into the media world.
•Read a novel
•Go to a movie
•Watch a television program
• News
•We enter into the media world to expand our real world
experience and to help us understand the real world better.
•But the experiences we get in media world differ from the
experiences that we get directly in real world.
•We constantly cross the border between the real world and
the media world.

•The border sometimes gets blurred.

What is Reality?
 Real World • Real
• Limited

Media World • Fantasy

 Magic Window
•Children
see the media especially television as a magic
window on the world.
•They perceive television as the simple, unvarnished truth
of what is happening in the real world.
 Adult Discount
•Shifting away from magic window belief in the
literal reality of media messages.
•Children begin thinking like adults and are more
skeptical of the reality of the messages.
• If we are to understand how people make decisions
about what is real in the media, we need to look at
more dimensions than the magic window.
Multi Dimensions of
Reality
Science Fiction movies
Situational Comedies
•Beginning point of judging reality is – an assessment
of whether a portrayal actually happened.
•Make assessments about whether something could
happens portrayed. That which could never happen
is fantasy.
•The judgments must move beyond the actualities of
occurrence to possibilities.
•Don't just judge on actualities (whether actually
occurred) but also consider possibilities
•Researchers have found that people will go
beyond magic - window consideration and
also judge the reality of media message
along the dimension of social utility and
identity.
•Judgingthe utility (usefulness)of media messages along
the dimensions of social utility and identity.

•SocialUtility Judgment- based on whether viewers believe they

can use the information in the portrayal in their own lives.

•Identity Judgment – based on a feeling of parasocial

involvement with particular characters. The closer viewer feels to
a character, the more real that character is to that viewer.
 Dimensions Introduced by Hall
• Factuality – what actually happened

• Plausibility – what could happen

• Typically – what usually happens

• Emotional involvement – the degree to which a person’s feelings and sense of identity are pulled into a

message.

• Narrative consistency – plot of a story & how well it makes people feel that sequence actions are

believable.

• Perceptual persuasiveness – how real the images look.

• It appears that Plausibility (what could happen) is the most often used

conceptualization employed by people to determine the degree of reality in

a message.
•Another important point is the differences in judgments of
reality in media portrayals are likely to be larger across the
people of the same age is making the same judgments about
reality.

• Not every child of the same age is making the same judgments
about reality –(violence )
•Children are less capable than adults in making judgments about
reality, but become more sophisticated on certain dimensions as
they age.

•Wide range of sophistication in making realty judgments across

adults.

•Many adults overestimate the degree of reality on reality

programs and news.
Organizing Principle:
Next – Step
Reality
•Perceptions of reality can be explained by the idea
“ next – step reality”.

idea is embedded in how media messages get

•This
produced and why certain messages attract large
audiences whereas other messages do not.
 Audience’s Perspective

•People expose themselves to the media to find messages

that they can not get in real life.

•Ifthey are getting all the messages in real life, no need to

expense search media for these messages.
There are two reasons why people are motivated
to go to the media.
•It
is impossible for people to get all messages in
real life.
• How earth looks like
• Second world war

To get access to these images, sounds and emotions, people

must access media messages.
•Getting messages from the media instead of real life is
because the costs of getting those messages in the media
are far lower than the costs required in real life.
•Cricket matches

•Discovery channel
•People search for messages that have two general
characteristics.

•Those messages must appear real.

•Those messages must represent a little more than everyday

life.
 Next – Step Reality

The message is presented as reality to resonate with the

experiences and make it have the potential to be useful in
everyday situations, but the message is “sweetened” by an
extra added ingredients that takes it step outside of the
audience’s everyday existence.
 Programmer’s perspective

• Skilled producers can take the audience on a journey by removing the

audience one step at a time until they have taken them willingly to an
absurd (strange) place.
• The next step reality is easy to understand with persuasive messages.

• The next step reality is a bit more difficult to understand with information

type messages.
Key Idea

The media spin reality to make it appear more

exciting and thus attract people away from their
real lives.