Habermas came up with the theory of the public sphere. He says that there is communication between dominance and the public through the public sphere, using the Media.

Plurality is essential to make people aware and keep communicating

Democracy is essential for other people to have opinions and to have a better world overall. This helps to make sure we live in a fair and understood world.

Around the 1900’s all of the companies were bought

Habermas believes that democracy depends on a public which is informed aware and debates on the issues of the day

‘Habermas argues that the development of early modern capitalism brought into being an autonomous arena of debate’

‘A good starting point for re-thinking the democratic role of the media is provided by the seminal study of Habermas’

‘Fundamental presumption that the media do serve the ‘public interest”

‘public service broadcast organisations tend to be unduly influenced by the political class’

‘public service broadcasting does not necessarily correspond to reality’

Regulation – free market? or state control?

The government creates laws to make sure that people don’t print bad or hurtful things or lie. But then the state are controlling the media.

• Structures of ownership – this is when there are different companies in charge. In the industry there are parent companies which own everything. Conglomerates and Monopolies come under this.

• The role of advertising – advertising is used to influence

• Links with ‘The Establishment’

• Diversionary tactics – ‘flack’

• Uniting against a ‘common enemy’

Audience Reception Theory

• Agenda Setting – the creation of public awareness to the big issues by the news media.
• Media attempts to influence audiences.
• The press and media do not reflect reality; they just filter it to make people see things the same way as them.
• Media also focuses on specific issues more than others and make some issues larger and seem more important than others.

“In China, published criticism of the state has been tightly constrained; newspapers, it is said in China ‘Swat flies but don’t beat tigers”

“Increasingly, there are efforts to articulate a view of ‘civil society'”

“Fewer and fewer corporations control more and more of the American news Media”

• Wrote a book where authors propose that the mass communication media of the U.S. “are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion”.
• There has been debate about how the Internet has changed the public’s access to information since 1988.
• The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media.

Production	Distribution	Consumption
pen pencil paper word processor printer telephone Computer Typewriter Ink License Permission Content Camera Microphone	(large scale) printing press lorries vans cars stacks shelves display cases Staff Social Media Billboards	paper (the ability to read? & understand?) a digital device (ipad/phone, computer Speech (word of mouth) Reading Glasses

share	active	creative	host
story	re-connect	personalise	stream
experience	store	scale	immerse
interface	live	adapt	binge
conversation	re-perform	circulate	endless

Store, personalize and stream all connect because they all link to how companies can attract customers. They can store small pieces of peoples data, then personalize adverts for person based on their interests from the data and then this advert is streamed to the target audience through their media platforms.

Store – Teen Vogue store data in order to know what people are interested in

Personalize – they can then use this data to personalize adverts to specific people

Stream – they then stream these adverts to the potential customers

Table to contrast ‘New’ vs ‘Old’ Media: Do you agree?

NEW MEDIA	OLD MEDIA
Active involvement	Passive involvement
Two-way conversation	One-way conversation
Open system	Closed system
Transparent	Opaque
One-on-one marketing	Mass marketing
About Me	About You
Brand and User-generated Content	Professional content
Authentic content	Polished content
FREE platform	Paid platform
Metric: Engagement	Metric: Reach/ frequency
Actors: Users / Influencers	Actors/ Celebrities
Community decision-making	Economic decision-making
Unstructured communication	Controlled communication
Real time creation	Pre-produced/ scheduled
Bottom-up strategy	Top-down strategy
Informal language	Formal language

Who really benefits from a digitally networked society? Big business or individuals? Refer to ‘loop theory’ and the ‘Dunbar number’

In general, big businesses benefit from a digitally networked society more than individuals. Having society digital means that big companies have easy access to peoples personal data and are therefore able to track their behaviors in order to advertise their products to the consumer at a specific time or place. This relates to Norbert Weiner’s loop theory as this says that through tracking media, companies can target their desired customers.

How does big business benefit? What commodity do they trade in? Answer: predictive human behaviour. Write out an answer in your own words.

Big businesses benefit through predictive human behavior as they are able to predict what specific people eill

The Network Effect (Theodore Vail) – the idea that certain things only have value if lots of people use them. Network Effects describes how the value of a good or service increases as more people start to use that good or service.

Feedback Loop Theory (Norbert Wiener) – tracking successes in things as a pattern and finding specific patterns in these movements. Feedback loops provide information to an organization about system successes and problems. Success results in a positive feedback loop and problems create a negative feedback loop. Sharing information to help companies make money through predictive human behavior and target specific audiences.

Dunbar Number (Robin Dunbar) – a limit to the number of people that someone can maintain good relationships with. Relationships where the person knows each person individually and personally.

• Canadian communications theorist and editor
• Wrote the book ‘Media Is The Message’ summarizing his views on the way that the media is changing the world and society
• Says that Media influences our thoughts and actions
• “Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which men communicate by the content of the communication” (p. 8: 1967)

Production	Distribution	Consumption
– Computers – Digital Cameras – Audio Recorders – Photoshop/Editing – Tablets (drawing/design) – Word Processor – Microphones – Blog/Websites	– Internet – Social Media (Instagram/Facebook – Broadcasts – Hosting Sites – Youtube – Wifi – Email – Websites – IP address	– Phones – Television – Tablets – Computer – Radio – Apps – Headphones – Cinema – Youtube