Today, the media is dispersed from the internet, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and many other different services. When listening to the news, posting your first status on Facebook or even deciding what news article to read off of the top of the CNN news website. They're many different old media theories that explain why or why not you might be more interested in certain topics, what news is most relevant, or just why you're involved with social media in the first place.
The study of uses and gratification, plays a very important role in explaining the use of social media today. This theory explains the increasing amount of sociological and psychological dependency we see in people today in regards to using social media. The theory itself suggests 3 different claims:
1. People use the media actively for their own purposes. 2. People know what those purposes are and can articulate them. 3. Despite individual differences in media use, there are basic common pat-terns among people. In a recent study done by Ashwini Nadkarni, suggests why media users use the site Facebook, and why. He came to the conclusion that Facebook is satisfying this "needed purpose" or dependency through fulfilling the psychological need to "belong", to be a part of something and the need for self presentation-which is exactly what the uses and gratification theory states. As far as self presentation one study examined the positive correlation between the use of Facebook and narcissism or self promotion. Whether it's putting up a good photo and receiving like, or having someone write on your wall. In the study it suggest how self esteem is very highly correlated with life satisfaction; if Facebook is boosting our self esteem that could definitely be a reason for consumption of it. It also showed how Facebook use intensity had reduced the students perceived levels of loneliness, though it may not be anywhere else but online. Facebook and many other types of social media are a way for people to stay sane almost, for people to feel some type of belonging/ interaction with others and maybe even a little bit of an ego boost.
The study of uses and gratification, plays a very important role in explaining the use of social media today. This theory explains the increasing amount of sociological and psychological dependency we see in people today in regards to using social media. The theory itself suggests 3 different claims:
1. People use the media actively for their own purposes. 2. People know what those purposes are and can articulate them. 3. Despite individual differences in media use, there are basic common pat-terns among people. In a recent study done by Ashwini Nadkarni, suggests why media users use the site Facebook, and why. He came to the conclusion that Facebook is satisfying this "needed purpose" or dependency through fulfilling the psychological need to "belong", to be a part of something and the need for self presentation-which is exactly what the uses and gratification theory states. As far as self presentation one study examined the positive correlation between the use of Facebook and narcissism or self promotion. Whether it's putting up a good photo and receiving like, or having someone write on your wall. In the study it suggest how self esteem is very highly correlated with life satisfaction; if Facebook is boosting our self esteem that could definitely be a reason for consumption of it. It also showed how Facebook use intensity had reduced the students perceived levels of loneliness, though it may not be anywhere else but online. Facebook and many other types of social media are a way for people to stay sane almost, for people to feel some type of belonging/ interaction with others and maybe even a little bit of an ego boost.
Another theory that helps us understand today's media would be the political economy theory. Over the years, political economy scholars examine how media ownership frames our media environment along with the status quo; how big businesses decide what kind of media it shown, for whom, and in what way. We see examples of this theory all throughout today. Take Fox news for example. The founder and CEO of Fox News are both conservative. Fox news is one of the biggest media outlets known today, but is definitely known for their outright leaning towards conservative news and reporting. One could argue that Fox news reports for conservatives, and only shows Republican standpoints in a positive light. In saying that, another theory that should be paid close attention to is Agenda setting. In the 1970's Max Mccombs and Donald Shaw explained how media basically picks what news is significant and seen as important. To put it more simply people tend to see more issues as more important the more they are shown on the news. Issues that may be repeated daily on the news are the ones people are likely to be more passionate and aware of verses the news telling someone what to think they are telling them issues to think of. For example, take the study done by Mccombs and Shaw in the 1986 Presidential campaign basically touches on how the media focused on certain important "voting issues" and the people who they asked who were undecided for voting concurred with the same voting issues made relevant by the media. More recently, another study done
| Stefano DellaVigna was done on Fox news media bias and voting. The study states "Between October 1996 and November 2000, the conservative Fox News Channel was introduced in the cable programming of 20 percent of U. S. towns. Fox News availability in 2000 appears to be largely idiosyncratic, conditional on a set of controls. Using a data set of voting data for 9,256 towns, we investigate if Republicans gained vote share in towns where Fox News entered the cable market by the year 2000. We find a significant effect of the introduction of Fox News on the vote share in Presidential elections between 1996 and 2000. Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.7 percentage points in the towns that broadcast Fox News"(Vigna). The media most definitely plays a role in peoples' opinions today and this is again another example of how these old media theory's still apply presently. Agenda setting can also be witnessed today through social media through sites such as twitter or Facebook. On each site, they have trends which basically is the most popular news of the day. The more people hash tag or talk about the trends on each site the more popular/ relevant the issues become. Though trends may be set by default (media companies), sometimes the users it still relates back to the Agenda theory in that the trends are chosen by popularity therefore the more people that click on it, the more relevant the issue becomes on social media leading to eventually making the trend board for everyone to see. |
The theory of encoding and decoding is also another proposition that should be taken into account when reflecting on today's social media. Developed by Stuart Hall in the 1970's, he claims media producers come up with a message which they encode and the audience decodes the meaning of the message.The audience has 3 basic for when they are decoding. First, is dominate decoding which means the audience understand the direct concept the message was intended to give. Second, is the opposition reading in which the audience can recognize the message but put their own meaning to the media product. Lastly, the audiences may choose negotiated reading which basically has the audience agreeing with the dominate message, but adding some variations with it. For example, take a report on violent attack during a public demonstration; another could argue it was the demonstrators fault or one could argue it was the person who caused the violence. It all depends on the encoding of the way the news team reports the message and the way the audience reacts and interpenetrates this message. Another example could be advertisements; take checkers commercials with the hot girls eating the cheeseburgers. On one hand, a person could be watching this commercial and totally want to go eat some checks, but on the other hand some may be offended by the sexualization of women.
All in all these old media theories definitely do connect and help to explain why social media plays such a big part in today's society and how we even play a part in what media is displayed for us.
