Operant conditioning – B.F Skinner
You can change behaviours.
‘The fiction of free will’ – links to ideological state apparatus.
It isn’t always free will that makes us do things.
Rewards are given when you do certain things – can question if free will is actually present or not.
You can tailor the media for certain needs – if someone doesn’t want to hear heavy stories, you could make something that will appeal to those people and fill that media with what people want to see.
Propaganda VS Persuasion
Propaganda is the expression of opinions in order to manipulate people to believe a certain thin. Generally overtly political
Persuasion is more about influencing people slowly by dripping information gradually and not obviously
Harold Laswell – spoke about how the US military used a rang of different persuasive devices in WW2 to get people ‘knocked into submission’ Hypodermic model – direct injection of messages into a passive audience.
Shoshana Zuboff
Surveillance Capitalism – we are all directly communicated to be manipulated to think certain things.
Persuasion through behaviour controlled technology
‘various form of persuasion are used to stimulate certain types of behaviours’
‘new methods of behaviour control’
‘ the power this technology gives one man to impose his views and values on another.’ – talking about the Donald Trump Campaign
Project Alamo
Helped to get donald trump elected
Campaign messages that are overwhelmingly negative towards the other party
Harold Lasswell
- Developed the theoretical tool of ‘content analysis’ and in 1927 wrote Propaganda Technique in the World War which highlighted the brew of ‘subtle poison, which industrious men injected into the veins of a staggering people until the smashing powers . . . knocked them into submission’
- If people are spoon fed information, they will believe it
Article with Boris Johnson having dandruff
- Who = Caroline Jones (Journalist)
- Says what = writes about the Priminister having dandruff
- Channel = The Daily Mail
- To Whom = the readers of the newspaper
- With what effect = to mock Boris
Shannon and Weaver (1949)
- They criticse that model and came up with the Transmission model of Communication, which included other elements, such as NOISE, ERROR, ENCODING and FEEDBACK.
Paul Lazarfeld – Two Step Flow Theory
- Says that a linear approach doesn’t work
- In 1948 he developed the Two Step Flow model of communication, which took account of the way in which mediated messages are not directly injected into the audience, but while also subject to noise, error, feedback etc, they are also filtered through opinion leaders, those who interpret media messages first and then relay them back to a bigger audience.
- Example = In class you ask a question to your friend about something you didn’t understand from the teacher.
- We’re more likely to take information from individuals rather than one big source. The individual is known as the ‘Opinion Leaders’.
- The audience are active
Uses and Gratification
Research into this area began with Denis McQuail and Jay Blumler, who in 1969, looked to study the 1964 UK Election. In the early 1970’s they were joined by Elihu Katz, Joseph Brown, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas.
This theory recognises that people do choose things themselves and aren’t forced into thinking or choosing something.
Cultivation Theory – 1975
George Gerbner
We can be shaped by the media. Over time we can make people believe certain things.
Even if they are doing this through the media that the people want, they can still sneak those opinions into this.
In other words, television shapes the way individuals within society think and relate to each other. However, the research also notes that the effects of television are limited and as such, the overall position is that ‘watching television doesn’t cause a particular behaviour, but instead watching television over time adds up to our perception of the world around us‘.
Structure (organisations and big corporations) have more power than the individual. Individuals don’t know that they don’t have any power but are tricked into thinking they do.
Stuart Hall – 1980’s
The Theory of Preferred Reading
The idea that you can present information in one way but other people will reject the reading and not accept the desired message.
- A dominant position accepts the dominant message
- A negotiated position both accepts and rejects the dominant reading
- An oppositional position rejects the dominant reading
Everyone is encoding and decoding things in a different way. Everyone reads things differently.
Clay Shirky: The End of Audience
‘the more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with.’