Tuesday, January 31, 2012

PETER & SIMONSON PART II: READINGS 12 –24

12. Conclusion: From Movies and Conduct
By: Herbert Blumer

The purpose of chapter twelve is to explain the impact movies have on people’s lives.

·      Motion pictures usually serve as a source of imitations on beauty, mannerisms, and relationships.
·      Motion pictures are influential in mind and control of adolescence they often serve a teacher on how life is suppose to be.
o   Adolescences view movies as a world they would like to experience, provides direction and focus to desires and ambitions.
·      Motion pictures are created as a form of art that is used to provoke emotion through horror, excitement, romance, adventure, and etc.


13. The Integration of Communication
By: Malcolm M. Willey and Stuart A. Rice

Chapter thirteen explains the way mass communication delivery constantly changes through innovation.

·      Communication is distribute through print (books) and non print (phonograph, speeches, and music)
·      Constant improvement of the way communication is distributed for example: buses competing with street cars, newspapers vs radio, and etc.
·      There are two contradictions: Reinforcements of community patterns with the increase communication from mass communication innovations on attitudes and behaviors with the local community. (local mail, transportation, telephone, and newspapers)
·      Standardization over wider national and international regions


14. "Toward a Critique of Negro Music" by Alain Locke

In this excerpt, Locke uses a critical eye to examine the state of African American music within the larger American cultural context.

·      African Americans are victims of two "vicious extremes": (98)
    • uncritical praise
    • calculated disparagement
  • Their music suffers from "the bitter tonic of criticism...or the soothing syrups of flattery." (99)
  • The Negro musical genius has been subjected to "commercial control, cheap imitation, and easy plagiarism." (100)
    • Uses the "labored fusions" of Carpenter, Gruenberg, Gershwin, and Grofe as examples
 
15. From "Technics and Civilization" by Lewis Mumford

Mumford discusses how new communication technologies have altered our view of the world, namely how we see ourselves in a constantly-connected world.

  • New communication technologies have bridged the gap between time and space; communication is now quicker than ever and the distance between two people is less of a barrier to communication
  • However, "men tend to be more socialized at a distance" Ex: Instead of making a dozen five-minute telephone calls, it would be more efficient just to leave a note for people to read and understand.
  • The danger is that, now that we have these new communication technologies, we'll use them even when the occasion calls for a more antiquated type of communication, like writing
  • This connectedness has an effect on our personal lives: p. 105's example of the man alone in the wilderness who still thinks of himself as "being watched."


16. The Business Nobody Knows by Rorty

In this essay, Rorty discusses "the business nobody knows" - advertising. He says people often mistake "a function of the thing for the thing insult" - in advertising's case, he refers to the business of preparing and placing ads.

·      Publishers of newspapers and magazines should call their enterprises "advertising business" because they must "serve the profit interests of the advertisers who employ and pay them." (107)
·      Advertising shapes the economic, social, moral and ethical patterns into "conformity with the profit-making interests of advertisers." (107)
·      "Mass advertising perverts the integrity of the editor-reader relationship essential to the concept of democracy." (108)


17. The Influence of Radio upon Mental and Social Life by Cantril and Allport

This essay explores the benefits of radio over other forms of communication. The main argument is that radio contributes to democracy.

·      Radio has made communication faster and cheaper and has made the world even smaller by reaching a large population of people. "The clamor for higher standards of living has been increased through more widely disseminated knowledge of the world's goods." (111)
·      Radio is a powerful tool of democracy:
o   Social distinctions are abolished and there is a consciousness of equality and commonality with a personal appeal. (111)
o   Encourages people to think and feel alike. Broadcasters have to appeal to the greatest number of people, so they aim at the average intelligence, middle class and avoids controversy. (111) One must take sides and "everything tends to be categorical." (113)
o   "Equalizes the opportunity of enjoying art, education and entertainment, and at the same time makes their level everywhere the same." Radio can level up or level down someone's cultural outlook. (112)
·      While "the effort required to overcome the distraction [of a radio] may actually enhance concentration on the task at hand [like studying], the cost is strain and fatigue. (114)
·      Radio is "improving the capacity of the average man to listen intelligently to what he hears." (114)


18. Foreword From Public Opinion Quarterly (1937)
Editors, Public Opinion Quarterly

In this foreword for the magazine’s first issue, the editors discuss how the improvement of communication has enabled mass public opinion to become a force determining political and economic action. Government agencies, institutions and businesses must now divert resources to advertising and public relations.

·      Mass media especially radio and the motion pictures raises the problems of private editorship and governmental control. (p. 117)
·      The Public Opinion Quarterly proposes to be the clearinghouse on the phenomena of public opinion, as well as promote and direct scientific research. (p. 177)


19. Human Interest Stories and Democracy From Public Opinion Quarterly (1937)
Helen MacGill Hughes

News began to be written more simply and in the form of personal stories for the benefit of the uneducated. This often dramatic approach allowed a broader audience to personally connect with the news.  Adjusting the telling of the news in order to be inclusive fostered a free society.

·      By changing the vocabulary in their stories, writers could tell the same story but in a way that the uneducated could understand and enjoy it. (p. 119)
·      The newspapers communicated through the familiar, eventually introducing unknown elements thus exposing the uneducated to a broader view of the world.
(p. 121)
·      Different classes had the same exposure to the news. (p.122)

 
20. From The Fine Art of Propaganda (1939)

Alfred McClung Lee and Elizabeth Briant Lee critically evaluate radio orator Charles Coughlin, who view these anti-democratic radio personalities are dangerous. They argue that propaganda has moved to an instrument of aggression (p. 125).

·      People need to learn how to analyze propaganda.
o   Some propaganda is in own interest and some threaten and distort our views.
·      Propaganda is an opinion that serves the purpose of influencing individuals and groups.
·      There are seven ABC’s of propaganda
o   Ascertain (conflict element)
o   Behold (own reaction to conflict)
o   Concern (today’s propaganda and conflict)
o   Evaluate (your own propaganda)
o   Find the Facts (before coming to conclusions)
o   Guard (always fight omnibus words
·      Define democracy using political, economic, social, and religious.


21. A Powerful, Bold, and Unmeasurable Party? From The Pulse of Democracy (1940)

George H. Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae argue that the true voice of the people is heard through public opinions polls.

·      Surveys enable people to speak for themselves (p.129).
o   Public opinion thus must be measured.
·      People should be able to voice their opinion rather than be dominated by a small clique.
·      Considers public opinion as a pulse of democracy.
o   Which is constant thought and action of citizen.
·      They consider this an instrument that bridges the gap of what was once a phantom of the public.


22. Democracy in Reverse: From Public Opinion Quarterly (1940)
By: Robert S. Lynd

In this excerpt, Lynd questions the value of public opinion polls

  • Public Opinion polls are performing an important service, to science as well as to practical affairs. 
  • Current public opinion polls take over naively the assumptions about human nature and about democracy.
    • “majority” becomes “right”
  • Issues cannot be solved simply by people’s taking positions “for” or “against” them and then totaling up “the truth”.
  • The central issue this generation faces is the change-over from laissez faire individualism to the centralized coordination of complex things important to the living of the mass of the people. 
  • The danger of public opinion polls is in their eagerness to be “objective”


23. Needed Research in Communication: From the Rockefeller Archives (1940)
By: Lyman Bryson, Lloyd A. Free, Geoffrey Gorer, Harold D. Lasswell, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Robert S. Lynd, John Marshall, Charles A. Siepmann, Donald Slesinger, and Douglas Waples

This excerpt conveys the urgent mission envisioned for communication research.

  •  The memorandum proceeds from two assumptions 
  • Events are obliging the central government to take on wider and wider responsibility for the welfare of the people
o   If the exercise of the responsibility is to be democratic, more effective ways of keeping the government and the people in communication with each other will have be created.
  • If the government and the people are to keep in touch, more effective ways of communicating will have to be created.
  • Thesis of this memorandum
o   Research will be essential to make communication a two-way process.
o   Research will be essential to report how the people feel themselves affected by proposals or decisions thus explained.


24. On Borrowed Experience: An Analysis of Listening to Daytime Sketches
By: Herta Herzog

Chapter twenty-four describes why people choices certain radio daytime sketches to listen to and the impact the sketches how in their lives.

·      The radio programs were chosen based on the listener’s life problems
·      Listening to the sketches: offers an emotional release, allows the individual to wishfully remodeling their life while doing one’s chores, and listening provides an ideology and adjustment
·      Applying the story lines to their lives



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