Sample "Reports"

Here are some samples of what I'm looking for in these group reports. What is missing in these is a short description (2-3 sentences) of the article as a whole, but in terms of bullet points, I think this is what I'm after. Feel free to integrate direct quotes that you think "capture" the overall idea of the article.

1.     Cooley

a.     The history of communication is the foundation of all history (21).

b.     Speech has limitations; lacks range in time and place (22)

c.     Writing enables cooperation, social enlargement, and specialization (22)

d.     Printing makes communication yet more democratic (22)

e.     Individuality and association are mutually enforcing (24), thus communication is the way that people become people, like the seed becomes a tree

f.      “this enlargement of intercourse has affected the processes of social change…within the past fifty years there have been developed new means of communication—fast mails, telegraphs, telephones, photography, and the marvels of the daily newspaper—all tending to hasten and diversify the flow of thought and feeling to multiply the possibilities of social relation.” (24)

2.     Addams

a.     Films fill youths’ impressionable minds with images that become the foundations for their working moral codes (27)

b.     Young boys steal for money to go to the movies (27), created models of glamour that made little girls cry

c.     In moments of moral crisis they turn to the sayings of movie characters (28)

d.     The movies commercialize pleasure—we should return to the days of the town dance, festivals, marches, orchestral music (28)

e.     “To insist that young people shall forecast their rose-colored future only in a house of dreams, is to deprive the real world of that warmth and reassurance which it is so sorely needs and to which it is justly entitled; furthermore, we are left outside with that shadow which already lurks only around the corner for most of us—a skepticism of life’s value” (29)

3.     Anderson

a.     Things have changed in modern society, communicatively (30)

4.     Park and Burgess, Intro to Science of Sociology

a.     Define (a) society as interaction, (b) communication as the medium of interaction, (c) imitation and suggestion as mechanisms of interaction (33)

b.     Media exposure encourages people to stray from traditional modes of being (33)

c.     Massive changes in media technologies demand greater theorizing (34)

5.     Dewey

a.     Communication > transubstantiation—participation and sharing is a wonder (35)

b.     Where communication exists, things have meaning, which means they can be negotiated and changed; “qualitative immediacies cease to be dumbly rapturous”—timeliness of new rhetoric

6.     Lippmann

a.     “we shall misunderstand the need [for publicity] seriously if we imagine that the purpose of the publication can possibly be the informing of every voter” (39).

b.     “And life is too short for the pursuit of omniscience by the counting in a state of nervous excitement of all the leaves on all the trees.” (39)

c.     What are the barriers between people and a clear picture of the world (from Public Opinion)?

                                               i.     *Censorship and Privacy, some barrier between the public and the event is necessary for propaganda (28); notions of what is private and public is elastic (28)

                                             ii.     *Contact and Opportunity, social set functions like a gatekeeper for information (36); amount of money you have has considerable effect on access to ideas (32)

                                            iii.     *Time and Attention, people have limited time and attention for public affairs—statistical analysis of surveys; “time each day is small when any of us is directly exposed to information from our unseen environment.” (40)

                                            iv.     *Speed, Words, and Clearness, “language is by no means a perfect vehicle of meanings” (42); fatigue of city / industrial life takes its toll (47); all these factors combine to prevent clearness (49)

d.     Explain his idea of stereotypes, and identify their positive and negative functions.

                                               i.     “we do not first see, and then define, we define, and then see” (54-5)

                                             ii.     modern life is busy, and there is no time for intimate contacts, so stereotypes are necessary

                                            iii.     shortcuts (59)

                                            iv.     media (motion pictures, arts, etc) create stereotypes (60)

                                             v.     functions of stereotypes:

1.     *charm of the familiar and comfortable (63)

2.     *guides perception (65); not determine the way we want the world to be, just the way we expect it to be (69)

3.     *consolidate identity / soothe troubles—story of the Belgian sniper for Germans (66)

4.     *stereotypes are bound up with all sort of assumptions and conclusions about life that fall when the stereotype does (74)

5.     *”preserves us from all the bewildering effect of trying to see the world steadily and see it whole” (75)

6.     *stereotypes preload judgments, wishes, hopes (78)

7.     *”public opinion is primarily a moralized and codified version of the facts…the pattern of stereotypes at the center of our codes largely determines what group of facts we shall see and in what light we shall see them.” (81-2)

7.     DuBois

a.     What would DuBois say in response to the optimistic vision of communication articulated by Cooley or Dewey?

b.     Colored and white people mark art done by colored people as inferior (44)

c.     All art is propaganda (46)

d.     “The white public today demands from its artists, literary and pictorial, racial prejudgment which deliberately distorts truth and justice” (46)

8.     Lasswell

a.     Propaganda is designed to intensify depression, disillusion, and disagreement in enemy (47)

b.     Wilson as rhetorically powerful propagandist articulating vision of a united, idealized world—League of Nations (49)

c.     The war dance can activate ‘primitives’ solidarity for war; we need propaganda (50)

d.     Propaganda is a necessary organizing concept for society—“if the masses will be free of chains of iron, they must accept their chains of silver” (50); literate world thrives on argument, the modern world is too complex and must have its “raw meat cooked and garnished by adroit and skillful chefs” (50)

9.     Bernays

a.     Public opinion represents the opinion of a group toward a given object (52)

b.     “a public that learns more and more how to express itself will learn more and more how to overthrow tyranny of every sort” (52)

c.     certain small groups are important enough to influence the larger groups with which they overlap (56)

d.     an age of mass production needs an age of mass distribution of ideas (57)

10.  Lynd & Lynd

a.     Leisure time increasing (59); but largely ‘passive’ pursuits

b.     Circulation of printed matters diffuses new ways of thought and tools (61); but men hardly read any more

c.     Music has ceased to be a matter of spontaneous, active participation and more a matter of passive listening to others (64); spontaneous singing of the 1890s has died out.

d.     Movies bringing about ‘early sophistication’ of the young (67)

e.     Fears of commercialism overwhelming leisure time (67); part of the standardizing of Middletown (68)

f.      Media increase possibility of connection, but does so in a way that leaves people more isolated—shallower connections (70)

11.  Sapir

a.     Types of communication: language, gesture, imitation, social suggestion (75-6)

b.     “The smaller the circle and the more complex the understandings already arrived at, the more economical can the act of communication afford to become” (76)

Multiplication of range of communication has two effects: (1) increases range of communication; no one avoids being drawn into that circuit (2) lessens the importance of geographical contiguity (77)