A-Level Sociology

Ch. 8 Media

Mehar

• 5 min read

Index:

  1. Introduction, New & Old Media
  2. Ownership & Control
  3. The History of Media
  4. Selection & Presentation of Media Content

  1. Impact of New Media
  2. Media Representation & Effects
  3. Media Impact on Behaviour, Violence, & Deviancy Amplification
  4. Globalisation & Postmodernity

Introduction, New & Old Media
Mass Media: The relationship between the production, distribution, and consumption of information.
Medium: Channels of communication (media is plural).
Old Media: Old media involves ‘one-to-many’ communication because information is produced and distributed by a media owner, and this is passively consumed by the audience. Usually owned by the state or private corporations. Examples: books, televisions, and newspapers.

Dutton suggests that the following characteristics of the media set it apart from interpersonal communication (one-to-one such as telephone calls)

Old media communication characteristics:

  • Impersonal ➜ the sender doesn’t know the receiver, and vice-versa.
  • Lacking in immediacy.
  • One-way ➜ creator to audience.
  • Physically and technologically distant, large-scale, and simultaneous.
  • Have organised channels/tools to reach audiences.
  • Commodifies (payment Is necessary to receive information).

Examples of passive consumption are Bandura’s Bobo Dols social experiment and the Hypodermic Syringe Model.

New Media: Contemporary channels of communication characterised by their interactivity, individualisation, and network capabilities.
Communication Types in the New Media:

  • One-to-one ➜ such as email.
  • One-to-many ➜ such as Facebook, Twitter, or a blog.
  • Many-to-many ➜ Shirky calls them group conversations. For ex. peer-to-peer networks (Quora, Reddit).

Crosbie: The New Media has 3 characteristics that differentiate it from other mass media forms:

  1. They can’t exist without the appropriate technology (for ex. a computer).
  2. Information can be personalised.
  3. Collective control means each person in a network can share, shape, and change the content of the information being exchanged.
    People in the lower castes were not given much of a voice before, but now they can make their voices heard.
    For example: More people speak up on particular issues through the Me Too movement, the Black Rights movement, and the Feminist movement.

New Media allows for two-way communication and a consumer-producer relationship. For example, if a person regularly uses social media, they become both a producer and consumer of information, i.e. Twitter. They are called ‘prosumers’.

3 Main Classifications of Media:

  1. Print media: Newspapers, archives, leaflets/brochures, and journals.
  2. Visual media: Television, social media, billboards, and paintings.
  3. Auditory media: Podcast, music, and radio.

Ownership & Control
Media Ownership is the commercial and legal control of interpersonal and mass communication technologies by individuals, corporations, and/or governments.
There are 2 types of media owners:

  1. Private Ownership ➜ Companies that are run by individuals, families, or shareholders.
    Rupert Murdoch owns a major portion of the News Corporation.
  2. State Ownership ➜ The government controls the media to a degree.
    In China, the government constantly regulates television and internet broadcasts. In other countries, public broadcasters have more freedom of speech.
    Such ownership allows the owners to choose the content the audience receives.
    For example, private companies would be reluctant to publish information critical of the company, and state-owned companies may be biased to suit political control.

Censorship: The deliberate suppression of the sharing OR communication of information.
Controllers ➜ Controllers can be editors of a newspaper that manage a company on a daily basis.

Extra information on mass media:

  • Targeted news and gatekeeping show only a certain agenda.
  • Mass media is when you reach to a large audience, over various locations, cultures, and religions.
  • In mass media, production and distribution go hand in hand. They can’t make a high amount of copies, so they conduct surveys to check how many will actually read. They look into delivering methods such as by motorbikes or by newspaper stands.

Media Ownership in the UK
The ownership of the main mass media in the UK is concentrated in the hands of a small number of large companies. They dominate UK newspaper circulation.

About Rupert Murdoch:

  • Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (he does not own it fully, rather just has a large voting power — major shares) dominates 35.5% of all newspaper sales in the UK.
  • Murdoch has a major shareholding in the News Corporation. Companies under the News Corporation: FOX, The SUN, 20th Century Fox, The Times, The Sunday Times, News of the World.
  • The concentrated number of media owners are known as the Lords of the Global Village. Murdoch is referred to as a Lord of the Global Village as well.
  • In 2011, Murdoch was involved in an international phone hacking scandal. Employees of his newspaper had been found hacking into phones and police bribery in the pursuit of stories. Further, according to a former editor who worked at Murdoch’s paper, Murdoch paper, Alex, Murdoch routinely interfered directly with editorial decisions in his newspapers.
    Rupert reinforces his ideology into the world by publishing it in all of the publishing media he owns.The SUN and Fox News were extremely biased and opinionated, and due to this attitude, people started questioning democracy at News Corporation. After the scandal, the public audience started trusting them much less.

Bagdikian: Lords of the Global Village. Bagdikian said that the ownership of the media is concentrated in the hands of the Lords of the Global Village.

The History of Media
Pre-Industrial Era (before 1700):

  • The Chinese crafted cloth sheets to record drawings and writings. They created it using rags and plant fibres.
  • Tools and weapons were forged with stones and metals.

Examples:

  • Cave paintings: The Lascaux Cave in France has Paleolithic cave paintings (20,000 years old). The Maltravieso Cave in Spain has stencils made by Neanderthals (older than 64,000 years).
  • Clay tablets: Papyrus in Egypt, etc.
  • Printing press using woodblocks (220 AD).

Industrial Era (1700s to 1930s)
People used steam power, developed machines, produced iron, and manufactured various products such as books using printing presses.
Examples:

  • Telegraph ➜ system to transport messages along a wire telephone (1876).
  • Printing press (for mass production).
  • Motion Pictures ➜ 1900s, first movie made in 1906 in Melbourne. It was called The Story of the Kelly Gang.

Electronic Age (1930s to 1980s)
The invention of the transistor marked the beginning of the Electronic Age. Transistors allowed the transistor radio, electronic circuits, and the early computers to be developed.
The first television was made in 1927 by Farnsworth. In 1876, the telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell.

New Information Age (late 1980s to 2000s)
The internet allowed fast communication and social networking. Microelectronics allowed the emergence of personal computers, mobile devices, and wearable technology.

We segregate the history of media into 2 broad parts. The internet came into existence for the public in the early 1990s, but in a very small way. 1993 would be considered as a benchmark because that was when the internet was introduced.

What separates Old Media from New Media?

  • Old media are media channels that are less digital and interactive. For Example: archives, journals, and newspapers.
  • New media is interactive and digital. Easy access is gained from all over the world. Interconnectivity.
  • Technology is the benchmark factor that segregates the old and new media.

Media Text= Any media product, or any work that communicates meaning to an audience. Examples: Film, TV programme, webpage, newspaper, article, etc.

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