Laerke

Laerke =Media and Society p 2-15=

Definition
The media are technologically developed and econimically profitable forms of human communication.

Characteristics

 * Human communication system
 * Uses industrialized technology
 * Aim is to reach a large group of people (mass media)

History
Over the years the media have gone through a long journey of changes and development.
 * The first major media was the printed press in the sixteenth century . This lead to pamphlets, books and newspapers.
 * In the eighteenth-nineteenth centuries we had the industrial revolution leading to a technologic development which made the printing press more effective.
 * In the nineteenth-twentieth centuries : the photography, film, radio, television, telephone, telegraph. The media was now the main source of knowledge and entertainment.
 * 1980-twenty-first century another revolution in communication because of the development in new technologies. E.g. satellite, cable communication, computer chip, internet ect. We live in a ‘media world’
 * Some governments are concerned about the potential power of the media. Some try to retain some control through censor, licensing ect.

Why study media?
An entire chapter about why the author studies media. I find her personal reasons quite irrelevant.
 * Pro || Con ||
 * Media is a range of cultural information and entertainment. Popular knowledge increase, people are aware and ‘educated’ by the media || Offers people worthless trivia. Media talks to peoples lowest intellectual skills. ||
 * Inspiration and development in people || Passive observers, we lose the ability to think or act on our own ||
 * Exploration and development of our understanding of (taboo) subjects || Gives people (children) a wrong view on subjects e.g. violence and sex ||
 * A window on the world: truthfull and informative || False constructions ||
 * Democratic: Allowing everyone to speak || Media serves their owners interest ||
 * Gives space to a voice of different minorities and cultures || Makes us all the same, destroy minority cultures. ||

Fears for the media
This is why ‘the freedom of the press’ is important to many. To understand this we must understand the following The media devote the low culture.
 * Political use**
 * The fear that media can be put in relation to specific political parties or ideologies.
 * The fear that media can be used by politicians to control the people.
 * Media and morals**
 * The fear that peoples values can be corrupted by the media they consume (forbruge, benytte)
 * Media and culture**
 * The fear that media devalue cultures.
 * High culture: opera, painting, literature. Great art produced by the people. (good manners, dannelse)
 * Low culture: the popular culture, magazines, mass-market, paperbacks, television.

Frankfurt School
A Marxist school who were the first to analyze the role of media in Europe and Germany (1930). They later moved on to the American media In the 40-50s. They are important because they were the first to come with deep studies of the media. They were also the first to see media as an industy.

Effects research
People wants to measure the effects of media. This is very difficult the effects are not tangible. Nevertheless, people keep trying.

Communication Model (McQuail and Windahl)

 * ** ? ** ||  Who?  ||  Says what?  ||  Where?  ||  To whom?  ||  With what effect  ||
 * ** Name of media element ** ||  Communicator  ||  Message  ||  Medium  ||  Receiver  ||  Effect  ||
 * ** Type of media research ** ||  Control studies  ||  Content analysis  ||  Media analysis  ||  Audience analysis  ||  Effects analysis  ||

Content analysis
The aim is to measure what the media actually produce. See e.g. in the book p. 12

Minh's Response

I would like to comment on how I agree on your “Fears of the media” section especially the political use fears. I think we can all agree in the wrong hands of a government, the media could potentially become the sole reason why they are in power and indoctrinate the population into the government’s ideologies. I think that Nazi Germany is a perfect case study of the potential power of the media. We see that the Nazis used media extensively for propaganda through radio broadcast, posters, and rallies and turn most of the population into fanatics of the Nazi ideologies. Most note – worthy and most notorious was the success of the anti Semitism that the population were introduced to along with the drastic change of culture from the Weimar Republic (Germany in 1919 – 1933.) to Nazi Germany. However I also believe in the government’s right to evoke restrictions and censorship laws if they feel that certain media can cause the instability of the government which could cause harm to the population, physically and mentally. As myself, do not want people to read on terrorist and anarchist’s blogs and articles. But if the media is used to inform and to educate about a government regime in which it might be corrupt, then the media should be used extensively to solve the problem as this problem affects people.

Please take note, that this information might be inaccurate and missing some important information that might give this response a biased viewpoint. It is not intentional of course. I only wish to convey knowledge.

Maxim: I agree with the view that the media can be really dangerous when it is controlled by the government. But I do not think that Nazi Germany is the best example, since the reign of national-socialists was really short, 12 years, compared to the Soviet's Union, 83 years; that is why I think the Soviet Union would be better case study. We cannot be sure how reliable the information from Germany was - it was in people's interest to say that they were influenced and mislead by other people. By saying that they were influenced by the media's propaganda, they moved responsibility away from themselves.

I do not believe in government's right to ban certain material with the help of censorship law. It is really hard to draw the line between the "informing people" and "causing instability", The government would use (and it use **s** ) to run their own interests.

Martin

It is irrelevant to argue whether Nazi Germany is or is not the best example. Undeniably, media played really big role in indoctrinating the population into the government’s ideologies. The ideas of the catch-all parties, both in Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, were put in the most persuasive manner possible.

However, that is what happened 70 years ago, in a single-party system. But, what worries me the most is that this happens now, in democratic countries where the mass media is supposed to proliferate the information, hold political officials accountable for their actions, and uncover secrets.

= Response to the advertisement I liked the most =

A hunter shoots a bear
This interactive video was released on youtube in 2010. It became wildly popular and has been recognized as a new sort of advertisement on the internet.

As I first saw this video, I thought it was really cool. I had worked a lot with films at the Danish Film Institute and I really enjoyed the ‘film mechanisms’ (filmiske virkemidler) used. During our work in class I started recognizing the video as an advertisement instead of just a short film. The advertisement in the video is hidden. When you first watch it, it seems as just being entertainment. If you analyze the short film, it becomes clear that it is not just a home video by amateurs. The product present is the tipp-ex Pocket Mouse (a pen eraser). The target group is young people. This is identified by the language used in the film. In the first few seconds the actors are talking about ‘chicks’. They use both slang and swearing during the hole film, which mirrors the language of young people very well. The movie was also released on youtube, where a lot of young people search for entertainment. What this advertisement does, that I have never seen any other advertisement do, is to interact with the target group. You really //feel// like you are //creating// the story as it comes along. I believe, this is exactly what the producers want us to feel, because we will when relate the feeling of power to create and rewrite a story with their product. I think the advertisement is successful because it reaches a very big target group. I heard about the movie from a friend, we saw it together and I then uploaded a link on my facebook profile so my friends could see the movie. I think especially young people shares a lot of information very quickly on the internet. Because the advertisement is presented in a funny and interesting way, we want to show it to others. We share. In that way a single video on youtube can reach a lot of people all over the world See the video here: [] = = Response to discussion in class I would like to point out that it is really important we have discussions like this in class. It is a good quality that we take us time to talk about relevant cases, and it is very much in the uwc-spirit that we not only discuss but also question each other about everything: religion, believes, traditions ect. I am a Christian, a Protestant. I have never experienced any sort of discrimination on my own body, but I live in Denmark, where discrimination against Islam isn’t rare. I am ashamed that the third most popular party in Denmark doesn’t follow an ideology – they are simply well-known as being racists. I can also mention the crisis with the Mohammed drawings as being Danish doings. And last year I experienced a friend of a friend almost getting kicked out of my country and ‘back’ to prison and torture in his ‘home country’ – this was the first time the discrimination became personal to me. Referring to all of this – I would say – that I __know__ what discrimination is even though I don’t experience it on my own body. Therefore it was not choking for me to hear people’s different experiences in the discussion. The essence of the discussion and the big, unanswered question is: WHY? Why do the newspapers in the west put together worlds like ‘Muslim’ and ‘terrorist’*? Why do we only read about Christians being discriminated against? Why is the stereotype of a Muslim wearing a bomb in the turban?? There are a lot of other whys, but I would like to focus on this one. I believe, the western newspapers are using this unattractive stereotype of the Muslims, because it is what the readers want to hear. I am not saying that all people in the west are against the Muslims, because that is definitely not the case, but I believe, we somehow expect our news to tell us those stories. The purpose of the news is not to inform us about the truth. The purpose of the news is not to discriminate. The purpose is to sell. If nobody wanted to hear about ‘Muslim Terrorist committing suicide with bomb in a bus’ the newspaper wouldn’t sell! And in the end the newspaper would not survive on the marked. You can twist and turn it, but I still claim that the headline ‘Muslim terrorist … ‘is fascinating. And that is exactly why it is the headline! That is why the story is newsworthy! We want it.... *Thanks Sophia

=Notes for movie: No Logo=


 * Globalization
 * You shoes shows globalization.
 * Leather from India
 * Produced in Hong Kong
 * Sold in USA
 * Imported to Denmark
 * Ect.

E.g. IKEA is selling ‘democracy’ because you can be the design your own furniture and Starbucks is not a café, but a place where people gather.
 * Modern advertising
 * Product is not a product – it is a lifestyle.
 * If you want to be a part of the modern market
 * McD and Coca-Cola is popular because they could do this from the beginning.
 * Modernization
 * Product comes from huge companies
 * No longer a personal relationship with the shopkeeper
 * To make a fake personal relationship, companies put a picture of themselves on the product.
 * Advertisements show ‘paradise’
 * When reality does not live up to the ‘paradise’ – when what?
 * You are not able to turn of the advertising. It is everywhere around us all the time

Worries
E.g. on the street, in the television, in the movies we watch, the music we hear, on our close, ect, ect
 * Schools start to look like malls, ect.
 * We have fewer and fewer places to go and escape the advertisements


 * Companies sell themselves as e.g. family companies. This has nothing to do with their values, it is a way of advertising.
 * A wrong picture of the companies, cheating people


 * Factories do no longer make a product, they produce a brand
 * The products no longer comes from the companies, it is produced far away to cheap prizes.
 * Do we want to support that? (e.g. abuse of children or women work)
 * The companies have moved from Japan, to Taiwan, to Korea ect.
 * They abuse their workers to get cheap prizes!
 * It also means that the jobs move away from developed countries, because people will not work for e.g. a dollar a day.
 * Again: The developed countries have ‘service jobs’ instead.


 * There are no way to prevent ^^ all this. You cannot go anywhere and shop products, you know supports values you want to support. But we can try…
 * We should have rules protecting our ‘values’ e.g. women and children far away or the environment.