Understanding Media Evolution and Challenges

9/9 and 9/11 Lecture Notes: Newspapers and Magazines * What can newspapers do to stay relevant in the 21st century? -It is proven that technology has shortened the attention span of all generations that use technology -Gen Z wants content to serve multiple purposes (inform AND entertain) -KISS- Keep It Simple Stupid (Keep your writing easy to understand so people will read) -News that is exaggerated or “fake news” catches younger generations’ attention -Often “Breaking News” now relates to celebrities and their lives -Newspaper channels could switch to a video platform and do short and sweet segments (like “Inside Edition”) Early Newspapers * 1618: Curanto, published in Amsterdam, is first English newspaper * 1622: newspapers being published in Britain, distributed through coffeehouses * Followers of church reforms John Calvin and Martin Luther amongst earliest publishers -Made newspapers based on their denominations of Christianity Colonial Publishing * 1690: Publick Occurrences, first papr published in American colonies * Colonial newspapers subject to British censorship * 1721: New England Courant -Published by James Franklin, Ben’s older brother -First paper published without “By Authority” notice Early American Newspapers * Audience primarily wealthy elite * Published by political parties * Focused on opinion, not news * Expensive and had small circulation * Generally bought by prepaid subscription Penny Press Revolution * Benjamin Day’s idea: The New York Sun - “It shines for all” * Sold on the street for one or two cents * Supported primarily by advertising Newspaper Wars: Hearst vs. Pulitzer * Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World * Creation of the front page * Often staged sensational stunts * Created headlines with news * Targeting immigrants and women * Nellie Bly and stunt journalism -Women were more likely to be put into Asylums back then -Bly wrote a story on how women are treated in asylums (went undercover as a patient) * William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal * Rise of Yellow Journalism * Popularized comics, including Yellow Kid * Sensationalistic stories by both papers promoting Spanish-American War in Cuba Broadcast News - Radio * 1920: KDKA covers Harding-Cox presidential election results * 1930s: newspapers argue radio should not broadcast news * WW2: Edward R Murow broadcasting for CBS from Europe - Brought the war home for listeners -Broadcasted live while Germany was bombing England at start of WW2 Birth of Photojournalism * Photographer Mathew Brady first became famous for portraits, Civil War photography team * By 1864, Harper’s Weekly was reproducing his team’s photos * Promoted idea that photographs could be published documents preserving history The Muckrakers * Progressive investigative journalists writing in the late 1800s, early 1900s * McClure’s Popular Reform-Oriented muckraking magazine featuring work by Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell * Teddy Roosevelt coined the term “muckraker” as a sign of contempt for their work (derogatory term) -Ex: investigating the working conditions of factories where children were working, when it wasn’t even safe for adults to be working there 9/11 Lecture Notes Continuing Chapter 5 * Corporate greed was starting to become a big issue in businesses * Muckrakers wanted to expose corruption in these big businesses and industries * President Nixon hated the media and despised media attention Henry Luce and Birth of Time/Life * Luce developed idea of Time magazine in the early 1920s to present the week’s news in context to readers * Followed by Fortune magazine covering the world of business * Life magazine presented the news through photos, featured work of Margaret Bourke-White and others establishing photojournalism as a legitimate part of the mass media * Time, Inc. magazines now owned by Meredith Corp. * Life magazine is no longer in publication, except for special issues Broadcast News - Television * 1940: Republican national convention covered by experimental NBC television network -Murrow makes jump from radio to television * 1948: CBS starts nightly 15-minute newscast * 1963: CBS expands newscast to 30 minutes with Walter Cronkite -1960s all of the TV news channels started 30 minute broadcasts * 1979: ABC starts Nightline during Iranian hostage crisis -Original show was called “American Held Hostage” -After the hostages were released the channel decided to do the same thing with different events -Started Nightline Broadcast News - Cable * 1980: CNN goes on the air, promises not to sign off until the “end of the world” * 1991: Gulf War makes CNN the place to go for current news -Operation Desert Storm put CNN on the map * 2000s: Fox News comes to dominate the cable news ratings with programming that takes a strong point of view * As of 2017, approximately 50% of Americans get news from television in some form * 1996: Fox News and MSNBC are formed Community and Suburban Papers * Daily and weekly papers serving individual communities and suburbs * 97% of newspapers in U.S fall into this category * Community papers can and do win Pulitzer Prizes * Publish news people can’t get anywhere else * “A local paper won’t get scooped by CNN” Papers with National Research: Wall Street Journal * Focus on financial news * Owned News Corp * Combined digital/print daily circulation of approx. 2.27 million * Editorial page is one of nation’s leading conservative voices USA Today * Brought color and design to forefront * Originally described as having “News McNuggets” -Short stories that draw attention * Has daily New York Times * Started as a penny paper * Influential in defining national news * Although tied to New York, has national circulation * Massive growth in online digital circulation Washington Post * Came to national prominence with Watergate scandal reporting of Woodward and Bernstein * Prominent source of government news * Much larger national presence online under leadership of new owner Jeff Bezos Los Angeles Times * Leading West Coast paper * Gaining national profile with online presence * Won fight with Disney when media giant tried to cut LA Times off from movie screenings -Disney tried to prevent LA Times critics from entering their next movie screening Herbert Gans: Basic Journalistic Values (His opinion of good journalism values) * Ethnocentrism -The belief that your own country and culture is better than all others * Altruistic Democracy -The idea that politicians should serve the public good, not their own interests * Responsible Capitalism -The idea that open competition among businesses will create a better, more prosperous world. But must be responsible * Individualism -The quest to identify the one person who makes a difference * Moderatism -The value of moderation in all things. Extremists on left and right are viewed with suspicion -The idea of moderation * Social Order -When journalists cover disorder they tend to focus on the restoration of order * Leadership -Media look at the actions of leaders whereas the actions of lower-level bureaucrats are ignored -If a business fails, typically reports on the higher-ups of said company News Media, Identity, and Political Bias * Fake News -Satire -Mistakes & Fabrication -Partisan Clickbait (Fake covers to draw a readers/viewers attention) -Foreign Political Manipulation -Media Criticism -Ex: TMZ -Doing uncommon things like taking photos at funerals, or broadcasting a celebrity death before the family is notified -Politicians might say something is “fake news” to deflect from the real story that may be occurring Dangers Journalists Face * In 2017, 46 journalists were killed in direct connection with their work * Eight killed in Iraq, 8 killed in Syria, 6 in Mexico and 4 in India * 5 Journalists killed at Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD in 2018 * Big consequences of attacks is that stories from dangerous places won’t get told * Jamal Khashoggi * Summer 2020 coverage of George Floyd protests Where Do People Go for the News? * People often choose their news sources based on their political views The Black Press * Black Press dates back to 1827 * Freedom’s Journal, North Star (published by Frederik Douglass) published emancipation papers * Chicago Defender et al. still publishing as of today some are available only online Hispanic and Latinx Presses * Hispanic and Latinx presses face declining circulation like rest of industry The LGBTQIA+ Press * Started in late 1960s, copied on office equipment, distributed in gay bars * Grew into profitable, professional papers * Losing revenue as gay advertising 9/16 Lecture Notes: Audio Music Class Discussion * Do the “Explicit Lyrics” warning labels on CDs and on music streaming sites such as Spotify help parents control the music young people are listening to, or do they simply serve to make controversial music more attractive? -Al Gore’s wife heard her teenage daughter listening to “Darling Nicky” by Prince, and decided to speak up about young people listening to explicit music -Through apps such as TikTok, Musically, and Vine younger children had access to music that may have been a little too mature for young people (this may vary depending on the person) -Bone Thugs and Harmony and “outcasts” -Sometimes children are oblivious to what is being said in a song and just like the way the song sounds -Websites like YouTube and all other streaming platforms can expose us as people to music that we may have not been exposed to before Storing Sound * 1877: Edison invents phonograph, records sound on foil cylinders * 1888: Emile Berliner develops gramophone, plays music on mass produced discs * 1953: Hi-Fi (High Fidelity) combination of technologies to create better music reproduction Radio Music Box Memo * Written in 1915 by engineer David Sarnoff * Said that households all over the country would have a radio box for entertainment and to keep informed * Suggested major uses for radio as mass communication tool including news, music, and sports * More receivers than transmitters RCA Monopoly * Created to bring together patents, develop radio as medium * Composed of General Electric, AT&T, Westinghouse, and United Fruit Company * 1920: KDKA in Pittsburgh launched as first commercial radio station Growth of Radio Networks * Sarnoff saw NBC as source of programming * William Paley saw CBS as advertising medium * In the 1930s (demographic from 1937) the film industry is thriving on the East Coast Golden Age of Radio * Music * Drama * Little Orphan Annie, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow * Soap Operas * Guiding Light started on radio in 1937, moved to television in 1952, ran until 2009 Radio’s New Look * HD tried to bring new life to broadcast radio, but few receivers * Satellite Radio- XM and Sirius merge, Single service more successful * Mobile streaming increasingly used in vehicles Online & Mobile Audio * Streaming audio (Spotify, Amazon Music, Youtube Music, etc.) * Podcasting * Podcasts bring programming from both the short head and the long tail * Podcasts named after Apple’s iPod 9/18 Lecture Notes Smart Speakers * Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod * Deliver audio programming, control of “internet of things” devices, online shopping * Essentially a full-time listening device in your home connected to large external servers * “Living in the future” or “creepy surveillance culture”? Rock ‘n’ Roll and Musical Integration * Race Records * 1950s: Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry -Elvis Presley got his musical influence from Black artists * Dewey Phillips (DJ) attracted mutli-racial audience for Red, Hot and Blue show Motown * Motown: The Sound of Young America * Founded by Berry Gordy * Originally called Hitsville USA * R and B to the masses * Black music to the mainstream * Highly-revered music in the present -The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Tarrell, Diana Ross, The Commodores, etc. * Went from being the name of a record label, to becoming its own genre British Invasion * A ‘rougher edge’ sound from British bands -Ex: The Beatles * Concept Albums -There is intent of how the album is structured from the first song to the last * 1970s British Metal groups started to come to the U.S * 1980s “Black British Invasion” (Ex: Billy Ocean) Hip-Hop Culture * MCing (Emcee) -Rapping over pre-recorded music * DJing -Turntables, scratching, etc. * B-boying -The alternative word for breakdancing * Graffiti Art (Related to hip-hop culture) -Tagging (implies criminal activity) -Became popular in late 70s into the 80s -Murals of Tupac, Biggie, Eazy-E, etc. * Hip-Hop gives voice to protest movements around the world Country Music * Grew out of Irish and Scottish folk music, Mississippi blues, and Christian Gospel music * Grew in the 1950s and 1960s with the Nashville sound * Most country songs had a narrative or storytelling aspect in the songs * Modern day country has a big pop element to it Radio Formats * Popular Radio * Talk Radio: Politics, News, Shock Jocks, and Sports Public Radio * NPR founded in 1967 * All Things Considered goes on the air in 1971 * NPR’s Morning Edition news show has bigger audience than any of the morning TV programs Effects of Music on Young People * There have always been concerns about effects of lyrics on young people * Adults and young adults have different interpretations of lyrics and meanings * Hip-Hop has attracted lots of controversy * Adults maintain connections with music from their youth * Newer Rap music seems to have a lot more swearing, sexual references, and explicit lyrics (It’s just more mainstream) * As a younger kid you really have no idea what an artist may be saying if it's dirty or explicit, but you will understand it as you start to get older -Ex: Rick James’ song “Mary Jane” is about marijuana, although younger people may think it’s just about a loving woman The Changing Musical Experience * Death of Social Music -People used to all listen to the same music on the same radio station or boombox -Then the walkman started to get big and people started listening to their own music * Rise of “personal soundtrack” * Personalized media use continues with downloads, podcasts and streaming audio * Can lead to “withdrawal from social connections” * Personal devices like phones and headphones have made people very self focused and dependent on technology so they could be by themselves instead of talking to people before classes or around school/work Rise of Digital Music * LPs versus 45s -Now had higher quality sound during music playback * Digital Recordings allow consumers to make perfect copies * CDs introduced in early 1980s, sold for premium price -Typically priced between $15-$20 * Resurgence of analog/vinyl in 2010s New Economic Models for Music Industry * File sharing, user-generated content, and Youtube changing marketplace -This cut out the middle man (a.k.a record labels) * But report in 2017 notes revenue from recorded music has been steadily increasing in recent years * Driving force is streaming services * Importance of producers * Artists seeking range of options to make money Music and the Long Tail: The Future of Sound 9/23 Lecture Notes Chapter 7: Movies - Mass Producing Entertainment * Some people in the younger audience watch movies and they have a big influence on the child -Ex: Using catchphrases from movies in our daily language or acting like a character does -Ex 2: In a movie a football team was hazing the new kids and made them lay down in a busy intersection during oncoming traffic (Real life kids thought it would be a good idea to replicate this) Early Movie Technology * 1870s and 1880s: Marey and Muybridge -Photographers -Marey took photos of animals -Muybridge set up 24 cameras along a horsetrack with tripwires to prove that all 4 hooves of a horse leave the ground when it gallops * 1894: Thomas Edison opens first kinetoscope parlor * Lumiere brothers invent portable movie camera and projector * Exhibit theaters were where people could go to watch motion pictures (earliest theaters) * Early 1900s: Nickelodeon theaters become popular Telling a Story With Film * 1903: Edwin S. Porter directs The Great Train Robbery -Had 12 separate scenes -Shot on multiple locations * 1915: Birth of a Nation is released -Depicted Black people as savages, rapists, etc. -White actors played Black people in this movie using “blackface” (white people putting black coloring all over their face) The Studio System * Movies as mass-produced art * Studios control all levels of production (vertical integration) -Big 5 Studios: Warner Bros., MGM, Fox, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Studios -Produced movies, owned theaters to show the movies they made * Talent works under exclusive contract to studios -Unions started to form because if you worked for a studio, you were told what film to work on, what film to act in, what to write in a film, etc. * Block bookings -Big studios would sort of “bully”/force theaters that they did not own to show their films that they produced -they would say “if you want to show the A list movie, then you need to show the B-D list films too” * Development of talking pictures Response to the Studio System * 1919: United Artists -Directors and actors take over * 1940s: United States vs. Paramount -The beginning of the break-up of the studio system under anti-trust laws -Ended the studio systems big monopoly power * During WW2 a lot of studios teamed up with the U.S Government to create military movies and get government points across (propaganda) The Blacklist * 1947: House Un-American Activities Committee holds hearing on communist influences in Hollywood * Hollywood Ten resisted testifying, were jailed and blacklisted * By 1953, as many as 324 were blacklisted, including many prominent screenwriters * Blacklist continued until 1960 when Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo hired to write Spartacus, Exodus -Trumbo had to write films under an alias because of the fact that he was blacklisted * Burgess Meredith was on the Blacklist, but was able to get roles after * Hazel Scott - Child prodigy from Trinidad, her name ended up on the Blacklist -She testified that she has no communist ties, but she still had to move to Europe to work because of the blacklist The Studio System * Television and the movies * Turn to television in the 1950s * Declining interest in movies 9/25 Lecture Notes Movies React To Television * Movie audiences peak in 1946-80; million tickets sold per week * By 1953, ticket sales drop to 46 million per week * First round of 3D movies, large-format theaters * Growing popularity of color * Growth of multiplex theaters The Blockbuster Era * 1975: Jaws creates the summer blockbuster * Succession of big-budget films with very wide release * 2015-16: Star Wars: The Force Awakens has biggest box office to date * 1939: Gone With The Wind sold the most tickets * 1990s: Home video becomes as important as theatrical release * Movie viewership in the Digital Era: Large Format Films * IMAX * Group experience (People and organizations started going to see movies in groups, or families were now going together) The Franchise Era * Are franchise movies more important than stand-alone blockbusters? -Sometimes franchises tend to make a lot more money than stand alone blockbusters because some franchises have SO MANY super fans that give the film a lot of money in the box office * Franchise Movies-Several movies that all follow the same storyline, or follow the same characters (could also be spreading a story over multiple films) * Franchises can sometimes take away from originality and creativity in the film industry Digital Production and Projection * 1977: Star Wars brings computer-generated cameras to movie making * 2004: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow becomes the first major film to have all-digital sets * 2007: 300 shows movie with digital sets can be successful * Late 2009-10: Digital and 3D digital projection grown in popularity * Computer-generated imagery (CGI) now became popular * Better 3-D image and lower cost * Some directors still choose to shoot on film Popularity of Bollywood Films * World’s biggest source of movies * Big musical numbers cross-language barriers * Having influence on western films * Known as masala or spice movies * Having to deal more with American imports being dubbed into local languages * Nollywood-Films that gained popularity that were shot, produced, and released from the country of Nigeria Racial Representation in the Movies * Stereotypes in films -Still found in movies and TV shows to this day * Casting white actors in parts intended for non-white performers -White actors portraying Black and Asian characters * Scarlett Johansson -Was cast as the lead protagonist in a Japanese anime (controversial) * Tilda Swinton -Character in the comic book Dr. Strange was an Asian man, and Hollywood replaced it with a White female actress in the movie * Movies with Asian cast * Are things changing? -Hollywood is slightly changing, but still has a long way to go * There is a presumption that movies with actors ALL OF COLOR do not sell well -Crazy Rich Asians proves this to be different -Everything Everywhere All At Once broke this stereotype as well The Bechdel Test * Test to see how central women characters are in the movie, not a test of quality 10/7 Lecture Notes Chapter 9: Online and Mobile Media What is the Internet? * “New” mass medium incorporating elements of interpersonal, group, and mass communications * “A diverse set of independent networks interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network” Development of the Internet * How do we make incompatible computers talk with each other? * How do we share information? * Can we maintain military communication after nuclear war? (But this system was never built) Packet Switching * 1964: Paul Baran develops decentralized computer network for Air Force * Messages are broken into small data packets, which are sent independently across the network * Receiving computer reassembles message * Air Force chooses NOT to build this network * Donald Davies proposes similar civilian network for Britain; also not built ARPAnet * Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) * Networking incompatible computers across the country * Went online in 1969, same year as the moon landing * Intended for primarily academic use Connecting Incompatible Networks * ARPAnet led to multiple packet-switching networks * How do you link these small networks together? * Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf created rules for networks to communicate with each other, a protocol known as TCP/IP * Next generation networks The Internet * Transmission control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) -How data is transmitted and how computers can locate each other * Internet -Internetworking of networks -Data exchange follows specific rules Online/Mobile Media * Electronic Mail (Email) -A message sent from one computer user to another across a network * Texting and Direct Messaging -Electronic message systems that allow two or more users to communicate in real time World Wide Web * Hypertext -Tim Berners-Lee, Enquire Within Upon Everything: wouldn’t it be a good idea to be able to share documents located on computers anywhere in the world? * Created the World Wide Web and gave the software away for free Major Components of The Web * Uniform Resource Locator (URL) -The address of the content placed on the web * Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http) -The standard set of rules for sending web content over the Internet Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) * The programming language used to describe the content on web pages Key Web Principles * One address to take users to a document * Everything should be accessible/linkable * Any type of data should be available on any type of computer * The web should be a tool for interaction, not just publication * No central control Accessing the Web * Mosaic-The first graphical web browser * Growth of high-speed continuous (broadband) access to the broadband internet access * Expansion of mobile access to the internet World Wide Web Searching on the World Wide Web * Criticisms of Google * Government and search capability Mobile Apps * Is the web dead? * Apps are big part of how we interact online * Mobile Devices becoming dominant method of going online Blogs * Collection of links and commentary in hypertext * Typically a Generation X form of communication/information * Blog reports brought down former CBS anchor Dan Rather after he mishandled a story on President George W. Bush * Blogs let writers talk directly to readers, bypassing legacy media Podcasts and Streaming Media * Online tools such as YouTube let non-journalists post video news online * Streaming media gets long-tail movies and video in front of a large audience * Distributing audio and video programming no longer requires a broadcast network The Notion of Cyberspace * Taken from word cybernetics-science of communication and control theory * Originally used in 1982 magazine story by William Gibson * Gibson also coined cyberpunk-a style of writing and movies that deal with the blurring of the lines between humans and computers 10/9 Lecture Notes Conflicts Over Digital Media * Controlling online content * Protecting intellectual property -Ex: Copyrighted films or TV shows * Privacy and the web -Companies use your data to recommend and suggest more products for you (ex: Amazon) -There is no federal law that grants people privacy rights online Media Convergence * Bringing together traditional legacy media with online media -EX: Disney+ * Reverse Synergy -When you get the worst of both by combining old and new media -EX: ABC is now available on streaming platforms Everything is Data * More and more media being delivered digitally * Mobile phones often have unlimited talk time and text messages, but definite limits on data use * Streaming services replacing satellite/cable for many subscribers * Cable companies experimenting with streaming apps to replace set-top cable boxes * Loss of privacy * Cookies The Internet and Society: Hacker Ethic * Independent use of computers * Consequences of uncontrolled information * Hacker ethic * Hacking the 2016 Presidential Election * Russian hacking and Trump’s win * Fake accounts and false stories * Hacked DNC network * Hacked into voter registration systems The Internet and Society: Our Online World * Changes in understanding of community -Similarities with the telegraph -Uniqueness of the internet -Internet access * Conflicts over digital media: Controlling Content on the Web -Unsuitable content -Filtering software * Conflicts over digital media: Privacy and the Web -Loss of privacy -Cookies 10/13 Reading Notes Chapter 10 * Social Network- Something that connects individuals or groups over a common platform * 5 Basic Characteristics that make Social Media Social: 1. User generated content-Social networks allow you to consume content AND create it (written words, photos, podcasts. etc.) 2. Comments-Could be as simple as liking a photo, or “extensive online debates” 3. Tagging-Tag people in photos where they are featured -Hashtags -Wasn’t created until a year after Twitter was started 4. Social Networking-Share posts online with groups or friends that are like-minded 5. Customization-Make your page on social media unique -Facebook has the profile photo AND a bigger cover photo -Twitter has an “avatar” * Social media is not just for recreational use, but can also be used for business -Collaboration -Public Relations -Crowdsourcing YouTube * Created by Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim * Most popular social network used by 91% of people aged 18-29 Facebook * Created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 when he was a Harvard student in 2004 * As of 2020 63%+ of Americans 12 and older use Facebook * More than 2.4 billion users worldwide (YouTube is bigger, but provides less services) * Facebook can find where you are located in the world using your IP address * Uses your browsing outside of FB for “targeted ads” * Facebook groups are not allowed to post political matters on the group page 10/14 Lecture Notes Chapter 10: Social Media and Video Games Social Media: Sharing Our Lives Online * Social Media * Five basic characteristics * Popular social networks * YouTube -Founders (Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim) -Platform for sharing videos * Facebook -Created by Mark Zuckerberg -Launched in 2005 (Had to be a college student and have college email to join) -Attractive to advertisers -Moderating groups -Controversies: User Privacy * Instagram -Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom -Changes to compete with other social media platforms * Snapchat -Popular among youth -Decline in popularity? -Difficult for it to make money * Twitter -Founders: Williams, Dorsey, and Stone -Valuable to businesses -Avenue in spreading messages on social and political issues -Everyday conversations -2022: Bought by Elon Musk -Now referred to as “X” * TikTok -Owned by ByteDance -Increasingly popular -Censorship and data collection Privacy * In digital era, the definition of privacy has changed * Allows people to control what gets put online * Social media collecting data on users * A lot of the time social media companies do collect your personal information and sell it to 3rd-party companies * People can find where you live or where you posted a picture from using location services and/or deeply searching the internet * The image you post can impact your future -Don’t want to look like a risk or liability to a job/school -Job loss or not hired -School discipline -Affect college admissions -Reputation -Oversharing (Parents posting baby pictures or childrens’ milestones. Children cannot consent to this, and may feel uncomfortable or embarrassed) Cyberbullying and Harassment * According to 2019 CDC report: approx. 15.7% of high schoolers were cyberbullied within 12 months prior to the survey * Cyberbullying among adults * Cyberbullying and celebrities Social Media and Your Future * No federal legislation to ban employers and schools from looking into your social media accounts -Potential employers, schools, and colleges have asked for social media passwords (Typically legally cannot ask for your password) -Lawsuits have been filed against schools and employers * Many states have passed laws banning such practices, although some employers and schools still search social media Development of Video Games * Turing Test -Named after British mathematician Alan Turing -Created a system to break German code in WW2 -Computers were able to produce computer chess games * Tennis for Two -First video game ever created * Spacewar! -Created in 1961 by MIT Students -Made by $120,000 equipment (Over $5,000 today) * Atari Popularizes Video Games -Nolan Bushnell -Pong -Atari 2600 -Decreasing sales * Importance of Arcades -Gathering spot -Force in youth culture -Pac-Man 10/16 Lecture Notes Development of Video Games (cont’d.) * Nintendo Revives Home Console Market -1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) -Strict control over production -Super Mario Bros. -Nintendo Game Boy introduced in 1990s (Tetris one of most popular games) -Made and sold games that parents would be okay with their children playing -Nintendo cereal was made to push the company’s sales -Nintendo DS -Nintendo 3DS -Nintendo Wii -Nintendo Switch * Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox -Sony Playstation (“Tomb Raider”= most popular game) -Microsoft Xbox (First Person Shooters became popular) -Nintendo’s new focus Conflicts Over Video Games * Inciting fear and controversy -Death Race and Custer’s Revenge (Running over people, references to rape) -Mortal Kombat (In the 90s it was the most popular video game in history) -Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise * Pokemon -Pokemon -Successful franchise -Pokemon Go -Augmented reality Video Games as Mass Communication * Content delivery devices * New advertising venue * Site of communities * Highly profitable * First Amendment protection Video Games as a Spectator Sport * Twitch * Battle royale games * Fortnite * ESports Video Games in Contemporary Culture * Animal Crossing: New Horizons * Video game platforms as venues * Diversity and Representation in Video Games -Lack of representational diversity 10/21 Lecture Notes Chapter 12 Advertising: Selling a Message The Development of the Advertising Industry * What is advertising? * “Any form of nonpersonal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor” The Birth of Consumer Culture * Industrialization -Going from work done by hand in small shops, to mass production of goods in factories * Modernization -Changing from a society in which people’s identities are fixed at birth to a society where people can choose who they want to be and how they want to present themselves to the world The Growth of Brand Names * Brand Names -A word or phrase attached to prepackaged consumers goods so they can be better promoted and identified * Early brands included: Quaker Oats, Pears’ soap * Economy of Abundance -An economy in which there are as many or more goods available as people are able to buy Advertising-Supported Media * 1830s: Penny press newspapers * Mid-1800s: Consumer magazines * Radio and television well-suited as advertising media * “We’re in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. (The sponsors) come to us asking for women 18 to 49 and adults 25 to 34, and we try to deliver” - Robert Niles, TV network marketing executive * Local Advertising -Designed to get people to use local stores, businesses, or service providers * National Advertising -Designed to build demand for a nationally available product or service * Direct-Action Message -Designed to get consumers to go to a particular place or engage in a specific action, such as purchasing a product * Indirect-Action Message -Designed to build the image of and demand for a product without calling for a specific action * Advocacy Advertising -Designed to promote a particular point of view rather than a product or service; can be sponsored by a government, corporation, trade association, or non-profit association * Public Service Advertising -Designed to promote the messages of non-profit institutions and government agencies * Trade Advertising -Also called business-to-business advertising -Promotes products and services to other businesses The Advertising Business * Client -The company with something to sell * Agency (may be in-house or contracted) -Advertising professionals * Media -Where the ads appear * Audience -Message recipients The Agency * Research and Planning -How do you meet the clients’ objectives? Do the ads accomplish what the client wants? * Creative Activity -Creating the ad itself; often a tension between creativity and salesmanship * Media Planning -Deciding which media provide the most cost effective way to reach the target audience The Media * Newspapers * Magazines * Outdoor Advertising * Radio * Television * Digital The Audience * Targeting -Trying to make a product or service appeal to a narrowly defined group -Targeting is done with: Demographics, Geographics, Psychographics * Psychographics and VALS -Not just who the audience is, but what motivates them -Psychographics look at people’s lifestyles, relationship to the product, and personality traits -VALS, developed by SRI international, places people in eight categories based on motivation and level of resources Advertising in Contemporary Culture * Advertising makes you buy things you don’t want * Reality: Suggests a possible need * Advertising makes things cost more * Reality: Advertising lowers costs by raising demand * Advertising helps sell bad products * Reality: Not for very long * Advertising is a waste of money * Reality: Sustains goods moving through the pipeline to keep economic growth going The Problem of Clutter * Clutter -The large number of non-programming messages that compete for consumer attention on radio, television, and the internet -Breaking through the clutter is an ongoing challenge for advertisers -Multiple television networks looking to lower advertising load to reduce clutter -Creative advertising makes products stand out -Ads can become more important than programs Debunking Subliminal Advertising * Subliminal Advertising -When messages that are allegedly embedded so deeply in an ad that they cannot be perceived consciously When Advertisements Are More Important Than the Program * Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl Ad -Introduced Macintosh computer -Indirect action, national ad -One of the most memorable commercials ever -Established idea of event commercial -Early example of integrated marketing communication 10/22 Lecture Notes Advertising to Children * Children are a growing advertising market * In 1983 spending was $100 million a year to reach children * By 2008, spending on ads to reach children reached $17 billion a year * Food ads directed at kids -Does food advertising contribute to childhood obesity? -Should advertising of “junk food” to children be limited? (What is “junk food”?) -Should there be other limits on advertising to children? -What would the consequences be of not advertising to children? Integrated Marketing Communication * An overall communication strategy for reaching key audiences using advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and interactive media * Case Study: Elon Musk’s Companies -Brands include Tesla (electric cars), SpaceX (reusable rocket ships) and Powerwall (solar-powered batteries) * Launched his Tesla Roadster convertible in a Falcon Heavy rocket test * Got global attention for both his space launch and car brands with minimal spending on media Is Anyone Watching Television Ads? * Loss of television audience to DVR/streaming * Rise of mobile advertising; potential for location-based advertising * Mobile advertising went from $31.6 billion in 2015 to projected $77.1 billion in 2020 Product Placement * Product Integration -When the product or service being promoted is not only seen, but is central to the story Social Marketing * Social Marketing: Using credible people on social media to promote your product * What is vital to social marketing campaigns: viewers need to perceive it as real * Instagram and others working to identify sponsored posts 10/28 Lecture Notes: Chapter 13: Public Relations, Interactions, Relationships, and the News From Press Agency to Professionalism * Public Relations -”The management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends” Who Are the Publics? * Public -Any group of people who share a common set of interests and goals * Internal Publics -People within the organization * External Publics -People outside the organization * Media Relations -Two-way interactions with members of the press The Origins of Public Relations * Press Agentry -Sending one-way communication from the press agent to the media with little opportunity for feedback; was often deceptive and unethical * Early users of press agentry -P.T Barnum, Standard Oil, railroads, temperance, and abolitionist movements * Ivy Lee -Early PR practitioner -Helped railroads deal with image problems -Early advisor to John D. Rockefeller -Importance of telling the truth * Edward L. Bernays -Applied social-scientific research techniques to public relations -Promoted technique he called engineering consent -Applying principles of psychology and motivation to influencing public opinion -Wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928) -Recognized importance of the crowd World War 1: The Federal Government Starts Using Public Relations * Committee on Public Information (CPI) * CPI run by newspaperman George Creel * Four-Minute-Men -Importance of interpersonal channels * Opinion Leadership -A two-step process of persuasion that uses influential individuals to deliver information to the community (two-step flow) What is Public Relations? * According to Bernays, the functions of public relations are: -Informing -Persuading -Integrating The Public Relations Process * Research -Researching Opportunities, problems, or issues * Objectives -Specific and measurable outcomes * Programming -Activities to carry out objectives * Evaluation -Testing prior to campaign, monitoring during delivery, measuring outcomes * Stewardship -Maintaining relationships created during previous steps Crisis Communication * Principles of crisis communication * Be prepared -Have a plan for things that are likely and unlikely * Be honest -Lies will catch up with you and hurt worse than the original problem. Ask Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton * Apologize, and mean it -Real apologies include action * Move quickly -The news cycle moves quickly. You can’t get left behind * Communicate your actions -Remember these include internal and external publics, along with the press * The Tylenol-Scare -Tampered-with Extra Strength Tylenol capsules killed 7 in Chicago area -Johnson and Johnson immediately pulled product off the market in Chicago -In response to public fears, Johnson and Johnson recalled all Tylenol nationwide -PR firm Burson-Marsteller handled corporate communication for Johnson and Johnson -Re-introduced product with triple-sealed packaging -Communicated using sales reps, press conferences, and 60 Minute Interviews * The Exxon Valdez and BP oil spills -Oil tanker ran aground, spiled 240,000 barrels of crude oil into ocean -Exxon perceived as being at-fault for spill -Lacked effective crisis plan -Failed to control environment -Failed to accept responsibility immediately -Corporate image still suffering more than 29 years later -Still tried to keep message on technical issues rather than effects on people -Both companies tried to shift blame to others -Neither company had effective PR plan in place Public Relations Goes Online * Online media give PR professionals new channels to work with * Organizations can bypass legacy media * Internet gives critics access without gatekeeper limits of journalists * Online media make it easy to leak confidential information * Using social media effectively -Social media present an opportunity to interact with publics, not just a channel to send out information -Need to establish ongoing relationships * Kraft and the #Cheeseocalypse -Kraft had minor issue manufacturing one size of its Velveeta cheese product -Crisis was publicized; tweets poked fun at the issue -Kraft capitalized on the conversation for publicity and to learn more about their customers * Responding to an internet crisis -Identify your crisis team -Imagine your worst nightmare, and be prepared for it -Track what is being said about you online -Don’t wait–you have limited time to respond Journalism and Public Relations * News starts out as press release, press conference, speech, or event created to be covered by the media * There are limits to what PR professionals can do when it comes to news coverage Public Relations and the Government * In 2017, more than 11,529 lobbyists registered to work in Washington, D.C * Total spending on government relations more than $6.44 Billion * Government and politicians make extensive use of public relations * Jennifer Rubin: Sarah Huckabee Sanders has had credibility problems for misleading the White House press corps Spin Control: A More Personal Form of Public Relations * Spin Control -Attempting to shape how the press interprets (spins) stories * Spin Techniques: -Selectively leak information in advance, hoping reporters will pay more attention to early information * Contract press immediately after an event with your interpretation of the situation * Push the idea that there are always two sides to every story

9/9 and 9/11 Lecture Notes: Newspapers and Magazines

* What can newspapers do to stay relevant in the 21st century?
-It is proven that technology has shortened the attention span of all generations that use technology
-Gen Z wants content to serve multiple purposes (inform AND entertain)
-KISS- Keep It Simple Stupid (Keep your writing easy to understand so people will read)
-News that is exaggerated or “fake news” catches younger generations’ attention
-Often “Breaking News” now relates to celebrities and their lives
-Newspaper channels could switch to a video platform and do short and sweet segments (like “Inside Edition”)

Early Newspapers

* 1618: Curanto, published in Amsterdam, is first English newspaper
* 1622: newspapers being published in Britain, distributed through coffeehouses
* Followers of church reforms John Calvin and Martin Luther amongst earliest publishers
-Made newspapers based on their denominations of Christianity

Colonial Publishing

* 1690: Publick Occurrences, first papr published in American colonies
* Colonial newspapers subject to British censorship
* 1721: New England Courant
-Published by James Franklin, Ben’s older brother
-First paper published without “By Authority” notice

Early American Newspapers

* Audience primarily wealthy elite
* Published by political parties
* Focused on opinion, not news
* Expensive and had small circulation
* Generally bought by prepaid subscription

Penny Press Revolution

* Benjamin Day’s idea: The New York Sun - “It shines for all”
* Sold on the street for one or two cents
* Supported primarily by advertising

Newspaper Wars: Hearst vs. Pulitzer

* Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World
* Creation of the front page
* Often staged sensational stunts
* Created headlines with news
* Targeting immigrants and women
* Nellie Bly and stunt journalism
-Women were more likely to be put into Asylums back then
-Bly wrote a story on how women are treated in asylums (went undercover as a patient)
* William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal
* Rise of Yellow Journalism
* Popularized comics, including Yellow Kid
* Sensationalistic stories by both papers promoting Spanish-American War in Cuba

Broadcast News - Radio

* 1920: KDKA covers Harding-Cox presidential election results
* 1930s: newspapers argue radio should not broadcast news
* WW2: Edward R Murow broadcasting for CBS from Europe - Brought the war home for listeners
-Broadcasted live while Germany was bombing England at start of WW2

Birth of Photojournalism

* Photographer Mathew Brady first became famous for portraits, Civil War photography team
* By 1864, Harper’s Weekly was reproducing his team’s photos
* Promoted idea that photographs could be published documents preserving history

The Muckrakers

* Progressive investigative journalists writing in the late 1800s, early 1900s
* McClure’s Popular Reform-Oriented muckraking magazine featuring work by Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell
* Teddy Roosevelt coined the term “muckraker” as a sign of contempt for their work (derogatory term)
-Ex: investigating the working conditions of factories where children were working, when it wasn’t even safe for adults to be working there

9/11 Lecture Notes

Continuing Chapter 5

* Corporate greed was starting to become a big issue in businesses
* Muckrakers wanted to expose corruption in these big businesses and industries
* President Nixon hated the media and despised media attention

Henry Luce and Birth of Time/Life

* Luce developed idea of Time magazine in the early 1920s to present the week’s news in context to readers
* Followed by Fortune magazine covering the world of business
* Life magazine presented the news through photos, featured work of Margaret Bourke-White and others establishing photojournalism as a legitimate part of the mass media
* Time, Inc. magazines now owned by Meredith Corp.
* Life magazine is no longer in publication, except for special issues

Broadcast News - Television

* 1940: Republican national convention covered by experimental NBC television network
-Murrow makes jump from radio to television
* 1948: CBS starts nightly 15-minute newscast
* 1963: CBS expands newscast to 30 minutes with Walter Cronkite
-1960s all of the TV news channels started 30 minute broadcasts
* 1979: ABC starts Nightline during Iranian hostage crisis
-Original show was called “American Held Hostage”
-After the hostages were released the channel decided to do the same thing with different events
-Started Nightline

Broadcast News - Cable

* 1980: CNN goes on the air, promises not to sign off until the “end of the world”
* 1991: Gulf War makes CNN the place to go for current news
-Operation Desert Storm put CNN on the map
* 2000s: Fox News comes to dominate the cable news ratings with programming that takes a strong point of view
* As of 2017, approximately 50% of Americans get news from television in some form
* 1996: Fox News and MSNBC are formed

Community and Suburban Papers

* Daily and weekly papers serving individual communities and suburbs
* 97% of newspapers in U.S fall into this category
* Community papers can and do win Pulitzer Prizes
* Publish news people can’t get anywhere else
* “A local paper won’t get scooped by CNN”

Papers with National Research: Wall Street Journal

* Focus on financial news
* Owned News Corp
* Combined digital/print daily circulation of approx. 2.27 million
* Editorial page is one of nation’s leading conservative voices

USA Today

* Brought color and design to forefront
* Originally described as having “News McNuggets”
-Short stories that draw attention
* Has daily

New York Times

* Started as a penny paper
* Influential in defining national news
* Although tied to New York, has national circulation
* Massive growth in online digital circulation

Washington Post

* Came to national prominence with Watergate scandal reporting of Woodward and Bernstein
* Prominent source of government news
* Much larger national presence online under leadership of new owner Jeff Bezos

Los Angeles Times

* Leading West Coast paper
* Gaining national profile with online presence
* Won fight with Disney when media giant tried to cut LA Times off from movie screenings
-Disney tried to prevent LA Times critics from entering their next movie screening

Herbert Gans: Basic Journalistic Values (His opinion of good journalism values)

* Ethnocentrism
-The belief that your own country and culture is better than all others
* Altruistic Democracy
-The idea that politicians should serve the public good, not their own interests
* Responsible Capitalism
-The idea that open competition among businesses will create a better, more prosperous world. But must be responsible
* Individualism
-The quest to identify the one person who makes a difference
* Moderatism
-The value of moderation in all things. Extremists on left and right are viewed with suspicion
-The idea of moderation
* Social Order
-When journalists cover disorder they tend to focus on the restoration of order
* Leadership
-Media look at the actions of leaders whereas the actions of lower-level bureaucrats are ignored
-If a business fails, typically reports on the higher-ups of said company

News Media, Identity, and Political Bias

* Fake News
-Satire
-Mistakes & Fabrication
-Partisan Clickbait (Fake covers to draw a readers/viewers attention)
-Foreign Political Manipulation
-Media Criticism
-Ex: TMZ
-Doing uncommon things like taking photos at funerals, or broadcasting a celebrity death before the family is notified
-Politicians might say something is “fake news” to deflect from the real story that may be occurring

Dangers Journalists Face

* In 2017, 46 journalists were killed in direct connection with their work
* Eight killed in Iraq, 8 killed in Syria, 6 in Mexico and 4 in India
* 5 Journalists killed at Capital Gazette in Annapolis, MD in 2018
* Big consequences of attacks is that stories from dangerous places won’t get told
* Jamal Khashoggi
* Summer 2020 coverage of George Floyd protests

Where Do People Go for the News?

* People often choose their news sources based on their political views

The Black Press

* Black Press dates back to 1827
* Freedom’s Journal, North Star (published by Frederik Douglass) published emancipation papers
* Chicago Defender et al. still publishing as of today some are available only online

Hispanic and Latinx Presses

* Hispanic and Latinx presses face declining circulation like rest of industry

The LGBTQIA+ Press

* Started in late 1960s, copied on office equipment, distributed in gay bars
* Grew into profitable, professional papers
* Losing revenue as gay advertising

9/16 Lecture Notes: Audio Music

Class Discussion

* Do the “Explicit Lyrics” warning labels on CDs and on music streaming sites such as Spotify help parents control the music young people are listening to, or do they simply serve to make controversial music more attractive?
-Al Gore’s wife heard her teenage daughter listening to “Darling Nicky” by Prince, and decided to speak up about young people listening to explicit music
-Through apps such as TikTok, Musically, and Vine younger children had access to music that may have been a little too mature for young people (this may vary depending on the person)
-Bone Thugs and Harmony and “outcasts”
-Sometimes children are oblivious to what is being said in a song and just like the way the song sounds
-Websites like YouTube and all other streaming platforms can expose us as people to music that we may have not been exposed to before

Storing Sound

* 1877: Edison invents phonograph, records sound on foil cylinders
* 1888: Emile Berliner develops gramophone, plays music on mass produced discs
* 1953: Hi-Fi (High Fidelity) combination of technologies to create better music reproduction

Radio Music Box Memo

* Written in 1915 by engineer David Sarnoff
* Said that households all over the country would have a radio box for entertainment and to keep informed
* Suggested major uses for radio as mass communication tool including news, music, and sports
* More receivers than transmitters

RCA Monopoly
* Created to bring together patents, develop radio as medium
* Composed of General Electric, AT&T, Westinghouse, and United Fruit Company
* 1920: KDKA in Pittsburgh launched as first commercial radio station

Growth of Radio Networks

* Sarnoff saw NBC as source of programming
* William Paley saw CBS as advertising medium
* In the 1930s (demographic from 1937) the film industry is thriving on the East Coast

Golden Age of Radio

* Music
* Drama
* Little Orphan Annie, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow
* Soap Operas
* Guiding Light started on radio in 1937, moved to television in 1952, ran until 2009

Radio’s New Look

* HD tried to bring new life to broadcast radio, but few receivers
* Satellite Radio- XM and Sirius merge, Single service more successful
* Mobile streaming increasingly used in vehicles

Online & Mobile Audio

* Streaming audio (Spotify, Amazon Music, Youtube Music, etc.)
* Podcasting
* Podcasts bring programming from both the short head and the long tail
* Podcasts named after Apple’s iPod

9/18 Lecture Notes

Smart Speakers

* Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod
* Deliver audio programming, control of “internet of things” devices, online shopping
* Essentially a full-time listening device in your home connected to large external servers
* “Living in the future” or “creepy surveillance culture”?

Rock ‘n’ Roll and Musical Integration

* Race Records
* 1950s: Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry
-Elvis Presley got his musical influence from Black artists
* Dewey Phillips (DJ) attracted mutli-racial audience for Red, Hot and Blue show

Motown

* Motown: The Sound of Young America
* Founded by Berry Gordy
* Originally called Hitsville USA
* R and B to the masses 
* Black music to the mainstream
* Highly-revered music in the present
-The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Tammi Tarrell, Diana Ross, The Commodores, etc.
* Went from being the name of a record label, to becoming its own genre

British Invasion

* A ‘rougher edge’ sound from British bands
-Ex: The Beatles
* Concept Albums
-There is intent of how the album is structured from the first song to the last
* 1970s British Metal groups started to come to the U.S
* 1980s “Black British Invasion” (Ex: Billy Ocean)

Hip-Hop Culture

* MCing (Emcee)
-Rapping over pre-recorded music
* DJing
-Turntables, scratching, etc.
* B-boying
-The alternative word for breakdancing
* Graffiti Art (Related to hip-hop culture)
-Tagging (implies criminal activity)
-Became popular in late 70s into the 80s
-Murals of Tupac, Biggie, Eazy-E, etc.
* Hip-Hop gives voice to protest movements around the world

Country Music

* Grew out of Irish and Scottish folk music, Mississippi blues, and Christian Gospel music
* Grew in the 1950s and 1960s with the Nashville sound
* Most country songs had a narrative or storytelling aspect in the songs
* Modern day country has a big pop element to it

Radio Formats

* Popular Radio
* Talk Radio: Politics, News, Shock Jocks, and Sports

Public Radio

* NPR founded in 1967
* All Things Considered goes on the air in 1971
* NPR’s Morning Edition news show has bigger audience than any of the morning TV programs

Effects of Music on Young People

* There have always been concerns about effects of lyrics on young people
* Adults and young adults have different interpretations of lyrics and meanings
* Hip-Hop has attracted lots of controversy
* Adults maintain connections with music from their youth
* Newer Rap music seems to have a lot more swearing, sexual references, and explicit lyrics (It’s just more mainstream)
* As a younger kid you really have no idea what an artist may be saying if it's dirty or explicit, but you will understand it as you start to get older
-Ex: Rick James’ song “Mary Jane” is about marijuana, although younger people may think it’s just about a loving woman

The Changing Musical Experience
* Death of Social Music
-People used to all listen to the same music on the same radio station or boombox
-Then the walkman started to get big and people started listening to their own music
* Rise of “personal soundtrack”
* Personalized media use continues with downloads, podcasts and streaming audio
* Can lead to “withdrawal from social connections”
* Personal devices like phones and headphones have made people very self focused and dependent on technology so they could be by themselves instead of talking to people before classes or around school/work

Rise of Digital Music

* LPs versus 45s
-Now had higher quality sound during music playback
* Digital Recordings allow consumers to make perfect copies
* CDs introduced in early 1980s, sold for premium price
-Typically priced between $15-$20
* Resurgence of analog/vinyl in 2010s

New Economic Models for Music Industry

* File sharing, user-generated content, and Youtube changing marketplace
-This cut out the middle man (a.k.a record labels)
* But report in 2017 notes revenue from recorded music has been steadily increasing in recent years
* Driving force is streaming services
* Importance of producers
* Artists seeking range of options to make money

Music and the Long Tail: The Future of Sound

9/23 Lecture Notes

Chapter 7: Movies - Mass Producing Entertainment

* Some people in the younger audience watch movies and they have a big influence on the child
-Ex: Using catchphrases from movies in our daily language or acting like a character does
-Ex 2: In a movie a football team was hazing the new kids and made them lay down in a busy intersection during oncoming traffic (Real life kids thought it would be a good idea to replicate this)

Early Movie Technology

* 1870s and 1880s: Marey and Muybridge
-Photographers
-Marey took photos of animals
-Muybridge set up 24 cameras along a horsetrack with tripwires to prove that all 4 hooves of a horse leave the ground when it gallops
* 1894: Thomas Edison opens first kinetoscope parlor
* Lumiere brothers invent portable movie camera and projector
* Exhibit theaters were where people could go to watch motion pictures (earliest theaters)
* Early 1900s: Nickelodeon theaters become popular

Telling a Story With Film

* 1903: Edwin S. Porter directs The Great Train Robbery
-Had 12 separate scenes
-Shot on multiple locations
* 1915: Birth of a Nation is released
-Depicted Black people as savages, rapists, etc.
-White actors played Black people in this movie using “blackface” (white people putting black coloring all over their face)

The Studio System

* Movies as mass-produced art
* Studios control all levels of production (vertical integration)
-Big 5 Studios: Warner Bros., MGM, Fox, Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Universal Studios
-Produced movies, owned theaters to show the movies they made
* Talent works under exclusive contract to studios
-Unions started to form because if you worked for a studio, you were told what film to work on, what film to act in, what to write in a film, etc.
* Block bookings
-Big studios would sort of “bully”/force theaters that they did not own to show their films that they produced
-they would say “if you want to show the A list movie, then you need to show the B-D list films too”
* Development of talking pictures

Response to the Studio System

* 1919: United Artists
-Directors and actors take over
* 1940s: United States vs. Paramount
-The beginning of the break-up of the studio system under anti-trust laws
-Ended the studio systems big monopoly power
* During WW2 a lot of studios teamed up with the U.S Government to create military movies and get government points across (propaganda)

The Blacklist

* 1947: House Un-American Activities Committee holds hearing on communist influences in Hollywood
* Hollywood Ten resisted testifying, were jailed and blacklisted
* By 1953, as many as 324 were blacklisted, including many prominent screenwriters
* Blacklist continued until 1960 when Hollywood Ten member Dalton Trumbo hired to write Spartacus, Exodus
-Trumbo had to write films under an alias because of the fact that he was blacklisted
* Burgess Meredith was on the Blacklist, but was able to get roles after
* Hazel Scott - Child prodigy from Trinidad, her name ended up on the Blacklist
-She testified that she has no communist ties, but she still had to move to Europe to work because of the blacklist

The Studio System

* Television and the movies
* Turn to television in the 1950s
* Declining interest in movies
9/25 Lecture Notes

Movies React To Television

* Movie audiences peak in 1946-80; million tickets sold per week
* By 1953, ticket sales drop to 46 million per week
* First round of 3D movies, large-format theaters
* Growing popularity of color
* Growth of multiplex theaters
The Blockbuster Era

* 1975: Jaws creates the summer blockbuster
* Succession of big-budget films with very wide release
* 2015-16: Star Wars: The Force Awakens has biggest box office to date
* 1939: Gone With The Wind sold the most tickets
* 1990s: Home video becomes as important as theatrical release
* Movie viewership in the Digital Era: Large Format Films
* IMAX
* Group experience (People and organizations started going to see movies in groups, or families were now going together)

The Franchise Era

* Are franchise movies more important than stand-alone blockbusters?
-Sometimes franchises tend to make a lot more money than stand alone blockbusters because some franchises have SO MANY super fans that give the film a lot of money in the box office
* Franchise Movies-Several movies that all follow the same storyline, or follow the same characters (could also be spreading a story over multiple films)
* Franchises can sometimes take away from originality and creativity in the film industry

Digital Production and Projection

* 1977: Star Wars brings computer-generated cameras to movie making
* 2004: Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow becomes the first major film to have all-digital sets
* 2007: 300 shows movie with digital sets can be successful
* Late 2009-10: Digital and 3D digital projection grown in popularity
* Computer-generated imagery (CGI) now became popular
* Better 3-D image and lower cost
* Some directors still choose to shoot on film

Popularity of Bollywood Films

* World’s biggest source of movies
* Big musical numbers cross-language barriers
* Having influence on western films
* Known as masala or spice movies 
* Having to deal more with American imports being dubbed into local languages
* Nollywood-Films that gained popularity that were shot, produced, and released from the country of Nigeria

Racial Representation in the Movies

* Stereotypes in films
-Still found in movies and TV shows to this day
* Casting white actors in parts intended for non-white performers
-White actors portraying Black and Asian characters
* Scarlett Johansson
-Was cast as the lead protagonist in a Japanese anime (controversial)
* Tilda Swinton
-Character in the comic book Dr. Strange was an Asian man, and Hollywood replaced it with a White female actress in the movie
* Movies with Asian cast
* Are things changing?
-Hollywood is slightly changing, but still has a long way to go
* There is a presumption that movies with actors ALL OF COLOR do not sell well
-Crazy Rich Asians proves this to be different 
-Everything Everywhere All At Once broke this stereotype as well

The Bechdel Test

* Test to see how central women characters are in the movie, not a test of quality

10/7 Lecture Notes

Chapter 9: Online and Mobile Media

What is the Internet?

* “New” mass medium incorporating elements of interpersonal, group, and mass communications
* “A diverse set of independent networks interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network”

Development of the Internet

* How do we make incompatible computers talk with each other?
* How do we share information?
* Can we maintain military communication after nuclear war? (But this system was never built)

Packet Switching

* 1964: Paul Baran develops decentralized computer network for Air Force
* Messages are broken into small data packets, which are sent independently across the network
* Receiving computer reassembles message
* Air Force chooses NOT to build this network 
* Donald Davies proposes similar civilian network for Britain; also not built

ARPAnet

* Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
* Networking incompatible computers across the country
* Went online in 1969, same year as the moon landing
* Intended for primarily academic use

Connecting Incompatible Networks

* ARPAnet led to multiple packet-switching networks
* How do you link these small networks together?
* Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf created rules for networks to communicate with each other, a protocol known as TCP/IP
* Next generation networks

The Internet

* Transmission control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
-How data is transmitted and how computers can locate each other
* Internet
-Internetworking of networks
-Data exchange follows specific rules

Online/Mobile Media
* Electronic Mail (Email)
-A message sent from one computer user to another across a network
* Texting and Direct Messaging
-Electronic message systems that allow two or more users to communicate in real time

World Wide Web

* Hypertext
-Tim Berners-Lee, Enquire Within Upon Everything: wouldn’t it be a good idea to be able to share documents located on computers anywhere in the world?
* Created the World Wide Web and gave the software away for free

Major Components of The Web

* Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
-The address of the content placed on the web
* Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http)
-The standard set of rules for sending web content over the Internet

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

* The programming language used to describe the content on web pages

Key Web Principles

* One address to take users to a document
* Everything should be accessible/linkable 
* Any type of data should be available on any type of computer
* The web should be a tool for interaction, not just publication
* No central control

Accessing the Web
* Mosaic-The first graphical web browser
* Growth of high-speed continuous (broadband) access to the broadband internet access
* Expansion of mobile access to the internet

World Wide Web

Searching on the World Wide Web
* Criticisms of Google
* Government and search capability

Mobile Apps

* Is the web dead?
* Apps are big part of how we interact online
* Mobile Devices becoming dominant method of going online

Blogs

* Collection of links and commentary in hypertext
* Typically a Generation X form of communication/information
* Blog reports brought down former CBS anchor Dan Rather after he mishandled a story on President George W. Bush
* Blogs let writers talk directly to readers, bypassing legacy media

Podcasts and Streaming Media

* Online tools such as YouTube let non-journalists post video news online
* Streaming media gets long-tail movies and video in front of a large audience
* Distributing audio and video programming no longer requires a broadcast network

The Notion of Cyberspace

* Taken from word cybernetics-science of communication and control theory
* Originally used in 1982 magazine story by William Gibson
* Gibson also coined cyberpunk-a style of writing and movies that deal with the blurring of the lines between humans and computers

10/9 Lecture Notes

Conflicts Over Digital Media

* Controlling online content
* Protecting intellectual property
-Ex: Copyrighted films or TV shows
* Privacy and the web
-Companies use your data to recommend and suggest more products for you (ex: Amazon)
-There is no federal law that grants people privacy rights online

Media Convergence

* Bringing together traditional legacy media with online media
-EX: Disney+
* Reverse Synergy
-When you get the worst of both by combining old and new media
-EX: ABC is now available on streaming platforms

Everything is Data

* More and more media being delivered digitally 
* Mobile phones often have unlimited talk time and text messages, but definite limits on data use
* Streaming services replacing satellite/cable for many subscribers
* Cable companies experimenting with streaming apps to replace set-top cable boxes
* Loss of privacy
* Cookies

The Internet and Society: Hacker Ethic

* Independent use of computers
* Consequences of uncontrolled information
* Hacker ethic
* Hacking the 2016 Presidential Election
* Russian hacking and Trump’s win
* Fake accounts and false stories
* Hacked DNC network
* Hacked into voter registration systems

The Internet and Society: Our Online World

* Changes in understanding of community
-Similarities with the telegraph
-Uniqueness of the internet
-Internet access
* Conflicts over digital media: Controlling Content on the Web
-Unsuitable content
-Filtering software
* Conflicts over digital media: Privacy and the Web
-Loss of privacy
-Cookies

10/13 Reading Notes Chapter 10

* Social Network- Something that connects individuals or groups over a common platform
* 5 Basic Characteristics that make Social Media Social:
1. User generated content-Social networks allow you to consume content AND create it (written words, photos, podcasts. etc.)
2. Comments-Could be as simple as liking a photo, or “extensive online debates”
3. Tagging-Tag people in photos where they are featured
-Hashtags
-Wasn’t created until a year after Twitter was started
4. Social Networking-Share posts online with groups or friends that are like-minded
5. Customization-Make your page on social media unique
-Facebook has the profile photo AND a bigger cover photo
-Twitter has an “avatar”

* Social media is not just for recreational use, but can also be used for business
-Collaboration
-Public Relations
-Crowdsourcing

YouTube

* Created by Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim
* Most popular social network used by 91% of people aged 18-29

Facebook

* Created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 when he was a Harvard student in 2004
* As of 2020 63%+ of Americans 12 and older use Facebook
* More than 2.4 billion users worldwide (YouTube is bigger, but provides less services)
* Facebook can find where you are located in the world using your IP address
* Uses your browsing outside of FB for “targeted ads”
* Facebook groups are not allowed to post political matters on the group page

10/14 Lecture Notes

Chapter 10: Social Media and Video Games

Social Media: Sharing Our Lives Online

* Social Media
* Five basic characteristics
* Popular social networks
* YouTube
-Founders (Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim)
-Platform for sharing videos
* Facebook
-Created by Mark Zuckerberg
-Launched in 2005 (Had to be a college student and have college email to join)
-Attractive to advertisers
-Moderating groups
-Controversies: User Privacy
* Instagram
-Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom
-Changes to compete with other social media platforms
* Snapchat
-Popular among youth
-Decline in popularity?
-Difficult for it to make money
* Twitter
-Founders: Williams, Dorsey, and Stone
-Valuable to businesses
-Avenue in spreading messages on social and political issues
-Everyday conversations
-2022: Bought by Elon Musk
-Now referred to as “X”
* TikTok
-Owned by ByteDance
-Increasingly popular
-Censorship and data collection

Privacy

* In digital era, the definition of privacy has changed
* Allows people to control what gets put online
* Social media collecting data on users
* A lot of the time social media companies do collect your personal information and sell it to 3rd-party companies
* People can find where you live or where you posted a picture from using location services and/or deeply searching the internet
* The image you post can impact your future
-Don’t want to look like a risk or liability to a job/school
-Job loss or not hired
-School discipline
-Affect college admissions
-Reputation
-Oversharing (Parents posting baby pictures or childrens’ milestones. Children cannot consent to this, and may feel uncomfortable or embarrassed)

Cyberbullying and Harassment

* According to 2019 CDC report: approx. 15.7% of high schoolers were cyberbullied within 12 months prior to the survey
* Cyberbullying among adults
* Cyberbullying and celebrities

Social Media and Your Future

* No federal legislation to ban employers and schools from looking into your social media accounts
-Potential employers, schools, and colleges have asked for social media passwords (Typically legally cannot ask for your password)
-Lawsuits have been filed against schools and employers
* Many states have passed laws banning such practices, although some employers and schools still search social media

Development of Video Games

*  Turing Test
-Named after British mathematician Alan Turing
-Created a system to break German code in WW2
-Computers were able to produce computer chess games
* Tennis for Two
-First video game ever created
* Spacewar!
-Created in 1961 by MIT Students
-Made by $120,000 equipment (Over $5,000 today)
* Atari Popularizes Video Games
-Nolan Bushnell
-Pong
-Atari 2600
-Decreasing sales
* Importance of Arcades
-Gathering spot
-Force in youth culture
-Pac-Man

10/16 Lecture Notes

Development of Video Games (cont’d.)

* Nintendo Revives Home Console Market
-1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
-Strict control over production
-Super Mario Bros.
-Nintendo Game Boy introduced in 1990s (Tetris one of most popular games)
-Made and sold games that parents would be okay with their children playing
-Nintendo cereal was made to push the company’s sales
-Nintendo DS
-Nintendo 3DS
-Nintendo Wii
-Nintendo Switch
* Sony Playstation and Microsoft Xbox
-Sony Playstation (“Tomb Raider”= most popular game)
-Microsoft Xbox (First Person Shooters became popular)
-Nintendo’s new focus

Conflicts Over Video Games

* Inciting fear and controversy
-Death Race and Custer’s Revenge (Running over people, references to rape)
-Mortal Kombat (In the 90s it was the most popular video game in history)
-Grand Theft Auto (GTA) franchise
* Pokemon
-Pokemon
-Successful franchise
-Pokemon Go
-Augmented reality

Video Games as Mass Communication

* Content delivery devices 
* New advertising venue
* Site of communities
* Highly profitable
* First Amendment protection

Video Games as a Spectator Sport

* Twitch
* Battle royale games
* Fortnite
* ESports

Video Games in Contemporary Culture

* Animal Crossing: New Horizons
* Video game platforms as venues
* Diversity and Representation in Video Games
-Lack of representational diversity
10/21 Lecture Notes Chapter 12 Advertising: Selling a Message

The Development of the Advertising Industry

* What is advertising?
* “Any form of nonpersonal communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor”

The Birth of Consumer Culture

* Industrialization
-Going from work done by hand in small shops, to mass production of goods in factories
* Modernization
-Changing from a society in which people’s identities are fixed at birth to a society where people can choose who they want to be and how they want to present themselves to the world

The Growth of Brand Names

* Brand Names
-A word or phrase attached to prepackaged consumers goods so they can be better promoted and identified
* Early brands included: Quaker Oats, Pears’ soap
* Economy of Abundance
-An economy in which there are as many or more goods available as people are able to buy

Advertising-Supported Media

* 1830s: Penny press newspapers
* Mid-1800s: Consumer magazines
* Radio and television well-suited as advertising media 
* “We’re in the business of selling audiences to advertisers. (The sponsors) come to us asking for women 18 to 49 and adults 25 to 34, and we try to deliver” - Robert Niles, TV network marketing executive
* Local Advertising
-Designed to get people to use local stores, businesses, or service providers
* National Advertising
-Designed to build demand for a nationally available product or service
* Direct-Action Message
-Designed to get consumers to go to a particular place or engage in a specific action, such as purchasing a product
* Indirect-Action Message
-Designed to build the image of and demand for a product without calling for a specific action
* Advocacy Advertising
-Designed to promote a particular point of view rather than a product or service; can be sponsored by a government, corporation, trade association, or non-profit association
* Public Service Advertising
-Designed to promote the messages of non-profit institutions and government agencies
* Trade Advertising
-Also called business-to-business advertising
-Promotes products and services to other businesses

The Advertising Business

* Client
-The company with something to sell
* Agency (may be in-house or contracted)
-Advertising professionals 
* Media
-Where the ads appear
* Audience
-Message recipients

The Agency

* Research and Planning
-How do you meet the clients’ objectives? Do the ads accomplish what the client wants?
* Creative Activity
-Creating the ad itself; often a tension between creativity and salesmanship
* Media Planning
-Deciding which media provide the most cost effective way to reach the target audience

The Media 
* Newspapers
* Magazines
* Outdoor Advertising
* Radio
* Television
* Digital

The Audience

* Targeting
-Trying to make a product or service appeal to a narrowly defined group
-Targeting is done with: Demographics, Geographics, Psychographics
* Psychographics and VALS
-Not just who the audience is, but what motivates them
-Psychographics look at people’s lifestyles, relationship to the product, and personality traits
-VALS, developed by SRI international, places people in eight categories based on motivation and level of resources

Advertising in Contemporary Culture

* Advertising makes you buy things you don’t want
* Reality: Suggests a possible need
* Advertising makes things cost more
* Reality: Advertising lowers costs by raising demand
* Advertising helps sell bad products 
* Reality: Not for very long
* Advertising is a waste of money
* Reality: Sustains goods moving through the pipeline to keep economic growth going

The Problem of Clutter

* Clutter
-The large number of non-programming messages that compete for consumer attention on radio, television, and the internet
-Breaking through the clutter is an ongoing challenge for advertisers
-Multiple television networks looking to lower advertising load to reduce clutter
-Creative advertising makes products stand out
-Ads can become more important than programs
Debunking Subliminal Advertising

* Subliminal Advertising
-When messages that are allegedly embedded so deeply in an ad that they cannot be perceived consciously

When Advertisements Are More Important Than the Program

* Apple’s 1984 Super Bowl Ad
-Introduced Macintosh computer
-Indirect action, national ad
-One of the most memorable commercials ever
-Established idea of event commercial
-Early example of integrated marketing communication

10/22 Lecture Notes

Advertising to Children

* Children are a growing advertising market 
* In 1983 spending was $100 million a year to reach children
* By 2008, spending on ads to reach children reached $17 billion a year 
* Food ads directed at kids
-Does food advertising contribute to childhood obesity?
-Should advertising of “junk food” to children be limited? (What is “junk food”?)
-Should there be other limits on advertising to children?
-What would the consequences be of not advertising to children?

Integrated Marketing Communication

* An overall communication strategy for reaching key audiences using advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and interactive media
* Case Study: Elon Musk’s Companies
-Brands include Tesla (electric cars), SpaceX (reusable rocket ships) and Powerwall (solar-powered batteries)
* Launched his Tesla Roadster convertible in a Falcon Heavy rocket test
* Got global attention for both his space launch and car brands with minimal spending on media

Is Anyone Watching Television Ads?

* Loss of television audience to DVR/streaming
* Rise of mobile advertising; potential for location-based advertising
* Mobile advertising went from $31.6 billion in 2015 to projected $77.1 billion in 2020

Product Placement

* Product Integration
-When the product or service being promoted is not only seen, but is central to the story

Social Marketing

* Social Marketing: Using credible people on social media to promote your product
* What is vital to social marketing campaigns: viewers need to perceive it as real
* Instagram and others working to identify sponsored posts

10/28 Lecture Notes: Chapter 13: Public Relations, Interactions, Relationships, and the News

From Press Agency to Professionalism

* Public Relations
-”The management function that establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships between an organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends”

Who Are the Publics?

* Public
-Any group of people who share a common set of interests and goals
* Internal Publics
-People within the organization
* External Publics
-People outside the organization 
* Media Relations
-Two-way interactions with members of the press
The Origins of Public Relations

* Press Agentry
-Sending one-way communication from the press agent to the media with little opportunity for feedback; was often deceptive and unethical
* Early users of press agentry
-P.T Barnum, Standard Oil, railroads, temperance, and abolitionist movements
* Ivy Lee
-Early PR practitioner
-Helped railroads deal with image problems
-Early advisor to John D. Rockefeller
-Importance of telling the truth
* Edward L. Bernays
-Applied social-scientific research techniques to public relations
-Promoted technique he called engineering consent
-Applying principles of psychology and motivation to influencing public opinion
-Wrote Crystallizing Public Opinion (1923) and Propaganda (1928)
-Recognized importance of the crowd

World War 1: The Federal Government Starts Using Public Relations

* Committee on Public Information (CPI)
* CPI run by newspaperman George Creel
* Four-Minute-Men
-Importance of interpersonal channels
* Opinion Leadership
-A two-step process of persuasion that uses influential individuals to deliver information to the community (two-step flow)

What is Public Relations?

* According to Bernays, the functions of public relations are:
-Informing
-Persuading
-Integrating

The Public Relations Process

* Research
-Researching Opportunities, problems, or issues
* Objectives
-Specific and measurable outcomes
* Programming
-Activities to carry out objectives
* Evaluation
-Testing prior to campaign, monitoring during delivery, measuring outcomes
* Stewardship
-Maintaining relationships created during previous steps

Crisis Communication

* Principles of crisis communication
* Be prepared
-Have a plan for things that are likely and unlikely
* Be honest
-Lies will catch up with you and hurt worse than the original problem. Ask Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton
* Apologize, and mean it
-Real apologies include action
* Move quickly
-The news cycle moves quickly. You can’t get left behind
* Communicate your actions
-Remember these include internal and external publics, along with the press
* The Tylenol-Scare
-Tampered-with Extra Strength Tylenol capsules killed 7 in Chicago area
-Johnson and Johnson immediately pulled product off the market in Chicago
-In response to public fears, Johnson and Johnson recalled all Tylenol nationwide
-PR firm Burson-Marsteller handled corporate communication for Johnson and Johnson
-Re-introduced product with triple-sealed packaging 
-Communicated using sales reps, press conferences, and 60 Minute Interviews
* The Exxon Valdez and BP oil spills
-Oil tanker ran aground, spiled 240,000 barrels of crude oil into ocean
-Exxon perceived as being at-fault for spill
-Lacked effective crisis plan
-Failed to control environment
-Failed to accept responsibility immediately
-Corporate image still suffering more than 29 years later
-Still tried to keep message on technical issues rather than effects on people
-Both companies tried to shift blame to others
-Neither company had effective PR plan in place

Public Relations Goes Online

* Online media give PR professionals new channels to work with
* Organizations can bypass legacy media
* Internet gives critics access without gatekeeper limits of journalists 
* Online media make it easy to leak confidential information
* Using social media effectively
-Social media present an opportunity to interact with publics, not just a channel to send out information
-Need to establish ongoing relationships
* Kraft and the #Cheeseocalypse
-Kraft had minor issue manufacturing one size of its Velveeta cheese product
-Crisis was publicized; tweets poked fun at the issue
-Kraft capitalized on the conversation for publicity and to learn more about their customers
* Responding to an internet crisis
-Identify your crisis team
-Imagine your worst nightmare, and be prepared for it
-Track what is being said about you online
-Don’t wait–you have limited time to respond

Journalism and Public Relations

* News starts out as press release, press conference, speech, or event created to be covered by the media
* There are limits to what PR professionals can do when it comes to news coverage

Public Relations and the Government

* In 2017, more than 11,529 lobbyists registered to work in Washington, D.C
* Total spending on government relations more than $6.44 Billion
* Government and politicians make extensive use of public relations
* Jennifer Rubin: Sarah Huckabee Sanders has had credibility problems for misleading the White House press corps

Spin Control: A More Personal Form of Public Relations
* Spin Control
-Attempting to shape how the press interprets (spins) stories
* Spin Techniques:
-Selectively leak information in advance, hoping reporters will pay more attention to early information
* Contract press immediately after an event with your interpretation of the situation
* Push the idea that there are always two sides to every story

Transcript for:Understanding Media Evolution and Challenges

Transcript for:
Understanding Media Evolution and Challenges