What are the mass media?

Channels of communication through which messages are sent and received by mass audiences. Television is an example of mass media; a form of communication that is not mass media is a cell phone—the message is personal rather than to a large audience.

• Media in mass culture in mass society
• Point-to-many distribution
• Mechanical, electronic or digital reproduction—the message carried in mass media is ALWAYS reproduced. Remember this distinction. Comparatively, a conversation on the phone is not reproduced.
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  Trend of the Media Industry

  Contents, audiences and institutions—this course is mainly focused on institutions.

• An example: advertising—advertising is a main economic function of the media; print industries (newspapers and magazines) are reproduced on a mass scale; broadcasting (radio and television); film industry; music industry (recorded music).

Why study Media industries?

• Forms of cultural knowledge in our society—media is one of our primary forms of cultural knowledge.
  • E.g. the media’s impact on education—how much education has been taken over by the media? E.g. many teachers are lazy and teach us through films (such as BBC documentaries).
• Information and entertainment are representations of reality.
• Operate as business, have a primary interest in making profits
• Media industries create wealth and employment. They are hugely important to the global economy.
• Media institutions are channels of creativity and meaning (symbolic creativity)
• Access is restricted according to social distinctions of class, race, and gender—we see a narrow representation of the creativity and meaning that media institutions are supposed to generate.
• Media industries reflect social inequalities.
• We study media industries to learn about the ‘social relations of cultural production’—we look at the conditions under which media is produced in our society.

Approaches to Media industries

• Media are business organizations, they produce cultural texts as products, are constrained by larger industry structures and have internal processes of production—what are people getting out of this advertisement? How does this organization function? [This is for the first half of the course]
• Media are social institutions, they are subject to global economic and technological changes and to local and national political environments. [This is for the second half of the course]

Media as businesses

• Media products—media sell texts à advertising is a product. Consumers of goods buy advertisements, not necessarily products.
  • Advertising revenue vs. Consumer revenue—some media are dependent on ads, others on consumers. E.g. when buying films, we buy the advertisement of the film.
• Problems
  • high risk production, high rate of failure
  • high initial costs of production, low reproduction costs
  • semi-public goods or ‘joint consumption’—films are used over and over again, can be sold second hand; not so much with a pair of shoes. It’s hard to get your money back when films are used over and over again.
• Solutions
  • solution to high risks: misses are balanced against ‘hits’ through repertoire or over production.
  • solution to high initial costs: strategies of audience maximization, largely through genre formulas and star system. E.g. Shrek was a hit, so they made Shrek 2.
  • solution to joint consumption: creating scarcity, controlling distribution and markets, vertical and horizontal integration.