TEL T 205 1st Edition Lecture 8 News Media How content develops Journalistic values o Entertainment has to be something that generates an audience through commercialism They have to entertain people to draw them in which influences the way the content is delivered o Objectivity Independence free from ownership from political parties and government Balance giving equal time to any serious sides of an issue Non evaluative not passing judgment about what happened o Informativeness Not something they need to know something they don t know Breaking news trumps all New news trumps importance and accuracy Homelessness is barely covered because it s not informative o Brevity We want short stories because we don t have the patience for it The impact of these values on content o Separate socialism from it o If you understand how these manipulations work you can use it in your favor o They don t cover persistent problems like feeding the hungry If you want coverage make it an event bring celebrities o If you don t want news coverage change how well it fits journalistic values These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute News media Effects of the coverage o Knowledge information acquisition o Diffusion of news spreading information o Accumulation of knowledge information the more we watching the more news media we consume and learn Cultivation the more news we consume the more we consume the more violence we consume the more inaccuracy we learn Next step reality o Effects on the knowledge gap it s a concern that some people don t have the knowledge Sometimes the knowledge gap is based on socioeconomic status News media could make the gap smaller or larger News media coverage effect has been pretty mixed o Two factors that influence Motivation is equal across these two groups News media coverage decreases the knowledge gap Like Health news Everyone wants to know how to prevent a heart attack Access to the information when access is equal news media coverage deceased the knowledge gap in the same way When access is unequal the knowledge gap increases o Agenda Setting news media don t tell us what to think but they do tell us what to think about Media coverage turns people towards a certain position They influence our perception of what matters Media coverage predicts what the public thinks are important Simple correlational designs In order to measure agenda setting measure what the news is covering and what the people think are important News coverage issues perceived issue importance Correlation does not predict causation Agenda setting o The agenda setting hypothesis o Findings the media does set what issues we care most about Suicide Stories o Findings When there is an increased coverage of suicide there is an increased rate of suicide The increase is proportional to that amount of coverage That increase is greatest in geographic area where the coverage is greatest not where it actually occurred Hypothesis news coverage is killing people Alternative explanations Coroner classification effect a lot of these situations are ambiguous There is a media effect but it s not on how media influence people to commit suicide but how the coroner labels them It could be because of how the coroner is classifying these deaths because of the news coverage of suicide So there isn t really an increase it s just the coroner labels them as suicide because of the news coverage Precipitation Not Causation Media doesn t actually cause them to kill themselves but rather people are already planning on doing it and the media is precipitating it When increase in suicide happens a proportional decease occurs Does not happen There is a solution When you report a suicide story provide information to get help