COMM 101 Study Guide - Final Guide: Jeff Bezos, Johannes Gutenberg, Mass Media
30 Aug 2016
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Comm 101 Notes
Chapter 1:
Intro:
-Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013
•Founder of Amazon
•Amazon was willing to transform the paper into becoming more tech savvy/profitable
-The media try to help us understand the events that affect us
-Media literate - to become critical consumers of mass media institutions and engaged
participants who accept part of the responsibility for the shape and direction of meds culture
-The former mass audience is morphing into niche groups
•Media outlets must appeal to the niche groups
Culture and the Evolution of Mass Communication:
-Communication - the creation and use of symbols systems that convey information and
meaning
•languages & codes
-Culture - the symbols of expression that individuals, groups, and societies use to make sense
of daily life and to articulate their values
-Mass media - the cultural industries - the channels of communication - that produces and
distribute cultural products to large numbers of people
-Culture links individuals to their society by providing both shared and contested values, and
mass media helps to circulate those values
-Convergence - newer forms of technology disrupted and modified older forms with the arrival
of the Internet
-Mass communication - the process of designing cultural messages and stories and delivering
them to large and diverse audiences through media channels as old and distinctive as the
printed book and as new and converged as the Internet
-Oral and Written Eras in Communication -
-Before information was just passed by word of mouth and then manuscripts, written word, was
developed and an economic and educational gap was created between the ruling and the ruled
based on literacy
-Socrates made his arguments through public conversations and debates to create equal
opportunities for everyone to learn information and not have people be hindered by their
illiteracy
•Plato - Socrates’ greatest student - wanted to banish poets
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-The Print Revolution -
-Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable metallic type and the printing press ushered in the
modern print era
-Books were the first mass-marketed products in history
•At first they were very expensive and elaborate and few could purchase them
-Three elements necessary for mass-market innovation -
•1. Easy to produce
•2. Could be produced in large quantifies - quickly
•3. The faster production led to cheaper prices
-The mass media allowed people to be able to think for themselves and not have information be
tainted by the upper class
•The print era supported more centralized nation-states
-The print era led to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the middle class
-Print also promoted literacy and education
•People became more educated
-The printing press fostered nationalism, and promoted individualism
-The Electronic Era -
-The Information Age began in the 1840s when the telegraph was invented
-Telegraph contributions -
•1. Separated communication from transformation
-Instantaneous mass messages
•2. Transformed information into a commodity, a “thing” that could be bought or sold
irrespective to its uses or meaning
•3. Made it easier for military, business, and political leaders to coordinate commercial and
military operations
•4. Led to further technological developments radio, fax, and cellphones
-1950s and 1960s - TV arrival which led to many other technological advancements
- The Digital Era -
-Digital communication - images, texts, and sounds are converted (encoded) into electronic
signals and are then resembled (decoded) as a precise reproduction of a TV picture, magazine
article, song, and telephone voice
-The new technology led to a loss in control for traditional leaders
-Bloggers - people who post commentary on cultural,personal, and political-opinion-based
Websites
•Became key players in news
-Before letters (snail mail) could have been censored by the government
-The Linear Model of Mass Communication -
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find more resources at oneclass.com
-The digital era brought a shift in how media messages and meanings are constructed and
communicated
-Senders - authors, producers,and organizations
-Messages - programs, texts, images, sounds, and ads
-Mass media channel - newspapers, books, magazines, radio, television, of the Internet
-Receivers - readers, viewers, and consumers
-Before mass communication was thought of as a linear process where senders transmit
messages through mass media channels to large groups of receivers and those messages were
filtered by gatekeepers
•This model is not realistic because messages do not smoothly move from point A to point B
-Gatekeepers - news editors, executive producers, and other media managers
•Decide what actually gets produced
-Feedback - where citizens and consumers return messages to senders or gatekeepers
-Senders have little control over how their messages are interpreted
-A Cultural Model for Understanding Mass Communication -
-Contemporary approach - individuals bring diverse meanings to messages, given their various
backgrounds, so the audiences actively affirm, interpret, refashion, or reject the messages and
stories that flow through various media channels
-Selective exposure - People typically seek messages and produce meanings that correspond to
their own cultural beliefs, values, and interests
-The Internet has largely eliminated the gatekeeper role
The Development of Media and Their Role in Our Society:
-The word media is a Latin plural form of the singular noun medium, meaning an intervening
substance through which something is conveyed or transmitted
-The Evolution of Media: From Emergence to Convergence -
-The development of most mass media is initiated by the diligence of inventors (Thomas
Edison) and by social, cultural, political, and economic circumstances
-Media innovation phases -
•1. Emergence (novelty or stage) - inventors and technicians try to solve a particular problem
•2. Entrepreneurial stage - inventors and investors determine a practical and marketable use
for the new device
•3. Mass medium stage - how to market the new device or medium as a consumer product
•4. Convergence stage - older media are reconfigured in various forms on newer media
-Merging of many different media forms and fragmenting of larger audiences into smaller
niche markets
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Jeff bezos bought the washington post in 2013: founder of amazon, amazon was willing to transform the paper into becoming more tech savvy/profitable. The media try to help us understand the events that affect us. Media literate - to become critical consumers of mass media institutions and engaged participants who accept part of the responsibility for the shape and direction of meds culture. The former mass audience is morphing into niche groups: media outlets must appeal to the niche groups. Communication - the creation and use of symbols systems that convey information and meaning: languages & codes. Culture - the symbols of expression that individuals, groups, and societies use to make sense of daily life and to articulate their values. Mass media - the cultural industries - the channels of communication - that produces and distribute cultural products to large numbers of people.
