FUNCTIONS OF MASS MEDIA
Mass media
- refers to channels of communication that involve transmitting information in some way, shape or form to
large numbers of people.
- It serves various functions in the society.
- More importantly, the bulk of popular culture comes from mass media.
The functions of mass media include:
• Information
- Dissemination of information is the major function of mass media.
- Media offer trustworthy and timely facts and opinions about various events and situations to mass
audience as informative items
- Information provided by mass media can be objective, opinionated, primary and secondary.
- Media disseminates information mostly through news broadcast on TV and radio, as well as in newspaper
columns.
- At present, social media is also a venue for news networks to circulate news and information.
Media outlets
- also interpret messages in more or less explicit and ethical ways.
- Newspaper editorials have long been explicit interpretations of current events, and now cable
television and radio personalities offer social, cultural, and political commentary that is full of
subjective interpretations.
- Although some of them operate in ethical gray areas because they use formats that make them
seem like traditional news programs, most are open about their motives
• Education
- Media provide education and information side by side.
- They try to educate people directly or indirectly using different forms of content Dramas, documentaries,
interviews, feature stories, and many other programs are prepared to educate people indirectly.
- Especially in a developing country, mass media is used as effective tools for mass awareness.
- History Channel, National Geographic Channel, and the Discovery Channel are examples of educational
media.
• Entertainment
- The other important function of mass media is the entertainment.
- It is also viewed as the most apparent function of media. When we say entertainment, it is a kind of
performance that provides pleasure to people.
- Mass media fulfill this function by providing amusement and assist in reducing tension to a large degree.
- Newspapers and magazines, radio, television and online platforms offer stories, films, serials, and shows to
entertain their audience.
- Sports, film reviews, columns on art and fashion are other instances that provide recreational and leisure
time to people. Currently, media also fuse entertainment and information, called infotainment
- The inclusion of education in entertaining programs is regarded as edutainment
• Persuasion
- Persuasion involves influencing otherspeople's minds.
- Mass media persuade the audience in varieties of ways.
- Media content builds opinions and sets agendas in the public mind.
- It influences votes, changes attitudes, and moderates behavior. Using editorials, articles, commentaries,
among others, mass media persuades audience.
- However, not everyone is aware that they are being persuaded. Many of them become unknowingly
influenced or motivated.
- Advertisement is one example of media designed to persuade
Public Opinion
- Mass media not only report the results of public opinion surveys conducted by outside organizations but also
increasingly incorporate their own polls into their news coverage.
- More importantly, newspaper and television help shape public opinion as well.
- Research has shown that the positions people take on critical issues are influenced by the media, especially
when the media air divergent views and provide in depth analysis.
Govemmental and Political Outlet
- Mass media can serve as an avenue for political agendas, a link between the government and the people,
and a government watchdog.
➢ The term political agenda is broader in scope than the term public opinion, and it refers to the issues people
think are the most important and that government needs to address.A person's perception of such matters
as crime, civil rights, the economy, or social welfare are affected by the manner and extent of media
coverage. Studies indicate that a correlation exists between the significance people assign a problem and the
frequency and amount of space or time newspapers, magazines, and television give to it
➢ Mass media also links the government and the people. It is the vehicle through which the government
informs, explains, and tries to win support for its programs and policies.
➢ It also serves as the government watchdog. From exposé early in the century to today's investigative
reporting, an important function of the mass media is to bring to people's attention evidence of corruption,
abuse of power, and ineffective policies and programs
Socialization
- Socialization is the transmission of culture.
- Media are the reflectors of society. Socialization is a process by which, people are made to behave in ways
that are acceptable in their culture or society.
- Whenever a person reads the newspaper or watches television, that individual picks up how other people
react on matters and what types of norms and values they perceive on a particular event, issue or situation.
- Though the process of socialization media help to shape our behaviors, conducts, attitudes and beliefs. It
also brings people close and ties them into a single unity.
MASS MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE
Gatekeepers and Tastemakers
Mass media and pop culture have been entwined from their very beginnings. does and does not make up
the pop culture scene.
The influence of gatekeepers and tastemakers in media have shifted over the decades due to the
democratization of mass media as well as the introduction of social media.
Gatekeepers
- decide which stories deserve to be in the spotlight, which ones should be put off to the side, and
which ones that will not be shown at all.
- Are those who determine which events, whether they be local, national, or worldwide. Make it to
the mainstream media and which events do not
- These people include magazine/newspaper editors, reporters, and even news companies on
television in the modern day.
- What is important to note is that these gatekeepers are influenced by the outside world and what
they consume media- wise just like every other person who consumes media. Therefore, every
gatekeeper has biases, whether these are conscious or unconscious decisions
Traditionally, pop culture hits were initiated or driven by the active support of media tastemakers.
Tastemakers
- Are people or institutions that shape the way others think, eat, listen, drink, dress and more
- When mass media is concentrated, people with access to platforms for mass communication wield
quite a bit of power in what becomes well known, popular, or even infamous.
- The digital age, with its proliferation of accessible media, has undermined the traditional role of the
tastemaker.
- In contrast to the traditional media, Internet-based mass media are not limited by time or space, and
they allow bloggers, critics, or aspiring stars to potentially reach millions without the backing of the
traditional media industry.
- However, this democratization has its downsides.
- An abundance of mass communication without some form of filtration can lead to information
overload.
- Additionally, online reviews can be altered or biased.
MEDIA CONVERGENCE
- It's important 10 keep in mind that the implementation of new technologies doesn't mean that the old ones
simply vanish into dusty museums.
- Today's media consumers still watch television, listen to radio, read newspapers, and become immersed in
movies.
- The difference is that it's now possible to do all those things through one device-be it a personal computer or
a smartphone-and through the Internet.
- Such actions are enabled by media convergence, the process by which previously distinct technologies come
to share tasks and resources.
- A cell phone that also takes pictures and video is an example of the convergence of digital photography,
digital video, and cellular telephone technologies.
- An extreme, and currently nonexistent, example of technological convergence would be the so-called black
box, which would combine all the functions of previously distinct technology and would be the device
through which we'd receive all our news, information, entertainment, and social interaction.
Kinds of Convergence
- But convergence isn't just limited to technology. Media theonst Henry Jenkins argues that convergence isn't
an end result (as is the hypothetical black box), but instead a process that changes how media is both
consumed and produced. Jenkins breaks convergence down into five categories:
1. Economic convergence
- occurs when a company controls several products or services within the same industry. For
example, in the entertainment industry a single company may have interests across many
kinds media. For example, Rupert Murdoch's of News Corporation is involved in book
publishing (HarperCollins), newspapers (New York Post, The Wall Street Journal), sports
(Colorado Rockies), broadcast television (Fox), cable television (FX, National Geographic
Channel), fim (20th Century Fox), Internet (MySpace), and many other media.
2. Organic convergence
- is what happens when someone is watching a television show online while exchanging text
messages with a friend and also listening to music in the background-the "natural" outcome
of a diverse media world.
3. Cultural convergence
- has several aspects. Stories flowing across several kinds of media platforms is one
component-for example, novels that become television series (True Blood); radio dramas
that become comic strips (The Shadow); even amusement park rides that become film
franchises (Pirates of the Caribbean). The character Harry Potter exists in books, films, toys,
and amusement park rides. Another aspect of cultural convergence is participatory culture
that is, the way media consumers are able to annotate, comment on, remix, and otherwise
influence culture in unprecedented ways. The video-sharing website YouTube is a prime
example of participatory culture. YouTube gives anyone with a video camera and an Internet
connection the opportunity to communicate with people around the world and create and
shape cultural trends
4. Global convergence
- is the process of geographically distance that physically separates them. Nigeria's cinema
industry, nicknamed Nollywood, takes its cues from India's Bollywood, which is in turn
inspired by Hollywood in the United States. Successful by Hollywood American horror
movies The Ring and The Grudge are remakes of Japanese hits. The advantage of global
convergence is access to a wealth of cultural influence, its downside, some critics posit, is
the threat of cultural imperialism, defined by Herbert Schiller as the way developing
countries an "attracted, pressured, forced, and sometimes bribed into shaping social
institutions to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating
center of the system (White, 2001)" Cultural imperialism can be a formal policy or can
happen more subtly, as with the spread of outside influence through television, movies, and
other cultural projects
5. Technological convergence
- is the merging of technologies such as the ability to watch TV shows online on sites like Hulu
or to play video games on mobile phones like the Apple Phone. When more and more
different kinds of media are transformed into digital content, as Jenkins notes, we expand
the potential relationships between them and enable them to flow across platforms
(Jenkins, 2001)."
MEDIA EFFECTS
Media effects
- are the intended or unintended consequences of what mass media does. There are various ways to explain
the effects of media on people:
• Third-Person Effect
- People think they are more immune to media influence than others.
- It predicts that people have a tendency to perceive that mass media messages have higher effect on
others than themselves, based on personal biases.
- The third-person effect reveals itself through a person's overestimation of the effect of a mass media
message on others, or an underestimation of the effect of a mass media message on themselves.
• Reciprocal Effect
- When a person or event gets media attention, it influences the way the person acts the way the
event functions.
- Media coverage often increases self- consciousness, which affects o actions.
- It's similar to the way that we change behavior when we know certain people are around and may
be watching us.
• Boomerang Effect
- This refers to media-induced change that is counter to the desired change.
- In the world of twenty-four-hour news and constant streams of user-generated material, the effects
of errors, blunders, or plain old poor decisions are much more difficult to control or contain.
- Before a group or person can clarify or provide context for what was said, a story could go viral and a
media narrative constructed that is impossible to backtrack and very difficult to even control.
• Cultivation Theory
- It states that media exposure, specifically to television, shapes our social reality by giving us a
distorted view on the amount of violence and risk in the world.
- High frequency viewers of television are more susceptible to media messages and the belief that
they are real and valid.
- Heavy viewers are exposed to more violence and a therefore an are affected by the Mean World
Syndrome, the belief that the world is a far worse and dangerous place then it actually is
• Agenda Setting Theory
- The influence of media affects the presentation of the reports and issues made in the news that
affects the public mind.
- The news reports make it in a way that when particular news report is given importance and
attention than other news the audience will automatically perceive it as the most important news
and information are given. to them.
- The priorities of which news comes first and then the next are set by the media according to how
people think and how much influence will it have among the audience Agenda setting occurs
through a cognitive process known as "accessibility".
- Media provides information which is the most relevant food for thought, portraits the major issues
of the society and reflects people minds
• Propaganda Model
- The Propaganda Model of Media Control tries to understand how the population is manipulated,
and how the social, economic, political attitudes are fashioned in the minds of people through
propaganda.
- According to the theory, media operates as a business which sells its products (readers and
subscribers) to other business entities that do their advertisements in media, rather than performing
the function of disseminating news for the public.
- Here the news is being misshaped and reformed from its original form.
➢ Propaganda are "ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in
order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc
➢ They are information, especially of misleading nature, used to promote a political cause
➢ Stereotypes are at the heart of all propaganda efforts. Their purpose is to create the perception
that our actions are always ethical and honorable, while those of our opponents are always
unethical and dishonorable. We have to be aware of propaganda because it manipulates and
diverts people from logical analysis of issues and hides the truth. By understanding propaganda,
you will be able to protect yourself from deceitful tactics.
➢ How to spot propaganda:
• Attacks a person instead of a principle or issue
• Suppresses evidence that does not support its cause
• Relies on emotion instead of logical evidence. Introduces irrelevant or unproved
evidence
• Distorts and oversimplify evidence
• Shows internal inconsistency after examining facts
➢ Propaganda materials are now in digital form posted, shared, liked, commented, and debated
on social media particularly on Facebook
