Mass Communication in Canada 8th Edition Test Bank

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Excerpts taken from:

Mass Communication Theories: Explaining Origins, Processes, and Effects

by Melvin L. DeFleur

Communication Theories: Origins, Methods, and Uses in the Mass Media, Fifth

Edition

by Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard, Jr.

Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning, Eighth Edition

by Clifford G. Christians, Mark Fackler, Kathy Brittain McKee, Peggy J. Kreshel,

and Robert H. Woods, Jr.

Communication Theories for Everyday Life

by John R. Baldwin, Stephen D. Perry, and Mary Anne Mofﬁ tt

Understanding Media in the Digital Age

by Everette E. Dennis and Melvin L. DeFleur

Comparing Media from Around the World

by Robert McKenzie

Basics in

Communication and

Media Studies

Edited by Mahmoud Eid & Aliaa Dakroury

10271294834_defleu_pi_ii.indd 1 10271294834_defleu_pi_ii.indd 1 4/13/12 8:45 AM 4/13/12 8:45 AM

ISBN 10: 1-256-66010-8

ISBN 13: 978-1-256-66010-1

Mass Communication Theories: Explaining

Origins, Processes, and Effects

by Melvin L. DeFleur

Published by Allyn and Bacon

Boston, Massachusetts 02116

Communication Theories: Origins, Methods,

and Uses in the Mass Media, Fifth Edition

by Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard, Jr.

Published by Addison-Wesley Longman

Boston, Massachusetts 02116

Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning,

Eighth Edition

by Clifford G. Christians, Mark Fackler, Kathy

Brittain McKee, Peggy J. Kreshel, and

Robert H. Woods, Jr.

Education, Inc.

Published by Allyn and Bacon

Communication Theories for Everyday Life

by John R. Baldwin, Stephen D. Perry, and

Mary Anne Mofﬁ tt

Published by Allyn and Bacon

Understanding Media in the Digital Age

by Everette E. Dennis and Melvin L. DeFleur

Published by Allyn and Bacon

Comparing Media from Around the World

by Robert McKenzie

Published by Allyn and Bacon

Permission in writing must be obtained from the publisher before any part of this work may be

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All trademarks, service marks, registered trademarks, and registered service marks are the

property of their respective owners and are used herein for identiﬁ cation purposes only.

Pearson Learning Solutions, 501 Boylston Street, Suite 900, Boston, MA 02116

A Pearson Education Company

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Taken from:

10271294834_defleu_pi_ii.indd 2 10271294834_defleu_pi_ii.indd 2 4/13/12 8:45 AM 4/13/12 8:45 AM

Preface ix

About the Editors xiii

PART I

Introduction 1

1 Introduction to Communication and Media Studies 3

Aliaa Dakroury & Mahmoud Eid

Communication theory and history 4

Media ethics and philosophy 8

Communication research and media effects 11

Communication, culture, and representation 18

Canadian communication perspective 23

2 Understanding Communication

Concepts in the Internet Age 33

Everette E. Dennis & Melvin L. DeFleur

Studying media strategically 35

The interpersonal communication process 41

The "mass" communication process 47

Comparing face-to-face and mass communication 51

PART II

Communication Theory, History, and Effects 59

3 Introduction to Communication Theory 61

Sandra Metts

What is communication? 63

What does communication do? 64

What is a theory? 67

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CONTENTS

vi CONTENTS

How do scholars construct theories? 70

How can I know if a theory is "good"? 73

4 History of Mass Communication 81

Rebecca Carrier

How do media serve as windows to the world? 83

When did mass communication theory get started? 86

Have scholars ever changed their minds about media theory? 87

Do the media affect me, or am I affected by my own decisions? 92

Are limited effects approaches simply too limited? 92

5 Effects of Mass Communication 97

Werner J. Severin & James W. Tankard

General trends in effects theory 97

Speciﬁc theories of media effects 103

A particular area of theory—effects of television violence 118

PART III

Media and Communication Research 129

6 Gatekeeping Theory 131

Melvin L. DeFleur

Basic news functions of the press 133

The origins of the concept of gatekeeping 136

Opening the gate: Criteria for selecting the news 138

Gatekeeping theory: A formal summary 143

7 Agenda-Setting Theory 147

Melvin L. DeFleur

The origins of agenda-setting theory 150

Factors used in setting the news media agenda 154

The public's agenda of beliefs about issue importance 158

The public's issue agenda and the policy agenda 161

The agenda-setting theory of the press: A formal summary 164

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8 The Two-Step Flow of Communication Theory 167

Melvin L. DeFleur

The People's Choice project: The seminal study 169

The unique design of the study 172

The results 173

The discovery of the Two-Step Flow of communication 175

The nature and role of opinion leaders 176

Additional studies 178

The Two-Step Flow of communication theory: A formal summary 179

The problem of distortion in interpersonal communication 180

9 Uses for Gratiﬁcations Theory 183

Melvin L. DeFleur

The discovery of the active audience 184

The uses and gratiﬁcations "perspective" 190

A "research tradition" develops 192

Developing a formal theory 193

The uses for gratiﬁcations theory: A formal summary 197

10 Cultural Imperialism Theory 201

Melvin L. DeFleur

American popular culture becomes global 203

The process of cultural diffusion 210

Cultural diffusion theory: A formal summary 217

The traditional meaning of "imperialism" 218

Cultural imperialism theory: A formal summary 224

PART IV

Media Philosophy and Ethics 229

11 Philosophies for Media Systems 231

Robert McKenzie

Primer questions 231

Authoritarian philosophy 233

Libertarian philosophy 235

CONTENTS vii

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Communist philosophy 237

Social responsibility philosophy 239

Developmental philosophy 241

Democratic-participant philosophy 243

Comparative summary 245

12 Ethical Foundations and Perspectives 249

Clifford G. Christians, Mark Fackler, Kathy Brittain McKee,

Peggy J. Kreshel & Robert H. Woods

The Potter Box model of reasoning 251

Using ethical principles 256

Five ethical guidelines 260

To whom is moral duty owed? 271

Who ought to decide? 274

Index 285

CHTOC_SEVE.3350.p.v-xiv.qxp 4/13/12 8:57 AM Page viii

viii CONTENTS

The advances and uses of technologies following World War I have contributed

to the arrival of the academic ﬁelds of communication and media studies to the

social sciences and humanities. However, it is imperative to recognize that com-

munication thought has a long history and is directly linked to human existence.

Simply put, human beings cannot live without communication—be it intra-per-

sonal, inter-personal, group, organizational, transnational, intercultural, or inter-

national. Human beings possess innate communicative instincts; since our ﬁrst

experiences with ﬁre, light, wars, and diseases, and even earlier by recording

symbols and images on the walls of old caves. In modern times, we communicate

through a seemingly endless smorgasbord of intuitive technologies, such as print,

television, radio, satellite, Internet, social networking sites and smart phones!

Repeatedly, we receive feedback from students, especially at the early under-

graduate level, who think that introductory communication and media textbooks

succeed in establishing two assumptions. The ﬁrst is the high level of elusiveness

and abstraction in presenting communication and media scholarships to the extent

that some believe that communication and media theorists are idealists who bab-

ble only about abstractions. The second trap is the over simpliﬁcation of the study

of communication and media to a minimal, or lack of, critical understanding of the

ﬁelds. Hence, students often resent the term "theory", thinking that it merely rep-

resents the tangled ambiguities of academia and that it has no relation to real life.

Basics in Communication and Media Studies is designed to lessen the tensions

between theory and practice by providing the rationale of communication and

media theories. This is done by explaining how they are based on our daily obser-

vations, and the continuous questioning, investigating, and researching of alter-

natives. It provides a fundamental overview of communication and media issues

to inform students about the intellectual origins of the study of communication,

its development, and its current trends and practices.

Consuming media is a daily habit, if not a necessity. We wake up listening to

music on our alarm clock; we listen to radio while driving; we read a book or a

magazine while waiting for the bus; we go to theatres to see movies; we wear the

latest fashion; we download music for our media players and iPods; we text each

other using our cell phones, and we develop relationships through our many so-

cial media sites. In short, we are media creatures—constantly immersed in the var-

ious communication platforms that surround us. We are continually affected by

our peers, celebrities, and media institutions. Hence, as communication and media

students (and consumers), it is important to understand the established body of

knowledge behind our daily practices, and critically analyze and synthesize its ap-

proaches. It is important, however, to note that communication students may have

backgrounds in different disciplines such as political sciences, sociology, psychol-

ogy, international affairs, history, Canadian studies, human rights, law, political

economy, and philosophy, among others. Thus, it is essential to engage them in

communication studies by introducing the ways in which communication theories

and topics affect them on the human, intellectual, and practical levels.

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PREFACE

Let us ask some questions, in order to give the reader meaningful examples of

the application of communication and media theories: How many of us see a stop

But how many of us have perceived this stop sign as a medium of communica-

tion? Probably few! This stop sign represents one of the useful examples of how

the theories of "semiotics" are evident in our daily lives. We can decode the stop

sign's red colour that symbolizes the meaning of stop when driving. How many

of us have a Facebook or Twitter page or a YouTube channel? Millions use such

media for social networking and communicating via time and space. In fact, the

predominance of Facebook interactions among students in our classrooms is an

interesting example of the "uses for gratiﬁcations" theory that argues that human

beings use media to gratify speciﬁc needs in their life. This is what we do when

we chat on-line, watch a speciﬁc program, or vote for our favourite Canadian

idol. Even more recently and with the ongoing Arab Spring, one has to under-

score the uses of social media sites not only for leisure and entertainment, but for

social movement and advocacy. Contemporary scholarship on media studies ex-

amines the viral uses of social media networks to orchestrate riots and demon-

strations against Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, and Syrian governments. To that

end, government equally weighted the massive impact of social media that fu-

elled such revolutions to the extent of disconnecting these tools of information

from their users and audience to weaken their efforts, fragment their power, and

alienate their activism.

Therefore, the purpose of this book is to show that theory exists everywhere.

We are continually bombarded with a seemingly inﬁnite amount of media mes-

sages that set our news and information agenda and priorities. Yet, what is im-

portant for communication students, researchers, and future professionals is to

follow the systematic line of thinking and reasoning; observe and ask questions;

and look for alternatives in order to obtain answers and reach conclusions. In this,

scientiﬁc thinking becomes very distinct from the typical processes of day-to-day

life. For example, it is important to examine the reasons behind the creation of

icons such as the teen pop culture sensation, Justin Bieber, and his use of media

technologies. His global stardom began with simply posting his video clips on his

YouTube channel when was only twelve years old, which went on to catch the at-

tention of music executives and producers. Another interesting example of mas-

sive online attention is that of Rebecca Black—the young teen who posted her

song, Friday in 2011 on YouTube, receiving polarized feedback on the video. In

sum, the electronic media possess the ability to create extensive debate across

Facebook walls, chatrooms, and among music reviews and critiques. As such, this

book is designed to provide an overview of the different intellectual, philosophi-

cal, and empirical tools necessary to conceptualize, research, and study communi-

cation successfully. Thus, this book may perhaps be best described as a portal for

communication students to understand, observe, reﬂect on, and critically analyze

the various intellectual, historical, and theoretical approaches to communication

and media studies, while also demonstrating how these theoretical approaches

relate to social and cultural spheres.

xPREFACE

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In addition to the various intellectual threads that have affected the study of

communication and media since their conception following World War I (such as

the study of public opinion, audience persuasion, and the spread of propaganda),

there are still important ideological positions that reﬂect a useful understanding

of current media practices. For instance, the ethics of communication practice in a

democratic society represents one of the recent and most important claims among

media researchers, academics, and professionals. Questions are raised with re-

gards to what would be the most appropriate philosophical system of media gov-

ernance. Such positions advocate the importance of the Foucaultian

understanding of governmentality; or the art of self-governance where communi-

cation ﬂows from the people themselves and not from their institutional powers.

Particularly, from their own civic participation and practice of democracy, such

decentralized power is built on effective public communication and reciprocity.

For example, the viral use and dissemination of information using mobile media

has impacted even the journalistic practices which traditionally depended on me-

dia corporations and their reporters to cover news and events. With the use of cell

phones and handy cameras, the phenomenon of "citizen journalism" dramati-

cally changed the practice of news gathering. Various reputed media organiza-

tions depend on those freelancers who report and feed directly to their online

blog, Skype and/or FaceTime. Thus, this book provides a collection of communi-

cation research that focuses on this critical dimension of communication and me-

dia studies by delving into landmark theories, their elaborations, assessments,

criticisms, and validations in our modern society. If the agenda-setting theory

was initially launched in the late 1960s assuming that the media are setting our

news agenda, it then becomes even more crucial now, with the advent of new me-

dia technologies and with the existence of giant media corporations, to critically

re-assess such theory and examine its applicability.

Integral to Basics in Communication and Media Studies is the argument that

there is not one-way to study communication and media; rather, communication

and media must be examined from a variety of perspectives. This book will pro-

vide introductory materials that cover fundamental topics for readers who need

to gain the basic knowledge of communication and media studies. It is divided

into parts, each of which is a composition of a group of chapters designed to pro-

vide students with essential materials that facilitate the understanding of the ma-

jor concepts of communication and media studies.

Editors

Dr. Mahmoud Eid

Dr. Aliaa Dakroury

Department of Communication

University of Ottawa, Canada

PREFACE xi

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Mahmoud Eid, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communi-

cation, University of Ottawa, Canada. Dr. Eid previously taught in the University

of Regina's School of Journalism in Regina, and in Carleton University's School of

Journalism and Communication in Ottawa. He has been teaching communication

and media courses in Canadian and Egyptian universities for more than two

decades. His teaching experience, research interests, and publications concentrate

on international communication and media studies, communication and media

ethics and effects, communication research methods, terrorism, crisis manage-

ment and conﬂict resolution, and the political economy of communication.

Dr. Eid is the Editor of the Global Media Journal -- Canadian Edition, and serves

on the editorial boards of several academic journals and as an organizing

committee member for various international conferences. He is the author of

Interweavement: International Media Ethics and Rational Decision-Making (2008), se-

ries editor of Research Methods in Communication (2011), Communication and Media

Studies: An Introduction (2010), Introduction to Communication and Media Studies

(2008), and Communication Research Methods: Quantitative and Qualitative Ap-

proaches (2007) and co-editor of The Right to Communicate: Historical Hopes, Global

Debates and Future Premises (2009) and Introduction to Media Studies: A Reader

(2007).

Dr. Eid has presented numerous papers at global conferences and has con-

tributed chapters to several books published by Pearson, Hampton Press, Peter

Lang, Rodopi, Rowman & Littleﬁeld, Kendall/Hunt, and Oxford University

Press, among others. In addition, he has published articles in various refereed

journals, including The Journal of International Communication; The European Journal

of Communication Research; International Journal of the Humanities; First Monday;

INFORMATION; Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen; Corporate Ownership and

Control; Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications; International Journal of

Technoethics; Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication; and Journal of Mass

Communication & Journalism.

Aliaa Dakroury, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Commu-

nication, University of Ottawa, Canada. She previously taught at Carleton Uni-

versity's departments of Communication, Sociology, and Law. She has been

teaching communication and media courses for many years. Her teaching expe-

rience, research interests, and publications concentrate on communication his-

tory, human rights, the Right to Communicate, media representations, culture,

globalization, Diaspora, information and communication technologies, and

Canadian public policy.

Dr. Dakroury is the Managing Editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social

Sciences, and serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals and as an

organizing committee member for various international conferences. She is the

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ABOUT THE EDITORS

author of Communication and Human Rights (2009), editor of The Right to Communi-

cate: Historical Hopes, Global Debates and Future Premises (2009), and co-editor of

Communication and Media Studies: An Introduction (2010) and Introduction to

Communication and Media Studies (2008).

Dr. Dakroury is the winner of both the 2011 Ontario Leading Women Building

Communities Award and the 2005 Canadian Communication Association (CCA)

Van Horne Award. She is an active member of many human rights organizations,

such as the Right to Communicate group, International Freedom of Expression

eXchange (IFEX), and the World Association for Christian Communication

(WACC), among many others. She has been recently nominated as an Honorary

Expert in Islamic Studies in the Islamic Resource Bank (IRB): A joint project of the

Minaret of Freedom Institute, the Association of Muslim Social Scientists and the

International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Dr. Dakroury has presented numerous papers at Canadian and international

conferences of major communication and media associations, such as: the Cana-

dian Communication Association, the Middle East Studies Association, the Asso-

ciation of Muslim Social Scientists, and the Canadian Ethnic Studies Association.

Her publications appear in various refereed journals, such as The International

Communication Gazette; The Journal of Intergroup Relations; Culture, Language, and

Representation; The Global Media Journal; Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary

Culture; Media Development; Journal of the World Association for Christian Communi-

cation; American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences; and The Journal of International

Communication.

xiv ABOUT THE EDITORS

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PART I

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For newcomers to the ﬁelds of communication and media studies, it is crucial

to learn about theories and investigate their history. In order to study any

ﬁeld scientiﬁcally, one must not only rely on its theories, but one must

equally work towards improving and developing them. Similarly, as is the case

with other disciplines, understanding the history of communication and media

helps to better understand their present and future.

Communication and media have great power in society. Ethics and responsi-

bility provide a check on this power for the beneﬁt of society and humanity,

which results in power "with responsibility", as opposed to power "without re-

sponsibility". Communication and ethics are both very rich ﬁelds: connecting

these results in an even richer area of research. For that, and given that ethics is

individual while morality is collective, communication and media researchers

need to understand that the world's media systems follow various philosophies,

which guide and inﬂuence their ethical conduct.

There has been a long tradition of theories, approaches, and models in com-

munication and media studies, through which researchers have learned about the

uses and effects of media and communication in society. These include a group of

theories that are still widely researched and considered cornerstones for students

of communication and media studies.

Communication and culture are interconnected; hence, the signiﬁcance of the

intercultural communication research. Levels of understanding of various cul-

tures and differences among those cultures and groups are effectively reﬂected in

the nature of communication. As a result, one needs to study communication in

relation to language, semiotics, and representation.

Finally, it is important for Canadian communication students, researchers,

and professionals to become acquainted with the contribution of the prominent

Canadian scholars to communication studies research. To this end, we aim to

shed some light on the signiﬁcant input of two key Canadian names in the ﬁelds

of communication and media studies—Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis.

Introduction to Communication

and Media Studies

Aliaa Dakroury & Mahmoud Eid

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CHAPTER 1

4PART 1 INTRODUCTION

Communication Theory and History

Communication is much more complex than is generally perceived to be. Metts

(2004) argues that communication is based on a process in which messages,

whether intentional or unintentional, create meaning. Social organization exists

as a result of the different communicative mechanisms adopted through its

norms, rituals, cultural values, and so on. In some societies, however, communi-

cation can also be constrained based on the mechanism adopted, as in totalitarian

and dictatorship regimes for instance, where freedoms of speech and expression

are restrained. For that, social structures are used to determine the norms of soci-

ety in both professional and social situations. Sociologists Berger and Luckmann

(1966) explain that this interplay of tension and inﬂuence between social struc-

tures and communication is often called a "dialectical process". Examples, among

several in social arenas, include: discoveries and technological advances in the

material world, and wars and revolutions in the political world. Communication

at the social level might be strategic and/or consequential. It may be strategic in

the way messages are constructed with certain goals or motivations in mind. This

also relates to certain communication theories that try to explain why some com-

munication messages are more effective than others and the factors and contexts

involved in their effectiveness. Communication messages can also be consequen-

tial because they do not always have strategic goals and can potentially carry un-

intended or unanticipated implications. These might include unintended

perceptual, behavioural, or relational consequences.

Perceptual consequences refer to our assumptions about others, such as level

of education, social class, attitudes, and so on, as well as others' assumptions

about us. Our assumptions also make us believe that people are sending us mes-

sages through their appearances. However, opinions may also change, without

intent from third parties, but these changes in opinions are based on the messages

to which one has been exposed. Behavioural consequences refer to changing one's

own behaviour without outside inﬂuence. This may be a result of choosing to be

around people you enjoy spending time with and avoiding spending time with

those who make you feel uncomfortable. Conversational synchrony occurs when

you match someone else's communication pattern. For example, a student may

avoid using slang around a teacher as the teacher does not typically use slang, or

a person may use an enthusiastic tone when the person she/he is speaking with is

also speaking enthusiastically. Relational consequences occur when interaction

patterns are repeated and sustained within professional, social, and personal rela-

tionships. For example, family, workplace, and school interactions stress patterns

of repetitiveness and sustainment.

Communication theories are distinguished from lay theories, which attempt

to explain merely how and why things occur in our world, from wondering why

the computer will not turn on, to why your roommate is messy. When producing

lay theories one generates variables in order to attempt to understand the situa-

tion. From a scholarly perspective, the same is true; however, scholars must ac-

count for the required validity that their peers will ﬁnd convincing based on the

research methods that were used. Thereby, theory describes concepts and the

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 5

speciﬁcation of relationships between, or surrounding, these concepts. Theories

can change depending on new concepts that are introduced and/or the potential

of hypothesized relationships. Concepts are the building block of theories because

they refer to features, qualities, or characteristics of elements in categories. Thus,

concepts are deﬁnitions used in assessing the categories scholars want to isolate

and study in order to understand and assess theories.

The relationships that exist between concepts are based on three types of

propositions: temporal relationships, correlational association, and causal propo-

sitions. A temporal relationship stresses that some concepts come before other

concepts in time; a correlational association stresses that two or more concepts

tend to occur or change together in a patterned manner; and a causal proposition,

which is the most complex association, stresses the notion of cause and effect. For

the notion of cause and effect to hold true, it is required that one concept precedes

another, that a relationship exists between the concepts, and that one concept

causes or motivates the other concept. Complexity arises in causal propositions

due to the challenges in assessing cause and effect in the social sciences. When

cause and effect are introduced in communication theories, they are based on sta-

tistical probabilities or statistical laws, which raise the possibility that other po-

tential reasons exist. Additionally, descriptive/sensitizing schemes are not formal

propositions, but do assess concepts and relationships among concepts when cre-

ating descriptive frameworks for studies of human behaviour.

Generally, scholars construct theories based on inductive and deductive ap-

proaches, using each when necessary. Inductive theory (often bottom-up) build-

ing is used in indiscriminate observations. In presenting this form of theory

building, theorists sometimes use their observations with minimal alterations.

Another example of this form of theory building would be typologies or cate-

gories that are used to organize observation. Inductive approaches can be advan-

tageous, as they avoid the blind spots that preconceived assumptions tend to

create. Deductively (often top-down) building theories require that scholars begin

by hypothesizing how a process works along with the relationship between con-

cepts and then use observation methods such as statistical values in testing their

hypothesis. This is often called hypothetico-deductive theory because the goal is

to test and conﬁrm assumptions rather than to discover something new. Deduc-

tive approaches can be advantageous because they allow for systematic testing

and reﬁning of speculations. An example of deductive research is the investiga-

tion of public speaking and political discourse.

The basic functions of a theory include organizing, describing, explaining, pre-

dicting, and controlling certain phenomena. In order to ﬁnd out whether a theory

is successful at explaining its concepts, the following criteria should be used: util-

ity, scope, parsimony, heurism, and falsiﬁability. Utility is based on its cumulative

usefulness and contribution to the ﬁeld of communication research, and is also tied

to three other criteria to be described below. It is important in order to judge the le-

gitimacy of a theory, as the author stresses this point again before the conclusion of

this chapter. However, utility has been criticized for not being able to identify the

audience who evaluates a theory's real-world applications. A blurred line is also

created by assessing the difference between the criteria of a theory and the criteria

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6PART 1 INTRODUCTION

of a utility. Predictive validity is one difference that requires a theory to be antici-

pated. Scope can be a subset of utility but also works independently in the evalua-

tion of a theory. Simply put, scope is the amount of focus placed on

communication—whether broad and across culture and/or context or narrow in

focus to a speciﬁc context. However, scope must be thought of as a continuum and

not as a dichotomy. Parsimony refers to the manner in which a theory is written.

Regardless of whether a theory is simple or complex, for a theory to have parsi-

mony it must present the concepts as simply and clearly as possible. Heurism

refers to new ways in which a theory or theories allow one to perceive phenomena,

processes, and issues, thereby promoting further research. Well-deﬁned concepts

and clear relationships between concepts tend to have heurism. An example of this

is the media effects theory, which has spawned several studies in understanding

its usage and effects. However, theories that tend to be harder to test empirically,

such as the spiral of silence theory, spawn fewer studies and may not be consid-

ered heuristic. Falsiﬁability explains whether the claim made by a theory can ever

be proven false. It is more likely to be used in a traditional social science theory

than the descriptive or inductive theories described above.

Practically, an understanding of the history of mass communication helps one

better appreciate the role of the media in contemporary society. Understanding

the history of mass communication also allows us to learn about how we gain in-

formation and can help us be more critical of the things we know. There is a dif-

ference between the real world and the inaccurate picture of the world that is

painted by the media. Public relations strategists and privacy issues can alter the

media's portrayal of the real world based on their inﬂuence in the process of gath-

ering and delivering news. To illustrate this, Rebecca Carrier (2004) gives an ex-

ample of a 1988 Exxon Valdez oil spill, when a public relations campaign stated

that the oil spill had been taken care of when in fact it had not. Time-constrained

journalistic research, among other factors, plays a role in creating a false image of

the news for the audience. Politicians and the government also play a role in dis-

tortion within the media, which arguably reoccurred more recently in the British

Petroleum April 2010 coverage in the Gulf of Mexico.

In response, research suggests that media create what is termed a "Pseudo-

environment" for audiences as it becomes difﬁcult for them to distinguish reality

from information that has been manipulated by public relations strategists, as

well as the packaging done by journalists in delivering the story. Direct experi-

ence is more trusted than media experience, but since direct experience is not al-

ways possible we must be cautious of experiences reported by the media.

It is interesting to mention that the media's increasing use of persuasion and

propaganda techniques began around the time of Walter Lippmann's book, Public

Opinion (1922). Advertising was on the rise, as was the threat of World War I fol-

lowed by World War II. His book was one of the ﬁrst texts to explain the role of

the media in shaping public opinion, creating stereotypes, and so forth. The lim-

ited effects perspective began to take shape in the 1960s due to the limited role, it

was thought, that the media played in persuading their audiences. Before this

time, a macroscopic view tended to generalize and group the media and audi-

ences in a homogenized fashion. Since researchers from the 1970s and 1980s were

unsatisﬁed with results from the 1960s with regards to media effects, they began

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to look at potential and more speciﬁc effects of mass communication. The limited

but powerful effects perspective explains how media are powerful in shaping

only limited sets of our beliefs.

Several scholars had fundamental interactions with earlier forms of media be-

ginning in the early 1900s with Charles Cooley, Robert Park, Harold Lasswell, Paul

Lazarsfeld, and John Dewey, who all stressed the inﬂuence of mass communica-

tion. The magic bullet theory (hypodermic needle theory), which implied the pow-

erful effects of the media, was based on the Payne Fund studies in the 1920s about

the effects of motion pictures on children. The results showed that the media had a

strong inﬂuence on the young audience. However this view assumed that all audi-

ences were identical, holding the same values and beliefs. Secondly it assumed that

they would react the same way to the messages conveyed. Believing the results of

the Payne Fund studies could work, Frank Capra, a Hollywood director, was hired

to produce ﬁlms which would rally soldiers and the citizenry in support of World

War II. Researchers at Yale, after testing the ﬁlms on audiences, found that they had

very little effect. In the eve of Halloween 1938, Orson Welles of CBS radio aired a

dramatization of the H. G. Wells science ﬁction The War of the Worlds that played

deadly attacks of Martian on the Earth. Listeners who tuned in late to the show

missed the introductory statements and ﬂed their homes in panic proving the as-

sumption of the mass society theory (or the magic bullet effect of media).

As a result, and around the same time, Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues

conducted a study on the inﬂuence of political media messages on voters in Erie

County, Pennsylvania. Their conclusions showed that the media had direct inﬂu-

ence on a small group of opinion leaders; however, generally speaking, the media

only reinforced attitudes people already held. The two-step ﬂow of communica-

tion was created out of this study, which explained that less informed masses re-

ceive ﬁltered and reshaped media messages through a small group of informed

people. The limited effects theory then asserts the limited effects of the media, and

juxtaposing the magic bullet theory taking into account social relationships, as

well as psychological processes. The individual (based on race, age, gender, reli-

gion, political afﬁliation, etc.) was now the focus for researchers. This opened the

door to attempting to understand how and why individuals interpret messages

the way they do. Because of the assumed limited effects, two generations of schol-

arly work largely ignored the media and their effects. However, advertisers were

spending a lot of capital in attempting to reach diverse audiences who, as re-

search stressed, would be difﬁcult to persuade.

Yet, in the 1970s and 1980s the notion of limited (in some areas), but powerful

effects of the media arose again in research circles. Three approaches explain this

theory: agenda-setting theory; framing or frame analysis; and media system de-

pendency theory. According to Bernard Cohen (1963), agenda-setting theory

stresses that the media tell audiences not "what to think", but "what to think

about". In essence, the media's messages in society serve as a catalyst in public

opinion. From a macroscopic view, the media often present problems about soci-

ety that the public ﬁnd important. Devoting more time and space to a story (in

print or on air) as well as the choice of a particular type of coverage explain the role

of media in setting what is important and what is less important for the audience.

Framing or frame analysis theory stresses that social cues are carried through soci-

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8PART 1 INTRODUCTION

ety by advertising and other media forms. Frames are ways in which we make

sense of social situations and act as signals for ways to respond to these situations.

Media system dependency theory expresses that the media have a powerful effect

when people have no personal contact or experience with situations and events

(natural disasters, etc). Research concluded that it is not necessary to rely solely on

the media when people have adequate information from interpersonal contact

with others, such as friends and family. As a result, when interpersonal contact on

a situation or event is absent, the power of the media increases signiﬁcantly.

In refuting the tradition of powerful effects of the media, uses and gratiﬁca-

tions theory explains the power of an individual's use and non-use of media mes-

sages and media products based on their wants and needs and can often produce

different results from the same messages. The theory, alongside the limited but

powerful effects model, tends to focus on the goals, motivations, and reasoning of

the audience. This theory assumes that the audience is not a passive target of the

media, but rather, an active recipient of media messages and uses the media ac-

cording to a set of wants, needs, and preferences. In other words, uses and gratiﬁ-

cations theory explains what the media do not do to the audiences, but what the

audiences do with the media.

Finally, highlighting the cultural aspect of media consumption, cultivation

theory views media and culture as inseparable, stating that media images affect

culture in far-reaching and pervasive ways. Originally evolved by George Gerb-

ner's 1970s study on violence in the media, the theory suggests that frequent tele-

vision viewing in contrast with limited viewing causes frequent viewers to

experience suspicion and fear of others in society. This fear is labelled the mean

world syndrome. Television is able to cultivate an audience's perception of reli-

gious values, sex roles, race, and so forth.

Media Ethics and Philosophy

Ethics is a branching ﬁeld of philosophy that deals with right and wrong actions.

William Neher and Paul Sandin (2007) explain that ethics refers to a systematic

method for making judgments concerning voluntary actions. They highlight four

points when deﬁning ethics:

1) A system is necessary for objectivity in decisions or judgments we make

and their justiﬁcation to ourselves and others;

2) Judgments about the actions taken determine whether they are right or

wrong, according to the principles of the method applied;

3) Judgments are important because they demonstrate that the actor always

had choices or options in making the ethical decision; and

4) The chosen actions are done internally by the actor, who knew what their

intentions were in their choices/actions.

Communication ethics applies ethical thought to areas involving human commu-

nication (whether interpersonal, political, religious, mass communication, and so

on). Integrity is a key ethical principle, which entails the unity of a person and the

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principles or virtues one holds in which these characteristics are consistent to that

person. Problems that arise include the difﬁculty of being consistent every single

day of one's life and the challenge of coming to a consensus on a deﬁnition of in-

tegrity. Integrity becomes more a basis of idealism than reality.

It is important to underscore that philosophies of media systems act as a diag-

nostic, imperfect tool that may help us understand how and why media systems

appear to have different purposes across various cultures. Furthermore, a media

system philosophy is perceived as a root network that feeds the media system

with characteristics from the surrounding culture. According to Robert McKenzie

(2006), there are six philosophies for media systems. The ﬁrst four philosophies

are titled legacy philosophies (formerly normative theories) while the last two are

titled contemporary philosophies. The legacy philosophies are: 1) authoritarian;

2) libertarian; 3) communist; and 4) social responsibility. A bias existed about

early normative theories because they did not account for societies in which cor-

porate interests and peer pressures dominated media systems, and only focused

on government and military control of the media. Thus, philosophy research of

media became the term used because it better evaluated how media systems

might operate and now how they should operate. The two contemporary philoso-

phies are: 5) developmental; and 6) democratic-participant.

According to authoritarian philosophy, the head of the country is an all-

knowing ruler who demands obedience and acquiescence. This philosophy holds

that no external cultures may encroach on the traditional cultures and values held

by the authoritarian state. Traditional theorists of this philosophy include Plato

and Machiavelli. The governance of society through authoritarian philosophy is

done through three main areas: 1) the decree issued by a ruler, and then adhered

to by government agencies and citizens without much formal debate; 2) the leg-

islative process in which a ruler submits the proposed policy to a deliberative

body that discusses it only for formality and then enacts it into law; and 3) inter-

pretation of religious doctrine through sacred texts, which is then enacted into

policy or law. Three points are listed for a media system that draws its roots from

an authoritarian philosophy: 1) to serve the goals of the state; 2) the immunity of

the state from media criticism; and 3) state control of the media. McKenzie then

lists ways in which this philosophy is implemented by the state, including state

censorship and self-censorship. Retributions by the state against media systems

that counter the authority of the state include punishment and seditious libel.

Yet, in libertarian philosophy the individual is the most important. The state's

purpose is to defend against external hostilities and to avoid interfering with the

individual. Based on seventeenth century philosophers such as John Locke, John

Stuart Mill, and Adam Smith, libertarian philosophy countered the absolute

monarchy of its time. This philosophy was later adapted by capitalists for whom

a free-market was crucial to economic success. The governance of society through

libertarian philosophy is done through two main areas: 1) constitutional law, and

2) legislative and judicial law. Three points are listed for a media system that

draws its roots from an authoritarian philosophy: 1) most media are privately

owned and operated; 2) governments can enter the marketplace only to maintain

fair competition; and 3) the media regulate themselves. Rewards are given to

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10 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

those who engage in fair competition, while punishments are dealt to those who

do not compete fairly in the marketplace.

As for communist philosophy, the state's role is to be the caretaker of society.

The ideal society is egalitarian where there is an equal distribution of wealth with

no poverty present. Beneﬁts of society are based on the collective and not the indi-

vidual. This philosophy maintains that materialism is bad and that the bour-

geoisie exploit the labour of the proletariat to maximize wealth. The governance

of society through communist philosophy is done through two main areas: 1) the

decree issued by the communist party which may be voted on at the party level

but not the public; and 2) the planning objective is developed and administered

by a central government committee. Three points are listed for a media system

that draws its roots from a communist philosophy (the ﬁrst two are to promote

tasteful material programming): 1) state ownership of property; 2) use of media to

elevate public tastes; and 3) the teaching of communist doctrine. Media that do

not abide by the communist rule are censored and punished.

Social responsibility philosophy holds that government inﬂuences the news

media to provide fair and balanced information for the greater good of society.

The media tend to regulate themselves; however, the government steps in when

self-regulation is not sufﬁcient. In return, media outlets are allowed access to non-

classiﬁed documents if they avoid criticizing the government. This philosophy

tends to be based on a mutual relationship between the media and the govern-

ment. This philosophy ﬁrst came about in the United States during World War II

and rose again in the 1980s. In short, the social responsibility theory asserts that

media should be free from government control in order to properly serve the

publics' interest and their right to know. The governance of society through social

responsibility philosophy is done through two main areas: 1) the bully pulpit,

where government action is threatened if media professionals are unable to estab-

lish their own code of conduct; and 2) legally binding regulation set forth by the

government. Three points are listed for a media system that draws its roots from

the social responsibility philosophy: 1) news media routinely provide factual cov-

erage tempered with contextual information; 2) news media content must contain

balanced opinion and commentary; and 3) editors and directors should clarify so-

cietal goals and desires (such as on-air editorials, letters to the editor, etc.). Finally,

this philosophy is primarily implemented through public accountability (through

laws and regulation) and secondly through public admonishment.

Developmental philosophy is based on improving quality of life in develop-

ing countries by means of government funding for establishing institutions. It

holds that government is to support media that acts as a stimulus for social

change. This philosophy is a product of the UNESCO debates in a report by Sean

MacBride called Many Voices, One World (1980), albeit the theory had originated

25 years earlier. The governance of society through the developmental philoso-

phy is done through two main areas: 1) the legal establishment of media freedom

(independence from government control); and 2) government mandate that re-

quires media to perform certain tasks in exchange for funding. Three points are

listed for a media system that draws its roots from the developmental philosophy:

1) the media serve as a watchdog on the activities of government, speciﬁcally to

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 11

improve physical infrastructure; 2) media pursue cultural autonomy by maintain-

ing the country's own distinctive culture; 3) media export domestic media content

to other countries. Finally, this philosophy is commonly implemented through in-

ternational assistance (World Bank loans, debt forgiveness, etc.) as well as the

public's expectation of their media to act as a stimulus for social change.

Finally, democratic-participation philosophy holds that citizen-created media

content is essential to all forms of government. This philosophy, established be-

tween the 1970s and the 1990s in the United States, is still an emerging philosophy.

The idea behind this philosophy is to formulate media operations in a way that in-

volves citizens in all phases of producing media content. Furthermore, this philoso-

phy argues that two common situations often create disenfranchisement: 1) in

countries where media systems operate largely by transnational media conglomer-

ates; and 2) in countries where media systems are mainly administered by govern-

ment agencies. The governance of society through the democratic-participation

philosophy is done through two main areas: 1) citizen-group pressure, in which in-

dividuals usually at the local level attempt to gain greater access to media produc-

tion equipment and to the creation of institutional media content; and 2) alternative

media start-ups by organizations. Two points are listed for a media system that

draws its roots from the democratic-participation philosophy: 1) citizen-initiated

media content; and 2) citizen groups are guaranteed the freedom to express opin-

ions without fear of retribution from the government or corporate media. Finally,

this philosophy is commonly implemented through citizen viewpoints, citizen par-

ticipation in the process of producing content, and citizen access to media facilities.

Communication Research and Media Effects

Following World War II, researchers attempted to understand the mass media's

impact on audiences. Some believed that mass media held the future of democ-

racy, while others believed that mass media were actually an impediment to

democracy—these opinions were based on the powerful effects (magic bullet the-

ory) of the media. Joseph Klapper's (1960) conclusions maintained the following

in regards to mass communication studies: 1) the media have less effect/power

than once assumed by the average citizen; 2) effects are felt by the audience in re-

sponse to media messages, however they are minor; and 3) the conditions are

more complex in regards to the effects the media do have on their audience.

A new approach to the effects of mass media on audiences was needed as nu-

merous factors played a role in the relationship between the media and audi-

ences. As Lowery and DeFleur (1995) explain, the secondary stage of the two-step

ﬂow assessed that the receiver/audience member of mass communication had so-

cial ties with family and peers who inﬂuenced their interpretation of mass media

messages and what to do with them—it was not simply mass communication ef-

fects on a mass audience. Thus, a social model was important in analyzing the

ﬂow of information between the media and the mass audience. The rediscovery

of the primary group was a term given to demonstrate new research, which

showed the impact of society and culture and interactions with groups within so-

ciety, leaving behind the notion of biological factors. The Hawthorn study, con-

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12 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

ducted in the 1930s, demonstrated this effect with worker productivity based on

strong social ties between workers.

Katz's and Lazarsfeld's (1955) Personal Inﬂuence study showed conformity

within primary groups (small groups) when assessing opinion leaders. Katz and

Lazarsfeld explain that when the media attempt to portray presidential elections,

they often use ambiguous and contradictory information. Individuals frequently

turn to members of their immediate social groups, or primary groups for inter-

pretation, which in turn creates a reality for that individual. Common values are

another point in which people tend to be drawn to one another within the pri-

mary group. They are also known as a reference group, since individuals refer to

other members for advice and other forms of help. Katz and Lazarsfeld's Personal

Inﬂuence links other important social factors and activities to mass communica-

tion behaviour.

Opinion leaders come in many forms, including those in positions of author-

ity. They make up the principle guides of numerous institutions and impact so-

cio-economic life. However, there are opinion leaders within the primary group

who have face-to-face contact with those whom they inﬂuence. The Decatur study

is considered to be a signiﬁcant step to study the two-step ﬂow of communication

more systematically. Particularly, it examined the inﬂuence of opinion leaders on

others in everyday life situations. These included: marketing leaders; fashion

leaders; public affairs leaders; and movie selection leaders. The research proce-

dure involved selecting the research site and then ﬁnding a sample. The site se-

lected was Decatur, Illinois, since it possessed the characteristics the researchers

were looking for in terms of economic status, mass communication usage pat-

terns, commercial activities, and so forth.

Despite its importance, the Decatur study would falter upon contemporary

research techniques. It was limited in sampling techniques, validity, statistical

analyses, measurements, and so forth. However the study was a milestone in

mass communication research because it provided a pivotal point in redirecting

research. Katz's and Lazarsfeld's Personal Inﬂuence was an excellent opportunity

to study the two-step ﬂow model. It also reduced the notion of the powerful ef-

fects of the media.

There has also been intensive research on the agenda-setting function of the

press. This research relies on the idea of returning to the known subtle inﬂuence

of mass media and studying their presence within contemporary society. What is

known so far about mass media is their consistent ﬂow of news. Additionally,

mass media are known to be selective in which news they communicate due to

gatekeepers, ﬁnancial constraints, and efforts to maximize proﬁt. However, mass

media do present an agenda to audiences with respect to which issues to think

about and which issues to respond to. Walter Lippmann (1922) suggested that ex-

periencing events ﬁrsthand is not always possible and media needed to provide

information on these events. As noted earlier, Bernard Cohen (1963) is one of the

earliest scholars who studied the notion of agenda-setting function of the media

in his assertion that that the press may not be successful much of the time in

telling people what to think, but it is acutely successful in telling its readers what

to think about; hence the notion of the agenda-setting function of the media.

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 13

Following that, the exploratory study by Maxwell McCombs and Donald

Shaw (1972) was conducted to observe the idea of the mass media functioning as

agenda-setters in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A sample of voter responses was

compared to what they thought were key issues during the 1968 presidential

campaign versus what the media were presenting during that period of 24 days.

The sample of 100 respondents was purposive, as the researchers wanted to deal

with undecided voters, and thus, narrowed their sample. The media studied in-

cluded ﬁve newspapers, two weekly news magazines (that reported on the cam-

paign), and two network TV news broadcasts. The results were astounding in

describing the correlation between campaign issues expressed by the media and

that of the voters' judgments on the importance of these issues. This was achieved

by analyzing the results of the rank order of party issues provided to the sample,

which was then compared to the media's emphasis on the same issues. What the

media emphasized was also emphasized by the sample.

Particularly, the presidential election campaign between Richard Nixon and

George McGovern in 1972 was another opportunity for McCombs and Shaw to ex-

pand on their original study and increase its sophistication. Accumulation and ex-

pansion of knowledge was known as programmatic research. In 1977, McCombs

and Shaw with other members of their research team released their ﬁndings in The

Emergence of American Political Issues: The Agenda-Setting Function of the Press. The

research had multiple objectives but was all related to the agenda-setting function

of the news media. The following ﬁve objectives were listed:

1) Deﬁning the concept: it had to explicitly deﬁne the concepts and state rela-

tionships between independent and dependent variables with a system-

atic approach of agenda-setting.

2) Information sources for personal agendas: an attempt to understand

where people received information was key in order to assess the salience

of rank ordering the issues of the campaign. It is quite possible that the

two-step ﬂow, in which opinion leaders were inﬂuential as a source of in-

formation, was possibly another source for information.

3) Sequencing over time as a major variable: the idea that agenda-setting is-

sues raised by the media affect the public through a time frame.

4) The personal characteristics of voters: the type of people mostly inﬂu-

enced by the agenda-setting hypothesis and the idea that possibly, some

more than others, turn to media for their information. The voting age had

been lowered from 21 to 18 and it was wondered if younger voters would

turn out.

5) Politics and agenda setting: the overall picture of the study once the data

are in. It may reveal the answer to the importance of the agenda-setting

function to the political process in the United States, if it has negative or

positive effects, and so on.

Charlotte, North Carolina was chosen for the research site because of the fol-

lowing factors: 1) it is located further away from major cities; 2) it has less media

and hence can narrow focus; 3) the population was 354,000, which was large

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14 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

enough in diversity but small enough for the sample needed; 4) its growth in pop-

ulation, social and economic activity had grown/was growing; 5) it historically

voted republican. The panel design idea expressed that the sample of respondents

be interviewed at different points in time to assess the role of the media from the

beginning of their agenda-setting, and then the audience's reaction to it. The sam-

ple was 227 registered voters who were interviewed over a period of three times,

and 24 black voters who were added to the list in October and contacted in No-

vember. The researchers were aware of the limitations in their samples due to

record keeping issues on Charlotte's part, but the results yielded useful data.

Shaw and McCombs (1974) determine the agenda-setting hypothesis in a cog-

itative rather than an affective framework since they do not believe in the power-

ful effects of the media. They adopt the work of Lippmann and others on the

notion of the media's role in generating a common culture of shared beliefs about

certain political aspects of our environment that play a signiﬁcant part in bringing

us together at election time. This hypothesis is used in relation to independent

and dependent variables and is fairly simple until it accounts for its relationship

with a web of complex factors that produce gatekeepers, media agenda setters,

and public individual agendas. This social system deals with the social construc-

tion of shared meanings that are a result of interpersonal and mass communica-

tion in modern society. TV networks presented their version of agenda-setting

while newspapers provided theirs. However, both media discussed the main is-

sues that were brought up by the candidates. These included: Vietnam, youth and

drugs, the economy, USSR-China, Watergate, and the environment. Results re-

vealed that the reporting from TV networks, and to some extent newspapers,

were the major sources of information. They played a larger role than interper-

sonal discussions of the issues at hand. Between the four-month periods of the

study (June-October), there was an increased media-voter correlation on agenda

setting. Furthermore, paid political advertisements may have helped solicit feel-

ings about candidates as individual people but did not appear to strongly inﬂu-

ence their personal decisions about the main issues.

The issue surrounding the study's time sequence and determining a causal

relationship was that as time progresses, it could very well be voter behaviour

that creates the media's agenda setting rather than the other way around. It was

clear that the newspaper's agenda was inﬂuential on voter agenda during the

four-month period, while TV networks did not show similar results. Researchers

wanted to know: why do some voters respond to media content more than others

do? Three major factors where explained: 1) level of interest of the voter in media

news content, based on perceived relevance to their concern; 2) degree to which

the voter was uncertain about the issue within the content; and 3) effort required

to ﬁnd reliable sources of information. A concept called "need for orientation"

was revealed, based on the ﬁrst two factors, which address individuals with low,

medium, or high orientation. The orientation need is described as a personality

factor in seeking exposure to the media content. Results indicate that the higher

the orientation needs, the higher the media usage; hence the hypothesis that ori-

entation needs lead to media exposure and then to agenda-setting inﬂuences.

Mass media, speciﬁcally news media, engage in agenda-setting as part of the

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 15

communication processes in society by which individuals develop and share po-

litical meanings. This relates to the social construction of reality by voters in in-

stances of election campaigns, aspects of political issues, and candidate images.

The press also inﬂuences elite political culture since key decision makers are often

consumers of the socially constructed reality.

The evolution of effects theories in mass communication has received signiﬁ-

cant attention by communication scholars. For example, Severin and Tankard

(2001) list four reasons: 1) the public is concerned about the effects of mass media

messages on audiences; 2) creators of mass communication messages are concerned

about the effects of their efforts; 3) understanding causes and effects is one of the

most powerful kinds of human knowledge; and 4) analyzing mass communication

in terms of causes and effects ﬁts well with the scientiﬁc model of research.

The bullet theory (also known as the hypodermic needle theory or the trans-

mission belt theory) predicts strong and universal effects of mass communication

messages on all audience members who happen to be exposed to them. It origi-

nated during World War I when the power of propaganda was used, and contin-

ued before World War II with common fear surrounding the possibility of a

Hitler-like person coming to power in the United States. The Institute for Propa-

ganda Analysis was created in response to this fear, and it began a massive cam-

paign to educate Americans on the techniques of propaganda. The limited-effects

model posits that mass communication typically has small effects on receivers.

Research on orientation ﬁlms, cartoons, and elections (by Lazarsfeld and associ-

ates) showed the limits of mass communication. Mediating factors, as Klapper

(1960) describes in his ﬁndings, were based on selective processes, group

processes, group norms, and opinion leadership. The powerful-effects model sug-

gests that the mass media, with the right combination of techniques and circum-

stances, can have a signiﬁcant effect on a large number of people.

Cultivation theory is a speciﬁc theory of media effects that explains the effects

of television viewing on people's perceptions, attitudes, and values. George Gerb-

ner and his colleagues believe that American culture is centered on the television

set. Cultivation theory explains that television elicits repetitive messages in which

frequent watching makes people feel that the world is an unsafe place. In re-

sponse to criticism that this theory fails to account for other variables, Gerbner

and his team revised the theory and added two notions to it: mainstreaming and

resonance, where the ﬁrst is said to occur when heavy viewing leads to a conver-

gence of outlooks across groups, while the second maintains that the cultivation

effect is increased for a certain group of the population. Conﬂicting results of the

cultivation theory also found that viewers actively and differentially evaluate

television content, rendering them an active audience. Other critics have come up

with the extended cultivation hypothesis, which says that the cultivation theory

may only work for certain types of television programming genres (such as crime

programs), or local news stories, which give the perception that crime hits close to

home. However, Gerbner continues to assess certain aspects of his theory because

of the economic motivations toward large audiences, in which the most popular

type of program material presents consistent and complementary messages, often

reproducing what has already proven to be proﬁtable.

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16 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

The spiral of silence theory explains that the mass media are more powerful

than any other theory proposes. This theory believes that people holding opinions

that they perceive to be part of the minority tend not to voice those opinions due

to a fear of social isolation. This silencing of opinions creates a downward spiral

that inﬂuences others to refrain from expressing their own views. Mass media

contribute to the phenomenon because they provide a signiﬁcant means for indi-

viduals to gauge majority opinions. Three characteristics of mass communication

play on the formation of public opinion, which affects the spiral of silence. The

ﬁrst is cumulation, referring to the build-up of certain themes or messages over

time. The second is ubiquity, referring to the widespread presence of the mass

media. The thirds is consonance, referring to the uniﬁed picture of an event or is-

sue that can develop and is often shared by different forms of media (televisions,

newspapers, etc.).

The third-person effect hypothesis proposes that people tend to overestimate

the inﬂuence that mass communication messages have on the attitude and behav-

iour of others. This effect involves two major hypotheses: the perceptual hypothe-

sis, suggesting that people perceive that a mass media message has greater effects

on others than themselves, and the behavioural hypothesis, suggesting that because

of that perception, people might take various actions. The application of the third-

person effect is stressed in political campaign communication as well as certain

kinds of censorship or attempts to control or limit information in which advocates

of censorship worry more about censoring others than themselves. Furthermore, its

usage is helpful in discussing rap music with violent lyrics, as well as mass media

portrayal of ideal body images. The greater the social distance between the individ-

ual and the comparison group, the greater the third-person effect.

According to the media framing concept, a frame is a central organizing idea

for news content that supplies a context. It suggests what an issue means through

the use of selection, emphasis, exclusion, and elaboration. If advocates succeed in

people's acceptance of the framed debate, then they have already won. Media

framing is often done through news coverage. Traditional concepts of bias tend to

change when news events are seen as being framed; framing may be more subtle

which increases its power, while bias is sometimes clearly evident. Framing is oc-

casionally deﬁned by those in power, with the media simply transmitting the

framed message—as was the case in the 1980s with the Reagan administration's

framing of the communist threat from Latin America. Research has also shown

how media framing may have an effect on the audience's interpretation of an is-

sue. Frames may sometimes work with devices such as headlines, leads, pull

quotes, and nut graphs, which then ﬁt into a category called "advanced orga-

nizer". This organizer explains that information that is stored in a person's head is

organized in a hierarchical manner along with speciﬁc information that is central-

ized under broader principles.

Marshall McLuhan's media determinism stresses that "the medium is the mes-

sage". Essentially, McLuhan believes that communication media's most important

effect is on their receivers' habits and perceptions of thinking. This deals with hu-

man beings' ﬁve senses—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. However, through

technology, the media are able to emphasize and encourage using one sense over

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 17

the other. Television, for example, places emphasis on more of the senses, while

print emphasizes vision. Television utilizes a balance of our senses while drawing

us closer together through a "global village". Furthermore, it is not the content of

the medium, but the medium itself which inﬂuences us. Testing McLuhan's theory

has proven difﬁcult as the effects McLuhan mentioned were pervasive and far-

reaching, hence it took longer to witness the effects of the medium, and test results

were only short-term. The National Assessment of Educational Progress con-

cluded in a study about declining literacy rates among youth that it was an effect

of the medium of television and the decline of focus on print.

Media hegemony attributes wide and possibly powerful inﬂuence to mass

media. The concept of hegemony states that those in privileged positions within

society also dominate with ruling ideas, which are accepted by citizens. Thus, me-

dia hegemony, based on news and other media content, dictates capitalist and/or

corporate ideologies.

Hypotheses on the effects of television violence on viewer behaviour include:

the catharsis hypothesis, which stresses that television violence releases the

viewer's aggression in a controlled, vicarious way; and the stimulation hypothe-

sis, which believes increased exposure to violent television causes increased ag-

gressive behaviour. This leads to the imitation or modeling hypothesis, which

holds that people reproduce aggressive behaviour learned from television. A ﬁnal

hypothesis entitled the disinhibition hypothesis, suggests that because of violent

or aggressive programming, people will tend to see violence as a norm in engag-

ing and relating with others in the real world by lowering their inhibitions on vio-

lence/aggression. With the numerous studies done on these hypotheses, only a

handful of people supported the catharsis position while many more supported

the disinhibition and imitation hypotheses. Limitations to the studies conducted

include being in a controlled environment, where reprisal for aggressive behav-

iour would not be sought, as well as the fact that the studies had only produced

short-term effects.

Research on what people do with the media is often termed as the uses and

gratiﬁcations theory, which shifts focus from the purposes of the communicator

to the purposes of the audience. As Severin and Tankard (2001) explain, the re-

search ﬁndings show that different people can use the same mass communication

message for very different purposes. They present studies done in the 1964 gen-

eral election in Britain with the questions: why people watch or avoid party

broadcasts; what uses they wish to make of them; and what their preferences are

between alternative ways of presenting politicians on television. The majority of

the results indicated that people used the political broadcasts as a source of infor-

mation about political affairs. The uses and gratiﬁcations approach has drawn

some criticism for being non-theoretical, vague in deﬁning key concepts, and es-

sentially nothing more than a data-collecting strategy. Furthermore, media hege-

mony is also not factored into the theory. A further challenge to the uses and

gratiﬁcations theory is the use of mass media as a ritualistic or habitual form of

"mildly pleasant stimulation", in which audiences navigate media in autopilot.

A few studies have been conducted to determine the uses and gratiﬁcations

theory based on the increased choices of audiences, such as cable television,

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18 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

which provides new and diverse opportunities for the audience to become active.

An individual's channel repertoire is based on the subset of available cable televi-

sion channels that correspond to one's interests. Furthermore, viewers tend to use

various scanning strategies to decide which programs to watch. These include au-

tomatic, controlled, elaborated, restricted, exhaustive, or terminating. The most

active viewers tend to use controlled, elaborated, and exhaustive searching strate-

gies. Videocassette recorder users have tended to be an active audience based on

research. Computer connectivity is a term used to describe the use of computers

to communicate with others through information services and the Internet. In re-

lation to the uses and gratiﬁcations theory, research in this ﬁeld showed that peo-

ple who were logged on to networks or information services found them logging

on out of ritualistic use. As a result, such behaviour might lead to users becoming

addicted to being constantly online.

Recent development in uses and gratiﬁcations research includes treating au-

diences and media use as a variable, rather than as active or passive viewers.

Sometimes media users are selective and rational in their processing of media

messages, but at other times are using the media for relaxation or escapism. Also,

temporary loneliness has recently been shown as a category for the uses and grat-

iﬁcations theory. Moreover, ﬁlm scholars have begun to use an active audience

approach to help us understand the viewing of extremely violent ﬁlms. In sum,

the uses and gratiﬁcations theory shows that people use media for numerous

ends and that they are in control, in contrast to the hypodermic needle theory.

The digital age will reveal more because audiences have more choice and control

(recoding technology, the World Wide Web, etc.).

Communication, Culture, and Representation

John Baldwin and Suraj Kapoor (2004) deﬁne culture as systems of beliefs, behav-

iours, values, attitudes, a way of life, and so forth. Intercultural communication is

then described as symbol systems and cultural perceptions that are distinct

enough to alter the communication process. Intergroup communication (per-

ceived differences, such as Democrat/Republican, Latino/Black, etc.) is different

from intercultural communication due to its reliance on prejudice and stereotypes

and the fact that it highlights different group identities rather than differing com-

munication styles. A three-dimensional model of communication includes: inter-

group, intercultural, and interpersonal communication (individual differences).

Cross-cultural communication is a term explaining a framework to compare

cultural differences. Communication is the code (the spoken word), the context,

and the meaning attributed to an event by communicators. Meaning is important

in interactions with other cultures because people attribute meanings to other cul-

tures based on their own cultural framework. High-context cultures tend to em-

phasize meaning whereas low-context cultures tend to emphasize the code. Geert

Hofstede (1997) developed four dimensions of cultural difference: power dis-

tance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity-femininity, and individualism-collec-

tivism. Power distance refers to the acceptance and expectance of less powerful

members of organizations and institutions of unequal power distribution within a

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 19

country. Uncertainty avoidance differentiates cultures based on structure and

rule preferences. Masculinity-femininity asserts that direct goal-oriented commu-

nication is masculine while modest communication is feminine. Individualism-

collectivism believes that individual cultures tend to focus on personal goals

rather than group goals, whereas collectivist cultures tend to view the tribal fam-

ily, work groups and so on, as essential to the group. Status and power distances

are more predominant in collective cultures whereas urbanization and industrial-

ization tends to produce more individualistic cultures.

According to Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson (1987), politeness theory

asserts that groups tend to balance their own cultures with the cultures of others.

This has been extended in order to explain intercultural interactions; face-negotia-

tion theory of conﬂict and conversational constraints theory are both extensions

of politeness theory. Face-negotiation theory of conﬂict, by Stella Ting-Toomey

(1988), tends to explain the goals of each culture involved in the communication

process. Her theory entails the notion of face-saving, face needs and politeness. It

also entails styles of: domination or competition, yielding or obligation, avoid-

ance, collaboration, and compromise. She also believes high-context cultures tend

to be collectivist while low-context cultures tend to be individualistic. Min-Sun

Kim's (1993; 1995) conversational constraints theory explains that communicators

use procedural knowledge to guide their choice of communication tactics as well

as the general assessment of communication competence. Face support and need

for clarity are things used when dealing with constraint communication. In her

model, Kim includes psychological gender (the degree of adopting traditional

gender roles), self-construal (how individuals view themselves in comparison to

others), and individualism-collectivism.

The communication theory of ethnic identity (CTEI) stresses that through

communication, groups can culturally create identities. This notion states that

identities (core symbols, rules, meanings, etc.) within the group can change while

other elements remain the same. Intersecting identities within people may vary

based on salience, intensity, scope, content, and relationship. Examples of scenar-

ios are then given for this theory and terms such as personal level, dyadic level,

relational level, and communal level are used to describe the interaction between

a Caucasian American male and African American female.

The communication accommodation theory (CAT) explains that the degree to

which people accommodate other cultures with different accents, languages, etc.

depends on their perception of that culture. In speech, people may converge, di-

verge, or maintain usual speech patterns. Interpretability strategies can be used to

converge or diverge by increasing or slowing down the speed of their speech or

speaking more loudly. Discourse management strategies such as controlling or giv-

ing others control of the topic, along with interpersonal control strategies which in-

clude interrupting, using formal titles, and so forth, are used to converge or diverge

in intercultural speech. However, diverging or converging is based on motives.

Converging and diverging can be either good or bad, depending on the situation, as

either method may have negative outcomes. Hyper-explanation would be an ad-

verse outcome of converging speech since it tends to be used by Caucasians to over-

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20 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

simplify their words or grammar when speaking with African Americans. This re-

sults in Caucasians being viewed as prejudiced and/or condescending.

The standpoint theory, developed by Sandra Harding (1991), Nancy Harstock

(1997) and others, assesses men, women and the use of power between gender

differences. Feminism tends to believe that this power is never taken into account

when discussing male and female gender roles. The standpoint theory states that

the perception of men and women is based on the class structure being beneﬁcial

for men and that this position gives each gender a perception of the world. Three

key points are stressed here:

1) A privileged standpoint (which a male occupies) is more powerful and

therefore dictates the ways in which genders live;

2) This power is mostly harmful to the lower structure (women); and

3) The lower structure tends to understand the higher structure more (the

oppressed understands the oppressor but the oppressor cannot under-

stand the oppressed since such an understanding may show a need for

change).

Another feminist theory is entitled muted group theory, which explains that an-

thropological research and accounts of cultures often deal only with male voices

since females were seen as unimportant. Cheris Kramarae (1981) transported this

theory over to communication studies and stated that women are twice muted—

meaning that men are in privileged positions of authority which gives them the

power to create language by being CEOs, ﬁlm makers, poets, dictionary writers,

etc., and women are ignored by men when they speak. Thus they become mute

when they anticipate being ignored and not heard. "Chick ﬂicks" and "guy ﬂicks"

are examples of this, as are more serious settings such as rituals (weddings, etc.).

Elaine Baldwin, Brian Longhurst, Scott McCracken, Miles Ogborn, and Greg

Smith (2004) argue that language is a representation of a version and construction

of the world. The attribution of human language deals with patterning sounds,

sound attributions and so forth, which are called phonemes. Syntax explains con-

struction of a phrase or sentence. Meaning and uses of language evolve over time.

Language may represent or what it names because language is constructed to

give meaning to human experience. Language has had a relationship with culture

and thought because it arises from a culture's perceptions and experiences.

Structuralism and semiotics (semiology) were inﬂuential to representation

and communication of meaning. Ferdinand de Saussure's work had inﬂuenced

writers such as Barthes, Chomsky, Foucault, and others. Roland Barthes's (1915-

1980) ideas of structuralism and post-structuralism were inﬂuential to the early

development of the ﬁeld of cultural studies. An example is his semiotic analysis of

a meaning of a photograph from a French magazine dealing with the Algerian

conﬂict whereby the context of empire was crucial. In discussing photographs,

important points about semiotics are developed:

1) Images or texts could have several layers or levels of meaning which in-

clude denotative and connotative;

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 21

2) Meaning will depend on the context of the image/text, therefore, meaning

is relational;

3) Some levels of code or meaning will be neutral and objective while others

may hold discourses or social meanings; and

4) To understand these meanings involves decoding, which depends on the

experience and knowledge of the analysis.

Therefore, signiﬁer (image, printed word, sound) plus signiﬁed (mental concept)

equal sign. Barthes demonstrates the association of different levels of meaning

and makes a distinction between language and myth where myth represents

structures of power favouring the bourgeoisie.

Signs convey meaning when organized into systems or codes. Codes are most

often studied in advertising. Feminists suggest that advertising stereotypes

women. Advertisements are constructed in a particular way in which we read

them, thus placing us in restricted positions, as an ideology typically does. They

create a sort of power in contemporary society and forms of powerful representa-

tion, which is also now being used within institutions, hence these institutions and

practices are like advertising (logos for universities, "sound-bites" for politicians).

Communication of cultural meaning and representation is done through lan-

guage in the sense that custom meanings are attached to words and particular

ways of speaking in speciﬁc cultural and social context. Raymond Williams (1921-

1988) created the notion of representation. It is a symbol or image, which is re-cre-

ated and stands for something else. Furthermore, Williams placed signiﬁcant

emphasis on the notion of understanding language within social context and so-

cial activity. Language has become a medium, which has been politically charged

due to culture politics and aspects of inequality in relation to power, which are

based on class, gender, and race.

Baldwin, Longhurst, McCracken, Ogborn, and Smith (2004) explain that lan-

guage does not represent any truths, nor is it neutral. Cultural imperialism domi-

nated language in a sense through hierarchy, which was thus perceived as the

truth of language (in actuality, their language, which does not speak for everyone),

as Edward Said remarks. Israel, Canada, France, Spain, etc. are examples of coun-

tries trying to remove identities imposed by languages of others. Men dominate

the public area and discourse, which is often encoded with meanings of males.

Women must learn the male language and also ﬁght to be heard. Even lower

classes of women needed to struggle within the same social class as males. Men

use aggressive and competitive speech, whereas women use cooperative speech.

Thus far, language has been discussed by using a sociolinguistic model and apply-

ing it to society and hierarchy, power, and so forth. However, the notion of cross-

cultural communication is suggested when men and women interact and it is not a

case of domination of one gender over another. Rather, it is simply different lan-

guage/speech. This raises the notion that language is open to interpretation.

From an actor's perspective, ethnographic research sets to examine the acts of

speech, both natural and experimental, so that the principles of generating and

shaping speech can be observed/determined in speciﬁc social situations. A lot of

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information is required about the actor (personal life, social/personal characteris-

tics, etc.) and the process involves analyzing the meaning of the transmission and

reception. Attempting to theorize certain communication language acts requires

several tests of communicating. These include face-to-face and faceless communi-

cation such as a telephone conversation. An example of a face-to-face conversa-

tion describes the use of a syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes diagram to indicate

unfolding events along the connection of the two axes. Test results indicate that

very rarely do these language interactions apply the full use of formal rules of

language and grammar. The telephone is one such exception because the physical

is not present, and as a result a more logical and formal conversation may take

place in order to convey the right meaning/message.

Language is both arbitrary and conventional, creating a paradox since lan-

guage is at once ﬂexible, creative, and regulated. Language represents forms of

meaning in certain societal contexts, and therefore is polysemic in character.

Meaning may also be masked deliberately as language as it has no real truth to it

(i.e. lying, etc.). Language does not deﬁne culture but encompasses it. Language

also never colonizes social terrain within speech communities but does map it.

Debates on ideology were developed with studies based around the media.

Stuart Hall (1977; 1997) was highly inﬂuential in this ﬁeld; he viewed television con-

tent, among every other form of text, as meaningful discourse despite the complex-

ity of messages. Hall was viewed as being highly important due to his work on

cultural studies in interconnecting ideology, culture and politics, and identity. En-

coding and decoding come into play when dealing with the language of semiotics

and structuralism codes. Encoding and decoding is involved in this process where

encoding is done by producers of the messages, while decoding is conducted by the

audience. These social phenomena are susceptible to struggle and change. Hall as-

sesses three different positions in which television decoding may proceed. The ﬁrst

is the dominant-hegemonic position, which has the viewer decoding the language

in the way the encoders intended. The second is the negotiated position, which

states that audiences may still be within the encoded framework of the ﬁrst position

(accepting the broader message), but may have disagreements about speciﬁc as-

pects of the code and challenge it. The third is the oppositional position, in which

the audience directly resists the dominant-hegemonic framework.

The relationship, which exists between ideology, discourse, and power in tele-

vision news, is the notion that it beneﬁts those in privileged positions. They further

stress the Marxist account of classes and the theory of representation. The Marxist

account of ideology and its implication to media can be criticized within Michel

Foucault's framework since the text within media messages is viewed as discur-

sively constructed and not within a frame of representation because it does not re-

present. Discourse is useful here since language constructs the text within the

language. Both discourse ideas are present within Foucault and Marx; however, the

production, structure and consumption of texts are more dependent on results than

are allowed by Marxists analysis. Therefore, discourse allows for contingencies, and

thus, not all codes within complex texts are ideological in nature. Discourse at-

tempts to move contemporary debates away from representation, stressing that dis-

courses are created within different forms of texts and that these discourses are

complexly related to the discourse of those who produce and consume them.

22 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

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Canadian Communication Perspective

Generally, the Canadian mind, as Arthur Kroker argues, "may be one of the main

sites in modern times for working-out the meaning of technological experience. . . .

A general fascination with the question of technology extends like a brilliant arc

across the Canadian cultural imagination" (1984: 8). Indeed, culture and technol-

ogy have occupied a unique role within the Canadian communication history, and

present times, and will remain one of the central challenges in its future. Important

factors have contributed to shaping such understanding and, undeniably, creating

communication policy demands. One reason for this position is that Canada's ge-

ography represents "an immense challenge to maintain east-west trafﬁc ﬂows in

the face of powerful north-south attractions" (Janisch, 1987: 1-2). Further, McPhail

and McPhail (1990) explain that ﬁve different factors affect Canada's understand-

ing and perception of culture:

1) The French-English cultural tensions that resulted in the ofﬁcial develop-

ment and implementation of the bilingualism and multiculturalism poli-

cies as from the late 1960s;

2) The cultural media invasion from the American media system that

prompts the Canadian call for a distinct cultural identity;

3) The challenge of maintaining a balance between the concepts of free trade,

competition, etc. on one hand and public subsidy, public interest, etc. on

the other hand in Canadian communications public policy;

4) The federal-provincial tensions on regulating cultural policies; and

5) Canada's own struggle to strive for a distinctly Canadian cultural identity.

As a result of these pressures, Canadian media have captured the interest of Cana-

dian policy makers since the early 1930s. During that time, the Canadian govern-

ment searched for possible solutions to confront the American cultural invasion of

the radio stations arguing that they were affecting Canadian cultural identity.

Such efforts concentrated mainly on the nationalist stance that feared cultural

and media invasion on the one hand, and depended on the media for "deﬁning"

our Canadian cultural identity on the other. Needless to say that these steps

caused different feedbacks that varied from asserting the importance of govern-

mental intervention in Canadian cultural policies and claiming that it is the only

way of protecting our "identity" and heritage, to refuting such claims and argu-

ing that cultural policies should not restrict Canadian access to "other" cultural

and media production, rather that they should promote the production of a

purely Canadian products that represent its society and people.

Canadian political economist Harold Innis, and the "prophet of media tech-

nology" Marshall McLuhan's theoretical research on communication technologies

have enriched the historical understanding of social change and its relation to the

media of technology used in a given society. McLuhan, for example, was ar-

guably the most famous communication scholar of his time. His ideas had a great

impact in the 1960s in North America, spreading to politics and even the media.

McLuhan's observations made the media and their inﬂuence an important issue.

"In the same way that Sigmund Freud identiﬁed the unconscious as an unknown

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force affecting our behaviour, or that Albert Einstein posited power at the level of

atoms that was awesomely powerful, McLuhan told us that the media were trans-

forming society before our very eyes though we couldn't observe it—until his the-

ory revealed it" (Lormier & Gasher, 2001: 14).

Indeed, one important intellectual strand that shaped the Canadian vision of

technology was Marshall McLuhan's, which spread like wildﬁre not only through-

out Canada, but also around the world. Marchand says that by the late 1960s,

McLuhan "was being acclaimed in the pages of the New York Times Magazine as the

'number one prophet.' . . . One Greenwich Village enthusiast, at about the same

time, staged a multimedia event that was climaxed by his singing quotations from

McLuhan's works" (1989: 172). McLuhan's personal secretary, Margaret Stewart re-

calls this time: "I also remember that, as Marshall's fame began to spread during the

mid-1960s, Claude Bissell (President of the University of Toronto) arrived at the old

Centre [for Culture and Technology] one evening with a group of wealthy Swiss

McLuhanites. They implored him to return with them to Switzerland and become

their 'king'!"(Zingrone, Constantineau & McLuhan, 1994: 24).

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) was born in Edmonton, Alberta, a place that

inﬂuenced the breadth and landscape of his thoughts. Phillip Marchand, in his bi-

ography of McLuhan, cites him saying: "I think of western skies as one of the

most beautiful things about the West, and the western horizons. The westerner

doesn't have a point of view. He has a vast panorama. . . . He has at all times a to-

tal ﬁeld of vision" (1989: 9). From an early age, McLuhan possessed charisma as

well as a very high opinion of himself. Despite the fact that he was not a good stu-

dent—he once said that he "never [had] a teacher who made me the slightest bit

interested in anything I was studying" (Ibid: 18)—he was, however, a connoisseur

of English poetry and the elocutionary arts that were introduced to him by his

mother, who taught public speaking. For this reason, he believed that language

was a "sensuous activity", in which he found a relationship between the body

and the spoken word. When he became fascinated with technology, he regarded

it as means to—or an extension of—this relationship (Marchessault, 2005: 7), an

idea that was interpreted as representing a deterministic view of technology.

Even after he moved to Winnipeg with his family and joined the University of

Manitoba, McLuhan was not sure about his interests. He started out studying en-

gineering, and then transferred to English literature in 1928. He admitted that "I

never took university days in Manitoba seriously. All I knew was that I was not

getting an education" (Marchand, 1989: 19). Surprisingly, a minor event in 1932

signiﬁcantly changed McLuhan's life. One day he entered a used bookstore where

he used to shop and found a book called What's Wrong with the World, which in-

stantly attracted him. After reading it, he commented: "The simple and obvious

answer is, 'You can'" (Ibid: 29).

In 1933, McLuhan received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Mani-

toba, and won the university's Gold Medal in Arts and Science. The same year, he

started his Master's in English literature. During these years, he published many

articles in the university's student newspaper, The Manitoban. One of his 1934 arti-

cles, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow?", became the main theme of his ﬁrst book, The

Mechanical Bride. Finishing his Master's in 1936, he went to Cambridge University,

24 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

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where he completed his Doctorate in 1942. McLuhan taught in various universi-

ties before he moved to the University of Toronto, teaching at St. Michael's Col-

lege from 1946 until 1979.

McLuhan's Understanding Media (1964) revealed to many the "magical"

world: the new media of communication—radio, television, ﬁlm, photography,

satellites, and later computers—that were for many the means to "restructuring

civilization" (Rosenthal, 1968: 19). McLuhan argued that with new electronic tech-

nologies human beings had returned to primitive, tribal ways of communicating.

Particularly, he studied media technology as an extension of the individual, argu-

ing that each medium embodies a certain bias toward one of the human senses

(sight, sound, touch, etc.). He argues that media transmit our knowledge and ex-

perience embedded within the very structure of our society. As he puts it in his

famous equation: "the medium is the message", which means that we should not

only be concerned with the tools of communication (the media) and ignore the

constructed (message). For McLuhan, each medium requires us to become en-

gaged using a different bias. For example, television for McLuhan is a "cool

medium" as it requires a "high" level of audience involvement or participation,

contrary to the print "hot medium", which is "low" in audience participation. For

that, McLuhan argues that the dominant medium in a given time shaped the way

we perceive and understand the world around it.

Thus, McLuhan's main thesis is centered on the argument that with the new

technological advances of the media (especially television during his time), soci-

eties are restoring the "tribal" character that existed before the invention of print.

For him, print asserted the senses of individualism and competition as opposed to

electronic media that created a "global village". He asserts that the world had be-

come a "global village" where people send and receive messages instantly. The

media reduced the spaces between, and the separation from, fellow humans and

hence could alter their behaviour: "Our new electric technology that extends our

senses and nerves in a global embrace has large implications for the future of lan-

guage" (McLuhan, 1964: 80). For example, he believed that there was great poten-

tial in satellites, which for him exempliﬁed how media could create a "global

theatre". He told Ed Fitzgerald of CBC television in 1970: "You could say that

with the satellite, the global village has become a global theatre . . . [with] every-

body on the planet simultaneously participating as actors" (Benedetti & DeHart,

1997: 66).

The prophesy of McLuhan also promised that electronic media could foster

education — one of the priorities of the times —through satellite distance educa-

tion, allowing students from around the world to experience the same informa-

tion environment, or bringing television into the classroom, where the learning

and teaching experience would be totally "transformed". He told CBC's Take

Thirty in 1965 that "TV . . . would blow the classroom to bits. . . . It would be ex-

actly like bringing the Trojan horse inside the walls of Troy. . . . It would simply

alter the entire pattern and procedures of the classroom and create an altogether

new educational form" (Benedetti & DeHart, 1997: 124). It was not surprising,

then, that some of his ideas connected to the deep Canadian belief in "technologi-

cal nationalism"—similar to the railroad of 100 years earlier, technology brought

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"the capacity to create a nation by enhancing communication" (Charland, 1986:

197). Some believed that Canada could use McLuhan's ideas to guarantee its fu-

ture. In summary, the signiﬁcance of the work of McLuhan is renewed in our cur-

rent day with the advances of new modern communication technologies that

have truly created a "global village". For instance, from North America we can

chat with our online friends with equal ease regardless of where they reside, be it

Africa, Asia, Europe, etc. Likewise, we share the same news experience if we

watch Al-Jazeera or CNN with their live breaking news, etc.

Harold Adams Innis (1894-1952) is another prominent Canadian theorist not

only in the ﬁeld of political economy where he started his academic research, but

also as a communication and media pioneer. Much of his work focused on the his-

torical relationship between power, political organizations and communication

technology.

Born in Otterville, Ontario, Innis obtained both his Bachelor of Arts and Mas-

ter's from McMaster University, and his Doctorate from the University of

Chicago. Harold Innis taught, worked, and chaired the Department of Political

Economy at the University of Toronto until his death in 1920. Innis represents one

of the pioneering scholarly efforts to understand how empires (as symbols of

power) were extended and transformed through social control of the structures of

media and culture in his two landmark books Empire and Communications (1950),

and The Bias of Communication (1951). Nicholas Garnham asserts that Innis' most

important contributions came from his study of the inﬂuence of technologies not

only on their messages' reception, but rather on media technologies as "mode(s)

of coercion and production". He noted that Innis understood media as including

"physical transport systems" and studied "their relationship to systems of eco-

nomic and political power" (2000: 28). Viewed in this manner, Innis' political

economy of communication was prophetic in that it inﬂuenced future approaches

to viewing the development of communication systems as central to the economic

structure and powers of the state that could be seen in contemporary Canadian

communication scholars (e.g., Vincent Mosco and Robert Babe). Garnham clari-

ﬁes that Innis' adoption of communication as a ﬁeld of study had a signiﬁcant im-

pact on the direction of research in this ﬁeld, inﬂuencing it to include the history

of modernity in which arguments focus on state formation, bureaucracy, and

modes of persuasion and production, rather than a perspective that merely fo-

cuses on the state as a mode of coercion (Ibid: 29).

Harold Innis emphasizes the importance of studying the effects of media in

different contexts as he explains in his The Bias of Communication: "A medium of

communication has an important inﬂuence on the dissemination of knowledge

over space and over time and it becomes necessary to study its characteristic in

order to appraise its inﬂuence in its cultural setting" (1964: 33). This Innisian pio-

neering perspective could be easily translated if correlated to our modern, ad-

vanced technologies in their global scope, and their powerful effect on the ﬁeld of

communication. Technology has impacted the lives of individuals in many cul-

tures throughout the world. Indeed, new technologies have removed many phys-

ical and geographical barriers between people living in different and distant

places around the globe.

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Harold Innis posed two key questions in his research: the ﬁrst is about the

reasons for change in societies. For him, the answer related to the ways in which

different media of communication transformed social and human organization in

society. He argued that the rise and fall of human civilization relies on the degree

of competition of the existing forms of media. Speciﬁcally, Innis asserted the im-

portance of the "monopoly of knowledge" and power domination of different

means of communication technology. The second question is ﬁnding the reasons

behind social and cultural stability, which Innis argues is related to maintaining a

balance between the bias of "time" and "space" such as the case of Ancient Greek

society. Innis genuinely studied media and culture, adopting a "macro" level of

analysis, which has recently been criticized for being too abstract and difﬁcult to

read (McPhail & McPhail, 1990: 62-63).

Empire and Communications (1950) is another major contribution of Harold In-

nis. In this seminal work he tracks the uses of different media of communication

in the ancient empires. He started his longitudinal research from the ancient

Egyptian civilization. Particularly, he explained that with the use of papyrus in

ancient Egypt, there was a move from carving into stone as a medium of commu-

nication (bias of time since these are heavy media) to writing on papyrus that re-

sulted in a major shift from an absolute monarchy system to a more democratic

system of governance. Innis explains the rise in power of religion, priests, and

scribes as well as the increased demand for literacy. This, however, strained the

Egyptian civilization, which was no match for the invasion and occupation of its

civilization by the Syrian Semitic people with their advanced weapons of war-

fare. The Egyptians, as Innis explains, eventually fought back due to the com-

plexity of their writing and culture, which the Syrian Semitic had trouble

understanding.

With the expulsion of the invaders, the use of papyrus grew along with the

expansion of the Egyptian empire and the emergence of the New Kingdom, the

Pharaoh of Thebes. Innis then shifts focus to the medium of clay tablets and

cuneiform writing and their impact and power over communication and society.

Interestingly, new religions emerged as the effects of writing took shape after the

democratic revolution. The worship of the Sun-god "Ra" diminished with

"Osiris"—the god of the Nile—which took power over "Ra" and other gods. Fur-

thermore, this revolution saw the redistribution of power among professional

priests with the king gods beneﬁting through the eyes of the people (Crowley &

Heyer, 2007: 24-25). Institutions had to be built to teach the new language struc-

ture and also how to read and write with special emphasis given to grammar and

mathematics. Newly found schools had the names of the priests who had in-

vented the signs, and the religious points of view in general knowledge and in le-

gal decisions were known to embody those who controlled the art of writing such

as priests, scribes, teachers, and judges. This, however, rendered priests and oth-

ers in power powerless when warfare ensued, since they were not specialized in

physical warfare.

Thus, Innis' research helped explain the rise and fall of political empires (as

the case of ancient Egypt, China, and Greece) by relating them to the social

changes that resulted from the uses of different media technologies. Such research

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNICATION AND MEDIA STUDIES 27

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has indeed contributed to communication research as it took a historical approach

through Innis' analysis of power relations associated with the media technologies.

In short, Harold Innis has, as Marshall McLuhan outlined in his introduction in

Innis' The Bias of Communication, opened new windows for us as communication

researchers to read and understand history: "Most writers are occupied in provid-

ing accounts of the content of philosophy, science, libraries, empires, and reli-

gions. Innis invites us instead to consider the formalities of power exerted by

these structures in their mutual interaction. He approaches each of these forms of

organized power as exercising a particular kind of force upon each of the other

components in the complex" (McLuhan, cited in Innis, 1964: ix).

To conclude, it is important to mention that despite the importance of their

work, the work of Innis and McLuhan was either unknown to many (as the case

of Innis), or misinterpreted (as the case of McLuhan). For example, McLuhan has

often been accused of adopting a deterministic view of technology, a belief that

technology "shapes" society. Scholars, such as Mark Dery strongly believe that

"technological determinism is the keystone of McLuhan's theories. . . . If Marx be-

lieved that class struggle was the engine of history, then McLuhan held that the

engine was the engine of history" (2005: 97). However, Kroker refutes this accusa-

tion, arguing that McLuhan regarded technology "as reason". Compared to Innis'

technological realism (seen as the study of the balance between the power rela-

tions (in empires for example) and culture (through history), McLuhan's ap-

proach is more of a technological humanism, that is seen by some analysts as

"expansive, pluralistic universalistic, and creative . . . because it privileges the re-

lationship of technology and freedom" (Kroker, 1984: 16). In other words,

McLuhan argued that any analysis of media technologies has to start with "hu-

man agency" in societies, something that strongly opposes a deterministic view of

technology.

Based on a re-examination of McLuhan's The Medium is the Massage (1967),

Kroker reveals that McLuhan did argue that we cannot understand a given tech-

nological experience without studying its social setting, adding that, "We can

only comprehend how the electronic age 'works us over' if we 'recreate the expe-

rience' in depth". Kroker quotes McLuhan asserting that "any understanding of

social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media

work as environments" (1984: 55). McLuhan has expressed this idea plainly, as he

conﬁrms that

I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am deter-

mined to understand what's happening. Because I don't choose just to sit

and let the juggernaut roll over me. Many people seem to think that if you

talk about something recent, you're in favor of it. The exact opposite is

true in my case. Anything I talk about is almost certainly something I'm

resolutely against. And it seems to me the best way to oppose it is to un-

derstand it. And then you know where to turn off the buttons.

(McLuhan, cited in Benedetti & DeHart, 1997: 70)

28 PART 1 INTRODUCTION

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More than thirty years ago, James Carey was initially one of McLuhan's most se-

vere critics, ﬁring attacks such as,

A serious critic of traditional logic and rationality, his argument is mecha-

nistic, built upon linear causality. . . . His terminology is ill-deﬁned and

inconsistently used and maddeningly obtuse. McLuhan is beyond criti-

cism not only because he deﬁnes such activity as illegitimate but also be-

cause his work does not lend itself to critical commentary. . . . It is a

mixture of whimsy, pun, and innuendo. (Carey, 1968: 291)

Yet, with the advent of computer technologies, Carey later stated that it was time

for "giving McLuhan some of his due". He admitted that "communication tech-

nology has developed along lines he [McLuhan] anticipated with great pre-

science" and that "McLuhan grasped the consequences of the globalization of

communications, the extension of the body as image and the words as simulation

for the human imagination" (cited in Grosswiler, 1998: 216).

The works of McLuhan and Innis represent major contributions to the study

of communication and media. The media of communication are very important

tools of democratic participation and inclusion in societies. Communication, cul-

ture, and technology have occupied the Canadian identity since the creation of

the Canadian Paciﬁc Railway when Canadian communication public policy at-

tempted to use means of communication technologies (like radio, and later televi-

sion) to create a unique Canadian cultural identity distinct from the powerful

American airwaves.

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... Agenda-setting theory posits that the media play a pivotal role in shaping public thought and discussion on breast cancer screening behavior compliance (Eid & Dakroury, 2012). It may be possible to promote changes in health behaviors with the help of media strategizing, as journalists and media practitioners have the ability to impact public health in a positive manner due to the power of agenda setting, potentially resulting in opinion changes (Dakroury & Eid, 2012;Jones, Denham & Springston, 2006). For example, a study about the impact of exposure to newspaper coverage on breast cancer screening practices among female college students and their mothers revealed that "the quantity of mammogram screening coverage in newspapers contributes to mammography utilization" (Atkin et al., 2008, p. 6). ...

Breast cancer incidence and mortality rates are of concern among Latin American women, mainly due to the growing prevalence of this disease and the lack of compliance to proper breast cancer screening and treatment. Focusing on Venezuelan women and the challenges and barriers that interact with their health communication, this paper looks into issues surrounding women's breast cancer, such as the challenges and barriers to breast cancer care, the relevant ethics and responsibilities, the right to health, breast cancer risk perception and risk communication, and the media interventions that affect Venezuelan women's perceptions and actions pertaining to this disease. In particular, it describes an action-oriented research project in Venezuela that was conducted over a four-year period of collaborative work among researchers, practitioners, NGOs, patients, journalists, and policymakers. The outcomes include positive indications on more effective interactions between physicians and patients, increasing satisfactions about issues of ethical treatment in providing healthcare services, more sufficient and responsible media coverage of breast cancer healthcare services and information, a widely supported declaration for a national response against breast cancer in Venezuela, and the creation of a code of ethics for the Venezuelan NGO that led the expansion of networking in support of women's breast cancer healthcare.

... The positive influence of healthcare providers in motivating women to engage in breast cancer screening is consistently demonstrated in literature examining this correlation. Perhaps the most important aspect of this linkage is the vital role of interpersonal communication (Dakroury & Eid, 2012) that can occur between a woman and a healthcare provider (Jones, Denham & Springston, 2006). While this area of communication offers hope for creating effective messaging strategies to encourage breast cancer screening and prevention, it includes confounding variables and complex issues. ...

The prevalence of breast cancer in Venezuela is particularly alarming, which is attributed to healthcare inequalities, low health literacy, and lagging compliance with prevention methods (i.e., screening and mammography). While the right to health is acknowledged by the Venezuelan constitution, activism beyond governmental confines is required to increase women's breast cancer awareness and decrease mortality rates. Through the development of social support and strategic communicative methods enacted by healthcare providers, it may be possible to empower women with the tools necessary for breast cancer prevention. This paper discusses issues surrounding women's breast cancer, such as awareness of the disease and its risks, self-advocacy, and the roles of activists, healthcare providers, and society. Specifically, it describes a four-year action-oriented research project developed in Venezuela, which was a collaborative work among researchers, practitioners, NGOs, patients, journalists, and policymakers. The outcomes include higher levels of awareness and interest among community members and organizations to learn and seek more information about women's breast cancer, better understandings of the communicated messages, more media coverage and medical consultations, increasing positive patient treatments, expansion of networking of NGOs, as well as a widely supported declaration for a national response against breast cancer in Venezuela.

The introduction to the volume emphasizes that communication between nurses and their patients and family members does not consist merely of disseminating information. Instead, nurses must view communication as the mutually beneficial creation of meaning and that the nurse and the patient/family collaboratively affect each other's communication. Every message has two levels of meaning: the task level, usually conveyed by the words themselves, and the relationship level, generally conveyed by nonverbals. Nonverbal communication relays most of the meaning of a message and affects both the task (patient care) and the relationship (communication climate) between nurses and patients/families. For this reason, it is essential that verbal and nonverbal communication receive adequate attention. The six components of patient-centered communication include both task and relationship aspects of patient-centered care. The chapter ends with a brief description of the communication model that undergirds the entire book, the COMFORT model, which outlines palliative care communication.

William W. Neher
Paul J. Sandin

Communicating Ethically provides a broad introduction to the ethical nature of communication. Now in its second edition, the text has been revised to further address current issues, such as: evolving social media and digital platforms, growing cultural communication and discussion of diversity, and the ethics of public discourse. This book combines coverage of the major systems of ethical reasoning with applications, including case studies in each chapter, to investigate ethics within many fields in the communication discipline. Incorporating a simple framework for ethical reasoning allows the reader to develop their own understanding of the various criteria for making ethical judgments.

Janine Marchessault

'Feted and reviled in his own lifetime, Marshall McLuhan has made a dramatic comeback in recent years. Marchessault gives a balanced and carefully considered appraisal of McLuhan's contribution to cultural theory, which may be even more pertinent now, in the early twenty-first century, than when he originally formulated it in the 1950s and '60s' Jim McGuigan, Professor of Cultural Analysis, Loughborough University Why is McLuhan important? What use can we make of his approach to the media today? In this insightful critical introduction, McLuhan's contribution is carefully explained and his reputation reassessed. The book: · Explains McLuhan's key ideas · Engages with critical issues in media and contemporary art · Demonstrates the relevance of his work for students of media and communications · Addresses his methodological contribution · Revises our understanding of his place in the history of ideas. Illustrated with many examples from the network society, the book works as a guide to anyone who wants to know why McLuhan is important.

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