B.F. Skinner-
Operant conditioning. eg positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement & punishment. “The fiction of free will”– determinism, no free will, result of environmental and biological factors.
Harold Lasswell– hypodermic model
He was involved in ww1, he explored propaganda techniques ww1 in book (1927), “brew up a subtle poison, which could be injected into the veins”
Hypodermic model– direct injection= passive audience.
Propaganda is overtly political and manipulative, and the processes of persuasion is invisible at first glace.
Liner model of communication– who (sender), says what (message), channel (media), to whom (receiver), with what effect (feedback)
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Adapted by Shannon and Weaver in 1949, to become Transmission model of Communication, including elements like noise, error, encoding and feedback.
The age of surveillance capitalism– Zuboff
Emerging behavior control technology (mobile phones) used to stimulate certain behaviors. “technology had begun to develop new methods of behavior control capable of altering not just an individual’s actions but its very personality and manner of thinking.”
Cambridge Analytica
Alexander Nix- harvesting data and using it to tailor ads. Influenced Brexit, and Trump 2016 campaign by targeting ads on Facebook to influence voting.
Two Step Flow of Communication (active consumption)
Paul Lazarfeld– developed the two step flow of communication this in 1948, messages are not directly injected to into the audience but in fact they go through a opinion leaders first, who interpret media messages first and then relay them back to a bigger audience. Audiences are active not passive
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Uses and Gratifications (active selection)
This approach doesn’t categories audiences as passive or active more focuses on the decision making process of the audience themselves. Research began with Denis McQuail and Jay Blumler, in 1969 as they looked into the 1964 UK Election. In the early 1970’s they were joined by Elihu Katz, Joseph Brown, Michael Gurevitch and Hadassah Haas.
There researched showed that individual audience members were more active and as a result a key part of the processes of selection, interpretation and feedback.
Audiences used media to gain gratifications. Which could be categorised into;
- information / education
- empathy and identity
- social interaction
- entertainment
- escapism
Or categorised as: diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance
This links into Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs, which shows social and psychological needs of the audience which is why they use the media in order to gain these.
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Cultivation Theory – effects over time
George Gerbner– worked on a large-scale, positivist, in-depth, longitudinal study into the effects of television, which started in 1975- developed cultivation theory
‘television cultivates from infancy the very predispositions and preferences that used to be acquired from other primary sources‘ (Gerbner et al 1986)- tv shapes the way individuals see & think. ‘watching television doesn’t cause a particular behavior, but instead watching television over time adds up to our perception of the world around us‘ (cited in West, 2014).
Noam Chomsky- manufacturing consent
Louis Althusser- IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPRATUSES (ISA’s)
The Theory of Preferred Reading
Stuart Hall- critical theory that looked to analyse mass media communication and popular culture as a way of both uncovering the invidious work of the State and Big Business.
He provided three main distinct positions that could be occupied by individual viewers;
- A dominant position accepts the dominant message
- A negotiated position both accepts and rejects the dominant reading
- An oppositional position rejects the dominant reading
Clay Shirky: The End of Audience
A theory that through new media technology there is no longer an audience but instead only individuals.
‘the more ideas there are in circulation, the more ideas there are for any individual to disagree with.’