Cultivation, Agenda Setting, are some theories that
talk about how media affect viewers. The reading you were set also
talks about how effects theory perspectives have changed with time
from the idea in the 1940s that media have massive effects to the idea
in the 60s or thereabouts that media have very limited effects to the
current idea that media have moderate effects. The idea basically is
that scholars react to the trends that are current in their day. This
is because they are reading each other’s published works and staying
abreast of the latest in the field. What usually happens is that a few
well-known and respected scholars set the trend and everyone takes a
cue from the most well known, best funded and best reviewed work to
design their own. So for example Entman has become a well know scholar
working with Framing theory and almost anyone who does any further
research about framing will definitely cite Entman. Similarly Gerbener
is best known for introducing cultivation theory so anyone who wants
to conduct surveys or carry out experiments dealing with cultivation
will read up on and cite Gerbner in his work.
What you should know about effects work is:
Causality is different from casualty. Only experiments prove causality.
Agenda setting is a theory for which causality was demonstrated via an
experiment. Cultivation theory does not typically include experiments
but relies largely on surveys – this is because the theory posits that
it takes a long time for the effect to have an effect.
Remember that experiments lack external validity because they are
generally conducted in artificial environments unlike the real world
and because the sample size is generally too small for us to be able
to generalize the results.
Phew.
Now that we have spent some time thinking about how media impact
society- lets switch gears and look at what impacts media.
Here too you have a number of ideas to think about- that we have
discussed over the course of the semester.
The uses and gratifications model
The socialization of journalists
What else drives media? Ideology? Codes and conventions? Commerce? Regulation? How does regulation drive media?
First, the model –profit versus public service.
Should media be profit driven for efficiency or should they be driven
by a desire to serve the public good? Your reading does mention some
advantages of each type of media and you should think about these.
In this topic you should be clear on the following concepts:
Public sphere,
Public opinion,
Public good.
It bears repeating on my part that public opinion is not simply to go
around asking people what they think about issues. Public opinion is a
more dynamic PROCESS. Whereby democratic theory assumes that media
will do the following
1- educate the public about key issues
2- to make these often boring issues interesting for the public by
dealing with them creatively
3- then, inform the public and those in power about what the public
thinks about issues. Media are suppose to give space and time to a
variety of views and ideas including the issues that affect
minorities, unpopular ideas and other less heard of views.
4- Media are suppose to be a space where various groups of people can
debate. This is why media seems full of shows where different parties
fight on air. However fighting is not what is required by the public
sphere model. What we need is informed debate.
Lippman of course thinks this is impossible and that democratic theory
is asking media for too much especially as the media is run on a
profit model and as people are not as smart as democratic theory
imagines them to be.
What do you think?
Also as part of this topic we discussed corporations.
The Business model of media says that in capitalist systems there is a
lot of competition and so a lot of voices including the minority
voices will automatically get heard because business owners will try
to give the audiences what they want. So, for example in the USA if
you consider African Americans as a minority group then, that group is
served by media as there are a number of movies, shows and books that
feature African American experience. However you might argue that such
shows are niche shows and are watched by niche audiences (in this case
black Americans) and that it is the mainstream media (think Friends)
that needs to include minority voices. Think about mainstream American
media- how inclusive of minority voices and opinions are these?
America includes significant Pakistani, Chinese, Spanish/Mexican and
non Christian origin citizens. Do you feel like these are accurately
and sufficiently represented on mainstream media?
The other issue with the business model is vertical and horizontal
integration. On the face of it the US has a number of media outlets :
websites , TV Channels, movies, newspapers etc. But if about 5
companies own a 1000 outlets then can we term that as competition?
And what can we do to escape the big bad corporations? Well here’s
where regulation comes in. For a long time PEMRA did not allow TV
channels to also own newspapers. That is why GEO which was launched by
Jang group- was forced to air all of their broadcasts out of Dubai-
this rule of PEMRA was known as “conflict of interest,” and was later
changed so that now Aaj TV, Express and Geo all of which have sister
newspapers, Business Recorder, Express and Jang – can operate both
types of media. Similarly the change in regulation allowed Hum Tv to
launch a radio channel.
So you can see that the trend of horizontal integration is also true
for Pakistan. Although so far vertical integration has not taken
place. If Geo buys a cinema and also starts selling you cable instead
of worldcall then we will have vertical integration as well.
Concepts you should know in this topic include:
Objectivity.
Integration
Regulation versus censorship
Freedom of speech
Objectivity in journalism is a very tricky concept. By now you have
seen in various films like Control Room that journalists are not
robots and that they have feelings, emotions, ideas and opinions.
Should journalists try to suppress their own subjectivities when
covering a story that may be as important as war? Or should they
perhaps tell us how they feel so that we are not fooled into thinking
we are reading impartial news? How should journalists achieve
objectivity?
One way journalists try to do this is by giving all the sides of a
story. So they would tell us that the President wants to go to war
however the opposition thinks this is a bad idea.
In reality, sometimes, news comes out biased.
Again market theory would say that if we de-regulate the business
environment to allow any and everyone to have a media platform then
all the voices would get heard. This too does not happen in practice
because media costs money and advertisers follow the majority.
Now think about freedom of speech. It’s a big issue today especially
as the freedom of speech of some countries allows them to publish
cartoons that upset large segments of the world population. This in
fact is a problem of globalization. Freedom of speech is rarely in
practice infinite. Even in the US and Europe pro Nazi voices for
instance would not be allowed to spread hatred and violence. It is for
individual societies to decide what will be included and won’t be
included in freedom of speech. However globalization has complicated
this issue- because although the Danish people might think that
certain cartoons are acceptable- those cartoons had an impact
thousands of miles away in our country. Think about this issue. How
would we react if the Danish told us that it was no longer okay for us
to print a certain topic? We would probably argue that Pakistan is a
sovereign state with a right to make its own laws about what we can
and cannot talk about. And in a previous era before Internet perhaps
we wouldn’t even have heard about the cartoons. Now we have heard and
have opinions about the issue.
What is two step flow?
What is Cultivation theory?
What was the Frankfurt School?
What are the methods used to research audiences?
What is the uses and gratifications model?
Three models: Direct effects, reinforcement, uses and gratifications.
How can democracy be replaced by publicity?
What is Yellow journalism?
What’s the church state wall?
What is publicity?
