OPERANT CONDITIONING – B.F Skinner – “the fiction of free will?” We decide to do something because the idea has already been planted in our minds by someone/something else. Free will is an illusion.
Propaganda vs persuasion
Propaganda – overtly political and manipulative
Persuasion – concealment, strategy and manipulation
Harold Lasswell – Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927) – highlighted “subtle poison”
Shoshana Zuboff – behaviour management – persuading people to engage in certain types of behaviour
We can connect with media messages through one-to-one communication
Individuality and personal freedom vs behaviour modification – “the behavioural technology being developed in the United States today touches upon the most basic sources of individuality and the very core of personal freedom…”
Cambridge Analytica – Alexander Nix – influences people through adverts on social media
Hypodermic model (passive consumption) – model proposes a clear linear (maybe even altered) connection between a message sent > message received
Paul Lazarfeld said that a simple, linear model may not be sufficiently complex to understanding the relationship between message sent > message received. Lazarfield developed the Two Step Flow model for communication, which took account of the way in which mediated messages are not directly injected into the audience.
Katz – Uses and Gratifications theory
Escapism, social interaction, educate and inform, identification
Maslow – Hierarchy of Needs
Self actualization, esteem, love and belonging, safety, physiological
Cultivation theory – effects over time…
George Gerbner and Larry Gross developed this theory that notes the distinct characteristics of television in relation to other media forms. They suggest that “television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and preferences that sued to be acquired from other primary sources.”
Theory of preferred reading…
- A dominant position accepts the dominant message
- A negotiated position both accepts and rejects the dominant reading
- An oppositional position rejects the dominant reading
Stuart Hall suggested we can reject media messages.
Clay Shirky – the end of audience
No mass audience, only a large group of individuals
The I and Daily Mail ownership – Daily Mail and General Trust
Conclude and summarise