Transcript Media Literacy - Université d`Ottawa

Media Literacy
• developing informed & critical
understanding of media
• understanding impact of techniques
• how does the media work?
• how does media produce meaning?
• how is media organized?
• how does media construct reality?
Why teach media literacy?
• Media dominate our political and cultural
lives
• Almost all information beyond direct
experience is "mediated"
• Media provide powerful models for values
and behavior
• Media influence us without our being aware
• Media literacy can increase our enjoyment
of the media
Print Media-Books
• Regularity: single issue, occasional future
editions
• Content: usually single topic
• Timeliness: not very...
• Format: bound, stitched, glued...
• Trends: some experiments in online
(Internet) distribution
Magazines
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Regularity: weekly, monthly, quarterly
Content: diverse
Timeliness: pretty important...
Format: bound, staples, glossy paper or not
Trends: Online (Internet) component
increasing or supplanting
Newspapers
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Regularity: daily, weekly
Content: diverse
Timeliness: very important
Format: unbound, newsprint
Trends: Online (Internet) component
increasing or complementing
TV, Radio & Sound Recording
• Regularity: anytime, hourly, daily,
weekly....!
• Content: diverse!
• Timeliness: very important (news shows) to
not so important (entertainment)
• Trends: Online (Internet) component
increasing. Convergence
• Radio on the Internet (Real Time Audio).
Why is the mass media
important?
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It's pervasive, we can't escape it!
It's an information source
It's an entertainment source
It tries to persuade us (to buy, to vote)
It can bind communities & nations together
- shared interests & concerns
Mass Communication Process
• Mass messages-- news items, movies, novels,
songs…created by journalists, songwriters, disc
jockeys, PR spinners
• Mass Media--what carries the messages-newspapers, books, magazines, TV, movies,
Internet
• Mass Communication--the process of how
messages reach the audience via mass media
• Mass Audiences --they vary - factors include
nationality, gender, class, age, ‘taste'
Mass Media Trends
• Conglomeration -- when the media is
owned by fewer and fewer companies.
Companies merge and/or are bought out
• See charts of media ownership:
http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/
Demassification
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narrow markets based on special interests
500 channels and more!
eclectic magazines
direct-mail
junk mail, and now junk Internet mail...
Online targeting and advertising…
Convergence
• ….of media technologies - TV, computer,
telecommunications, etc.
• ….of content: the movie, the website of the
movie, the book of the movie, the products
from the movie (toys, bed-sheets etc), the
comic book of the movie, the Movie #2, the
tv-show based on the movie, the website of
the tv-show based on the movie etc etc etc
Powerful Trends Transforming
Our Media World
• Running the culture industry is the new
dominant U.S. role in the global economy
• Corporate media are less tolerant of
alternative views
• The right/conservative builds its own media
infrastructure (Rush Limbaugh, Pat
Robertson‘ Religious Broadcasting
Service).
Powerful Trends…
• The future of public interest journalism is in
jeopardy
• Commercialism reigns
• Whither public communication systems?
• Developing world is left behind
Media History (video)
• To understand the impact of contemporary
changes in new information and
communication technologies (ICTs), we
must look back to media history
• Social, political, and economic trends, as
well as patterns of consumption of mass
media
How do we communicate?
• Looking at history shows us how we have
developed into a very complex society
• Consider … accelerated pace of life because
of the Internet…and some of its
ramifications….’economies of scale’, stress,
multi-tasking
Evolutions and Revolutions in
Media
• Oral communication – storytelling
• Art of oratory –classical times
• Invention of writing…scribes…process of
interpretation
• Invention of printing press-amplification of
message larger – one speaker can reach
many…production of many
copies…multiple & identical
Printing Press, etc.
• Incursion of commercialization into press…
• …Business news
• So, origins of mass media tied into
commercial imperative
• Rise of commercial printing built on 19th c.
mass production (factory) model
Commodity and Audiences
• Industrialized form of communication
thought of as a product to be bought & sold
• Changes create different social and cultural
interactions
Wired Communication Telegraph
• Telegraph and telegraphy– electrification of
communication
• Separate transportation from
communication
• Sense of space and time changed
• Development of wire services – pooling &
sharing information
Wired Communication –
Telephone & Radio
• Sense of simultaneity with telegraph
• Telephone – one to many communication as
well as point to point communication
• Radio as wireless telegraph
• AT&T enters scene
Visual Communication
• Television – enter NBC
• Domestication of tv
• Disputes over role of tv with kids—media
effects, “telebugeye”
Commercial Television
• U.S. – ABC, NBC, CBS
• Mass homogenization
• Creation of national cultural
experience…but what kind?
• Advertiser oriented
Enter VCR & Cable
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Time-shifting
More control for audience
Cable – broader spectrum
Launching of satellites- cheaper and
efficient way of distributing information
• Development of niche services and markets
(e.g., MTV, History Channel)
From Broadcasting to
Narrowcasting
• Lots of competition
• Carving out pieces of the mass audience
• How do cable services differentiate
themselves?
• Diverse demographics – targeting for
women, for men, for kids
• Mass Fragmentation
Does More = Less?
• Serving same basic functions?
• Does it matter if audiences are fragmented?
Converging Technologies
• With Internet…
• Traditional media converging with new
media
• Is access available for all?
• 24/7 communication – what does this
imply?
• The Daily Me (Cass Sunstein)
Transition…
• Fractitonalization – more media channels
are being offered to people
• Globalization – media global phenomena
and media companies global entities –
revenues made in foreign markets
• Conglomerization of media – media moves
across boundaries
Blurring of Media Boundaries
• Regulation difficult
• Policymakers grappling with how to deal
with these changes…
• Jurisdictional issues