• Introduction to Mass Communication

• Lecture 1 – Overview

• “A fish’s existence is so dominated by water that only when water is

absent is the fish aware of its condition”

• “This is true with people & mass media. The media so fully saturate
our everyday lives that we are often unconscious of their presence
not to mention their influence”

Media – inform us

entertain us

delight us

annoy us

move our emotions

challenge our intellects

insult our intelligence

reduce us to mere commodities for sale

to the highest bidder

DEFINE US

SHAPE our realities

Media do not do all these alone. They do it with US as well as to US thru

mass communication. They do it as a central cultural force in our society.

Communication is the process of creating shared meaning. It is reciprocal

and an on-going process. Feedback is immediate.

Mass Communication is the process of creating shared meaning

between the mass media and their audience. Feedback is inferential,
indirect, comes too late.

Cultural Definition of Communication (James Carey)

 • it is the symbolic process whereby reality is produced, maintained,
repaired and transformed

Based on Carey’s definition

• communication and reality are linked

• communication is a process embedded in our everyday lives that

informs the way we perceive, understand & construct our view of
reality & the world

• communication is the foundation of our culture

CULTURE - the learned behavior of members of a

given social group - traditions & lifestyles

- ways of thinking, feeling & acting that

are repetitive

The creation and maintenance of a more or less common culture occurs

through communication including mass communication.

Functions of Culture

1. helps categorize & classify our experiences

2. helps define us, our world & our place in it.

Effects of Culture

1. limiting & liberating effects

- limits our options & provides useful guidelines for

behavior: what is right or wrong, appropriate
& inappropriate,

- liberating: different ideals of beauty & success

2. defining, differentiating, dividing, uniting

- defining ex. Filipina – DH

- differentiating ex. Afro-American

In a pluralistic society, culture can divide & unite people.

Culture is the world made meaningful; it is socially constructed and

maintained through communication. It limits as well as liberates us; it
differentiates as well as unites us. It defines our realities & thereby
shapes the ways we think, feel and act.
 •
Mass Media as Cultural Storytellers

- a culture’s values and beliefs reside in the stories it tells

- our stories help define our realities, shaping the ways we think, feel &
act.

- Storytellers have a remarkable opportunity to shape culture

- Audience have a responsibility to question the tellers and their stories,

etc.

• Mass Media as Cultural Fora

• mass communication is a primary forum for the debate of our

culture. What is the meaning of honesty, graft & corruption, political
dynasty, etc.

• the most powerful voices in the forum have the most power to shape
our definitions & understanding

• Mass Media as Cultural Fora

• where should the power reside? media industries or audience?

if media industries – they must be

professional & ethical

if audience – they must be thoughtful and critical of media

messages they consume

• the forum is only as good, fair & honest as those who participate
in it.

• Role of Technology

• Technological determinism means it is machines and their

development that drive economic and cultural change.

• The way people use technology is what gives it significance.

• Technology changes the basic elements of communication

• Role of Money

• Money alters communication. It shifts the balance of power; it tends

to make audiences products rather than consumers.

• It sells those readers to their participants – advertisers

 • Changes

1. concentration of ownership of media companies

2. conglomeration is the increase in the ownership of media outlets by

larger non-media company. Hence, there is conflict of interest.

3. globalization is primarily large and multi-national conglomerates that

are doing the lion’s share of media acquisition. There is diversity of
expression.

4. audience fragmentation. Audience is becoming more fragmented; its

segments more narrowly defined. It is becoming less of a mass audience.
There is narrowcasting, niche marketing or targeting.

5. Hypercommercialism

- concentrated media control permits the largest media

firms to increasingly commercialize their outputs.

- the sheer growth in the amount of advertisers is one

trouble aspect of hypercommercialism.

6. convergence is the erosion of distinction among media

7. synergy is the driving force behind several recent mergers and

acquisitions in the media and telecommunications industries.

• Mass Communication, Culture and Literacy

Oral or preliterate cultures are those without written language

Characteristics:

1. the meaning in language is specific and local

2. knowledge must be passed on orally

3. memory is crucial

4. myth and history are intertwined

Ideogrammatic (picture-based) alphabets appeared in Egypt (as

hieroglyphics), Sumer (as cuneiform), and urban China

• Literate culture

Literacy is the ability to effectively and efficiently comprehend and

use written symbols
 • Changes that writing brought

1. meaning and language became more uniform

2. communication could occur over long distance and long periods of time

3. the culture’s memory, history, and myth could be recorded on paper

The Gutenberg Revolution

The advent of print is the key to our modern consciousness simply

because it allowed mass communication. The development of movable
metal type (printing press) is Johannes Gutenberg’s contribution to mass
communication.

MEDIA LITERACY

Media literacy is the ability to effectively and efficiently comprehend

and utilize mass media content.

•
Elements of Media Literacy

1. an awareness of the impact of media

2. an understanding of the process of mass communication

3. strategies for analyzing and discussing media messages

•
Elements of Media Literacy

4. an understanding of media content as a text that provides insight into

our culture and our lives

5. the ability to enjoy, understand, and appreciate mass content

•
Elements of Media Literacy

6. an understanding of the ethical and moral obligations of media

practitioners.

7. development of appropriate and effective production skills

 •
Elements of Media Literacy

Media literate consumption requires a number of specific skills:

1. the ability and willingness to make an effort to understand content, to

pay attention and to filter out noise.

•
Elements of Media Literacy

2. an understanding of and respect for the power of media messages.

3. the ability to distinguish emotional from reasoned reactions when

responding to content and to act accordingly.

•
Elements of Media Literacy

4. development of heightened expectations of media content

5. a knowledge of genre conventions and the ability to recognize when

they being mixed

•
Elements of Media Literacy

6. the ability to think critically about media messages, no matter how

credible their sources.

7. a knowledge of the internal language of various media and the ability to

understand its effects. No matter how complex.

•
Introduction to Mass Communication
Lecture 2 – Books

Books are a medium of mass communication that deeply

affects all our lives

•
Cultural Values of the Book

• books are agents of social and cultural change. Ex. controversial and
even revolutionary ideas can reach the public
 • books are an important cultural repository. Ex. we turn to books for
certainty and truth about the world in which we live and the ones
about which we want to know.

•
Cultural Values of the Book

• Books are our windows on the past.

• Books are important sources of personal development. Ex. the

obvious forms are self-help and personal improvement volumes

• Books are wonderful sources of entertainment, escape, and personal

reflection

•
Cultural Values of the Book

• The purchase and reading of a book is much more individual,

personal activity than consuming advertiser-supported (television,
radio, newspapers, and magazines) or heavily promoted (popular
music and movies) media

• Books are mirrors of culture. They reflect the culture that produces
and consumes them.

•
Nature of Books

1. books provide a permanence characteristic of no other communications

medium whether they are paperbacks or hardcover volumes

2. books, if cared properly, last virtually forever.

•
Functions of Books

1. They serve as wellsprings of knowledge

2. They convey vital ideas to millions of people throughout the world

through translations and reprinting and through conversion to movies,
television productions, live performances audiotape and electronic
“books”

•
A Bit of History
 1. The world’s oldest preserved book was printed from wood blocks in
China in A.D. 968.

2. The first book published in the English colonies of America was Boston’s
Bay Psalm Book of 1640.

•
Categories of Books

1. Book club editions are books sold and distributed (sometimes even
published) by book clubs.

2. El-hi are textbooks produced for elementary and high schools

3. Higher education are textbooks produced for colleges and

universities

•
Categories of Books

4. Mail order books are delivered by mail and usually are specialized
series (The War Ships) or elaborately bound special editions of classic
novels

5. Mass market paperbacks are typically published only as paperbacks and

are designed to appeal to a broad readership; many romance novels,
diet books, and self-help books are in this category.

•
Categories of Books

6. Professional books are reference and educational volumes designed

specifically for professionals such as doctors, engineers, lawyers,
scientists, and managers.

7. Religious books are volumes such as Bibles, catechisms, and hymnals

•
Categories of Books

8. Standardized tests are guide and practice books designed to prepare

readers for various examinations such as the bar exam.

9. Subscription reference books are publications such as the Encyclopedia

Britannica, atlases, and dictionaries bought directly from the
publisher rather than purchased in a retail setting.

•
Categories of Books
10. Trade books can be hard- or soft cover and include not only fiction and
most nonfiction but also cookbooks, biographies, art books, coffee-table
books, and how-to books.

11. University press books come the publishing house associated with
and often underwritten by universities.

• Distribution Channels

Books are marketed through six main channels:

1. retail stores

2. college stores

3. directly to consumers through mail order, book clubs, and door-to-door

sales to individuals

4. libraries

5. schools and institutions

6. in miscellaneous fashion to industry, government, foundations, and

research institutions.

•
Trends in Book Publishing

A. Convergence is altering almost all aspects of the book industry.

Most obviously, the Internet is changing the way books are
distributed and sold.

e-publishing. With this new technology, the publication of books initially

or exclusively online, offers a new way for the writers’ ideas to be
published. E-publishing can take the form of d-books and print on
demand (POD).

•
Trends in Book Publishing

d-book is a book downloaded in electronic form from the Internet to

computer or handheld PDA device such as a Pal Pilot

print on demand (POD) is another form of e-publishing. Books are stored

digitally and, once ordered, a book can be instantly printed and bound,
and sent.

•
Trends in Book Publishing
e-books are handheld computers resembling books and dedicated to the
receipt of downloaded works.

e-mail is also being utilized for reading digital epistolary novels (or DENs),
stories that unfold serially through emails, instant messaging and Web
sites.

B. Conglomeration. Book publishing is now dominated by big corporations.

Publishing houses become just one in the parent company’s long list of
enterprises, product quality suffers as important editing and production
steps are eliminated to maximize profits. The world of corporate
conglomerates has little room for such niceties as attention to detail, their
devotion to tradition, the care they gave to facades (their reputations).
Profit dominates all other considerations.

C. Profit and Hypercommercialism. The threat from conglomeration is seen

in the parent company’s overemphasis on the bottom line – that is,
profitability at all costs. Publishers attempt to offset the large
investments they do make through the sale of subsidiary right, that its,
the sale of the book, its contents, and even its characters to filmmakers,
paperback publishers, book clubs, foreign publishers, and even product
producers like T-shirt, poster, coffee cup and greeting cards
manufacturers.

•
Introduction to Mass Communication
Lecture 3 – Newspapers

European corantos and diurnals led to the creation of what we now

know as the newspaper

• In Ceasar’s time, Rome had a newspaper, the ACTA DIURNA (actions

of the day) written on a tablet, was posted on a wall after each
meeting of the Senate

• Corantos of the 17th century Europe, one-page news sheets about

specific events, were printed in English in Holland in 1620

• Diurnals – the true forerunners of our daily newspaper, daily

accounts of local news.

• Broadsides (broad sheets) are single-sheet announcements or

accounts of events imported from England.

• Bill of Rights was composed of 10 amendments to the US

Constitution. The first amendment guaranteed the freedom of
speech or of the press
• Alien & Sedition Acts – a group of 4 laws made illegal writing,
publishing or printing “any false scandalous and malicious writing”
about the president, Congress or federal government.

• Penny Press refers to the one-cent newspapers. Benjamin Day’s Sept

3, 1833 issue of the New York Sun was the first of the penny press

• Wire Services refer to the news-gathering (and distribution)

organization – the first being the New York Associated Press in 1856.
Primarily, it collected news from foreign ships docking at the city’s
harbor. Others followed: Associated Press in 1900, United Press in
1907, International News Service in 1909.

• Yellow journalism was a study in excess – sensational sex, crime,

disaster news, giant headlines, heavy use of illustrations and
reliance on cartoons & color. Yellow journalism drew its name from
Yellow Kid, a popular cartoon character of the time. Joseph Pulitzer
and William Randolf Hearst started it.

• Newspaper chains: newspapers consolidated into a newspaper chain

– papers in different cities across the country owned by a single
company.

• Pass-along readership : readers who did not originally purchase the

paper

• Alternative Press – offspring of underground press

• Dissident press – weeklies with very local & very political

orientation.

• Feature syndicates are feature services that operate as

clearinghouses for the work of columnists, essayists, cartoonists &
other creative people. Ex. opinion pieces such as commentaries.

• Civic Journalism (public journalism) – a newspaper actively engaging

the community in reporting important civic issues

• Desk-top publishing – computer hardware & software combined to do

small-scale print design, lay-out & production.

• Soft news – sensational stories that do not serve the democratic

function of journalism

• Hard news – stories that help people to make intelligent decisions

and/or keep up with important issues of the day
Problem: There is a declining readership among younger people.

• Introduction to Mass Communication

Lecture 4 – Magazines

• Magazines seek to inform, persuade, and entertain their audiences

and put before them advertising messages of national, regional, and
city scope.

• Magazines never appear more frequently than once a week; thus

their writers and editors, although generally part of small staffs with
firm deadlines often have more time to dig into issues and situations
than do those on daily newspapers.

• Magazines are a channel of communication halfway between

newspapers and books.

• A Short History of Magazines

• Magazines were a favorite medium of the British elite by the mid-

1700s and two prominent colonial printers hoped to duplicate that
success in the New World.

• In 1741 in Philadelphia, Andrew Bradford published American

Magazine or a Monthly View of the Political State of the British
Colonies, followed by Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine and
Historical Chronicle for All the British Plantations in America.

• The Early Magazine Industry

• In 1821, the Saturday Evening Post appeared; it was to continue for

the next 148 years. Among other successful early magazines were
Harper’s (1850) and Átlantic Monthly (1857)

• Still, these early magazines were aimed at a literate elite interested

in short stories, poetry, social commentary, and essays.

•
Mass Circulation

Mass circulation popular magazines began to prosper in the post-Civil War

years. Ladies’ Home Journal and Good Housekeeping appeared at this
time.

Magazines were truly America’s first national mass medium and like books
they served as important force in social change.
 • Muckraking – a form of crusading journalism that primarily used
magazines to agitate for change.

• The Era of Specialization

• With the advent of TV, many magazines declared bankruptcy. But

the industry had hit on a secret of success – specialization and
lifestyle orientation. It was the magazine that began the trend –
attracting an increasingly fragmented audience.

•
Magazines and Their Audience

Contemporary magazines are typically divided into three broad types:

1. trade, professional, and business magazines carry stories, features, and

ads aimed at reople in specific professions and are either distributed by
the professional organizations themselves or by media companies.

2. industrial, company, and sponsored magazines are produced by

companies specifically for their
own employees, customers, and stockholders or by clubs and associations
specifically for their members.

3. consumer magazines are sold by subscription and at newstands,

bookstores, and other retail outlets, including supermarkets, garden
shops, and computer stores

• List of common consumer magazine categories

1. Alternative magazines

2. Business/money magazines

3. Celebrity and entertainment magazines

4. Children’s magazines

5. Computer magazines

6. Ethnic Magazines

7. Family magazines

8. Fashion Magazines

9. General Interest Magazines

10. Geographical Magazines

 • List of common consumer magazine categories

11. Gray Magazines

12. Literary Magazines

13. Men’s Magazines

14. News Magazines

15. Political Opinion Magazines

16. Sports Magazines

17. Sunday Newspaper magazines

18. Women’s magazines

19. Youth Magazines

• Magazine Advertising

• Magazine specialization exists and succeeds because the

demographically similar readership of these publications is
attractive to advertisers who wish to target ads for their products
and services to those most likely to respond to them.

• Magazines are often further specialized through split runs, special

versions of a given issue in which editorial content and ads vary
according to some specific demographic or regional grouping.

•
Types of Circulation

Circulation is the total number of issues of a magazine that are sold

a. subscription sale

b. single-copy sales

• Types of Circulation

c. controlled circulation refers to providing a magazine at no cost

to readers who meet some specific set of advertiser- attractive
criteria. Ex. free airline and hotel magazines. These magazines are an
attractive, relatively low-cost advertising vehicle for companies
seeking narrowly defined, captive audience.

• Trends and Convergence in Magazine Publication

 Webzines or on-line magazines have emerged made possible by
convergence of magazines and the Internet.

•
New Types of Magazines

Brand magazine is a consumer magazine complete with a variety of

general interest articles and features published by a retail or other
business for readers having demographic characteristics similar to those
of consumers with whom it typically does business.

• New Types of Magazines

Magalogue is a designer catalogue produced to look like a consumer

magazine. Such magazines feature models who wear for-sale designer
clothes.

• Meeting Competition from Television

a. First is internationalization which expands a magazine’s reach making it

possible for magazines to attract additional ad revenues for content that
essentially has already been produced.

•
Meeting Competition from Television

b. Second is technology. Computers and satellites now allow instant

distribution of copy from the editor’s desk to printing plants around the
world. Almost immediate delivery to subscribers and sales outlets makes
production and distribution of even more narrowly targeted split runs
more cost-effective.

•
Meeting Competition from Television

c. Third is the sale of subscriber lists and a magazine’s own direct

marketing of products. Advertisers buy space in specialized magazines to
reach a specific type of reader.

• Advertorials are ads that appear in magazines that take on the

appearance of genuine editorial content

•
Introduction to Mass Communication
Lecture 5 – Films
The movies were developed by entrepreneurs, people seeking to earn
profits by entertaining audience. Among the first to make a movie was
Eadweard Muybridge, whose sequential action photographs inspired
Edison laboratory scientist William Dickson to develop a better filming
system, the kinetograph. The next advance came from the Lumiere
brothers, whose cinematographe allowed projection of movies. Another
Frenchman, Georges Melies, brought narrative to movies, and the
medium’s storytelling abilities were heightened by Americans Edwin S.
Porter and D.W. Griffith.

• Film soon became a large, studio-controlled business on the West

Coast, where it had moved to take advantage of good weather and
to escape the control of the Motion Picture Patents Company. The
industry’s growth was a product of changes in the U.S. population,
political turmoil overseas, the introduction of sound, and the
development of new, audience-pleasing genres.

• After World War II the industry underwent major changes due to the
loss of audience to television, the red scare, and the Paramount
Decision. The industry was forced to remake itself. At first
Hollywood resisted television, but soon studios learned that TV
could be a profitable partner. Today, the major studios are
responsible for much of the film industry’s production and
distribution. They are also involved in exhibition.

• The modern film industry is experiencing the same trend toward

conglomeration and internalization as are other media, and content
is influenced by that fact. A blockbuster mentality leads to reliance
on concept films; audience research; sequels, franchise films, and
remakes; movies based on comic books, video games, and TV shows;
merchandise tie-ins; and product placements. Profits are
additionally boosted by distribution overseas and through other
media such as videocassettes, DVD, satellite, pay- par-view, and TC.
Convergence and digital technology are reshaping production,
distribution, and exhibition.

• The audience for the movies is increasingly a young one, and movie
content reflects this reality. Many observers fear that the
traditional, elevated role movies have played in our culture is in
danger as a result. The same pressures for profit that raise this fear
also lead to potentially misleading practice of product placement
and, therefore, to the increased importance of media literacy.

• Zoopraxiscope, invented by Muybridge, is a machine for projecting

slides onto a distant surface. When people watched the rapidly
 projected, sequential slides, they saw the pictures as if they were in
motion. This perception is the result of a physiological phenomenon
known as persistence of vision, in which the images our eyes gather
are retained in the brain for about 1/24 of a second. Therefore, if
photographic frames are moved at 24 frames a second, people
perceive them as actually in motion.

• Kinetograph, William Dickson’s early motion picture camera

• Daguerreotype, a process of recording images on polished metal

plates, usually copper, covered with a thin layer of silver iodide
emulsion.

• Calotype, the early system of photography using translucent paper

from which multiple prints could be made

• Kinetoscope, peep show devices for the exhibition of kinetographs.

• Cinematographe, Lumiere brothers’ device that both photographed

and projected action.

• Montage, tying together two separate but related shots in such a

way that they take on a new, unified meaning

• Nickelodeons, the first movie houses, admission was one nickel

• Factory studios, the first film production companies

• Double feature, two films on the same bill.

• B-movie, the second, typically less expensive, movie in a double

feature

• Vertical integration, a system in which studios produced their own

films, distributed them through their own outlets, and exhibited
them in their own theater,

• Block booking, the practice of requiring exhibitors to rent groups of

movies (often inferior) to secure a better one.

• Green light process, the process of deciding to make a movie.

• Platform rollout, opening a movie on only a few screens in the hope

that favorable reviews and word-of-mouth publicity will boost
interest.
• Blockbuster mentality, filmmaking characterized by reduced risk
taking and more formulaic movies; business concerns are said to
dominate artistic considerations.

• Tentpole, an expensive blockbuster around which a studio plans its

other releases.

• Concept film, movies that can be described in one line

• Franchise film, movies produced with full intention of producing

several sequels.

• Theatrical film, movies produced primarily for initial exhibition on

theater screens

• Microcinema, filmmaking using digital video cameras and desktop

digital editing machines