Convergence and the Reshaping of Mass Communication

The mass media system we have today has existed more or less as we know it ever since the 1830s. It is a system that has weathered repeated significant change with the coming of increasingly sophisticated technologies—the penny press newspaper was soon followed by mass market books and mass circulation magazines. Then, more recently, came the Internet, World Wide Web, and mobile technologies like smart phones and tablets. Now, because of these new technologies, all the media industries are facing profound alterations in how they are structured and do business, the nature of their content, and how they interact with and respond to their audiences.

There is a seismic shift going on in the mass media—and therefore in mass communication—that dwarfs the changes to the media landscape wrought by television’s assault in the 1950s and 1960s on the preeminence of radio and the movies. Encouraged by the Internet, digitization, and mobility, new producers are finding new ways to deliver new content to new audiences. The media industries are in turmoil, and audience members, as they are confronted by a seemingly bewildering array of possibilities, are just now starting to come to terms with the new media future.

Industries in Transition

Media consumer “behavior is shifting,” media consultant Mike Vorhaus told industry executives at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, and that means media companies “have to do business differently, which is hard enough in normal times.

The Good News for Media Industries

Indeed, what this turmoil indicates is that the challenge facing the media industries today is how to capture a mass audience now fragmented into millions of niches. What has come about, according to Variety’s Jonathan Bing (2006), “is an unfamiliar new entertainment landscape, one in which the old rules of media consumption no longer apply”. In fact, more than at any time in history, Americans are watching more video, listening to more music, reading more often, playing more video games, and accessing the Internet more often than ever before; they are simply doing it in new and different ways (Masnick & Ho, 2012). For media industries, these facts offer good news—readers, viewers, and listeners are out there in ever increasing numbers, and they value the mass communication experience. These data also offer good news for literate media consumers—their consumption choices will shape the media landscape to come and, inevitably, the mass communication process itself.

Together, media industries and media consumers face a number of challenges. Beyond fragmenting audiences and the impact of new technologies (and the convergence —the erosion of traditional distinctions among media—they encourage), they must also deal with three other forces that promise to alter the nature of the media industries as well as the relationship between those industries and the people with whom they interact: concentration of media ownership and conglomeration, rapid globalization, and hyper commercialization.

Changes Concentration of Ownership and Conglomeration

Ownership of media companies is increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Th rough mergers, acquisitions, buyouts, and hostile takeovers, a very small number of large conglomerates is coming to own more and more of the world’s media outlets. Th e public has a right to be informed by a diversity of viewpoints so they can make up their own minds. Without a diverse, independent media, citizen access to information crumbles, along with political and social participation. For the sake of democracy, we should encourage the widest possible dissemination of free expression. Changes in media ownership have been swift and staggering. Over the past two decades the number of major US media companies fell by more than one half; most of the survivors are controlled by fewer than ten huge media conglomerates.

There are, however, less dire observations on concentration and conglomeration. Many telecommunications professionals argue that concentration and conglomeration are not only inevitable but necessary in a telecommunications environment that is increasingly fragmented and internationalized; companies must maximize their number of outlets to reach as much of the divided and far-flung audience as possible. If they do not, they will become financially insecure, and that is an even greater threat to free and effective mediated communication because advertisers and other well-monied forces will have increased influence over them. Another defense of concentration and conglomeration has to do with economies of scale; that is, bigger can in fact sometimes be better because the relative cost of an operation’s output declines as the size of that endeavor grows

 

 

Lecture

Notes on videos

Stages of creating a traditional media message stages of creating a traditional media message:
1. Reporters or writers working for a media company try to find a story that will be interesting for their target audience. Target audience is similar to a term we learned in the unit on advertising. It means the specific group of people that a media message is made for.

2. Once the basic story is put together, it is given to editors.
An editor is a person who makes changes to a media message so that it's appropriate for a target audience. That means they might try to make a story more interesting, for instance.
the role of editors. Editors are very important because they choose exactly what the media message says and what it looks or sounds like. This includes choosing what people say, choosing which images to show, choosing text, and choosing the organization of the message.

3. The media message is ready to be published. It can be broadcast like television and radio, or printed and distributed like newspapers, magazines, mail and outdoor messages. who creates social media messages Many of the messages we see on social media are created by writers and editors who work for media companies, just like in traditional media. Other messages we see in social media, however, are user created content.

 

4. The major difference between social media and traditional media is that the pictures, text, and video that are created by social media users instead of by media companies.
Another major difference is in how these messages are published. Social media messages can be sent directly between users.

 

Synopsis BIAS

How is media constructed?

Traditional media. Stages of creating a traditional media message (for media companies).

1) Reporters and writers try to find the story that would be interesting for the target audience.

2) Then the story is given to the editor who changes media message so it’s appropriate for the target audience (choosing what people say, choosing what images to show, choosing text, choosing organization of the message).

3) The media message is ready to be published it can be broadcast like television and radio or printed like newspapers and magazines.

Social media. Many of the messages are created by writers and editors who work for media companies. Other messages are user created content (for example people pictures news in Twitter or Facebook). And this is the main difference between traditional and social media messages (in traditional media there is not user created content). Another difference is how these message is published. Social media message can be sent directly, the message that you see are chosen by social media sights they may recommend certain message for you or say that this story is trending.

Media bias – showing an opinion about smth. that is not based on all of the facts

Three types of bias: bias by omission (some information is omitted or left out if that information is important we say it’s bias by omission) bias by placement (where the main information is situated) and bias by spin (the choosing of words make us think if the information is positive or negative)

Bias by omission Two types: 1) avoiding coverage (coverage means publishing media messages about an event; when media avoid coverage of an important event) 2) one-sided story (there is only one point of view; we don’t have

all the information to decide our own opinion some points of view might be missing)

To be objective means being fair and using facts instead of opinions (several points of view)

To be subjective means present only one point of view.

Media publish omitted or one-sided stories because conflict of interest, a situation where there might be biased coverage due to business or political reasons

Bias by placement happens when stories that are important don’t receive important placement in media messages. Important placement means smth at the top of the page or at the beginning of a video. Role of editors – they basically tell us how important the story is, they can influence people’s opinions. News as entertainment. Sensationalism means using news media message to entertain people instead of inform them. Example: smb is arrested by the police for driving too fast, next say you can hear about this arrest on the radio, TV, you are given details, and in the front page of newspaper you will learn about another people in the car. This story becomes trending. But is this story really important?

Bias by spin happens when media tries to influence our opinion of situation. Pundit is a person who has a lot of knowledge and experience about the subject and gives opinions about the subject in public. It can prevent you from making your own opinion. Negative or positive connotation. The connotation can lead to bias by spin. E.g. teachers are demanding a fat pay increase of 10% (negative) and Teachers are requesting reasonable pay increase of 10% (positive)

The difference between connotation and denotation in course activities and games Denotation means the basic definition of a word that you'd find in a dictionary. Connotation refers to the personal, emotional and cultural associations of that word. Connotation means the feelings that we have about a word. These feelings are usually positive or negative. This is the main difference between connotation and denotation. In course activities and games the Denotation may be the instruction and Connotation is emotions produced expressed during the game.

The difference in meaning and usage of several modals of opinion – types of modals 1) possibility: will, must, might, may – expresses the most possibility (100% chance), could, can – small possibility 2) advice: must, had better, ought to– the strongest advice, could should – less serious advice.

 

Synopsis Chapter 4

A Short History of Newspapers

The Earliest Newspapers. The Acta Diurna (actions of the day), written on a tablet, was posted on a wall after each meeting of the Senate in Rome. The newspapers we recognize today have their roots in 17th-century Europe. Corantos, one-page news sheets about specific events, were printed in English in Holland in 1620. Oxford Gazette, the official voice of the Crown was founded in 1665 and later renamed the London Gazette, this journal used a formula of foreign news, official information, royal proclamations, and local news that became the model for the first colonial newspapers. In 1690 Boston bookseller/printer (and coffeehouse owner) Benjamin Harris printed his own broadside, Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestick. More successful was Boston postmaster John Campbell, whose 1704 Boston NewsLetter survived until the Revolution. In 1721 Boston had three papers. James Franklin’s New-England Courant was the only one publishing without authority. The Courant was popular and controversial. In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin established a print shop and later, in 1729, took over a failing newspaper, which he revived and renamed the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1734 New York Weekly Journal publisher John Peter Zenger was jailed for criticizing that colony’s royal governor.

The Modern Newspaper Emerges

penny press - one-cent newspapers for everyone. Benjamin Day’s September 3, 1833, issue of the New York Sun was the first of the penny papers. Soon there were penny papers in all the major cities. Among the most important was James Gordon Bennett’s New York Morning Herald. New York. Tribune was an important penny paper as well. The first African American newspaper was Freedom’s Journal, published initially in 1827 by John B. Russwurm and the Reverend Samuel Cornish. In 1848, six large New York papers, including the Sun, the Herald, and the Tribune, decided to pool eff orts and share expenses collecting news from foreign ships docking at the city’s harbor. Other domestic wire services followed—the Associated Press in 1900, the United Press in 1907, and the International News Service in 1909. In 1883 Hungarian immigrant Joseph Pulitzer bought the troubled New York World. Today there are more than 9,800 newspapers operating in the United States Pass-along readership —readers who did not originally purchase the paper—brings 104 million people a day in touch with a daily and 200 million a week in touch with a weekly.

Types of Newspapers

-National Daily Newspapers

-Large Metropolitan Dailies

-Suburban And Small-Town Dailies

-The Ethnic Press

-The Alternative Press

-Commuter Papers

 

 

Synopsis Film

History of the Movies Although the start of the history of film is not clearly defined, the commercial, public screening of ten of Lumière brothers' short films in Paris on 28 December 1895 can be regarded as the breakthrough of projected cinematographic motion pictures. There had been earlier cinematographic results and screenings by others, but they lacked either the quality, financial backing, stamina or the luck to find the momentum that propelled the cinématographe Lumière into a worldwide success. Soon film production companies and studios were established all over the world. The first decade of motion picture saw film moving from a novelty to an established mass entertainment industry. The earliest films were in black and white, under a minute long, without recorded sound and consisted of a single shot from a steady camera.

By 1914, several national film industries were established. Europe, Russia and Scandinavia were as important as America. Films became longer, and storytelling, or narrative, became the dominant form.

 

Adding color

Color was first added to black-and-white movies through tinting, toning and stencilling. By 1906, the principles of color separation were used to produce so-called ‘natural color’ moving images with the British Kinemacolor process, first presented to the public in 1909. The early Technicolor processes from 1915 onwards were cumbersome and expensive, and colour was not used more widely until the introduction of its three-color process in 1932.

Adding sound

The first attempts to add synchronized sound to projected pictures used phonographic cylinders or discs. The first feature-length movie incorporating synchronized dialogue, The Jazz Singer (USA,

1927), used the Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone system, which employed a separate record disc with each reel of film for the sound. This system proved unreliable and was soon replaced by an optical, variable density soundtrack recorded photographically along the edge of the film.

Cinema’s golden age

By the early 1930s, nearly all feature-length movies were presented with synchronized sound and, by the mid-1930s, some were in full color too. The advent of sound secured the dominant role of the American industry and gave rise to the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood’. During the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment, with people often attending cinemas twice weekly. In Britain the highest attendances occurred in 1946, with over 31 million visits to the cinema each week.

Three component systems in the movie industry—production, distribution, and exhibition. Each is undergoing significant change in the contemporary digital, converged media environment.

- Production. Production is the making of movies. About 700 feature-length films are produced annually in the United States, a large increase over the early 1980s, when, for example, in 1985, 288 features were produced. As we’ll see later in this chapter, significant revenues from home video are one reason for the increase, as is growing conglomerate ownership that demands more product for more markets. Technology, too, has affected production.

 

- Distribution. Distribution was once as simple as making prints of films and shipping them to theaters. Now it means supplying these movies to television networks, cable and satellite networks, makers of videodiscs, and Internet streaming companies. In all, a distributor must be able to offer a single movie in as many as 250 different digital formats worldwide to accommodate the specific needs of the many digital retailers it must serve (Ault, 2009).

- Exhibition. There are currently over 38,000 movie screens in the United States spread over 6,000 sites. More than 80% of theaters have two or more screens and average 340 seats in front of each. One-half of all screens are owned by a studio. For example, Sony owns more than 3,000 under the names Sony/Loews, Sony IMAX, Magic Johnson, and Loews-Star Theaters.

 

 

Lecture 08.05.20

Advertising creates messages to tell people about a product or service and to convince them to buy it. For this purpose media are used. They are in TV, newspapers, magazines. Advertisers - people who create advertisements. They often place them on buses, buildings, telephones, you tube, social networks. Consumers - people who buy products or services. Advertisers spend o lot of money to attract a large number of consumers. Commercial - an advertisement played on the radio or TV.

Advertisers create ads to inform people about their product, to convince them to buy it. Targeting an audience means finding ways to direct advertising to a specific group of people. The classic approach is problem solution. If you have product that solves the problem, you present it that way. The advertisers affect the psychology, emotions. People will buy, if they want to be happy or to avoid regret.

Features included in a print advertisement

Features - are characteristics or specific parts of something;

Print Advertisement - an advertisement that you can see, but there is no sound

(magazines, newspapers);

Features:

- Colors

- Images

- Logo

- Slogan

Appeal means to be very interesting and attractive, such ad will cause people to notice and look at them.

When creating print advertisement companies must think about what colors to use. Different colors make people feel differently. The choice of image also influences  our feelings. Ads can make you cry or laugh. Advertisers use famous people, to attract your attention. Besides colors and images many print advertisement also include the company's logo and slogan.

Radio and TV commercial differ from each other in one major way radio can only be heard while television can be seen and heard. Sound effects are noises, other than music or voice, that are used when telling a story.

- Jingle is a short song used in advertising to discuss a product or company

Radio advertisement features include music, different voices, sound effects and jingles. Television commercial features include all radio advertisement features, all print advertisement features. Television commercial include the video, that's why they can better show/explain the product. Advertisers can tell the story about the product. Telling such stories helps the listener remember the commercial and the product.

 

Glossary

 

Communication – is the transmission of a message from a source to a receiver.

Feedback – the response of the receiver.

Interpersonal communication – communication between two or a few people.

Encoding – the process of transforming the message into an understandable sign and symbol system.

Decoding – the process of interpreting the signs and symbols after receiving the message.

Noise – anything that interferes with successful communication.

Medium – is the means of sending information.

Mass medium – a medium that is a technology that carries message to a large number of people.

Mass communication – is the process of creating shared meaning between the mass media and their audiences.

Inferential feedback – indirect feedback that sources must wait to receive and may only be as simple as whether people received the message, not whether they liked it or not.

Cultural definition of communication – communication is a symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired and transformed.

Culture – is the learned behavior of members of a given social group.

Dominant culture (mainstream culture) – culture that seems to hold sway with the majority of people.

Bounded culture (co-culture) – smaller culture within a large one.

Smartphone – a device with an advanced operating system.

App – an application, especially as downloaded by a user to a mobile device.

Technological determinism – the idea that it is machines and their development that drive economic and cultural change.

Media literacy – the ability to effectively and efficiently comprehend and use any form of mediated communication.

Literacy – the ability to effectively and efficiently comprehend and use written symbols.

Multiple points of access – the ability to approach media content from a variety of directions and derive from it many levels of meaning.

Third-person effect – the common attitude that others are influenced by media messages but that we are not.

Genre – a term referring to the categories of expression within the different media.

Conventions – certain distinctive, standardized style elements that characterize certain genre.                                                                                                    Acta Diurna – written on a tablet, account of the deliberations of the Roman senate; an early “newspaper”.

Corantos – one-page news sheets on specifi c events, printed in English but published in Holland and imported into England by British booksellers; an early “newspaper”.

Diurnals – daily accounts of local news printed in 1620s England; forerunners of our daily newspaper.

broadsides (broadsheets) – early colonial newspapers imported from England, single-sheet announcements or accounts of events.

Bill of Rights – the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

First Amendment – Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peacefully to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Alien and Sedition Acts – series of four laws passed by 1798 U.S. Congress making illegal the writing, publishing, or printing of “any false scandalous and malicious writing” about the president, the Congress, or the U.S. government.

penny press – newspapers in the 1830s selling for one penny.

wire services – news-gathering organizations that provide content to members

yellow journalism – early 20th-century journalism emphasizing sensational sex, crime, and disaster news.

newspaper chains – papers in different cities across the country owned by a single company.

pass-along readership – measurement of publication readers who neither subscribe nor buy single copies but who borrow a copy or read one in a doctor’s offi ce or library.

crowdfunded journalism – journalists pitch stories to readers who can contribute small amounts of money to those they want to see completed.

zoned editions – suburban or regional versions of metropolitan newspapers.

ethnic press – papers, often in a foreign language, aimed at minority, immigrant, and non-English readers.

Production values – the choice of lighting, editing, special effects, music, camera angle, location on the page, and size and placement of headline.

Zoopraxiscope - early machine for project and slides onto a distant surface.

Persistence of vision - images our eyes gather that are retained by our brains for about 1/24 of the second, producing the appearance of constant motion.

Kinetograph - William Dickinson’s early motion picture camera.

Daguerreotype - process of recording images on polished metal plates, usually copper, covered with a thin layer of silver iodine emotion.

Calotype - early system of photography using translucent paper from which multiple prints could be made.

Kinetoscope - peep show device for the exhibition of kinetographs.

cinématographe - Lumiere brother’s device that both photographed and projected action.

Montage - the auction of tying together separate but related short frames in such a way, that they make one unified meaning.

Nickelodeons - the first movie theaters, admission was one nickel, as the name suggests.

Factory studios - the first film production companies.

Double feature - two films on the same bill.

B-movie - the second, typical less expensive, movie in a double feature.

Vertical integration - a system in which studios produce their own films, distributed them through their own outlets, and showed them in their own theatres.

block booking - the practice of requiring exhibitors to rent groups of movies (often inferior) to secure a better one.

Green light process - the process of deciding to make a movie.

Platform rollout - opening a movie on only few screens in the hope that favorable reviews and word-of-mouth publicity will boost interest.

Blockbuster mentality - filmmaking characterized by reduce risk taking and more formulaic movies; businesses concerns are said to dominate artistic considerations.

Concept films - movies that can be described in one line.

Tentpole - expensive blockbuster around which story of plans it's other releases.

Franchise films - movies produces with full intention of producing several sequels.

Theatrical films - movies produced primarily for initial exhibition on theater screens.

Microcinema - filmmaking using digital video cameras and desktop digital editing machines

Branding films - sponsor financing of movies to advance our manufacturers product.