Mass Media Concepts & Theories
1. Selective Perception—This perspective on how humans “see” the world is based on individual differences of upbringing, race, gender, socioeconomic status, life experiences. The result of these differences is that people perceive and interpret the world differently. Recognizing shared perceptions of the world is essential to understanding how individuals form communities.
• Selective Exposure: Individuals are exposed to different experiences and influences—some profound (like nationality or gender) and some subtle (like bigtown/smalltown)—that help shape how they see and make sense of the world, people, issues, culture, society.
• Selective Perception: As a result of these difference background and formative influences, individuals see and make sense of the world differently; we all create our own meanings of events around us, filtering information that reaches us through our own prejudices and prior knowledge, framing information so that it makes sense in our own context.
• Selective Retention: Based on how we see the world, individuals tend to pay attention to different kinds of information that is more or less relevant and familiar to their own experience. Some information flies right past us; some sticks.
2. Gatekeeping—There are gatekeepers in any communication system—interpersonal, written, mass communication. These are elements that make constant decisions about what information is or isn’t important enough to pass along—what information gets through the “gate” from the sender of a message to a receiver of that message. Not only does gatekeeping occur in deciding the end message (e.g., what stories get into the newspaper), but also as a reporter decides what stories to cover, what sources to interview, what questions to ask, and what parts of her reporter’s notebook are important enough to make it into the story. So there is both “front-end” gatekeeping as a media message is created, and a “back-end” gatekeeping as an editor decides what stories to put in the paper, on what page, with what headline, and what part of the reporter’s story gets edited out. Clearly, individual perceptions of the world and what things are
important in it (selective perception) are in play in this process. The ultimate gatekeeper in the mass communication process is the news reader/viewer—what do they think is important/relevant enough to permit through the “gates” of their conscious minds? In this context (and under agenda-setting, below), the media do not reflect “reality”; they filter,
shape and construct a “reality.” (Remember the principles of media literacy.)
3. Agenda-Setting—This theory holds that although the mass media can’t tell us what to think, the media are stunningly successful at telling us what to think about. That is, through their selection or de-selection of what is “news” (gatekeeping), the mass media serve to create an agenda for social discourse. When there were only three major national TV networks, and some 70-80% of Americans watched them nightly, a very clear national agenda of what’s most important was created. Even in such a monopolistic and dominated mass media system, the networks couldn’t make people think in certain ways (because of individual selective perception), but they were and are able to focus attention of some issues while ignoring others. (The Project Censored story is an illustration of what stories did not make the public’s agenda/consciousness.) Examples of how agenda-setting worked in society include: The OJ Simpson murder trial; the Clinton impeachment hearings following Zippergate; WMDs and the Iraq War/War on Terrorism. Consider the implications of agenda-setting for public policy debate and creation of laws. Another question: Who sets the agenda for the media agenda-setters?
4. Framing—This subset of agenda-setting concerns how news and information are “framed” or presented once through the news “gate” and on the public agenda. A media “frame” is the central organizing idea for a news story that supplies a context and emphasizes certain aspects of a story while minimizing or ignoring others. As media literacy theory tells us, media messages are constructions or representations of “reality.” It is impossible for a media message to be anything more than a summary or representation of the world. Thus, the question for message consumers is always: “What aspects of this story are not being told?” “What information lies outside the ‘frame’ of this message?” and, perhaps most importantly, “What might be the intent (ideological, intentional or inadvertent) of the senders (gatekeepers) of this message?” So framing suggests that the bottom line in news coverage is not just what to think about (agendasetting), but how to think about it, based on how the story is presented. Framing is not a conspiracy to skew the news (although it can be done that way); individuals, based on their selective perceptions, not only select different things as important, but inevitably frame them in different ways to conform to how they see the world. But what is the effect of that framing on the receiver of those messages, and on the larger society?
5. Cultivation—The images and impressions and topics (and how they are framed) that appear in the mass media serve to “cultivate” in all of us certain impressions of the world. These messages and the way they are framed—if they are a stable set of images consistent over time—may serve to change our own individual perceptual frame of the world around us. The mass media build and maintain a stable set of images—stories about our culture, our society, who we are—that govern our lives and how we see the world, and influence the decisions we make. Ultimately, mass media messages in sufficient accumulation may influence our behavior, attitudes, decisions and life choices. This has wide implications for both individuals and for societies. One example is
Gerbner’s “mean world syndrome,” in which research found that heavy viewers of news
tended to perceive the world as a more dangerous and scarier place than light TV viewers. Based on the amount and kind of stuff we include in our mass media diets, we may over time start to “cultivate” new perceptions of people, ideas, issues, etc., with which we have little direct involvement. In short, the cultivate media “reality” may become more real to us over time than real reality. This has important implications for mass media producers and consumers, and for the society in which we live— advertising, consumerism, society anxiety, racism, sexism, etc.
6. Third Person Effect (TPE)—Rather than examining media effects in terms of how media may effect the way individuals think about issues and people, TPE theory examines our beliefs about how media effects us and others. In other words—rather than taking the approach that media affect our perceptions, TPE considers how our perceptions shape our ideas about media effects. Research shows that most of us have the perception that media will not have its strongest impact on us—but on other people. In other words, media will influence other people—but have little influence over me personally. One result of this attitude/perception, according to research, is that people who have this perception, tend to overestimate media’s potential impact on others and underestimate potential impact on self. Another result of individuals’ perception that
media will significantly influence others, is that these individuals are more likely to
believe media need to be restricted and censored in order to avoid the media’s harmful
effects on others
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
aggiemail documents instructions
Aggiemail Instructions by David Baker
- First login to your Aggiemail, as if that wasn't obvious, once inside Aggiemail, to access Google Documents, look in the upper lefthand corner of the browser window for five blue hotlinks. The forth one should say "Documents." Click it.
- With the click, you will be wisked into the Docs section of your Aggiemail experience. From this window, you can create new documents, manage existing ones, create folders, hide stuff, trash stuff, share stuff and about a thousand other things that are far too advanced for any of our purposes.
- To create a new document, click on the "New" button in the toolbar. You will get a new drop-down menu that has fabulous things like folder, spreadsheet, presentation. We are interested in a standard document, so you click on that.
- Once your new document window pops up, it will be just like your standard word processing experience. A few things to remember, though: Aggiemail automatically saves your file, and it will name it whatever is the first line of text. So remember to type the filename you want at the top of your document. You can change it later, but there is a lot of paperwork and several forms of ID required to do so. It will then save periodically throughout, as well.
- After you are done with you typing, bolding and italicizing (and spellchecking because you can do that with a click on "CHECK SPELLING" button in the bottom lefthand corner), you will need to share your document with your group. To accomplish this:
1. Find the share tab located in the just above the toolbar on the righthand side of the page. Click it.
2. Once inside the share window, look to the left side where there is a rectangular white space just dying to be typed in. Satisfy it's urges by typing in the email addresses of those people you want to have access to this document.
3. Look above the box and below where it says "INVITE PEOPLE." IF you want people to be able to add comments or make changes to the document, which will be helpful in group situations, make sure the "as collaborators" button is full. IF you just want people to be able to view it, click on the "as viewers" button. The default is "as collaborators" that's the one you'll be using most, so you probably don't even have to worry about all the stuff I just spent three hours writing.
4. After you have to right email addresses in the box, and the right button clicked, you click the "INVITE COLLABORATORS" button below the box. Don't worry about checking or unchecking any of the boxes below. They are already configured for your success. So just click it, already.
5. When you click the "INVITE" button, a message box will pop up. It will ask you if you want to send an email to those people you invited, telling them the glorious news of their inclusion into the super-secret club that is your new Google Doc. Think of the email as glad tidings of great news, and just click the "SEND" button.
- After completing all those steps, you can click the gray "BACK TO EDITING" button near the top lefthand corner to go back to the word processing.
- To exit the document, click the "SAVE" button, which will be in about the same place as the "BACK TO EDITING" button -- the top lefthand corner.
- TO OPEN a shared document from a group member, go through the same steps to get into Google Docs as mentioned before. In your main window, in a folder called "Items not in folders" will be your new gift, the document or documents that were shared with you.
- OR, if an email was sent to the collaborators, you could also access the document by going into the email and clicking the link inside. That link will take you directly to the document.
- You can just click on the document and it will take you to the document where you can word process naughty things into the document (NOT suggested, especially since this stuff will be a part of something for your group that will be graded.) Once you're inside the document, look things over, type them in and save the document. When the all the people that have the document, including the owner, open it, your changes will be included.
- There's about a thousand other things you can do with Aggiemail, but that's the basics. Playing around with it will yield a bunch of interesting adventures, I'm sure.
- First login to your Aggiemail, as if that wasn't obvious, once inside Aggiemail, to access Google Documents, look in the upper lefthand corner of the browser window for five blue hotlinks. The forth one should say "Documents." Click it.
- With the click, you will be wisked into the Docs section of your Aggiemail experience. From this window, you can create new documents, manage existing ones, create folders, hide stuff, trash stuff, share stuff and about a thousand other things that are far too advanced for any of our purposes.
- To create a new document, click on the "New" button in the toolbar. You will get a new drop-down menu that has fabulous things like folder, spreadsheet, presentation. We are interested in a standard document, so you click on that.
- Once your new document window pops up, it will be just like your standard word processing experience. A few things to remember, though: Aggiemail automatically saves your file, and it will name it whatever is the first line of text. So remember to type the filename you want at the top of your document. You can change it later, but there is a lot of paperwork and several forms of ID required to do so. It will then save periodically throughout, as well.
- After you are done with you typing, bolding and italicizing (and spellchecking because you can do that with a click on "CHECK SPELLING" button in the bottom lefthand corner), you will need to share your document with your group. To accomplish this:
1. Find the share tab located in the just above the toolbar on the righthand side of the page. Click it.
2. Once inside the share window, look to the left side where there is a rectangular white space just dying to be typed in. Satisfy it's urges by typing in the email addresses of those people you want to have access to this document.
3. Look above the box and below where it says "INVITE PEOPLE." IF you want people to be able to add comments or make changes to the document, which will be helpful in group situations, make sure the "as collaborators" button is full. IF you just want people to be able to view it, click on the "as viewers" button. The default is "as collaborators" that's the one you'll be using most, so you probably don't even have to worry about all the stuff I just spent three hours writing.
4. After you have to right email addresses in the box, and the right button clicked, you click the "INVITE COLLABORATORS" button below the box. Don't worry about checking or unchecking any of the boxes below. They are already configured for your success. So just click it, already.
5. When you click the "INVITE" button, a message box will pop up. It will ask you if you want to send an email to those people you invited, telling them the glorious news of their inclusion into the super-secret club that is your new Google Doc. Think of the email as glad tidings of great news, and just click the "SEND" button.
- After completing all those steps, you can click the gray "BACK TO EDITING" button near the top lefthand corner to go back to the word processing.
- To exit the document, click the "SAVE" button, which will be in about the same place as the "BACK TO EDITING" button -- the top lefthand corner.
- TO OPEN a shared document from a group member, go through the same steps to get into Google Docs as mentioned before. In your main window, in a folder called "Items not in folders" will be your new gift, the document or documents that were shared with you.
- OR, if an email was sent to the collaborators, you could also access the document by going into the email and clicking the link inside. That link will take you directly to the document.
- You can just click on the document and it will take you to the document where you can word process naughty things into the document (NOT suggested, especially since this stuff will be a part of something for your group that will be graded.) Once you're inside the document, look things over, type them in and save the document. When the all the people that have the document, including the owner, open it, your changes will be included.
- There's about a thousand other things you can do with Aggiemail, but that's the basics. Playing around with it will yield a bunch of interesting adventures, I'm sure.
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