COMM 102 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Stress Management, Alternative Media, Social Capital

• School: U of M
• Department: Communication Studies
• Course: COMM 102
• Professor: Scott Campbell

Document Summary

Individual differences cause each audience member to seek out different messages, use them differently, and respond to them uniquely; in other words, we actively seek and select our media. Uga looks at how/why media is chosen; it looks at the effects of the media later: assumes viewers actively choose media content to gratify individual needs. Belief that different people have different reasons for having interests in certain types of media. Belief that audience is active; audience seeks media, the media doesn"t just happen to the audience automatically: uag can be seen as a 3-stage model: Individual differences in motivations exist ---> those individual differences explain our media use ---> our media use then explain the effects that the media has on us. Societal-level functions of mass media: lasswell (1948) laid out 3 major functions of mass media in society: Surveys the environment - keeps users informed.