key terms

  1. Cultural industries – the different types of popular media , production, distribution and products in the creative industry.
  2. Production – The making of the product(movie, series, tv show)
  3. Distribution – The methods by which media products are delivered to audiences, including the marketing campaign .
  4. Exhibition / Consumption – the retail branch of the film industry when the media is taken in by individuals or a group.
  5. Media concentration – The ownership of mass media by fewer individuals.
  6. Conglomerates – A group that owns multiple companies which stand out different media specialised in written or audio-visual content.
  7. Globalisation (in terms of media ownership) – The worldwide integration of media through the cross-cultural exchange of ideas.
  8. Cultural imperialism – The practice of promoting the culture values or language of one nation in another.
  9. Vertical Integration -Where media companies expand by acquiring different businesses in the same chain of production and distribution.
  10. Horizontal Integration -A way in which media companies expand by acquiring media companies that work in similar sectors.
  11. Mergers – Where 2 or more business combine together to make one.
  12. Monopolies – Concentrated control of major mass communications within a society.
  13. Gatekeepers – The process through which information is filtered for dissemination.
  14. Regulation – The process by which a range of specific tools are applied to media systems and institutions to achieve established policy goals such as pluralism, diversity, competition and freedom.
  15. Deregulation – The process of removing or loosening government restrictions on the ownership of media outlets.
  16. Free market – one where voluntary exchange and the laws of supply and demand provide the sole basis for the economic system.
  17. Commodification – The transformation of the relationship, which is trafficked into things that are free of the commercial nature of the relationship.
  18. Convergence – The merging of media technologies and platforms through digitalization and computer networking.
  19. Diversity – diversity of ideas, viewpoints or content options.
  20. Innovation – Change in several aspects of the media landscape, like the development of new media platforms, new business models and new ways of producing media texts.

Hypodermic model:
The work on the relationship of media consumption are often traced back to Harold Laswell.
Martin Moore notes Laswell believed each government had manipulated the mass media in order to justify its actions in World war 1.
In 1948 he developed a linear model of communication, one that breaks down the line of communication from point A to point B, in which the sender is transferring a message through a medium.

Two step flow of communication:
Paul Lazarfeld recognised that a simple, linear model may not be complex to understanding the relationship between message sent and message received. 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.

The theory of preferred reading
At around the same time Stuart Hall, working at the centre for contemporary cultural studies, at the university of Birmingham, was also developing a 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, as well as looking for ways of subverting that process. Hall was working at a time of great societal upheaval and unrest in the UK and therefore committed to understand the relationship between power, communication, culture and behaviour management.

Hall proposed three positions that could be occupied by individual viewers, determined, more or less on their subject identities:
– A dominant position accepts the dominant message.
– A negotiated position both accepts and rejects the dominant reading.
– An oppositional position rejects the dominant reading.

Qualitative vs Qualitative

Demographic classification
– A socio-economic classification developed by the NRS(Nation Readership)
– Approximated social grade of six categories a,b,c1,c2,d and e.

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