SOC100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Mass Media, List Of Muppets, Media Studies
14 Jun 2018
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CHAPTER 6 - MASS MEDIA
Midterm: 30 MC, 5 short answer
Overview:
- Mass media prevalence and forms
- Communications that target large audiences in print or electronic format
- Integrated into almost every aspect of our lives
- Internet → Canadians spend 37 hours/month
- “The medium is the message”
- So the medium (your phone or TV) is what organizes who you are
- Allows people to organize their time and lives in different ways. As such,
the tool, the phone, is organizing YOU (you have your to do list on your
phone, your contact list, etc), and you are limited and constrained by the
technology yourself
- Also with twitter, you only have a specific amount of characters; as such
you have to be super witty within that limit of words → once again,
social platforms and media is constraining us once more
- You are not just using the tool; the tool is also using and influencing YOU
- Approaches to studying media
- Functionalist framework
-KNOW THIS ASSUMPTION: Media contributes to the maintenance
of social order
- We use media to make judgements about others, because it is
presumed that in order to maintain social order, you have to have
the continuous same message so people can organize their lives
- So basically, media is what allows us to have a similar
message and belief, so that we can maintain social order. We
see stuff on media, like clothes and fashion, and we use that
to make judgement about ourselves and other people. IN
order to be “in” we have to conform
- Media provides us with information as well
- The news tells us about the important issues in our communities
(so we know how we should function and whatnot within society
based on the issues that are being addressed)
- To switch from education being secondary to family, to
the internet being secondary to family
- Media key agent of socialization
- A mechanism of organization and control; so we give
what people want to see, and we can avoid conflict and
maintain control
- Conflict framework
- Concentrated ownership affects media agendas
