The media of mass communication [11th edition, New International edition] 1292025239, 9781292025230

Citation preview

Media of Mass Communication John Vivian Eleventh Edition

Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate Harlow Essex CM20 2JE England and Associated Companies throughout the world Visit us on the World Wide Web at: www.pearsoned.co.uk © Pearson Education Limited 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. The use of any trademark in this text does not vest in the author or publisher any trademark ownership rights in such trademarks, nor does the use of such trademarks imply any affiliation with or endorsement of this book by such owners.

ISBN 10: 1-292-02523-9 ISBN 13: 978-1-292-02523-0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States of America

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Table of Contents

1. Mass Media Literacy John Vivian

1

2. Media Technology John Vivian

27

3. Media Economics John Vivian

59

4. Ink on Paper John Vivian

89

5. Sound Media John Vivian

127

6. Motion Media John Vivian

153

7. New Media Landscape John Vivian

183

8. News John Vivian

211

9. Entertainment John Vivian

247

10. Public Relations John Vivian

277

11. Advertising John Vivian

307

12. Mass Audiences John Vivian

337

13. Mass Media Effects John Vivian

365

I

14. Mass Media Globalization John Vivian

393

15. Ethics

II

John Vivian

421

Index

447

Mass Media Literacy

From Chapter 1 of The Media Of Mass Communication, Eleventh Edition. John Vivian. Copyright © 2013 by Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

1

Mass Media Literacy Media Tag-Alongs The Fox television network didn’t invent police ride-along news reporting, but Fox’s Cops polished the journalistic story form into a low-budget, high-drama genre. To be sure, the Fox program and copycat series on other networks attracted controversy from the start. Critics called the shows an assault on civil society—a sign of a new “peep culture.” Indeed, there was a tawdriness. Crime

isn’t pleasant. And journalistically there were questions. Was Fox serious about illuminating crime as a public policy issue? Or was Fox merely into a filthy lucre game with cheap-to-produce programming that was easy to sell to advertisers? These questions exploded powerfully when a crew for a copycat program, the A&E network’s First 48 Hours, trailed the cops on a police raid on a Detroit home. Police were searching for a suspect in a convenience store killing. Specifics of what happened may never be known, but police insisted that an officer either collided with the woman of the house, Mertilla Jones, or was jostled by her. For sure, a police gun went off. Mrs. Jones’ granddaughter, asleep on a couch, took the bullet. Seven-year-old Aiyana died instantly. Everyone agreed: A tragic mistake. The immediate questions included whether the A&E television crew had factored into the tragedy. Were the cops conducting themselves differently because they knew the raid was being taped? People do play for the camera, to look better, to be more daring, and also sometimes being more cautious than otherwise. We’ll never know those answers.

A Grandma’s Grief. At a candlelight vigil Mertilla Jones wails in sorrow over the death of her granddaughter. The 7-year-old girl was killed by a police bullet in a raid on the family home. Was television a factor in the tragedy? A television crew was taping the raid for a network reality show.

chapter insights

• • •

Mass media easily go unnoticed despite their enormous role in our lives.

• • •

Media literacy involves not only knowledge but also critical thinking.

Technology distinguishes mass and social media from other human communication. Linguistic, visual and film literacy are essential skills for mass communication.

Mass communication is done with a purpose, usually to inform, persuade, amuse or enlighten. Mass communication has become simultaneously a unifying and divisive force in society.

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2

There are ways, however, to address important and confounding questions about mass media behavior and effects. This chapter is a primer on media literacy. The purpose is to help you hone your skills at understanding the myriad dynamics that influence media activities, like reporter ride-alongs on police raids. These include economic imperatives and the complicated relationship of building audiences to draw in advertising revenue. These also include ethics questions, like intrusions on privacy and gotcha journalism. And what about consequences of media behavior? Do media messages have effects on us as individuals that are positive? Or insidiously manipulative? Think about monster movies. Think about advertising. What about effects on society? For better or worse, consider corporate public relations campaigns. And what of political campaigns? Are they good for democracy? Or are they part of a path for ruining our way of life? Tools are available to help assess these issues. They require media literacy—knowing what to look for, and knowing how to evaluate critically. These are tools to defend ourselves against being conned though mass media. More important, these are tools to empower us to use mass media ourselves in our lives to our individual and mutual advantage. In the death of little Aiyana Stanley-Jones in Detroit one Sunday night, it is important to know that producers of ride-along cop shows defend their work as giving citizens valuable insights into police work. Many police departments note that ride-along shows help recruit young men and women. Some political scientists say that the recording

of police activities by non-police entities like television crews enhances police accountability to the public. At the same time, cases can be made against these so-called ride-along shows. In 1999 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that media ride-alongs violate a citizen’s right to “residential privacy” when reporters follow cops into a home. In the Detroit raid, the A&E crew stayed outside when the cops drew weapons and stormed the house. Thus A&E technically did not violate the law, but questions remain about whether the presence of the television crew heightened tensions or otherwise contributed to the tragedy. Another question, broader and even more vexing: Do reality cop shows trivialize important issues, reducing everything to mere entertainment? If so, is it conveniently disingenuous for A&E and other carriers of reality shows to cloak their programming in saintly journalistic rationales like public service that heightens public understanding? And if these are indeed reality shows, which suggests a journalistic justification, then why do the producers accede to police department insistence on editing them? Journalists never allow the people in their stories to edit the news, but police departments routinely are allowed the final say on what gets aired on ride-along shows and what doesn’t. This even includes minor issues like whether police are wearing their uniforms by the book. One department even took out shots of officers smoking because they reflected poorly on police professionalism. What is the truth in all this? Media literacy enables us to have the conversation that can steer us to answers.

Media Ubiquity STudy Preview

We swim in an ocean of mass communication, exposed 68.8 percent of our waking hours to media messages. So immersed are we in these messages that we often are unmindful of their existence, let alone their influences.

Media Exposure So awash are we in mass media messages that most of the time we don’t even think about them. Scholars at Ball State University found that people are intentionally involved in a media activity, like watching television or browsing the internet, 30 percent of their waking hours—almost five hours a day. Additional media exposure is passive, like audio wallpaper. In the 21st century, mass media are essential in most of our daily lives, sometimes in our faces and sometimes, like air, ubiquitous but invisible. Or at least unnoticed, taken for granted.

mass media

Strictly speaking, mass media are the vehicles through which messages are disseminated to mass audiences. The term also is used for industries built on mass media: the television and book media. Also, companies in the business of delivering mass messages with mass media: Viacom is a media company.

Mass Media Literacy

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4000

Television 3,584 hours

3500

Radio 1,035

3000

Internet 189

2500

Recorded music 180

2000

Daily newspapers 169

1500

Magazines 118

1000

Books 107

500

Media usage. The media research firm Nielsen says television viewing easily leads other media in the average hours of use whether measured by hours per person or hours per household. Television’s lead is even stronger if time-shifted and DVD viewing are included.

Home video 78

0

Daily Media Usage

Concurrent Activities 5 hours, 37 minutes

Media Multitasking

Media Multitasking 45.9 minutes

Housework 41 min. Eating meals 49 min. Social activities 1 hr. 2 min.

Time Spent Exclusively With Media 3 hours, 45 minutes Working 2 hrs. 37 min.

Grooming, personal needs TV + Web 18.5 min. 28 min. TV + e-mail 9.8 min. TV + telephone 9.6 min. TV + software 8.0 min.

Time Spent Exclusively With Media 3 hours, 45 minutes

Time Spent with Media. Mass media are everywhere all the time. An extensive Ball State University study found that we spend 68.8 percent of our waking hours with the media, much of it while doing something else. Also, we sometimes expose ourselves to additional media messages at the same time.

Concurrent Media Usage

media multitasking

Simultaneous exposure to messages from different media

mass communication

Technology-enabled process by which messages are sent to large, faraway audiences

Incredible as it may seem, the Ball State study found that besides five hours of media involvement a day, people average more than an additional six hours with the media while doing something else. That’s an additional 39 percent of our waking hours. This includes half-watching television while cooking dinner or catching a billboard while commuting. All tallied, the media are part of our lives about two-thirds of the time we’re not sleeping—68.8 percent, to be precise. Perhaps we need the rest. Mass media have become so integrated into people’s lives that media multitasking is no chore. The Ball State researchers found that roughly one-third of the time people spend with mass media involves simultaneous contact with two or more other media. This includes reading a newspaper with one ear tuned to a television program, listening to the radio with the other ear, and simultaneously surfing the internet. As startling as the Ball State study may seem, the findings are hard to dispute. Researchers tracked 294 Midwesterners for 12 hours a day, 5,000 hours in all, recording their media use every 15 seconds on a handheld device. That’s a sample size and methodology that commands respect. Strictly speaking, the media exposure tracked in the Ball State study was not all mass communication. By definition, mass communication is the technology-assisted transmission Mass Media Literacy

4

of messages to mass audiences. The Ball State study included technology-assisted one-on-one communication, such as instant messaging and e-mail, which primarily are forms of interpersonal communication. The fact, however, is that distinctions between mass communication and some interpersonal communication are blurring. Video gaming, for example, can be a solo activity. Video gaming can also be interpersonal, with two people together or apart. Also, video gaming can be a mass activity with dozens, theoretically thousands, clearly making it a form of mass communication. By lumping technology-assisted communication and mass media communication together, the Ball State data merely reflect the emerging reality that we are living a media-saturated existence.

Inescapable Symbiosis As a demonstration of willpower, someone occasionally goes cold turkey and abstains from exposure to mass media. The oddity makes it news, whether it’s a grade-school class exercise or a scientific experiment with careful controls. Usually these media-free demonstrations are short-lived. Except perhaps when we backpack into the remote wilds, most of us have a happily symbiotic dependence on mass media. We depend on media. And media industries, of course, are dependent on having an audience. What would be the purpose of a radio station, for example, if nobody listened? Personal Dependence. Most days the most-listened-for item in morning newscasts is the weather forecast. People want to know how to prepare for the day. Not knowing that rain is expected can mean getting wet on the way home. For most of us, modern life simply wouldn’t be possible without media. We need media for news and information; for entertainment, amusement and diversion, and for the exchange of ideas. Media Dependence. Not only do people in their contemporary lifestyles need mass media, but the industries that have built up around the media need an audience. This is the interdependence—a symbiosis. To survive financially, a publishing house needs readers who will pay for a book. A Hollywood movie studio needs people at the box office or signed up for movie downloads. Media companies with television, radio, newspaper and magazine products cannot survive financially unless they can deliver to an audience that advertisers want to reach. Advertisers will buy time and space from media companies only if potential customers can be delivered. We live in an environment that interconnects with mass media. The interdependence is a generally satisfying although not problem-free fact of modern life.

symbiosis

Mutually advantageous relationship

appLying your Media Literacy • Take a day or two to track your own media usage. How closely do your results match those of the Ball State University study? • How does media multitasking affect the way messages are presented? • What is the impact of the interdependence of mass media and audience on our society?

Mediated Communication STudy Preview

Mass communication is a process that targets technologically amplified messages to massive audiences. Other forms of communication pale in comparison in their ability to reach great numbers of people. interpersonal communication

Ancient Communication Human communication has many forms. Cave dwellers talked to each other. When Tor grunted at his neighbor Oop, it was interpersonal communication—one on one. Around the campfire, when Tor recounted tales from the hunt for the rest of the tribe, he was engaging in group communication. Traditionally, both interpersonal and group communication are face-to-face. Technology has expanded the prehistoric roots of human communication. When lovers purr

Between two individuals, although sometimes a small group, usually face to face group communication

An audience of more than one, all within earshot

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5

sweet nothings via a mobile phone, it’s still interpersonal communication. And even though technology-assisted, a rabble-rouser with a megaphone is engaging in group communication.

Communication Through Mass Media Fundamental to media literacy is recognizing the different forms of communication for what they are. Confusing interpersonal communication and mass communication, for example, only muddles an attempt to sort through important complex issues. Mass communication is the sending of a message to a great number of people at widely separated points. Mass communication is possible only through technology, whether it be a printing press, a broadcast transmitter or an internet server. The massiveness of the audience is a defining characteristic of mass communication: Audience. The mass audience is eclectic and heterogeneous. With sitcoms, for example, the television networks seek mega-audiences of disparate groups—male and female, young and old, liberal and right-wing, devout and nonreligious. Some media products narrow their focus, like a bridal magazine. But a bridal magazine’s intended audience, although primarily young and female, is still diverse in terms of ethnicity, income, education and other kinds of measures. It still is a mass audience. Distance. The mass audience is beyond the communicator’s horizon, sometimes thousands of miles away. This is not the case with either interpersonal or group communication. Even technology-assisted group meetings via satellite or videoconferencing, although connecting faraway points, are not mass communication but a form of group communication. feedback

Response to a message

Feedback. The mass audience generally lacks the opportunity for immediate feedback. In interpersonal communication, a chuckle or a punch in the nose right then and there is

Mediatimeline MEdIA LITErACy MILESTonES

LANGuAGe Humans devise structured oral language (pre-history)

wriTiNG ANd reAdiNG reading skills grow

CAve ArT Art on cave walls broadened human communication (17,000 years ago)

PIvoTAL EvEnTS

• Human communication (prehistory) • Homo sapiens originated in Africa (200,000 years ago)

Paleolithic humans left images that communicated among selves and later cave visitors.

Pre-history

PIvoTAL EvEnTS

• Gutenberg’s mass production for printing (1446) • First press in British North American colonies (1639)

Mass Media Literacy

6

Milton encouraged an open forum

1400s–1700s

MEdIA LITErACy MILESTonES

immediate feedback. With most mass communication, response is delayed—an e-mail to the editor, a canceled subscription, a nasty tweet. Even a text message to a reality television show is delayed a bit and is certainly less potent than that punch in the nose. Also, the recipient of an e-mailed message doesn’t necessarily read it right away. Mass communication cannot exist without technology like printing presses and broadcast transmitters. As such, mass communication was a triumph of the Industrial Age and the rise of machinery. Some people call it industrial communication. The term signifies the significant technological resources that are essential for mass communication to work on a large scale. Ever thought about buying a Goss Metro printing press to start a newspaper? Think in the millions of dollars. The Federal Communications Commission won’t even consider issuing a television broadcast license to anyone without cash upfront to meet six months of expenses. Again, think millions. Mass communication is an industrial-scale undertaking.

industrial communication

Synonym for mass communication that points up industrial-scale technology that underlines the mass communication process

Communication Through Social Media Perhaps as revolutionary as the addition of mass communication to human communication is the 21st century phenomenon of social media. This too, like mass communication, is mediated. But unlike mass communication, social media are accessible to almost anybody. You don’t need costly printing presses or broadcast equipment. With only an internet-ready computer, individuals can create content that can be tapped into worldwide. Social media are internet-based. Through mobile technologies they turn communication into interactive dialogue. This interactive exchange of user-generated content led to the term social media. Leading examples: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, all of which are relatively inexpensive to individuals to publish or find information and to exchange information—in contrast to industrial media. Both mediated forms of communication, whether through mass media or

social media

Internet-based communication platforms for the interactive exchange of user-generated content

MEdIA LITErACy MILESTonES

MEdIA LITErACy MILESTonES

MEdIA LITErACy MILESTonES

PuBLiC eduCATiON First public school in u.S. in Boston (1821)

KiNeSiCS Julius Fast wrote Body Language on non-verbal communication cues (1970)

yOuTuBe do-it-yourself video on youTube (2005)

PHOTOGrAPHy Joseph Niepcé invented photography (1826) Free SCHOOLiNG All u.S. states offering free schooling (1870)

PIvoTAL EvEnTS • Illustrations a standard in magazine Harper’s Weekly (1862) • First newspaper photograph (1880) • National Geographic magazine featured photos (1899)

OrGANiZiNG John debes founded international visual Literacy Association (1969)

PIvoTAL EvEnTS • Wikipedia founded (2001) • Facebook founded (2004) • Great Recession (2007–2009) • IPad introduced (2010) • Steve Jobs of Apple died (2011)

PIvoTAL EvEnTS

Coming to grips with visual literacy

2000s

• Predecessor to first major movie studio, Paramount, formed (1912) • Life magazine founded (1936) • Internet invented (1969)

1900s

1800s

Visuals grow in mass communication importance in 20th Century

viSuAL LiTerACy Scott McCloud defined visual literacy in understanding Comics (1993)

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7

social media, can reach tiny or huge audiences. A video posted on YouTube can go almost unnoticed, as most do, while others go viral and outdraw the most successful products from the television industry. Here are useful ways to see differences between social media and industrial media: Reach. Social and industrial media both use technologies to give scale to communication. Both are capable of reaching a global audience. However, industrial media typically use a centralized framework for organization, production and dissemination. Social media are more decentralized, less hierarchical, and have many more points of production and access. Ownership. Because the means of production are complicated and costly, industrial media typically are owned by corporations or government. In contrast, social media’s production tools have low thresholds for entry and are within the economic means of most people. Access. The complexity of production for industrial media requires specialized skills and training. Social media production requires only commonly held skills, which means that just about anyone with access to an internet-ready computer can produce messages for potentially wide distribution.

appLying your Media Literacy • Compare the effectiveness of interpersonal communication, group communication and mass communication. • What characteristics of social media distinguish it from industrial communication? • If you see yourself eventually as a communicator with information and ideas to change the world, would you choose to hone your skills now for a career in mass media or social media?

Literacy for Media Consumers STudy Preview

Basic components of media literacy are writing and reading skills. But as visuals have become more important in mass communication, visual literacy is needed too. This involves “reading” still and moving images.

Linguistic Literacy

linguistic literacy

Competencies with a written and spoken language

Mass media once were almost entirely word-centric. The act of creating media messages and deriving meaning from them—media literacy, it’s called—required vocabulary, grammar and other writing and reading skills. These were acquired skills, both teachable and learnable—not anything innate from birth. Linguistic literacy today is as much a measure of modern civilization as economic production and prosperity, all of which are interconnected. Although there are exceptions, like Cuba, with a national policy that emphasizes education but which is economically troubled, strong literacy rates correlate roughly to capita income:

United States India Afghanistan Niger

Literacy

Annual income per capita

99.0 percent 54.2 percent 34.0 percent 28.7 percent

$7,132 $1,265 $906 $381

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visual Literacy Symbols of communication predate structured and complex human languages. There were messages in animal drawings in ancient caves, such as the one in Lascaux in southwestern France. More than 17,000 years ago, before structured languages, Paleolithic cave-dwellers communicated meaning among themselves through images. Probably the messages were augmented by simple uttered indicators. Whether intended to or not, the images also conveyed meaning to future generations. Just ask anthropologists who are “translating” the cave paintings today. The images are recognizable through visual literacy. Except for occasional crude woodcuts, visual images weren’t part of early mass media products. Technology back then was word-centric and didn’t lend itself to visuals. This changed gradually with the introduction of photography in the mid-1800s, and then quickly with improved printing processes by the 1900s. People liked pictures, but the process was largely intuitive. Not until the 1960s did anyone think much about whether a systematic intellectual process was at work for interpreting, negotiating and making meaning. The term visual literacy was the invention of John Debes when he was education projects coordinator at Eastman Kodak in 1969. Debes defined visual literacy as “a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences.”* With technology making visuals increasingly part of human communication, educators recognized that learning visual literacy could be indispensable in increasingly visual modern life. But the multiplicity of academic disciplines involved hindered the development of core principles. Today the most coherent definitions are from comics author Scott McCloud. In a 1993 nonfiction book in the graphic novel format, McCloud proved himself a leading theorist of visual literacy. In Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art McCloud described how artists can control core elements of their work, including form, idiom and structure, to convey messages with precision. Savvy media consumers will recognize basics concepts

visual literacy

A competency at deciphering meaning from images

John Debes

Introduced term visual literacy in 1969

Scott McCloud

Comic book author who refined understandings about media literacy

Agents of Control. Mass communicators are effective to the extent that they control their messages. These techniques of control, as theorized by graphic novelist Scott McCloud, include form, idiom and structure. The better the mastery of these techniques by mass communicators, the keener the message—and the stronger the visual as well as linguistic literacy. From the media consumer’s perspective, the more that these techniques are recognized, the stronger their participation in the mass communication process. Scott McCloud. * “The Loom of Visual Literacy: An Overview” by John L. Debes in Proceedings: First National Conference on Visual Literacy by C. M. Williams and J. L. Debes (eds.). Copyright © 1970 by International Visual Literacy Association. Reprinted by permission.

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such as right-facing depictions of movement being upward and positive, at least in Western cultures in which reading is ingrained as left to right. Left-moving depictions suggest obstacles, orneriness and tension. Colors affect mood and tone, just as can the pace and juxtapositioning of words in word-centric communication. Done well, the intended messages in comics and other visuals don’t require conscious analysis. But a sophisticated media consumer who recognizes the principles employed by an artist is well-positioned to understand and assess the messages. Picking up an author’s intent yields more accuracy and satisfaction from the message. McCloud and other visual literacy theorists are quick to point out that visual literacy, although necessary to survive and communicate in a highly complex world, cannot be a replacement for linguistic literacy. Rather, visual and linguistic literacies are interlaced and a mastery of both is essential to maximize meaning and understanding.

Film Literacy film literacy

Competences to assess messages in motion media, such as movies, television and video

The introduction of photography and other still images into mass media content was gradual over decades. Motion pictures dawned explosively. Techniques were subject to immediate exploration, which created conventions known as film literacy. Audiences learned, for example, not to be frightened by bigger-than-life heroes and heroines on screen. It took awhile, but audiences eventually overcame confusion about visual clues to flashbacks. White hats were shorthand for good guys, black hats for villains. These techniques of master film-makers were transferred to television, also a motion medium. There are countless other techniques for conveying deep subtleties that aficionados recognize. Film literacy deepens the experience. Much of the work going on in visual literacy comes from the much more extensive thinking that had been going on in movies for the better part of a century before Debes, McCloud and others began exploring visual literacy.

appLying your Media Literacy • How do you explain the rough correlation between literary literacy and prosperity? • Going as far back as you can remember, trace the development of your own visual literacy. • Film literacy has multiple layers of sophistication. What does the use of white and black hats to represent good guys and villains say to you?

Assessing Media Messages STudy Preview

Media literacy is the application of knowledge and critical thinking processes. Fundamentals include recognizing message forms, not confusing messages and messengers, understanding the possibilities and limitations of various media and platforms, and placing media in a framework of history and traditions. Media literacy also requires continued questioning of conventional wisdom.

Fundamentals of Media Literacy media literacy

Competences that enable people to analyze and evaluate media messages and also to create effective messages for mediated delivery

By literacy, people usually mean the ability to read and write. Literacy also can mean command of a specific discipline such as history or physics. Media literacy is possessing the knowledge to be competent in assessing messages carried by mass media. Media literacy is essential in this Age of Mass Communication that envelops our lives dawn to dusk, cradle to grave. Think about not having modern media literacy. Thomas Jefferson, although brilliant and learned in his time, would be in absolute wonderment at hearing a radio for the first time. As foolish as he would seem to you and me today, a resurrected Jefferson might ask how so many little people could fit inside so tiny a box and make so much noise. Jefferson’s lack of media literacy would be laughable. Mass Media Literacy

10

Mediatomorrow Eclipse of the Novel? Technology begat the novel as long-form storytelling. Before Gutenberg invented mass production for the printed word in the mid-1400s, lengthy fictional prose was a rarity. Handscribed and bound books were horribly expensive, produced manually one copy at a time. Further, with low pre-Gutenberg literacy levels, the market was miniscule. The word novel itself didn’t come about until the 1700s. Now after a run of 300 or 400 years, the novel as we know it may be at a crossroads. The question is whether technology, which gave birth to the novel as a high form of literary art, may be its comeuppance. •

COMPeTiNG TeCHNOLOGy. Newer media technology has created potent storytelling forms that encroach on the novel’s once exclusive province. Movies have emerged as “Cultic Activity.” American novelist Philip Roth is a powerful vehicle for exploring the human condition and dour about prospects for his craft. Novels, he sees, have great social issues. Television too has potential for serious peaked as medium for long-form story-telling. He sees literary expression. Every medium has unique attributes novels becoming “a cultic activity.” and shortcomings. As an example, the relative compactness of a movie is limiting. But the compactness hardly means that movies are incapable of yielding literary insights.

•

eASe OF ACCeSS. Technology, also, has made access easier to electronic-based and digital-based media. Going to a movie house for a two-hour experience is easier, far easier, than acquiring a book and committing two weeks to reading. Access could hardly be easier than on-demand movies and television downloaded to a mobile tablet.

•

TiMe CONSTrAiNTS. Although novels can be downloaded, the process of consuming long-form literature involves the slow and laborious intellectual process of reading. Most people, when reading for comprehension, move through only 300 words a minute—less than a page. As a learning tool, textbooks are even more labor-intensive. At an extreme, quick reading, like skimming, is typically 600 or 700 words a minute. With easier access to more compact media communication, it seems that people either have shorter attention spans or less patience. For sure, more is competing for people’s attention than ever before. And 24 hours a day is not enough for even a fraction of the media involvement most of us would like.

Will the novel disappear? Not overnight, but even some champions of long-form story telling, like novelist Philip Roth, see the sun setting. Roth bemoaned to the Daily Beast: “The book can’t compete with the screen. It couldn’t compete beginning with the movie screen. It couldn’t compete with the television screen. And it can’t compete with the computer screen. Now we have all those screens.” New media forms are attracting creative people who in earlier times might have chosen the form of the novel for their artistic explorations and expression. At an extreme are episodic Japanese cell phone novels. While 16-character keitai shosetsu episodes can hardly be considered good literature, the history of printed and bound full-length books is also littered with lots of weak and even bad stuff. It’s probably fairer to evaluate keitai shosetsu not as episode but in the complexity of their whole. It may be that the format has yet to mature into any kind of artistic fulfillment. Episodic delivery—in chunks—exists in television series and to a greater degree in the edited breakdowns of shows into mini-segments for downloading and consumption on the run.

What Do You Think? How much longer will the traditional novel as long-form storytelling be with us either in a print-and-bound or a downloadable form? How do you respond to broadsweeping criticism of new media packaging of literary expression as inferior to the novel?

Mass Media Literacy

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Most of our media exposure is invisible or at least unnoticed at a conscious level—the background music at a mall store, the advertising blurb on a pen, the overblown entrée description on a menu with the stacked-higher-than-life photo of a burger. Many media messages blur into our landscape as part of the environment that we take for granted. One measure of media literacy is awareness of the presence of media messages. Some awareness requires broader and deeper media literacy than others. Message Form. Fundamental media literacy is the ability to see the difference between a one-on-one message and a mass message. This is not always easy. Consider a mass mailing with a personal salutation: “Hi, Karla.” It’s naïve—media illiteracy, we could call it—for Karla to infer from the salutation that she’s getting a personal letter. Message vs. Messenger. Once there was a monarch, as the story goes, who would behead the bearer of bad news. The modern-day media equivalent is faulting a news reporter for telling about a horrible event, or criticizing a movie director for rubbing your face in an unpleasant reality. Media literacy requires distinguishing between messages and messengers. A writer who deals with the drug culture is not necessarily an advocate. Nor necessarily is a rapper who conjures up clever rhymes for meth. Motivation Awareness. Intelligent use of the mass media requires assessing the motivation for a message. Is a message intended to convey information? To convince me to change brands? To sour me on a candidate? The answer usually requires thinking beyond the message and identifying the source. Is the message from a news reporter who is trying to be detached and neutral about the subject? Or is the message from the Democratic National Committee? It makes a difference. Media Limitations. The different technologies on which media are shaped affect messages. CDs, for example, can deliver music superbly but printed books cannot. Both CDs and books are mass media, but they have vastly different potentials. Someone who criticizes a movie for departing from the particulars of the book on which it’s based may well lack sufficient media literacy to recognize that a 100-minute movie cannot possibly be literally true to a 90,000-word novel. Conversely, Matthew Vaughn’s 2011 movie X-Men: First Class did things visually and audiologically that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby could not have done in their Marvel Comics series X-Men back in the 1960s. It’s as pointless to criticize a movie for not being a book as it is to criticize tuna for not tasting like spinach, Or vice versa. Traditions. The past informs our understanding of the present. A longstanding strain in U.S. journalism, for example, was born in the Constitution’s implication that the news media should serve as a watchdog on behalf of the people against government folly and misdeeds. Another tradition is for artistic expression that is free from government restraint. Media literacy is impossible without an appreciation of the traditions that have profoundly shaped the parameters of media performance and reasonable expectations. Too, media literacy requires an understanding of other cultures and traditions. The role of mass media in China, for example, flows from circumstances and traditions radically different from those in Western democracies. Even among democracies, media performance varies. News reporting about criminal prosecutions in Britain, as an example, is much more restrained than in the United States. Media Myth. Video games are the latest whipping boys for violent crime. The fact is that the oft-heard conventional wisdom that media violence begets real-life violence has never been proved, despite hundreds of serious studies by social scientists. In fact, no matter how cleverly criminal defense attorneys have tried to scapegoat violent behavior on video gaming, television or movies, the courts always have rejected the argument. This is not to say that there is no link between violence in the media and violence in real life. Rather, it’s to say that a simple, direct lineage has yet to be confirmed. Media myths galore are afloat, polluting intelligent dialogue and understanding of important issues, including media violence. To separate real phenomena from conjecture and nonsense requires media literacy.

Mass Media Literacy

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Mediacounterpoints Literacy and the Internet Carr’s history as an internet junkie goes back to 1995 and Netscape, the first web browser. A dozen years later he recognized that the internet had come to exert a strong and broad influence on both his professional habits as a writer and his personal habits. He wanted information in quick, easy chunks, the more the better. It was addictive, he says. And destructive. Once Carr had enjoyed deep reading. He recalls getting caught up in an author’s prose and thinking about twists in plot lines. He would spend hour after hour immersed in a book. No more. Now, he says, his mind drifts after a page or two. He gets fidgety. Deep reading, he says, has become a struggle. Even so, Carr acknowledges the wonders and efficiencies of the internet. As a writer he has immediate access to unprecedented stores of data. What once took hours in a library now takes seconds or a few minutes. But at what price? The internet, he says, has been chipping away at his capacity for concentration and contemplation. This worries him. Carr cites friends who have experienced the same phenomenon. And there is research on brain function that supports his theory, although, as he concedes, much more research is needed. No shortage of scholarship exists, however, about positive cognitive aspects of internet use. Katherine Hayles, a postmodern literary scholar, sees less of a threat in the fragmented and nonlinear processes that the internet encourages. To be sure, Hayles says, this “hyperattention,” hopping around screens and hyperlinking, is far from the traditional approach of cloistering yourself off from the world to concentrate on a written work. But as she sees it, switching through information streams quickly and flexibly has its own value. Hayles calls for “new modes of cognition” that bridge traditional deep attention with internet-age hyperattention.

Nicholas Carr, a widely published technical writer, thought maybe he was suffering “middle-age mind rot.” At 47 he realized he couldn’t pay attention to one thing for more than a couple minutes. Back in college at Dartmouth, Carr loved books and spent hours in the library. So what was happening now, almost 30 years later? Indeed, was it mind rot? No, Carr says. But how he uses his brain has changed drastically—and not necessarily for the better. He The Neuroscience Question. Research on how the blames the internet. In his book The Shallows, brain functions is posing questions about whether internet access to so Carr notes that the brain is a much information is changing how creature of habit. Just as a rut we humans think. Nicholas Carr in a road deepens with traffic, framed the issue provocatively in so do the channels of connecthe Atlantic magazine. tivity in the brain. The more he was using the internet over the years, picking up bits and pieces of information, often fragmentary and scattered, the less his brain was working as it once was trained to do. Before the web, he read linearly as the author had intended, going from beginning to end and looking for facts and ideas, making connections, following plots, and assessing rationales.

w

CoUnTer Point

ith the superficial engagement of the internet we are losing our ability to pay deep attention. This devaluation of contemplative thought, solitary thought Point and concentration is a loss not only for us as individuals but also for our culture.

The risk of losing our culture and our abilities

to reason are overblown. There are things that traditional linear and literary approaches can do that hyperattention cannot do. and vice versa.

deepening your Media Literacy ExplorE ThE IssuE: From your experience, identify a literary work that has shaped your values or your thinking. A novel that’s recognized as important would work well for this exercise. Or a movie. If you have a hard time deciding, consider Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 book Johnny Got His Gun or the 1971 movie adaptation. DIg DEEpEr: Conduct a web search with words for key details and concepts from the work. If you chose Johnny Got His Gun, try the author’s name, the title, and terms like World War I, trachea, suffocation, pacifism, Morse code, euthanasia. Be imaginative with search terms. Go to as many additional links as your time allows. WhaT Do You ThInk? How did your web search enrich your experience with the work you chose for this exercise? Did you see the author’s purpose or point differently after the web search? Were your values shaken? Reinforced? Fine-tuned? Most important, was your web experience adequate as a substitute for your linear, reading experience?

Mass Media Literacy

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Spheres of Media Literacy Media literacy takes many forms. People who craft media messages, for example, need technical competence. Competence at a soundboard is essential for music producers. Mastery of editing software is essential for magazine editors. These are skills that a media consumer doesn’t need. In fact, the more invisible the technical details of media production are to media audiences, the more effective the messages. At the same time, media consumers can have a deeper appreciation of media messages if they have a sense of what went into making the message. In the same sense, anyone can be awed by a Yo-Yo Ma performance, but someone schooled just a little bit on the cello has a greater feel for Ma’s intricacies and range. Media literacy can be highly specialized. There are so many academic specialties on mass media, for example, that no one can master them all. An award-recognized historian on Federalist Period newspapers may not have the vocabulary to converse with a scholarly theorist on visual communication. We all will have blind spots in our media literacy, which is not a reason to give up or ease off working at improving your media literacy across a broad range. Rather, it’s a recognition of the breadth of mass communication and mass media as a field. Put another way: Because so much media behavior is explained through economics, savvy media consumers need an understanding of media revenue streams and finances and corporate structures. Most of us, however, need not aspire to the level of business acumen to be a high-stakes risk-taker like radio-television entrepreneur David Sarnoff, CNN founder Ted Turner or Fox television creator Rupert Murdoch.

appLying your Media Literacy • How do you expect your media literacy to deepen as you proceed through this semester? Think in terms of the preconceptions you bring to the course: Is news biased? Can advertising be trusted? Are media depictions of aberrant behavior contagious? Think in terms of your own media usage: Mostly for information? Mostly for amusement? • About which kind of media messages are you most expert at this point? Music? Political news? Video-production techniques? Movie genres? Celebrity news?

Purposeful Mass Communication Unless anyone is interested in babble, mass communication has purpose. One purpose is informational, so people can make intelligent decisions in their daily lives and in their participation in society. Persuasion can be a purpose of mass communication. Indeed, media are essential in making most purchases and even embracing points of view. Another purpose is amusement.

STudy Preview

To Inform Mass media-delivered information comes in many forms. Students heading for college, especially if they plan to live in a dorm, receive a brochure about the dread disease meningitis. It’s a life-or-death message about reducing the contagion in cramped living quarters. The message “Inoculate Now” is from a mass medium—a printed brochure or a mass-mailed letter or an e-mail attachment from the campus health director. The most visible mass media-delivered information is news. People look to newscasts and news sites, even Steven Colbert, Bill Maher and David Letterman, to know what’s going on beyond the horizon. If not for mass media, people would have to rely on word-of-mouth from travelers to know what’s happening in Afghanistan, Hollywood or their state capital. Information creates awareness in many forms—not just news and health brochures. For example, advertising offers information to help consumers make intelligent decisions. In a democracy, media comprise an essential forum for news and information and the exchange of ideas that promote intelligent citizen participation. Mass Media Literacy

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Mediapeople Hero of Cairo’s Arab Spring The plainclothes agents of the corrupt Mubarak administration knew who they were after. At a sidewalk café near Tahrir Square in Cairo, the henchmen strong-armed Wael Ghonim and dragged him away. It was a desperate attempt by Mubarak underlings to quell a revolution erupting in Egyptian streets. Ghonim’s crime? Ghonim was a computer engineer who at age 27 had become a regional marketing executive for Google. In his spare time Ghonim operated a web site that now, three years later, was encouraging the departure of President Hosni Mabarak after three decades in power. Mubarak recognized that Ghonim’s online activism was the fuse for revolution. As the revolution continued in the streets, Ghonim was locked in a Cairo jail. Eleven days later under severe international pressure, the authorities released Ghonim. Soon, with the Mubarak administration disarrayed and writhing in death throes, Ghonim was back in the streets. And after 14 days of massive protests, Mubarak fled Cairo. It was a new