Media Power And Communication

Introduction

Media, in general terms, refers to the tools of mass communication. Telephone, magazine, internet, radio, newspaper, television, cinema and fax are the elements of media. Images in media are used as a useful tool to deliver the message to the audience. Media like television increases our knowledge by providing access to information all over the world.  Images in the media have the most substantial impact on the behaviour of an individual. Movies, as a part of the media, show different types of violence in one form or another.

Magazines display different visual images that profoundly influence female readers. Adults and teenagers mostly spend their time reading magazines related to fashion trends. Most of the models in the magazines are tall, slim and attractive, which draws the reader’s attention. Advertisements can be created to influence a buyer towards the purchase of a particular product. Some of the commercials have hidden messages in them. For example, young people eating fries and drinking sweet drinks can have a powerful influence on young adults or buyers. Images that show violence somehow influence young people. For example, they start believing that society accepts those who are violent while it’s not. These kinds of images have a high impact on the power and soul of an individual.

Nowadays, life without media is unacceptable. Media provides channels that help people to stay connected with one another. One can receive different kinds of information related to events or what is happening around the world. For example, when the people of Egypt started their protest against their rights, the images broadcast on television influenced others to fight for their rights. Those advertisements that get one’s attention, a person stares, visualising himself or herself in the ad.

Discussion

Two different readings will be discussed in this paper. The first one is on “Locating media power”, and the other one is “A cultural approach to communication”. In both of these readings, the influence and importance of media power have been discussed. Further, we explain each passage and then compare them at the end of the essay.

Locating Media Power

The Place of Media Power mainly focuses on an area neglected in previous studies of the media: the meetings between media and ordinary people. This study explores what happens when people who regularly consume the media witness media processes in action or even become the object of media attention themselves. Such encounters tell one a great deal about his or her attitudes towards the media world. This also offers a new way of thinking about the media’s impact on contemporary social life, the basis of their social authority, and the possibility of challenging it. The initial emphasis of the writer was the interaction between ordinary people and media people and also focused on the places where they meet, like in filming studios or sets. Symbolism in media, which the author defined as the power of creating or constructing reality, is intensely discussed. We often talk about media power when we hear a biased statement from organizations or from the news on the political situation of the country (Prat, 2015).

The author has argued two arguments. The first one is related to the interaction between ordinary people and media people. The second one that is supported by the author is media power is far from social life. The author explained that symbolism in the press is a social process but is complicated as well. Media power is not just media texts that are absorbed by the audience. However, the symbolism in media is more involved at every level of social interaction. Media power is reproduced through the use of actors in the advertisements, what they do and what they say is critical things in the ad. The author claims that, from his perspective, media have social effects on the bigger picture because we believe that the authority of media discourse is in many contexts.  The author’s approach has differentiated it from others by explaining what it means to live in a society where large-scale media institutions dominate. It is essential to consider how the audience decodes the message that is encoded in any advertisement.

The most important effect of the media is not to sustain certain specific ideologies but to widen the near talk about things. This was argued by one of the researchers made by Channel. However, there are other implications attached to these studies, like the use of men and women, which shows little consideration towards the integration of themselves into media.  Another approach that is related to the anthropology of media consumption has been discussed in threading. This approach explains how people look towards an advertisement and how well they impact their lives. Roger Silverstone argues that media needs to be understood as an overall social process that involves the audience, reader or listener, but it also focuses on how people interact with media. Silverstone explained that television is an excellence in our culture. A most important point that is discussed in this study is that the most central part of our culture operates principally through the media, which has its power. From this, Silverstone makes a conclusion that issues of religion cannot be kept separate from the problems of the force.

One of the main focuses of an author is to see the effects of things that are social facts and social realities. An analogy of Durkheim explained this relationship by saying that social impacts start from the privileged role in framing one’s experiences of the social society. Television, he believed, is a platform from where anyone can get any information that they think is social. At the functional level, it is not that easy to separate Television from radio and the press. Communication as a social platform is often underestimated. For the media as media, it is considered as more effective than television and radio (Prat, 2014). But then the press has also been characterised by the broad and regular availability. The point to be discussed is not about identifying the differences between different media platforms but about looking at the functionality and importance of these media platforms (Peppiat, 2016).

Durkheim’s analysis of the social origins of the profane distinction is useful within the universal religion. Most of the other researchers have argued that it is useful, but most of them said it is not. However, the author finds it relevant to the location of the media perspective.

One of the main challenges faced by the author is to connect general concerns of locating the media with detailed empirical work. According to the author, the connection lies in how people interact with media processes. Most of the time, wood framing has been used. That is because it connects ordinary people with the media. The use of fame in this context contrasts in multiple ways. First, concerning devices through which media studies and sociology are conducted, The second one is associated with a framework of expectations and plans which are associated with the frame.

A frame word was used to cover the objectivity and subjectivity of the media. By objectives, the author means the media institutions that connect media workings, while subjectivity means cultural and social aspects or processes through which those objectives are adapted culturally. Media involves various forms of media, such as radio, television, and the press. The author explains when we consume media as an ordinary course of an event, our primary concern is not about the objectivity of the mechanism but rather than subjectivity. So far, the reading provides a theory based not on media texts or audiences’ interpretations of them (reception studies), nor on the structure and economics of media institutions and media markets, but based on the place of media power instead of analysing the direct interactions between non-media people and media institutions, and non-media people’s talk about them (Caaffery, 2017).

A Cultural Approach To Communication

In the artistic reading approach to communication, two concepts of communication have been discussed that have prevailed in American culture since the nineteenth century. The first one is the transmission view of communication, and the other is the Ritual view of communication. The transmission view of discussion is most commonly found in American culture. It is sometimes defined as giving information to others. The main idea of this view is to transfer signals from one place to another with the sole purpose of control. It is derived from an ancient perspective of sending messages to increase the spending and effects of a word. When the Christian community of Europe came in contact with the non-Jewish population of America by transportation, it is considered one of the forms of religious implications of communication. In the middle of the nineteenth century, telegraphs replaced the identity of communication and transportation. Samuel Morse prophesized the first ever message of the transmitter as the purpose of the invention was to see “What Hath  God Wrought”. As the forces of technology, science and secularisation gained ground, religious metaphor fell away. From the telegraph to computers, the possibility of moral improvement is present whenever these machines are invoked.

The ritual view of communication is the older view. In fact, it is old enough for the dictionary to list it down. From a ritual point of view, communication is defined as sharing, participation, fellowship or association of a common faith. This view is directed not towards the extension of messages in space but towards the maintenance of society in time. The ritual aspect of communication is not dominant in American culture, as people’s eyes are glued to the transmission view of the discussion. The traces of ritual light can be found in many studies like Durkheim’s “Elementary forms of religious life”. In American society, the concept of culture is a weak notion. The difference between the ritual and transmission view of communication can be grasped briefly by looking at the alternative conceptions of the role of a newspaper in social life.

There are different problems associated with examining Newspapers from the ritual view of communication. They view newspapers as less a means of gaining information and more a trading mass. Writing and reading the paper is a ritual act and is considered more of a dramatic one. The news is regarded as a historical reality, a form of culture invented by a particular class at a specific point in history in the transmission view of communication. Under a ritual aspect of the disclosure, the news is just a drama. From the previous works done on the connection, the author derives a definition of communication as a symbolic process whereby reality is maintained, produced, transformed and repaired. One of the significant problems associated with communication is it refers to the most common human behaviour. Conversation, with the help of symbolism and language, depicts the expression of a human being. Word often confuses and distorts one’s perception of this external world.

The models of communication today found more science than religion, although the implications are the same. Models of communication are not merely a representation of communication but rather a representation of communication. Existing models of communication are less an analysis than a contribution to the chaos of modern culture. Communication begins in the struggle to learn and to describe. To initiate this process in our minds and to pass on the results of that process to others entirely depends upon certain communication models and certain rules. Raymond William has argued that the experiences we get in our lives that shape our minds are communication.

Comparison And Contrast Of Studies

Based on the readings provided, the representation of media in both readings is different. Locating the media focuses on Television and radio. It tells us about how the news or information from television is perceived by the public. The audience gets the information according to their beliefs and thoughts and gets impacted according to that. However, in reading the Cultural Studies’ approach to communication, the representation of media revolves around two concepts of communication: one focuses on the ritual view of communication and the other on the transmission view of communication. The reading shows that the transmission view of communication is more prominently found in British countries. However, with the transmission approach to communication, traces of the ritual view of communication are always present along with the transmission view. Media texts have the power and knowledge to shape the audience’s understanding (BBC.com).

The relationship between the producer’s audience is not fully explained in both readings, but in Locating the Media reading, it has been explained that the audience should be identified in the first place so that the message that the producer of a film or song or anything wants to deliver targets the target audience and audience will get the message effectively. Television media has been mostly used to Locate the media, and transmission and ritual views of communication are focused on the cultural approaches to communication. It is important that one should know about the audience. It shows whether the message that the producer wants to convey is received by the right audience or not.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the relationship between the producer and the audience is the current media environment in the United Kingdom. There are many ways by which a producer attracts an audience. In the UK, producers, before and after making a film, reaches out to the target audience by continuous researching techniques like test screening (Bromley, 2014). The main reason behind researching the target audience is to let the producer know who the audience is, what they want from the producer, and how the audience could be targeted. For example, making a comedy film which features a young guy and a woman. The right campaign would be in magazines that are mostly read by teenagers and young adults rather than advertising on television. It is important that the producer should know what audience he or she is targeting. A distributor is responsible for the “In between” phase of the producer and audience. The production of the movie or film is the making of it. Engagement is the term that usually means that audience attention is the changing social media trend. The media industry has become a fast-paced industry and is clearly doing all it can to stay on top and reach its potential consumers.

References

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