The mass media: roles and

functions
COM30805 Discovering Mass Communication
Lecture Week 3
Today’s class

 Surveillance, correlation, transmission of values, entertainment

 Uses-and-Gratifications model
 Critical / Cultural Studies approach
Why do we study Mass Communication?
Why do we study Mass Communication?

 People do it for different reasons:

 Scholars/Academics want to comprehend the process and develop theories to explain and predict
how the media operate.

 Critics want to know about media’s influences and to suggest improvements to media content.

 Media consumers want to evaluate the information presented by the media in order to be used in
their daily lives.

 In order to study the field, we need to use a PARADIGM

Why use a Paradigm?

 Paradigm: a model/pattern used to analyse

something
 e.g. We all know that what goes up must come down
(gravity); red traffic light means stop (not go faster!)
 It provides us with a consistent perspective from
which to examine mass communication
 It generates concepts that are helpful in
understanding media behaviour
 It helps us identify what is or is not important in the
process
Key terms

 Paradigm: a model; thought patterns that a person uses to analyse something – e.g. Newton’s
Law of Gravity – what goes up must come down; English Grammar Rules

 Functional approach: emphasises the way that audiences use mass communication and the
benefits that people receive from media consumption

 Critical/cultural approach: examines the underlying power relationships in media exposure and
stresses the many meanings and interpretations that the audience members find in media content

 Empirical approach: uses the techniques of the social sciences, such as experiments and
surveys, to investigate the cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioural effects of mass communication
 Functional analysis

 Asks, “why?”

 Why do you watch TV?

 Why do you go to the movies?
 Why does a company want to use Twitter?
Example: America’s Next Top Model
The functional approach would ask why people watch this show. What about the show that
appeals to men, or women? Does the audience learn anything? Do they talk about the show
with their friends? What benefit does the audience get from watching this show?

The critical/cultural approach would investigate the role editing and casting plays in creating
a reality experience, how does the show portray the ideals of beauty? Does it suggest the worth
of a woman in modelling is only about physical beauty? Does it glorify competition over
cooperation? How would this show create a positive/negative impression about the fashion
industry?
Example: Avatar
Functional approach
How individuals use the media
oWhy this movie? Like it?
oIdentify with Jake Sully?
oWhat have you learnt that is helpful?
oYounger vs older audience? How do they “use”
the show?

Critical/cultural approach
How we interpret the content
oWhite supremacist domination in movie?
oAnti-war, anti-capitalism & pro-enviroment
message?
 Mass communication in society

 Mass media is pervasive – it’s everywhere

 Different people use different media for different
purposes
 e.g. Music CDs = entertainment, Films/Cinema =
escape, Newspaper =
Awareness/knowledge/entertainment
 Society requires communication
Mass communication in society

 Two types of functional analyses:

 Macroanalysis - take the perspective of a sociologist and look through a wide-angle lens to
consider the functions performed by the mass media for the entire society
 Microanalysis - look through a close-up lens at the individual receivers of the content - the
audience - and ask them to report on reasons why they use mass media
Functions of Mass Communication for Society

 Surveillance: the news and information role of the media. The media as sentinels and
lookouts. On any given day, about 60 million Americans are exposed to mass-
communicated news
 Beware surveillance: when the news/information media warn the public about something.
i.e. weather alerts, terrorism warnings, global warming
 Instrumental surveillance: information that is useful in an everyday manner. e.g. stock
prices, movie listings, latest music, “lifestyle” articles, interesting places to travel, guides
to good restaurants/food
Consequences of relying on the media
surveillance function
 With electronic media, news travels FAST
It took months for the news of the end of the War of 1812 to travel across the
Atlantic. In contrast, more than 90% of the U. S. population knew about the
terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, within 2 hours of the events.
 Sometimes speed leads to inaccuracy
In 2011, NPR erroneously reported that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had
died following a shooting incident in Tucson, Arizona.
 The media shows us more than we can personally verify
Credibility is what makes news believable, reliable. According to the news, the
Mars rover is collecting data. Can you personally verify this? What about all the
crazy, hyped up news about North Korea?
Interpretation
 The mass media do not
supply just facts and data,
they also provide
information on the
ultimate meaning and
significance of events
 Media gatekeepers decide
what makes it into the
newscast/newspaper/maga
zine and what doesn’t
 Editorials, TV news
specials, cable news
roundtable shows,
reviews, political cartoons
Interpretation
Consequences
 Wide range of contrasting viewpoints
 Greater depth of expertise available
 No guarantee interpretations are accurate
 People become overly dependent on media interpretation=passivity
 Weigh all sides before making decision
Linkage

 Mass media are able to join different elements of society that are not
directly connected
 Advertising links the needs of buyers with the products of sellers
 When geographically separated groups share a common interest and are
linked by the media.
 Example: Social Networking sites, eBay, Tinder, Jack’d,
Mudah.my, Lowyat.net

Consequences: Terrorist groups such as the Daesh use social media for
recruitment; children committing suicide due to cyber-bullying; pro-
anorexia “thinspo” websites
Socialisation
 the ways an individual comes to adopt the behaviour and
values of a group – if you are ___, then this is how you should behave/be
like.
 By watching the media, we perceive & learn how people
are supposed to act and what values are important
 Consequences:
 Media stereotypes
 What do you think some of those are? Beauty and the Geek - Are all
beautiful girls… really dumb?
 How does the media portray the Asian parenting over the years?
 How has Hollywood portrayed Middle Easterners and Arabs post-9/11?
Media transmission of social values

Sometimes, the media consciously tries to instill/promote values and behaviour in the
audience, and/or enforce social norms
 newspapers reporting whether or not a car accident victim was wearing a seatbelt
 smoking
 anti-drug ads
 mothers shouldn’t breastfeed in public
 discrimination based on gender is unacceptable
 social media posts that name and shame people who commit wrongdoings
Entertainment

 In its opening weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens collected US$247M in
box-office receipts domestically, opening in 4,134 theatres.

 About 111.5 million people watched the 2013 Super Bowl on the Fox Network.
In 2016, celebrating its 50th year, it was 111.9 million – 3rd largest live broadcast
audience in TV history.

 The video game Grand Theft Auto V banked $800 million in sales on its first
day—the largest single-day haul for any form of art or entertainment ever! 

The emergence of mobile media and the internet have increased the
entertainment function of the mass media.
Consequences of the entertainment function

 Consequences: entertainment that is carried by the

mass media must appeal to a mass audience. As a result,
media content is designed to appeal to the lowest
common denominator of taste. More programs that
resemble America’s Next Top Model and CSI will find
their way to TV than will opera performances.
 We are more apt to see sequels such as Star Wars VIII
and Avengers 4 than we are to see Much Ado About
Nothing II and More King Lear, MacBeth: The Saga
Continues
 Rock radio stations outnumber classical stations 20 to 1.
 Critics have charged that the mass media will turn
Americans into a nation of watchers, listeners and
followers (couch potatoes) instead of doers and
thinkers.
 Popular culture vs elitist culture
Dysfunctions of the media

 Media can cause panic and anxiety

 In 2004, many reports concluded bird flu would kill 150 million people worldwide (this
never happened)
 It can also stir sentiments of hate and abuse towards others
 Hatred towards a community - conservative US media spreading messages of hate and
intolerance against Muslims, LGBT, immigrants etc.
 The media decides what/who “matters”
 status conferral: media attention raises prominence / profile / social standing –
everyone wants their 5 seconds of fame. Youtube further extends this dysfunction.
 The media perpetuates false information – “fake news/post-
truth” era
How people use the mass media
(microanalysis)
 Functional approach from a microanalysis view is a uses-and-gratifications model, that
states audiences have needs and desires that are satisfied by media and non-media sources.
 Six category system:
1. Cognition
2. Diversion
3. Social Utility
4. Affiliation
5. Expression
6. Withdrawal
1. Cognition

The act of coming to KNOW something

 Using the media to learn something
 Example: current events, news
 People use the media in a cognitive way when they want to understand the world
2. Diversion

 Using the media to take our attention

elsewhere. Three major forms of diversion:

 Stimulation – relief from boredom or routine

 Relaxation – escape from pressures and
problems of everyday life
 Emotional release – media consumption as
catharsis – releasing pent-up emotions/energy
3. Social Utility

 Social Utility describes the human need to strengthen contact with family members,
friends, our entire social group - E.g. – Petronas TV commercials celebrating festivals
& Merdeka
 Conversational currency: using media as common ground for connecting with others
 Did you see The Avengers?
 What did you think of the Superbowl commercials?
 Did you read those hilarious #SochiFails tweets from journalists?
 Parasocial relationship: the phenomenon where people develop (one-sided)
relationships with media characters.
 Example: fans of fictional characters (Potterheads), fans of a band, people who have
favourite American Idol contestants, Asia’s Next Top Model fan favourites etc.
4. Affiliation

 Refers to a person’s desire to feel a sense of belonging or involvement within a social

group
 The Internet is the primary medium that fulfills this function for many people.
 Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin
 Others include: online gaming, instant messaging, dating and matchmaking Web sites,
Online forums and messaging apps like WeChat and KakaoTalk
5. Expression

 Self-expression refers to individuals’ need to express their inner thoughts, feelings,

and opinions.
 The first examples of the need for self-expression are the cave drawings done by
early human beings
 Since that time, the need for self-expression has been fulfilled primarily by
creative and artistic activities such as music, painting, writing, dance, and
sculpture
 The Internet has opened up new vistas for self-expression
 Blogs, commenting on articles
 YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud
 Facebook pages can be personalised to express a person’s individuality
 Expression is an important function for the individual
6. Withdrawal

 Withdrawal describes using the media to create a barrier between themselves

and other people
 “I’ll do that after I’m done watching my show.”
 Here, attending to mass media content is defined as a socially appropriate
behaviour that should not be interrupted.
 People also use the media to create a buffer zone between themselves and
others.
 When you are riding a bus or sitting in a public place and do not want to be
disturbed, you bury your head in a book, magazine, or newspaper.
 If you are on an airplane, you might pop in your iPod ear buds and tune
everybody out.
 Television can perform this same function at home by isolating adults from
children (“ Don’t disturb Daddy; he’s watching the game”) or children from
adults (“ Don’t bother me now; go into the other room and watch Sesame Street
”).
Conclusion about the functional approach…

 Content & context (of using media)

 Content (of the media) and context (of people) both affect media use:
 Why do you go to the movies? For the movie? Dating?
 Why do you like to watch McDreamy?
 Assumptions of functional approach:
 Audiences are actively interacting with the media to satisfy needs.
 Mass media competes with other sources of satisfaction.
 People are aware of their needs and they rationally choose to consume the media (gauged
through surveys).
Critical / Cultural Studies approach
Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

 Very different from the functional approach:

 More qualitative; humanistic, deeper in understanding
 Examines different concepts:
 Ideology, culture, politics, social structure as related to the role of media in
society
Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

HISTORICAL ORIGINS
1930s-1940s: The Frankfurt School

• A grouping of intellectuals committed to the analytical ideas of rooted in Marxism

and Freud:
• Suggested that the best way to understand how a society worked was to examine who
controlled the means of production that met the basic needs of the population for food
and shelter
• Who controls the means of production?
• Capitalists (the haves) control the mass (have-nots – peasants, labourers), the
capitalistic system exploits the working class, dominated by the wealthy
• Conform to status quo (capitalism –as a way of life)
• Those in control will maintain control
Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

Great Britain (late 1950s and early 1960s) - Scholars at the Centre for Contemporary
Cultural Studies at Birmingham University noted that members of the British working class
used the products of mass culture to define their own identities through the way they dressed,
the music they listened to, the hairstyles they favoured, and so forth.

The audience did not seem to be manipulated by the media, as the Frankfurt School
argued; instead, the relationship was more complicated.

Audience members took the products of mass culture, redefined their meaning, and created
new definitions of their self- image. – E.g. Oppa KL Style, music covers, parodies, satire,
memes

This emphasis on meaning was reinforced by studies of film and TV.

 Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

 A theory developed by British film critics suggested that

cinematic techniques (camera angle, editing, imagery)
subtly but effectively impose on the audience certain
meanings preferred by the filmmaker.
 However, audience members were free to resist and come
up with their own meanings.
 For example, although the dominant theme in a
Citizen Kane (1941) utilises extreme low
documentary about efforts to control pollution might be angles to project dominance of the
how hard the industry is trying to control the problem, protagonist over his peers and rivals…
some in the audience might see the program as nothing
more than an empty marketing gesture by big companies
to elicit sympathy.
Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

 1970s-1980s: Varied approaches

 Feminist scholars
 Patriarchy: Gender-based inequalities of wealth and power;
 Eg. Gender inequality in the media
 Communication as ritual
 Group viewing participation that maintains social bond/stability
 Eg. Men gathering at Mamak stalls to watch soccer, going to clubs and concerts for music,
watching movies together at the cinema, organising book clubs etc. and the conversations
that follows from the participation of these activities.
Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

 Important to the cultural studies group were the values that were represented in the content.

 Marxists note that the values of the ruling class became the dominant values that were depicted
in mass media and other cultural products.

 The dominant values that were represented were mainly those of white, upper-class, Western
males.

 The media worked to maintain those values by presenting versions of reality on TV and films
that represented this situation as normal and natural, as the way things should be (cultural norms)
Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

 This approach gained prominence in the United States

during the 1970s and 1980s, and was adopted by
communication researchers and scholars engaged in
feminist studies

 Examined the role of the patriarchy in media and cultural

products

 How were women portrayed in the vintage American ads

and in film? How about now?
 Critical/cultural studies analysis approach

 The audience is not passive in this approach – they are free

to reject or accept cultural norms encoded into cultural
products
 This approach also includes studying cultural myths
embodied in mass communication
 Society’s common themes, heroes and origins.
 Example: Star Trek relies on the telling of cultural myths
of frontier expansion and exploration; The world of Harry
Potter amidst the backdrop of modern London; The idea of
“super”heroes in films and comics such as Spider-Man, X-
Men, Captain America, Iron Man…
Key concepts

 Culture: is a complex concept that refers to the common values, beliefs, social practices,
rules, and assumptions that bind a group of people together

 Text: is simply the object of analysis. Texts are broadly defined: They can be traditional
media content such as TV programmess, films, ads, and books, or they can be things that
do not fit into the traditional category, such as shopping malls, T-shirts, dolls, video games,
and badges.
Key concepts

 Meaning: the interpretations that audience members take away with them from the text. In
fact, texts have many meanings; they are polysemic. Different members of the audience
will have different interpretations of the same text.

How many different

type of meanings can
you come up with for
this image?
 Key concepts
 Ideology: a specific set of ideas or beliefs, particularly
regarding social and political subjects. Mass communication
messages and other objects of popular culture have ideology
embedded in them.
 E.g. The man should always save the woman; Americans are
the saviours of the world;
 Hegemony: has to do with power relationships and dominance.
 In the United States, for example, those who own the channels
of mass communication possess cultural hegemony over the rest
of us. Maintains the “status quo.”

How are gym teachers represented in

our cultural products?
Conclusion

 Functional and cultural/critical approaches are different:

 Difference has led to tension among scholars.
 Both approaches are valuable.
 As mass communication professionals, you have to have the ability to recognise the
purpose of content in mass media from both approaches, based on context.
Announcements

 Reading: Hanson, R.E. (2016) Mass Communication: Living in a Media World (6th ed.)
California: SAGE Publications – Chapter 2
 This week’s tutorials – in-class tutorial activities
 Please download the tutorial brief, slides and readings from TIMeS and come to tutorial
classes prepared.

 Education Field Trip to Sri Pentas

 Date: 18 April 2019 (this Thursday!)
 Time: 2pm – 5pm (the bus will leave at 2pm, please come before 2pm)
 Where to meet: Bus stop at Block B (next to SLC)