Description
How is key idea one of media studies impacted by key Idea two? How does Key idea three influence key idea four?
For each question write at least 120 words for it. No outside sources or chat gpt allowed. Use the four key ideas of media studies that I have provided below to answer the questions. Please write formally and make sure your grammar is correct.
Four Key Ideas Of Media Studies
Knowing what to avoid is important. Having a fundamental understanding of communication and the mass commercial media industry provides a set of tools that accurately explain those systems.
Most of the ideas for the rest of this book are based on four key ideas of media studies. These ideas are the bedrock upon which further concepts are based, and are useful in providing a framework in which to understand things that otherwise simply do not make sense.
1. Communication is the way we learn who we are, what the world is like, and how we fit into it. There are two ways to learn a new idea or concept. The first is personal experience. You can learn that an ice cube is cold by touching it. The second way is through communication – someone tells you the ice cube is cold.
Gerbner says in The Electronic Storyteller, “Most of what we know, or think we know, we have never personally experienced, but heard from stories.” We hold strong opinions and beliefs about people and places we never have met or visited. We base those beliefs on the information others have told us. We create images of ourselves and define ourselves by our adherence to those images. Those images are created by our communication with others – the stories that we hear about who we are supposed to be, or the stories we hear about how people “like us” are supposed to think and act.
In the book Communication In Our Lives, author Julia T. Wood states, “The self develops only as we communicate with others and participate in the social world … We learn how (others) see us, and we internalize many of their views of who we are and should be.”
It is important to realize that the majority of our perception of reality is built on stories we have been told by others. Again, this can be challenging to accept, but once done, it frees up the possibility of an accurate and comprehensive analysis of what stories we have been told, who told us those stories, and what their motives were and are.
2. Most of our communication takes place with the mass commercial media. Americans spend more time every day watching television than any other activity except for sleeping and working, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s American Time Use Survey. The population of people 15 years old and older in the United States spends on average 2.78 hours per day watching. That average includes people who do not watch television at all. And that is just television. That does not include watching movies, listening to music, engaging with others on social media platforms (which are vehicles by which media companies use individuals to create the stories that attract audiences to advertisements), reading magazines, looking at billboards, wading through a sea of company logos at a retail outlet or even coming face-to-face with the logos on the clothing of others.
To truly grasp the extent to which the mass commercial media has colonized the attention of society, compare the nearly three hours per day of television watching to the average of 0.46 hours spent engaged in educational activities and the average of 0.15 hours spent on religious activities.
To study the mass commercial media, it must be understood that, for all practical reasons, it has displaced every other storyteller in the society.
3. The goal of the mass commercial media is to maximize profits. Media companies are economic entities that exist to make money. They do so by taking in other people’s money by selling stock or via direct investment, creating a product – a movie, a television show, etc. – and using that product to make money. Part of the profit is returned to the investors. The greater the return for investors, the more they are willing to invest.
What this means is that media companies must do what will generate the greatest profit. Educating the public, informing society, even accurately reporting news about the world, all take place within the goal of maximizing profit.
An explanation of anything done by a purely financial operation, such as a bank, is described in financial terms. Media companies operate in the exact same way a bank does. They attract money, use it to generate profit, and distribute some of the profit back to investors. Thus, it is entirely accurate – and absolutely necessary – to understand the actions of a media producer in financial terms.
4. The primary function of the largest, most influential mass commercial media texts is to attract an audience that can be sold to advertisers. Some media texts are sold directly to audiences. Those tend to reach much smaller audiences than the texts that exist to attract an audience that can be sold to advertisers.
So the real product of a mass commercial media company is an audience. That audience’s attention can then be sold to advertisers and other supporters of the media company. This is easily visible in the traditional television model, where programs are used to put audiences into place to see commercials – and to see the products companies pay to have inserted into the programming.
This concept is broader than merely the traditional story/advertisement model seen in television, newspapers and magazines.
For example, Advertising Age reported in June 2013 that the Warner Bros. movie Man of Steel attracted more than 100 promotional partners and $160 million in promotional support from global companies like Nokia and Kellogg. Those companies paid Warner Bros. to be linked to the movie in some way. Therefore, the initial function of Man of Steel is to deliver audiences to the companies that paid Warner Bros. for the tie-ins to the movie.
It must also be remembered that Man of Steel doesn’t simply disappear when it leaves the theaters. It is sold and sold again, for cable television, for rentals, on traditional broadcast television, and media companies are experimenting with streaming stories ranging from movies to sporting events to customers’ phones and tablets.
From the beginning, all of these possible sources of revenue from the sale and re-sale of the movie are incorporated into the decisions that shape the story.
One more element of this idea: If the audience is the product, the media companies must produce the product that meets the needs of the consumer of that product – and those consumers are the advertisers and supporters.
Considering this element allows for a recognition of the link between the story and the needs of the
advertiser/sponsor. It does Nokia little good to spend millions on linking its latest phone to a story that ignores smartphones – or worse, depicts technology as harmful or negative. The needs of the promotional partner will dictate, explicitly or implicitly, elements of the text that Warner Bros. produces.
Considering this element also shows that some potential audience members are more valuable than others. It is in the economic interest of Warner Bros. to attract people who – to illustrate the point – have the money to purchase the Nokia phone, the interest in the Nokia phone, and who have a generally positive view of smartphones and communication technology. Gathering such an audience with Man of Steel makes it easier for Warner Bros. to get Nokia to invest in the movie.
These four ideas – that communication is the way we learn about the world and ourselves; that most communication takes place with the stories produced by the mass commercial media industry; that the goal of the mass commercial media is to maximize profits; and that the function of the mass commercial media is to gather an audience that can be sold – provide a foundation. They explain what mass commercial media companies do, and why what they do has such a great impact on an individual and on a society.
Lastly, these ideas lead to an understanding of how economic forces ruthlessly dictate a particular social ideology that underlies the majority of mass commercial media texts. Stories and ideas that don’t help media companies attract advertising money are not told.
No automobile company is going to continue to produce a model of car that is not selling well. Similarly, no media company is going to continue to produce and air a program that is not drawing an audience. In later chapters, the relationship between audiences and revenues will be detailed further. For now, it is enough to recognize that stories and texts – movies, television shows, etc. – that fail to attract the correct audiences will fall out of any society’s social environment. And their underlying ideologies are thrown away as well.
