mass comm
Student Number: 089010366
MA in MASS COMMUNICATIONS
Key Issues and Approaches in Media Study
Assignment: Choose any two of the different traditions of media research which have been identified in Module One of the course. Discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses, and critically compare their contributions – actual and potential – to any given media – related topic or issue of contemporary concern.
Word Count: 1499.
A priest, a company, a newspaper, a writer, a journalist, a communications officer, a salesman, a painter, a film director, the government, a politician, in general everyone who wants to sell a product, to provide a service, to inform, to entertain or anything you can imagine has a target group or if you prefer an audience. Within the field of social sciences and especially into media research, understanding the audience is a topic of great concern. Two schools of thought, the Media Effects tradition and the New Audience Research influence audience studies each one in its own, unique way. The Media Effects tradition is “mainly concerned with persuasion, public opinion, belief, attitude formation, retention of information, short and long term effects, direct and indirect effects, and ultimately behavioral change”(Newbold, 1995, p. 6).1 The disciplines of Psychology and Sociology emerged in the late nineteenth century. At the same time there was a period of industrialization, urbanization that fueled concerns about the status of the family as a unit. Marx, Durkheim and Weber contributed greatly with their works in the understanding of these phenomena. But there was something new that also emerged and united in a sense people in common interests and goals; the mass media. Their messages were believed to influence people who used them as their only source of information for the world. In the turn of the twentieth century the Communism and Fascism used the mass media as “instruments of state control”(Newbold, 1995).2 Within this state
MA in MASS COMMUNICATIONS
Key Issues and Approaches in Media Study
Assignment: Choose any two of the different traditions of media research which have been identified in Module One of the course. Discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses, and critically compare their contributions – actual and potential – to any given media – related topic or issue of contemporary concern.
Word Count: 1499.
A priest, a company, a newspaper, a writer, a journalist, a communications officer, a salesman, a painter, a film director, the government, a politician, in general everyone who wants to sell a product, to provide a service, to inform, to entertain or anything you can imagine has a target group or if you prefer an audience. Within the field of social sciences and especially into media research, understanding the audience is a topic of great concern. Two schools of thought, the Media Effects tradition and the New Audience Research influence audience studies each one in its own, unique way. The Media Effects tradition is “mainly concerned with persuasion, public opinion, belief, attitude formation, retention of information, short and long term effects, direct and indirect effects, and ultimately behavioral change”(Newbold, 1995, p. 6).1 The disciplines of Psychology and Sociology emerged in the late nineteenth century. At the same time there was a period of industrialization, urbanization that fueled concerns about the status of the family as a unit. Marx, Durkheim and Weber contributed greatly with their works in the understanding of these phenomena. But there was something new that also emerged and united in a sense people in common interests and goals; the mass media. Their messages were believed to influence people who used them as their only source of information for the world. In the turn of the twentieth century the Communism and Fascism used the mass media as “instruments of state control”(Newbold, 1995).2 Within this state