DEFINITIONS OF CONCEPTS
Media: plural of medium, from the Latin meaning middle, a channel through which something is transmitted; refers to television, radio, newspapers, magazines and movies as means of communication
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television |
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newspapers |
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radio |
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magazines |
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movies |
Mass: a large anonymous social group that lacks distinctive characteristics and relationships
Mass Media:
- Agents of communication in a mass society: print (books, magazines, newspapers) and electronic media (television, radio, recordings).
- Modern versions of the storytellers and singers, face to face communication replaced by mass produced items for use by a wide public
- one way communication, from an identifiable point to an anonymous body of people
- Important sector of the economy
Communication: to bring together or unify by establishing shared meanings and understandings among groups and individuals, transmission of information, knowledge or beliefs by means of language, visual images and other sign systems such as music
Media communicate messages: pleasurable, meaningful, entertaining, informative, etc…
The process of representation – the use of language, visual images and other symbolic tools to create messages that people can understand and find satisfying or enjoyable – a selective process which results in what is called framing.
Framing: Once story is selected, must be placed in some frame of reference; uses imagery, illustration, code words, tone of voice, placement. To frame something (picture or story), is to set up boundaries that define where the representation begins and ends, and to organize the contents in a way that distinguishes what is being emphasized from what it being treated secondary. The framing of any representation has ideological effects inasmuch as it entails a particular inflection or bias. Every frame is only one of several ways of seeing and interpreting something.
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Gender framing |
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Social class framing |
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Crime framing: e.g. white collar crime is a product of our society’s materialistic values, while black street crime is a matter of personal pathology, committed by antisocial savages |
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Racial framing: e.g. heavy metal music is basically a white form deemed dangerous on an individual level, black rap music is a serious threat to society |
Criteria for inclusion of news stories
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Intense: stories pop up and disappear quickly – speed, using images, coverage brief, fleeting, never examining what led to events or background of situation, and future impacts |
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Unambiguous and balanced: simple, objective |
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Culturally familiar and marketable: socially recognizable, repetition combined with limitations of news gathering capabilities, use of stereotypes, appeal to consumer tastes, complex issues less marketable |
Contrary facts, prior conditions, longterm causes, underlying structures that explain events tend to be downplayed or crowded out
News values:
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Immediacy: news is about what is new or immediate, report events as quickly as possible after they occur, news written in present tense usually, causes belong in past so not covered, stories created with some sense of uncertainty about consequences in order to create curiosity and general interest at expense of providing historical context and perspective, communication technology keeps getting faster |
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Personalization: explanations and causes are reduced to level of individual motive and psychology, make events more concrete and familiar, use personalities and people, e.g. political news coverage |
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Extraordinariness: out of the ordinary, entail conflict, confrontation, deviance or disorder result is negative news |
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| Course documents of Sociology of Mass Media |
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