J 201 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Soviet Empire, Job Satisfaction, Culture Industry
7 Mar 2018
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J201 Exam #1 Study Guide
Encoding/Decoding
Encoding: creating messages or meaning
Decoding: interpreting meaning
Medium/Media
Medium
• A form of media
• A platform
• A “go between” or vehicle
• Channels of communication
• Any technology that extends the senses or capabilities of the human body (eg. glasses)
• Medium is the message
• Content of any medium is another medium
Media
• Media facilitates communication
• Media are social processes of transferring and circulating meaning
o Created by people and used by people
Interpersonal Communication
• Communication one on one or a small group
• Usually face to face
• Point A to point B
• Might use voices but also can be phone, email etc
Mass Communication
• Communication from one point (sender) to multiple receivers
• Top-down
o Only select group of professionals, working under managers, owners or other
political elites are able to make and distribute meaning on a large scale
• Recipients become depersonalized groups: target audiences, publics, niche markets
• Messages are intended to: make money by increasing or tailoring the audience,
influence public opinion, or spread promotional messages (ads)
• Mass media only “listen” (conduct audience research) so that they can more effectively
manage, reach, and retain audience share
Networked Communication
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• Usually linked (one person to another, to another, who connects back to the first and the
second connects to another etc)
Power
• Power is a crucial dimension of the production and circulation of meaning
• Power is the capacity to get what you want when interacting with others
• People with power are able to realize their own will even against the resistance of others
Culture Industry
• The range of institutions that make meaning and use it to shape and manage
populations
o Schools, news/entertainment industries, tech companies etc
• Meanings we all collectively share
Marshall McLuhan’s Understanding of Media
• He thinks society focuses too much on content and are missing the entire picture of what
media technologies actually do in society (basically everything)
• The message isnt whats spelled out
• Media are extensions of people
• Were so fixated on content and meaning, we don’t recognize technologies as media (eg.
railroads, airplanes, electric light)
o These are media bc they alter our sense of space and time, they are an
extension of what a human could do alone
Raymond Williams’ Understanding of Media
• Television 1974
• The rise of TV in the 1950s and 60s led to many discussions about its effects on viewers
o Researchers / media critics were concerned about how TV influenced peoples
behavior/attitudes regarding sex, violence, politics
• Children -- particularly vulnerable to new medium
Media Effects
• Raymond williams argued that media effect studies all isolated medium from society
• TV was like an alien that came in and disrupted society
• Concepts like violence, socialization, deviance are abstractions that dont take society
and actual human intentions/uses into account
• Medium is seen as determining social behavior
Technological Determinism
• McLuhan
• Sees media forms (radio, tv, print) as operating on and changing society
Cultural Determinism
• Williams
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• Society, tv, radio, print are all connected to society but also invented for human
purposes
Representation (Older and Newer Understandings)
Older View
• To depict something out there in the world (object, person, event) either accurately or
inaccurately
• Meaning is fixed
• The best representation is the one that comes closest to accurately reflecting the thing
being depicted
Newer View
• The social process of making and exchanging meaning
• Meanings are shared social constructs that are circulated, made, and remade through
process of representation
Meaning
• The meaning of representation is never fixed
• Meaning making is a thoroughly social process
• Meanings are always in a state of flux, undergoing revision and contestation
• An object, person, event never has “one true meaning”
• Meanings are resources we use to generate our identities, negotiate with others and
position ourselves within a social milieu
• Meanings change and grow because the process of communication relies on many
small creative transactions between active human beings
Models of Power (Pluralist, Ruling Elite, and Hegemonic Dominance)
Ruling Elite Model
• C. Wright Mills
• Power is highly concentrated and top down
• The elite are a tightly-knit group with similar interests who impose their will on others
• The media are extensions of the ruling elite and express represent the ideas of this
group
Pluralist
• Power is diffused in a democratic society
• No unified elite
• Society is comprised of groups with intersecting and cross-cutting interests
Hegemonic Dominance
• A combination of the pluralist and ruling elite models
• Society is comprised of groups with multiple overlapping and cross-cutting interests
• There is an elite that can steer, shape, and channel meaning
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