week 11

Lecture notes

Week 11

Monday
Compare ads from the past

Text analysis vs. audience analysis (inferential feedback)

Products – audiences – methods, techniques – special effects

Correlation vs. causality – advertising 50%, can track some effects by public interest advertising – drunk driving campaigns, seat belts, recycling, HIV prevention and condoms – plus limits on some advertising such as tobacco and alcohol, Joe Camel effectiveness

EPIC and the long tail

What do initials stand for?

Futuristic – applies the ideas of convergence – everything is digital,
globalization – is everywhere,
hypercommercialism – competitive with few restraints or checks,
audience fragmentation

Relationship between media and society – protecting free speech means protecting media from government interference, save us from totalitarian governments, what of entities larger or let’s say as powerful as government, government (public interest, public trust, commons) doesn’t have place in the discourse, media is a checks and balances system, what are the checks and balances beyond the marketplace

Is the future now? The long tail, use x-y axis, future of marketing for entertainment, customer is always right,

Stuff last forever, endlessly replicated

Empower of individual, consumer values rather than citizen, collective awareness and wisdom of the crowd, leads to Web 2.0 approaches

No Logo review

No Space: branded world

No Choice: brand bombing

No Jobs: discarded factories

No Logo: anti-corporate activism

Space: private/personal, commercial, shared/commons

Physical and social

Tragedy of the Commons

Wednesday

Free Speech for Sale

Friday

Space again

Discussion writing 5

week 10

Lecture notes for week ten

Mon. view homework on website, Geoff not being here on Friday: No Logo, public space and the commons, check out ethics case studies

Visit with Steve Muller

Publics

Strategies and synergy

Competition

Ethics

Weds.

Advertising background: “to understand modern society study advertising”

Increase of manufacturing needs to increase the manufacturing of consumers

WWI and psychological theory –

people are not rational (a very different premise from our founding fathers – freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas based people being rational),

aim for the unconscious,

tendency to be most influenced when zoned out and not attending to ads

moving from rational to irrational messages

news/information to advertising/persuasion, propaganda,

shift from word to image, image as truth (if I read something, I am skeptical, if I see something I am persuaded, photos don’t lie)
human need for symbolic knowledge, symbols are never neutralthose who understand this use symbols tied up with power

Pavlovian psychology – subconscious response, can be trained with juxtaposition of something desirable or a human need with other stimuli

Production of discontent – you are not okay, inner sense of conflict, anxiety – opposite of therapy – never hear you are okay, just be you

Dream world – magical thinking, marketplace does not provide what most people describe as happiness (love, respect, friends)

Implications:
Consumerism: advertising seeks to monopolize cultural space, strong socializing influence, compare the greeks value of beauty vs. today’s world (for selling of products), personality as job qualification, turn ourselves into products, advertising is our role model

Premeditated waste: culture of invisible of where things come from and where they go

Using up of resources, sense of entitlement as the well off used the resources that the less well off could or need to have, 3^rd world people are our competitors to our resouces and way of life

Democracy: all voices heard, technology is at the most advanced but used for advertising, freedom of government interfering in our lives, but how to manage freedom from corporate and advertising influence

What to do

Not censorship, but more free speech

Disengage from advertising system, where does it end and you begin (what thoughts are your own)

Advertising chapter 12: text notes

How different mediums and time periods influenced advertising

Newspapers – come to shops

Magazines – Civil War to 1880’s prosperity, images, brands, muckrakers, FTC

Radio – allows radio to be “free”, national audiences and expanded reach, roaring 20’s

TV – WWII public service announcements, increase of consumer products

Compare ads from the past

Text analysis vs. audience analysis (inferential feedback)

Products – audiences – methods, techniques – special effects

Correlation vs. causality – advertising 50%, can track some effects by public interest advertising – drunk driving campaigns, seat belts, recycling, HIV prevention and condoms – plus limits on some advertising such as tobacco and alcohol, Joe Camel effectiveness

EPIC and the long tail

What do initials stand for?

Futuristic – applies the ideas of convergence – everything is digital,
globalization – is everywhere,
hypercommercialism – competitive with few restraints or checks,
audience fragmentation

Relationship between media and society – protecting free speech means protecting media from government interference, save us from totalitarian governments, what of entities larger or let’s say as powerful as government, government (public interest, public trust, commons) doesn’t have place in the discourse, media is a checks and balances system, what are the checks and balances beyond the marketplace

Is the future now? The long tail, use x-y axis, future of marketing for entertainment, customer is always right,

Stuff last forever, endlessly replicated

Empower of individual, consumer values rather than citizen, collective awareness and wisdom of the crowd, leads to Web 2.0 approaches

week 9

Week nine

Public relations:

points to emphasize from textbook

- the reputation of public relations
- how it has different parts and layers, hard to define

- pseudo-event
- evolution to two-way communication (use of polling, advertising, promotion)

Shaping the character of public relations:
advances in technology
growth of middle class
growth of organizations

Better research tools

Professionalism

Different publics: employees, stockholders, communities, media, government, investment community, customers

Activities: community relations, counseling, development/fundraising, employee/member relations, financial relations, government affairs, industry relations, issue management, media relations, marketing communications, minority/multicultural affairs, public affairs, special events and public participation, research

Difference between PR and Advertising:
advertising is controlled communication, typically this group does not help set policy for the company

PR less controlled, advertising can be public relations in building an image

Spin and embedded journalists – ethics

Trends: globalization – most PR companies are global

Specialization – will be focused on a particular issue (greenwashing) or will provide media for media (Video news releases) or use the internet with integrated marketing communications (IMC)

Number of PR people exceed the number of journalists in the US, 40% of what we read and see appears virtually unedited

The best PR is invisible

VNR – looks like real news report, narrated by speaker, carries voice-over in separate channel, accompanied by a script, free of titles or graphics that can be added both local station

Info from Toxic Sludge is Good for You

Tree map: four categories

Public relations tactics, past and present: Ivy, Bernays, corporations seek media as a delivery system

Local news: VNRs, dwindling resources, what to look for

Third Party Advocacy: experts, save journalist a step, distance message from source, group with special name, Gulf War

Managing Crisis: Tylenol, Exxon, risk = hazard + outrage, short term damage control, long term preemptive strategy, Alar

Silencing Debate: genetically modified food, trumpet tests about efficiency not about safety

What role does PR play in a democracy?
How have new technologies facilitated the growth and success of this industry?

How might public interest groups compete with public relations?

How does corporate ownership of mainstream journalism interact with the big players in public relations industry? Does this work against the interests of smaller public relations efforts?

What’s the most ethical approach to practicing public relations?

- a lawyer in the court of public opinion, all parties have a right to tell their side
- but legal setting is a controlled environment under the supervision of an expert judge who enforces groundrules

Week 4

Next week:

Monday:

Comparison with Bias Book and OutFoxed

Spiral back:
Spiral back:

Bias Book – Tree Map of four catagories: What is News, what is Objectivity, what is Bias, Can News Media Reform

Genre: point of view documentary, conventions: narrator, short statements/graphics/music sequence topic related, production values: short cuts to create narrative – French, flip-flop, shut-up

OutFoxed – Tree Map of four catagories: Techniques, Former Employees, Critique of film, Concerns

planting misinformation in foreign press

Commercials through the ages: products, audience, methods, special effects

Key ideas to emphasize:

textual analysis vs. audience analysis (examples – Mickey, Commercials, Gerbner)

correlation vs. causality

Technological determinism – Gutenberg

Wednesday:

Cultivation Theory, Cultural Attitudes, Connect Communication and Culture

Website with conglomerate listing

5 key trends:

Convergence

Conglomeration

Audience Fragmentation

Hypercommmercialism

Globalization

hypercommercialism – responses to questions about newspaper advertising and costs, targeting of demographics and psychographics – use NYTimes from Sara

Tie this to audience as product and advertisers as consumers idea

Standard business model – hardware store sells hardware to people, grocery stores sell food to people, auto repair and dentists sell products and services to people. What are media selling to who. Does media create the products shown in advertising? Media makes their money from advertisers. They are selling audiences to advertisers. Chart on page 20 (powerpoint visual??)

Also newspaper questions point to audience fragmentation – customizing content is what we want, we don’t always want what other people want – allows us to be and think as individuals (chocolate vs. vanilla)

Also point out appointment consumption vs. consumption-on-demand as part

Note how these trends change the previous contrast of communication from the interpersonal model and mass media model, content senders may likely be individuals, messages may be more varied and freed of producers time demands, feedback can be more instantaneous and direct, audience can be well known to content producers and distributors

Week 3

Lecture notes

CO2064

Week three

Monday:

Discussion 1 leftover from last week – heros, violence

Commercials through the ages

Note new date for test one, illustrate old test, identify overall timeline and steps toward test completion

Wednesday:

OutFoxed video

Friday:

Discussion-writing 2

Above the fold exercise

Test is Posted: practice tests available, list of key terms, take-home essays (to be dealt with next week)

Next week:

Monday:
Spiral back: Cultivation Theory, Cultural Attitudes, Connect Communication and Culture
Spiral back: Bias Book – objectivity and bias, sensitivities, sociocentrism – how does fox news illustrate this, how does video clips and on the media illustrate this (planting misinformation in foreign press

Key ideas to emphasize:

textual analysis vs. audience analysis (examples – Mickey, Commercials, Gerbner)

correlation vs. causality

Wednesday:

5 key trends

Fall07 week two

Lecture Notes: Week two

Monday:
Purpose – highlight and expand upon key ideas from text and disc, add personal understanding

Class business: website for this week, syllabus, student interview, social networking inventory, homework?, return papers,

Review main ideas and critique of Cultivation Theory (see previous lecture notes)

- implication about cumulative effect, we get jaded, gets pumped up (advertising, violence, sex, pushing the envelope)

Bowling for columbine – correlation vs. cause

1) Mediated communication: compare and contrast interpersonal and mediated communication model, spend time on graphic on page 8

Weekend experiences with mass media

2) “Communication is foundation of culture” definition of culture – culture is learned, does a fish know it is wet? Are we fish? paradox: culture limits and liberates us, paradox: media reflects and defines culture – the importance of children and culture

Activity: word association

Handouts – how communication practices define cultural behaviors and standards, bounded cultures: college students

- cultural storyteller – what it means to be human, what is normal, what draws human attention, theater masks of comedy and tragedy, can this be connected to sex and violence, multiple points of access – Shakespeare and Jon Stewart

- cultural forum – gays inclusion in society (despite cross dressing of Shakespeare and Jack Benny)
- technology

- money: two ways to make money in media: subscription and advertising,

historical examples: phone – controlled/regulated monopoly, public good (free speech and government interference), neutrality

newspapers: subscription based at first, many small newspapers, economics of scale, general interest regional newspapers and advertising

tv versus cable: content limitations, free vs. tiered pricing, (audience as consumers or product?), advertising and public space

Internet:

All adds up to “responsibility”

3) Media Literacy – definition, Media as Text, course syllabus, what media literacy is not

Who holds journalism accountable, quality control? Does admitting mistakes impact credibility (contrast with other professions – politician, teacher, religious leader, boss, parent) (disc)

Homework –

For Friday: Heros and violence worksheet

For Monday: read media bias and propaganda to page 33

Media tracks 18 and 19

Wednesday:

Purpose: To detect cultural patterns within media images

View Mickey Mouse Monopoly (the importance of children and culture, disc: “all media is educational”, good parent or not? “market values are not family values”)

Use of textbook vocabulary – genre, convention, production values

Complete class Tree TMap

Critique of video

Friday:

Purpose: To find cultural values in media images

Heros and violence worksheet – what about villains , group discussion

View commercials through the ages for generational differences and cultural values

Week 1: Fall 2007

Lecture notes: week one

Weds.

Purpose - Personal Media experience

Complete Media Inventory (demonstrated by me)

Share with others, class composite inventory

You are what you eat? What interpretations can be made by one’s media use? What societal implications can be made?

What is the purpose of media experiences – who do they serve? What if we are all different, is there a societal benefit or cost?

Cause and Effect vs. Cultivation Theory

in 1969, Gerbner and his colleagues "began to chart the content of prime-time and weekend children's television programming, and Gerbner et al (1986, p. 25) noted that 2,105 programs, 6,055 major characters, and 19,116 minor characters had been analyzed by 1984. Significantly, Gerbner et al. (pp. 25 - 26) noted the following patterns: " (Miller, 2005, pp. 283 - 284)

• Men outnumbered women three to one on television
• Older people and younger people are underrepresented on television
• Blacks and Hispanics are underrepresented on television
• Seven percent of television characters are "middle class"
• Crime is 10 times as rampant in the "television world" as it is in the real world

• "First-order cultivation effects refer to the effects of television on statistical descriptions about the world" (Miller, 2005, p. 287). For example, "a first-order effect would suggest that heavy viewers would overestimate the likelihood of being the victim of a crime" (Miller, 2005, p. 287).

• "Second-order cultivation effects refer to effects on beliefs about the general nature of the world" (Miller, 2005, p. 287). For example, "a second-order effect would suggest that heavy viewers would be more likely to view the world as a mean or scary place" (Miller, 2005, p. 287).

Two ways "in which cultivation theorists have extended their theory to account for small effects and differences in effects among subgroups" (Miller, 2005, p. 286) are the concepts of mainstreaming and resonance, added to the theory.

• Mainstreaming "means that television viewing may absorb or override differences in perspective and behavior that stem from other social, cultural, and demographic influences. It represents the homogenization of divergent views and a convergence of disparate viewers (p. 31)" (Miller, 2005, 286).
• Resonance "is another concept proposed to explain differential cultivation effects across groups of viewers. The concept suggests that the effects of television viewing will be particularly pronounced for individuals who have had related experience in real life. That is for a recent mugging victim or someone who lives in a high crime neighborhood, the portrayal of violence on television will resonate and be particularly influential" (Miller, 2005, 286).

Homework – weekly pattern, integration of classwork and homework

Informal Writing – Media in My Life due Friday

Chapter one, media tour tracks 7, 8, 14 due Monday

Friday:

Purpose – Understanding of Cultivation Theory and introduction to course

Video of Cultivation Theory (how the research is dated – current trends in TV, the impact of the Internet)

Tmap: Gender, Class, Race

Burgess Pet Peeves: talk you out of taking this class

Most important course you will take – I teach it that way,

ambivalence and commitment
mistakes happen – it’s what you do with them, efforts to correct pattern, learning from mistakes, communication, preparation, office hours

active class – learn every day

Syllabus

Course Website

- homework and calendar

- access to resources