Chapter 2 outline — Media and Society

Chapter 2 outline

Media and Society

n  Understanding the Media

Ø  Do media change society
or reflect society?

Ø  Mutual relationship between media and culture

Ø  Theories on how media institutions function

n  Media Economics

Ø  Media exist to make money

Ø  Mass production, distribution
are keys to economic success

Ø  Profits reaped by producing many copies at low cost

Ø  Large audiences help media companies recoup first-copy 

n  Media Economics

Ø  Economies of scale

n  Cut staff, automate, merge

n  Reduce marginal costs

Ø  Benefits of competition

n  Law of supply and demand

n  Good for consumers: lower prices, better products

Ø  Marginal costs

n  Media Economics

Ø  Media monopolies

n  No pressure to be efficient

n  Can raise prices and profits

n  Not invariably bad

n  Can reduce content diversity

Ø  Duopoly

Ø  Oligopoly

n  Media Economics

Ø  Barriers to entry

Ø  Profit motive

n  Profits: what’s left after paying costs and taxes

n  Media use different methods to recoup first-copy costs

n  Profits are not always paramount (example: PBS)

n  How Media Make Money

Ø  Direct sales (buy iPod)

Ø  Rentals (rent DVD)

Ø  Subscriptions (newspaper)

Ø  Usage fees (movie ticket)

Ø  Advertising (newspapers,
magazines, TV, radio)

n  How Media Make Money

Ø  Syndication (TV reruns)

Ø  License fees (song royalties)

Ø  Subsidies (PBS)

Ø  Voluntary donations (NPR, some software and game developers)

n  Mass Markets to Segments

Ø  Narrowcasting: target smaller audience segments with specialized content

Ø  Why? Technologies, advertisers’ preferences, research techniques, consumer-info databases, audience demand

n  New Media Economics

Ø  Personalized content

Ø  Internet: low reproduction
and distribution costs

Ø  Websites use advertising, too (but with a twist)

n  Examples: Google sponsored ads, Groupon

n  Critical Studies

Ø  Need for media literacy

Ø  Political economy

n  Marx: Dominant groups create hegemony

Ø  Feminist studies

Ø  Ethnic studies

Ø  Media criticism

n  Postmodernism

Ø  Critique of modern technological society

Ø  No universal truth

n  All views equally valid

n  New forms of expression

n  Nation-states obsolete

Ø  What comes next?

n  Diffusion of Innovations

Ø  Explains why people adopt new communication behaviors

Ø  Why innovations succeed: price, compatibility, social norms, other factors

Ø  Stages of diffusion: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, laggards

n  Media’s Functions

Ø  Surveillance (news)

Ø  Interpretation (editorials)

Ø  Values transmission/ socialization (textbooks)

Ø  Entertainment (movies)

Ø  Functions of new media

n  Media and Public Opinion

Ø  Gatekeeping

Ø  Agenda setting

n  Media tell us what to think about

n  But new media may be undermining older media

Ø   Framing

n  Media tell us how to think

n   Technological Determinism

Ø  The medium is the message (McLuhan)

n  Form, not content, matters

n  The ‘global village’

Ø  Technology as dominant social force (Postman)

Ø  Media drive culture