Types of communication Intrapersonal Thought patterns that make up internal conversations we have with ourselves Source and receiver is me Interpersonal Source is one person or small group receiver is one person or small group Constant feedback 2 way communication and personalization Mass Source is usually an organization receiver is large audience Mediated interpersonal communication The sharing of personal messages through some form of interposed device communication via the telephone e mail text messages etc Does not involve face to face contact Differs from mass communication messages don t go out to a large audience not produced by professionals and it allows a considerable amount of interaction and feedback Mediated communication Messages conveyed through a medium rather than face to face Convergence the merging of technologies industries and content Convergence of Technologies merging of computer telephone and mass media technologies Industries corporate mergers that allow companies to combine their media technologies such as a cable TV company acquiring Internet and telephone divisions Content bringing together of mediated interpersonal messages including telephone and e mail with the messages of traditional mass communication such as text and television e g the social networking site Facebook Media Ownership From 46 in 1981 to 23 in 1992 to 5 major companies in 2009 o Time Warner o Viacom CBS o Disney o News Corp o NBC Universal Comcast merger For profit media o Profit seeking rather than civics building o Globalization of values culture o Gatekeepers Media Impact Impact issues deal with how the media affect society and how they affect individuals within society Legal issues deal with media practices that are governed by law such as libel invasion of privacy and antitrust actions Ethical issues deal with the idea of whether certain media practices are right or wrong from a moral point of view Impact legal and ethical issues are related Causation Vs Correlation Correlation only proves that two things occurred at the same time not that one thing caused the other Correlation does not equal causation o About 80 percent of killers who commit sexual crimes have been proven to have a taste for violent pornography o Does that prove that violent pornography caused the violent behavior o One hundred percent of those killers might also drink milk or use aspirin Payne Fund Studies 1929 Explore the influence of movies on children Concern that children were modeling antisocial behaviors in movies Used content analysis experiments and surveys Results o Children o Adults o Teens Bullet theory direct effect The People s Choice Study 1940 Examined how media affected voter behavior in the 1940 presidential election between FDR and Wendell Wilkie Random sample of subjects from Erie County Ohio Selective exposure caused Republicans to avoid messages that seemed to support Roosevelt while Democrats would seek out these messages Selective perception caused Republicans to hear FDR s fireside chats as evidence of incompetence while Democrats would hear it as evidence of his great abilities and integrity Two step flow e g opinion leaders Social Learning Theory Bobo doll Modeling Observational Learning A person learns by observing the actions of others esp from media and the consequences of those actions Cultivation George Gerbner 1976 Long term exposure to media content TV will shape our view of the world Because media content is violent long term exposure will cause us to be overly concerned about violence in society Mean world syndrome Agenda setting The media may not be very successful in telling us what to think but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about Ethics Absolutist ethics guidelines describes the position that there is either a right or wrong response for every ethical decision these rules are often based on religious ideals and are often rigidly enforced Prescriptive codes stipulate specific behaviors to be followed Proscriptive codes stress the tings that should not be done Situation ethics are where ethical choices can be made rationally without a rigid adherence to a predetermined set of rules situation ethics are sometimes called relativistic ethics A set of principles of right conduct Movies The eras The Pre Talkies and the Silent Era Theater owners began demanding certain popular actors studio heads started placing them under contract and promoting them heavily Studios developed new talent by block booking which forced theaters to show movies with unknown actors in order to get movies with established stars Blind booking required theaters to take movies without previewing them These practices enabled studios to make money from low cost films known as B movies The golden Age Development of sound and color The first full length sound feature was Warner Brother s The Jazz Singer featuring Al Jolson Mostly a silent film only 354 words of spoken dialogue and a few songs Established both the technology and popularity of sound Some audiences stood and applauded when they heard the dialog 1940s The birth of film noir Crime drama