Transcript Communication, Symbols, and Meaning

Mass Communication
John A. Cagle
Innis, McLuhan, and Carpenter:
Communication, Technology, and Culture
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History is directed by the dominant media at each age.
Communication media are tools which extend human faculties.
Hot media are filled with information and we become passive
observers. Print.
Cool media require audience to fill-in information and we
become involved. TV.
The medium is the message.
Media affect the ratio balances among the senses.
Walter Lippmann & others:
Agenda Setting
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Society responds to the pseudo environment created by media,
creating the perception of what the environment around them
is.
Agenda-setting establishes the salient issues or images in the
minds of the public.
Agenda setting occurs because the press is responsible for
what we as a people are allowed to hear.
In order for an agenda to be set, there is a three-part linear
process that must occur.
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First, the media agenda must be set; next, the public agenda is
created; then, finally, in response, the policy makers/political
leaders must make a policy agenda.
In the simplest model, the media agenda directly affects the public
agenda which directly affects the policy agenda.
George Gerbner: Cultivation Analysis
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Cultivation analysis is a theory dealing with the total impacts of
mass communication on cultures over time.
Television, through commercials, the news, drama and comedy,
send common images to the viewing masses.
Gerbner explains television as a "homogenizing" or
"mainstreaming" agent, because it sends general images and
presents a common way of viewing things.
Cultivation analysis is concerned with the total, not individual,
impacts of communication through television. Where people
used to learn socialization and cultivate their predisposition’s
from experience, they now obtain through television. The
danger lies in the fact that television does not generally present
a realistic view of the world.