COMN 2200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Abstract Theory, Moral Realism, Print Culture
25 Aug 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
September 18, 2015
Lecture Notes
•Theory - tentative explanation of a field of study
•Critical theory (what the course is taught in) —> critical moral realism
•Cultural Theory
Technologies in historical perspectives
•phonetic alphabet - revolutionary
•does not try to represent literacy n a graphic form
•intimidated written text
•Plato’s words
•Literacy leads to separation of subject and object
•oral context -> subject and object merged
•You don’t need to have concrete information to talk about the topic as it is abstract theory
(in reference to literacy)
•Can take the contexts of your mind, transcribe it in some way (media) and examine it
•Morality
•Subject -> object
Literate Cultures
•Abstract
•Philosophical
•logical
•Subject -> object
•Dualism
Oral Cultures
•Communitarial
Anachronism
Progress
•Begin to think that the past is inferior and primitive
•The future is advanced, superior, and preferable
Printing Press (1450)
•News papers
•Public Opinion
•More newspapers = more public opinions, speculations etc.
Industrialization
1. Need for Capital
2. Advertising
find more resources at oneclass.com
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3. Scientific MST
4. Commodification of News
1. News agencies
5. Barriers to Entry
Newspaper Writing
•consigns
October 2nd 2015
Lecture Notes
Commercial Broadcasting
Public Service Broadcasting
•Positive approach to freedom
•allows you to take risks
•Covert & inferential racism
•Radio network is connected to a similar form of cell phone networks
•Way to earn money on radio is through advertising
•Sponsors want to make sure that the message they want is being portrayed if not the
advertisements will be dropped
•programming should not overlook the narrative of consumerism
•If a program gets a lot of viewers it is a success by definition, whether or not it was good
•Quality of programming = quality/quantity of audience
•Creation of true public space -> helps create a educated bran of public opinion, this is focused
on in communications
•Grechams Law -> interns of broadcasting, bad drives out the good
Lecture Notes
October 16, 2015
•Advertising in books and novels may not necessarily be paid advertising
•A person in recent years especially face large amounts of advertising whether or not it is
intentional
•Advertising can influence largely what child wants and being that children are easily
influenced, it may be affective for advertisers but it is immoral
•Corporate relationship between audience and advertisers
•Unwillingness or inability of commercial broadcasters to provide high quality
programming
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
•Broadcasters are essentially selling the audience to advertisers
•Quality is not important to broadcasters
Quality
1. Gresham’s Law
2. What is quality
3. Political economy
4. Desired vs. desirable
•Ratings do not provide the efficiency of the quality
•People cannot watch whatever they want due to advertisers choosing the menus in which
we choose the show we would “like” or supposedly forced to watch despite it not being
what we intend to watch.
•People often choose inferior quality over superior quality due to the need of multitasking
•Audience calls inferior quality shows as guilty pleasures
1. Gresham’s Law
a. 17th century ! bad money drives good money out of use
b. Face value vs. commodity value
c. Coins used to have large amounts of valuable metal and in recent years there is
less and less of precious metals such as silver and gold used in coins
d. Bad programming is generally superior due to commercial broadcasting, high
quality is generally on subscription networks such as Netflix, due to there being
more money and less reliability on advertisers for profit, thus increasing
production value
e. Paradox of commercial broadcasting
i. Theory ! good drives out the bad
ii. Observation ! bad drives out the good
f. What is the product of commercial broadcasting? ! audiences
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
