ETH 201 Lecture 6, Fall 2016

NM 11 SEPTEMBER 2001, terrorists hijacked three planes and used them te attack sites in Washington and New York. The timing of the attacks was such that when a plane crashed into the second of the Twin Towers In New York, around twenty minutes after the first tower had been struck, it is estimated that a global audience of two billion watched the incident on television in real time. Almost 140 years earlier, in 1465, the actor John Wilkes Booth assassinated US President Abraham Lincoln ine Washington theatre. It took twelve days before the news reached London. The ship carrying the message from the United States was moet by # smaller boat off the south coast of Ireland and the news was telegraphed to Landon from Cork, still beating the ship by three days. (it wasn'tuntil the 1950s that a dedicated trans-oceanic cable existed ta carry telegraphs instantly across the Atlantic — although long-wave radio trans- mission between continents became pos: sible in the early twentieth century.} In the twenty-first century, communi- cations technology is such that informa- The Media 585 Do you know Osama Bin Laden's face better than that of your next-door neighbour? Hon can be shared instantaneously, and by millions of people simultaneously, almost anywhere around the world. Com- munication — the transfer of information from one individual or group to another, whether in speech or through the mass media of modern times — is crucial to any society. Qne influential carly theorist of communication media was the Canadian author Marshall McLuhan. According to McLuhan, ‘the medium is the message’ That is to say, society is influenced much more by the type of the media than by the content, or the messages, which the media convey, A society in which satellite televi- sion plays an important part, for example, is obviously a very different medium from one that relies on the printed word carried aboard an ocean liner. Everyday life is experienced differently in a society in which the television, relaying mews instantaneously fram one site of the globe to the other, plays an important role to one that relies on horses, ships or the tele- graph wire, for example. The electronic media, according ta McLuhan, are creat- ing a global village — people throughout the world see major events unfold and hence pardcipate in them together, Por billions of people around the world the image of Osama Bin Laden, the man blamed for masterminding the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, is mare instantly recognizable to them than their next-door neighbour. We live today in an interconnected world in which people experience the same ¢tvents from many different places, Thanks to globalization and the power af communications technology, people from Caracas to Cairo are able to receive the same popular music, news, films anal tele- Vision programmes. Twenty-four-hour news channels report on stories as they oceur and broadcast coverage of the unfolding events for the rest of the world to see. Films made in Hollywood or Hong Kong reach audiences around the world, while celebrities such as David Beckham and Tiger Woods have become household names on every continent. For several decades, we have been wit- hessing & process of convergence in the production, distribution and consump- tion of information. Whereas at one time 566 THE MEDIA ways of communicating, such as print, television and film, were relatively self- contained spheres, they have now become intertwined to a remarkable degree. The divisions between forms of communica- tion are no longer as dramatic as they once were: television, radio, newspapers and telephones are undergoing profound transformations as a result of advances in technology and the rapid spread of the Internet. While newspapers remain central to our lives, the ways they are orga- nized and deliver their services are chamg- ing. Newspapers can be read online, mobile telephone use is exploding, and digital television and satellite broadecast- ing services allow an unprecedented diversity of choice for viewing audiences. It is the Internet, however, that is at the heart of this communications revolution. With the expansion of technologies such as volee recognition, broadband trans- mission, web casting and cable links, the Intermet threatens to erase the distine- tions between traditional forms of media and to become the conduit for the delivery of information, entertainment, advertis- ing and commerce to media audiences. In this chapter, we'll study the transfor- mations affecting mass media and com- munications as part of globalization. The mass media include a wide variety of forms, including television, newspapers, films, magazines, radio, advertisements, video games and CDs. These are referred to as ‘mass’ media because they reach mass audiences - audiences comprised of very large numbers of people. We begin the study of the mass media by considering same of the forms it can take. We discuss older, more traditional formes of media, such as the press, cinema, radio and television, before looking at the recent development of new forms of media like the Intemet. Second, we shall explore some of the key theoretical per- spectives on the media. Next, we look at the some of the issues surrounding mass media and society, such as bias, the effects of the media and audiences, Last, we look atthe development ofthe mass media ina global age. Traditional and new media An inportant precursor to the mass media was the invention of the printing press iin the mid-fifteenth century, which made the high-speed reproduction of texts possible for the first time. Yet, although technalog- ical advances played a crocial part in the development of the mass media, the influ- ence of social, cultural and cconomic factors must also be taken into account. The mass media could only develop in societies with a celatively free press and an educated and wealthy enough population to take advantage of it. In the last few years, new technologies, such as the inter- net have revolutionized the mass media and wider society too. In the next section we look al the development of new forms of media; first, we examine the rise of the mass media inthe UK, by looking at briefly atthe press, film, radio and television. Traditional media The press The development of the press in Britain during the nineteenth century occurred at a time of political and social unrest. The fovernment exerted its control over the emerging newspaper industry through strict laws on libel and sedition, which prevented political agitation; at the same time, a stamp tax was imposed to ensure that newspapers were only affordable by the well-off. The stamp tax had unin- tended consequences, as illegal and inex- pensive pamphlets emerged, spreading radical views amongst the newly indus- trial working class. The biggest of these pamphlets, such as William Cobbed’s weekly Political Register, outsold the official, ‘stamped’ press many times over (Hall 1982), The stamp tax - condemned by its opponents as a ‘tax on knowledge’ — was finally repealed in 1855 after a series of reductions, leading many writers to hail a golden era of British journalism marked by a ‘transition from official to popular control (Koss 17S]. Am alternative view was put fonvard by James Curran and [ean Seaton challenged this view in their his- torical account of the British press, Power Without Responsibility (2003). They saw the repeal of the stamp tax as an attempt to break the popularity of the radical press and to boost the sales of more ‘respectable’ newspapers. For Curran and Seaton the repeal of the stamp tax did mot introduce a new era of press freedom, but atime of repression and ideological control, this time by market forces rather than government. (The issue of media control is discussed below, pp, 615-20.) The newspaper was a fundamentally important development in the history of modern media, because it packaged many different types of infonmation in a limited and easily reproducible format. News- papers contained in a single package information on current affairs, entertain- ment and consumer goods. The cheap daily press was pioneered in the United States. The Media 587 The one-cent daily paper was originally established in New York and then copied in other major castern US cities. By the early 1900s there were city or regional newspapers covering most of the Ameri- can states; in contrast to the smaller coun- ties of Europe, national newspapers did notdevelop. The invention of cheap news- print was the key to the mass diffusion of newspapers from the late nineteenth century onwards, Curran and Seaton have noted that extra revenue from advertising enabled the cover prices to Fall dramatically during this period, making the newspaper afford- able forall, They also argue that advertis- ing undermined the radical press as advertisers tended to place announce- ments in papers ta which they were politi- cally sympathetic, and to select papers with a smaller circulation and a wealthy readership, rather than radical papers with a higher circulation which sold to readers who would be unlikely to afford the product advertised (Curran and Seaton 2003), By the early twentieth century mew types of national newspaper had emerged in the UE, such as the Gaily Meth, Daily Express, Mirrorand the News of the Worle, selling a mixture of news, entertainment and patriotism to a Lirgely working-class readership, The Timesand Daily Telegrayalt provided more serious news analysis for wealthier readers. Qwnership of much of the news media hy this stage was concen- trated anoongst a handful of rich entre- preneurs. By the 130s Lords Beaverbrook, Camrose, Kemsley and Rothermere owned 50 per cent of British national and local daily papers and 30 per cent of the Sunday papers. Critics have argued that the ‘press barons) as they became known, 568 THE MEDIA used their ownership of national news- papers to promote their own political causes and ambitions (Curran and Seaten 2003). (We discuss the issue of media own- ership further below: see pp. 599-601.) For halfa century or more, newspapers were the chief way of conveying informa- lien quickly and comprehensively to a mass public, Their influence has waned with the rise of radio, cinema and -—much mere important — television and, increas- ingly, the Internet. Figures for newspaper readership suggest that the proportion of people who read a national daily paper in Britain has declined since the early 1480s, Among men, the proapertion of daily newspaper readers dropped fram 7h per centin 1981 to 60 percentin 1998-9 read- ership levels are somewhat lower among women, but a similar drop - from 6& per cent to 51 per cent - has taken place (HATSO 2000). Online communication might well bite further into newspaper circulation, News information is now available online almost instantaneously and is constantly updated during the course of the day. Many newspapers can also be accessed and read online free of charge, Film The first film to be shown to paying cus- tomers was in 1895 in Paris, Franee, where the Lumiére brothers’ Arteal af the Treter in La Clotar Station caused viewers to flee from their seats as the screen slowly filled with an oncoming steam engine. Whilst the print media in the UK developed slowly over many decades, film and the cinema arrived much faster. The first cinema in the UK opened im 1896 and by 1914 there were more than five hundred in London alone. Cinema tickets could be afforded by all classes and the decline in working hours and rise in unemployment in the late 19205 meant the cinema-gocrs soon formed a mass audience. Audience demands were soon leading cinemas to screen two new programmes a week, cach consisting of two films, a B- mevie and the main feature. The demand for new films led studies to churn out pro- ductions to tight schedules, These films tended to be formulaic and created by bureaucratic organizations with a high degree of specialization and division of lalvcrtir, Bureaucracy is further discussed in chapter 16, ‘Organizations and Mel- works, pp. 638-46.) As the industry became more commer- cialized a ‘star system’ emerged, with studios encouraging interest in the per- sonal lives of actors like Mary Pickford and Rudolf Valentino, whose appearance in a film would ensure a box-office hit. By 1925, 95 per cent of the films shown in the UR were American. Cinemas were increasingly controlled by the American studios which owned the distribution rights to films. The studies could oblige cinemas to bulk-buy future productions, effectively freezing oul competitors. As with the print media, ownership thad become largely concentrated amongst a few large corporations, The American production of the films raises questions about cultural imperialism ane the mass media, which we return to below [see pp. 626-30). Radio and television As audiences, we interact differently with the radio and television from how we do with the cinema. Radio and television The Media 589 Paul Julius Reuter initiated a prototype news service in Paris in 1844, using carner pigeons as well as the electric telegraph in his network. By 1923, the company he founded, Reuters, was transmilling mews by radia, enters the household in a way that the cinema cannot. Neither do these media demand the attention that film does. Lis- tening to the radio, in particular, is com- bined with other activities in the everyday lives of its audience — most radia is listened to in the morning as part of the ritual of preparation for the day. Television and radio also have an immediacy which film does not they can report events, as they did! the terrorist attacks in the USA in Sep- tember 2001, from almost anywhere in the world loa mass audience as they happen. In the UK, radio was quickly taken under the conteol of a public monopoly, which by 1926 had become known as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Radia provided the organizational model for television broadcasting in the UK, and the BBC remains a public organization to this day, funded by licence fees charged ta every household that owns a television set. For some years the BBC was the only organization permitted to broadcast either radio or television programmes in the UK. This policy was relayed with the introduction of commercial television in the 1950s - dependent on advertising for its revenue, rather than the licence fee — and later a host of commercial radio sta- lions, The first Director-General of the BEC, John Reith (later Lord Reith), a strict Pres- byterian Christian, imposed his values rigidily on the organization. To Reith the purpose of the BBC was to “inform, educate and entertain: it could be added, in thatorder. As the historian A. J. B Taylor has written, Reith used ‘the brute force af monopoly to stamp Christian morality on the British people’ (cited in Curran and Seaton 2003). Tt was during this period that the distinctive role of the BBC as a public-service broadcaster developed. (The future of public service broadcasting in the UK is discussed further on p. 614.) The number of television sets in the UK 590 THE MEDIA and the amount of time that people spend viewing them increased dramatically from the 1950s onwards. Television now domi- nates the other media. If the current trends in TY watching continue, by the age of eighteen the average child born today will have spent more time watching televi- sion than in any other activity except sleep. Virtually every household now pos- sesses a TV set. In the UK, every day around 85 per cent of adults watch televi- sion (HMSO 2004), and the average set is awitched on for between three and six hours per day, Much the sane is true jin other West European countries and in the USA. Individuals aged four and overiin the UK watch an average of twenty-five hours of television a week. Older people watch No. of hours. te 44 1 a twice as much television as children, perhaps because they are mot in school and go to bed later in the evening, and people from lower social classes watch more than those from the top three social classes (sec figure 15.11. Television and sectal life Several media theorists have been highly sceptical about the effects that a seem- ingly ever-increasing diet of television has had on the populatian: tee well-known accounts have been provided by Robert Putnam in his recent works on social capital and Neil Postman (1941-2003) in his tellingly titled book, Arinstag Onr- selves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), Bf Al homes 1B Multichannel homes Middle Vrarking en class chaise ae se Ln as a oe Figure 15.1) Number of hours of television wewed per household per day, by age and social class, January-March 2003 Source: Adapted fram Ofcom (2005), p. 32 To Postman, television presents serious issues as entertainment because, in his phrase, ‘the form excludes the content’ By this, he means that television as ‘the form’ isa medium that is incapable of sustaining serious ‘content. For Postman, rational argument is best carried on in the form of the printed word, which is capable of sus- taining complex and serious content, He harks back to the nineteenth century as an ‘age of reason, when the written word wis dominant, Postoian'’s argument con tains some similarities with Marshall MeLuhan’s claim that ‘the medium is the message’ [see p. 565), although Postman is much more sceptical than McLuhan about the benefits of electronic media. To Postman, the medium of print creates a rational population, whereas the medium oftelevision creates an entertained one. In a society dominated by the television, news, education and polities are all reduced to entertainment, so that we are, as the tithe of his book indicates, doing nothing more than ‘amusing ourselves to death’ Although Postman's book is fiercely argued, it has been criticized as being based on impression rather than empiri- cal research, This criticism cannot be ley- elled at the work of the American political theorist Robert Putman. Putnam's thesis on the decline of ‘social capital is examined in mare detail in chapter 15, ‘Organizations and Net- works) pp. 675-9. By social capital, as we have seen, Putnam is referring to useful social networks, a sense of mutual obligation and trust- worthiness, an understanding of the norms that govern effective behaviour and. in general, other social resources that enable The Media 591 people to act effectively. Putnam’ account, put forward in his book Bowling Alone (2000) and elsewhere, is based on research inthe United States, where he finds signifi- cant decline in social capital over the last few decades. Putnam (1996) suggests a culprit for that decline: television. Putnam points out that in 1950, around the time measures of social capital peaked, barely 10 per cent of Americans had a tele- vision set in their homes; by 1959, this figure had risen to 90 percent. Studies esti- mate that the average American now watches roughly four hours of TY every day (not including periods when television is merely playing in the background), A conservative estimate of television viewing in the USA means that this one activity now absorbs around 40 percent of the average Americans free time. Putnam notes that this massive change in the way Americans spend their lives coincided pre- cisely with the years of declining social capital, Putnam argues that the link between mass television watching and the erosion of social capital is mot merely circurmstan- tial. Taking other facts into consideration, such as education, age and gender, TV viewing is strongly and negatively related to secial trust and group membership, Ushag the same criteria, the correlation of hewspaper reading to social trust and proup membership is positive, One reason Putnam suggests forwhy T¥ wewing erodes social capital is the effect of programme content on viewers, For example, studies suggest that heavy watchers of TV are unusually sceptical about the benevolence of other people — by overestimating crime rates forexample. Putnam concludes: ‘Just as the erosion of the ozone layer was detected only many 5o2 THE MEDIA years after the proliferation of the chlorofluorocarbons that caused it, so too the crosion of America’s social capital became visible only several decades atter the underlying process had begun.’ Although Putnam warns against nostalgia for the 1950s, he argues that it is time for critical reflection on the effects of techneol- ogies on our lives (Putnam 1995), New media In his book Beleg Dlgiral (1995), the founder of the media laboratery at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nicholas Negroponte, analyses the pro- found importance of digital data in current communications technologies. Any piece ofinformation, including pictures, moving images and sounds, can be translated through a binary system into “bits. A bit is either | ord. For instance, the digital repre- sentation of 1,2,3,4,5,is 1, 10,11, 100, 101, etc. Digitization - and speed - is at the origin of the development of multimedia: what used to be different media needing different technologies (such as visuals and sound) can now be combined on a single medium (DVD and PCs, ete. In recent years the processing power of computers has doubled every eighteen months, This means, for example, that itis now possible te watch films and listen ta music via the Internet, Digitization also permits the development of interactive media, allow- ingindividuals actively to participate in, ar structure, what they see or hear. In this section we examine the protound impact that digitization has had om the media. Digital! television Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, television broadcasting technol- ogy has been undergoing a revolution, with the transfer of programme transmis- sion from analogue to digital. Analogue TY is the ‘old’ system of broadcasting that has been used to transmit signals to television sets around the country since the 1940s, [t converts sound and pictures into waves, which are transmitted through the air and picked up by the aerial on the reef of the house or on top of the television. Digital TV works by transforming pic- tures and sound inte information that is understood by a computer, Digital trars- missions are received in three ways: through the TV aerial and a decoder (often a set-top box), via a satellite dish or via cable, The television acts like a computer and converts this information back inte pictures and sound. Broadcasters and service providers argue that digital televi- sion not only means more channels, but alse a better quality of sound and pictures and additional services. Digital TV offers the possibility of, for instance, interactive television, the Internet, home shopping and home banking. The arrival of digital TV has also created the possibility of single units that merge the personal computer with the television, although these are not yet widely in use. In the UE, the government hapes that all viewers will have transferred from ara- logue to digital television by 2012, when the transmission of television on analogue frequencies is expected to stop. All trans- missions from then on will be digital. By 2004, one-third of WK households had already switched to digital television. The number of television channels available to British audiences has been increasing as a result of advances in satel- lite, cable and digital technology. In 2003, one service provider, Sky, offered a