MEDIA FUNCTIONS AND EFFECTS

Transcription

1 MEDIA FUNCTIONS AND EFFECTS PREAMBLE Just as all living organisms live in certain specialized environments to which they adapt and which completely determine their lives, so do human beings live, to a significant extent, in an ocean of words. The difference is that the human environment is, to a large extent, man made. We secrete words into the environment around us just as we secrete carbon dioxide and, in doing so, we create an invisible semantic environment of words which is part of our existence in quite as important ways as the physical environment. The content of verbal output does not merely passively reflect the complex social, political, and economic reality of the human race: it interacts with it as well. As our semantic environment incorporates the verbal outputs secreted into it, it becomes both enriched and polluted, and these changes are largely responsible for the course of human history. (Rapoport 1969) 1

2 What is Mass Media? Mass media are the means of public communication reaching to the large, scattered, heterogeneous and anonymous audience at the same time. The branches of the Mass Media 2

3 How does it influence us? We are produced by the environment of signification that we have collectively produced However, we cannot simply 'ingest' those secretions because our culturally learnt codes and conventions transform what we get from external stimuli into actual communication, where the message is not only received but also decoded, understood and responded to 3

4 How do we perceive it? The codes and conventions which comprise our particular culture's ways of seeing are incorporated into the modes of perception of each individual We are largely unconscious of their operation Our perception is not so much an inherited mechanism as a learnt one The awareness we bring to consuming media is a precondition for making sense of what we get This awareness is itself produced in us by what we have experienced hitherto Media consumption or media diet It is the sum of information and entertainment media taken in by an individual or group It includes activities such as interacting with new media, reading books and magazines, watching television and film, and listening to radio 4

5 Media blames Media is often blamed for producing results which are in fact conditioned by much broader and more diffuse historical circumstances The number of hours people spend consuming media is not ultimately caused by media itself - it results, much more obviously, from: shorter working hours increased family resources available for leisure the hours the new media fills were previously filled by various activities, like knitting, chatting or even dozing the new medium seems to be able to co-exist quite comfortably with them Media evolution It has brought new stimulus into the home, and created a demand for more entertainment: more books, magazines and newspapers are read more music heard more plays and films are seen now than ever before - even if 'only' on television or online 5

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7 THE FUNCTIONAL TRADITION Media theory is based on some underlying assumptions. There are at least three, which can best be thought of under the following headings: (1) individualism; (2) abstraction; (3) functionalism. 1 Individualism This assumption presupposes a one-to-one relationship between the mass communicator and the individual viewer which is justified by reference to the one-toone model of face-to-face communication The media consumer is regarded as an individual with certain psychological needs They take these needs with them to the screen, and the mass communicator attempts to gratify them 7

8 2 Abstraction Here the assumption is that an individual's psychological needs are much the same no matter what society or culture s/he belongs to. There is a kind of universality and timelessness about human relations, which derive from myths about the existence of a universal 'human nature'. This approach tends to disregard the historical processes which have produced such formative developments as the division of labour, class oppositions, regional cultures, economic differentials and the various subcultures, in favour of general psychological needs. 3 Functionalism This approach assumes that media is used by its consumers to satisfy their psychological needs, in a more or less conscious and active way Functional analysis concentrates on the relations between the different parts in a system, in order to discover how they work and the functions they perform The notion of functionalism derives from a wellestablished sociological discipline, and in the field of mass communication it has extended the range of the earlier stimulus-response assumptions The most recent research has developed from this into what is called the 'uses and gratifications' theory 8

9 USES AND GRATIFICATIONS This theory attempts to explain the uses and functions of the media for individuals, groups, and society in general. There are three objectives in developing uses and gratifications theory: 1. to explain how individuals use mass communication to gratify their needs. What do people do with the media. 2. to discover underlying motives for individuals media use. 3. to identify the positive and the negative consequences of individual media use. At the core of uses and gratifications theory lies the assumption that audience members actively seek out the mass media to satisfy individual needs. A medium will be used more when the existing motives to use the medium leads to more satisfaction 9

10 USES AND GRATIFICATIONS There are five basic needs to be fulfilled by the mass media (Katz et al.1974): 1. Cognitive needs: the acquiring of information, knowledge and understanding. 2. Affective needs: the need for emotional and aesthetic experience, love and friendship; the desire to see beautiful things. 3. Personal integrative needs: the need for selfconfidence, stability, status, reassurance. 4. Social integrative needs: the need for strengthening contacts with family, friends and others. 5. Tension-release needs: the need for escape and diversion. 10

11 AN 'INTEGRATED, THEORY' OF MASS MEDIA EFFECTS The idea of needs becomes the basis for understanding the media as a whole. The three categories of need are (De Fleur and Ball-Rokeach1989): 1. The need to understand one's social world 2. The need to act meaningfully and effectively in that world 3. The need for fantasy-escape from daily problems and tensions Magic Bullet Theory The "hypodermic needle theory" implied mass media had a direct, immediate and powerful effect on its audiences. The mass media in the 1940s and 1950s were perceived as a powerful influence on behavior change. 11

12 "strong effects" theory Factors: the fast rise and popularization of radio and television the emergence of the persuasion industries, such as advertising and propaganda the Payne Fund studies of the 1930s, which focused on the impact of motion pictures on children, and Hitler's monopolization of the mass media during WWII to unify the German public behind the Nazi parties: Criticism Even 'handling' the 'large amounts of raw news' might still leave the individual in a dysfunctional state The news itself increases personal tensions and anxiety which leads the individual to reduce his attention to the news It is appropriate that the bread of news should be leavened by the judicious addition of quantities of entertainment The function of entertainment is 'to provide respite for the individual which, perhaps, permits him to continue to be exposed to the mass-communicated news, interpretation, and prescriptions so necessary for his survival in the modern world 12

13 Wright 1975: Imagines the individual consumer of media as a mechanism whose needs are merely those of equilibrium-maintenance and continued 'exposure' to the 'necessary' doses of news. This is in fact a classic statement of the 'hypodermic needle' model (sometimes also called the 'bullet theory') of mass communication's uses and effects. As a mass, an audience displays the following four characteristics: It comprises people from all walks of life. It comprises anonymous individuals. Its members share little experience with each other - there is little interaction between them. Its members are disunited - they are very loosely organized. Underexposure One of the most striking results of this approach can be observed in the attitude to individuals who for whatever reason are underexposed to media influences They come to be regarded as sufferers from a new kind of social malady, namely 'mediadeprivation'. This stands if we define the media primarily in terms of their function of disseminating news and public affairs from an informed elite to a dependent mass public. 13

14 MASS CONSUMPTION OR MASS COMMUNICATION? Early research done by the broadcasting institutions or their agencies lead to the definition of the audience as a 'market', comprising people whose shared characteristic is that they are all 'consumers' of television output But this language is of course metaphorical; audiences do not 'buy' television messages, and they do not 'consume' the messages transmitted to them McQuail s (2010) theory suggests the fact that television is communication as well as mass If the mass media are to influence individuals, then, as a form of communication, they must do so according to the rules of communication in general 14

15 McQuail s five conditions to the effect of communication: 1. The greater the monopoly of the communication source over the recipient, the greater the change or effect in favour of the source over the recipient. 2. Communication effects are greatest where the message is in line with the existing opinions, beliefs and dispositions of the receiver. 3. Communication can produce the most effective shifts on unfamiliar, lightly felt, peripheral issues, which do not lie at the centre of the recipient's value systems. 4. Communication is more likely to be effective where the source is believed to have expertise, high status, objectivity or likeability, but particularly where the source has power, and can be identified with. 5. The social context, group or reference group will mediate the communication and influence whether or not it is accepted. Relationship media-audience 1 Diversion escape from the constraints of routine escape from the burdens of problems emotional release 2 Personal relationships companionship social utility 3 Personal identity personal reference reality exploration value reinforcement 4 Surveillance - maintaining an overall view of the immediate environment. 15

16 WHO IS THE COMMUNICATOR? There is an apparent paradox which does not occur in most other forms of communication: neither party in the communication act knows who the other is. Normally when one party encodes a message according to one set of codes and conventions and a second party decodes that message according to different codes, the result is known as an aberrant decoding. As Umberto Eco has pointed out, aberrant decoding is quite normal in the field of the mass media. Relationship communicator - audience We can identify three simultaneous levels in the presentation of the communicator: The image on the screen, whether that image be one of a newscaster, the actors in a fictional representation, or camera shots of the world out-there - urban streetscapes, for instance. The broadcasting institution, its employees and professional codes The culture for which the messages are meaningful. At this level the communicator is the macro-group, of many millions of people, of which each member of the audience group is a differentiated part. 16

17 There is no single 'authorial' identity for the mass communicator The image on the screen would hardly be able to make itself understood at all were it unable to rely upon the resources of everyday verbal language. Media functions are to some extent dependent upon and defined by the functions of speech in general. Media is a complex semiotic system going beyond mere words - but much of its visual content takes the form of 'para-linguistic' signs derived ultimately from real-life linguistic codes. Television functions in society as a form of communication Roman Jakobson s functions of communication 1. The referential function. Language's most familiar function, where the relationship between a sign and its referent or object is dominant. 2. The emotive function. This concerns the relationship between a sign and its encoder; it expresses their attitude towards the subject of the message (e.g. 'it's been a long day' communicates the speaker's attitude towards the day, and does not refer to its time-span). 3. The conative function. This concerns the relationship between the sign and its decoder. Imperative commands are messages where the conative function is most clearly dominant 17

18 4. The poetic function. Here the dominant function is the message's concern with itself. It is not confined to poetry. Slogans can use it (e.g. 'I like Ike'), and so can proverbial sayings (e.g. 'Finders, keepers, losers, weepers'). It is dominant in many television advertisements. 5. The phatic function. Here the dominant function of the message is to stress the act of communication between the parties involved. Remarks about the weather are its classic example. Television programmes use it frequently; perhaps because of, rather than in spite of, the 'remote' relationship between broadcaster and viewer. 6. The metalinguistic function. Here the function of language is to communicate a message about language. Literary criticism is all metalanguage, and many television programmes, especially comedies, are 'about' the television message. Parodies are especially adept at exploiting metalanguage. Media Effects 1. Media influenced effects are those things that occur as a result either in part or in whole from media influence. 2. They can occur immediately during exposure to a media message, or they can take a long time to occur after any particular exposure. 3. They can last for a few seconds or an entire lifetime. They can be positive as well as negative. 4. They can show up clearly as changes but they can also reinforce existing patterns, in which case the effect appears as no change. 18

19 Media Effects 5. They can occur whether the media have an intention for them to occur or not. 6. They can affect individual people or all people in the form of the public. 7. They can also affect institutions and society. 8. They can act directly on a target (a person, the public, an institution, or society) or they can act indirectly. 9. And, finally, they can be easily observable or they can be latent and therefore much more difficult to observe. Sources Fiske, J., Hartley J. 1996, Reading Television, London and New York: Routledge Jeff Lewis Cultural Studies: The Basics. London: Sage. Katz, E., Blumler, J. G., & Gurevitch, M. (1974). Ulilization of mass communication by the individual. In J. G. Blumler, & E. Katz (Eds.), The uses of mass communications: Current perspectives on gratifications research (pp ). Beverly Hills: Sage. DeFleur, M. L. & Ball-Rokeach, S Theories of mass communication (5th ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman. McQuail's Mass Communication Theory 6 th edition, London: Sage 19