الملاحظات
الفصل الأول: مقدمة
(1)
It is, of course, important to remember that much of the world,
and indeed many in the United States, do not share this life experience.
Yet, even then, the lack of access to the full panoply of media is
understood as an impediment to full participation in society, whether local,
national, or global.
(2)
Our discussion of the hurricane of 1928 is drawn from the
wonderful book by Eliot Kleinberg, The Black
Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane of 1928 (New York:
Carroll & Graf, 2003).
(3)
The wisdom and fairness of these evacuation plans comprise,
of course, a very different issue. As we note below, they failed to take
into account the very different access to transportation of the average
middle-class car owner and poorer inner-city residents without private
means of transport.
(4)
Even then, the differences between 2005 and 1928 are stark.
President Calvin Coolidge’s response, in the absence of federal agencies
like the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), was to call
for citizens to make contributions to the Red Cross and other voluntary
organizations.
(5)
We provide an extended discussion of media events in
chapter 3.
(6)
This echoes the argument of the great sociologist Max Weber,
who observed that modern society—what he called “rational-legal
society”—transforms wants into needs. That is, as the mass production
of a wide variety of goods and services addresses the wants of mass
markets, society itself becomes organized on the assumption that
everyone will have these goods and services. To that extent, they are no
longer wants, but needs.
(7)
It is important to note that much else was changing
besides forms of communication during this period. For example, as
historians and social scientists have long noted, in the United
States, from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, the
development of industrial capitalism, modern transportation systems,
immigration, and the like transformed a predominantly rural society
into a predominantly urban one. However, in a brief book like this,
we are more interested in highlighting the dramatic role that
changes in the dominant forms of media had in this
transformation.
(8)
As we shall see, there is much debate over whether and
in what sense, as media scholar Elihu Katz put it, “Television is
over,” and has been superseded by a fundamentally different “Age of
the Internet.”
(9)
A sound bite is defined as the length of uninterrupted
speech allowed to a person.
(10)
Matthew Brady’s famous Civil War photographs, first
publicized in 1862, ushered in new expectations that this new medium
could provide us direct and, paradoxically, unmediated access to
reality. Yet, it turns out that many of the shots of the dead on the
battlefield were actually carefully posed by the photographers. So,
while it was assumed that pictures couldn’t lie, these pictures did
– a paradox that remains with us to this day as we attempt to unpack
what is real and what is not in the representations we daily
confront on television, in newspapers, and
elsewhere.
(11)
For a more detailed treatment of the relationship between
these broader shifts and changing communication technologies, see
Williams and Delli Carpini (forthcoming, chap. 3), on which the rest of
this chapter is largely based.
(12)
Figures are from Statistical
Abstract of the United States, 1999 (Bureau of the Census
1999) and TV Dimensions 2004 (Media
Dynamics, 2004). Internet statistics from WebSiteOptimization.com
(n.d.).
(13)
Percentages total more than 100 percent because survey
respondents could be regular viewers of more than one news
source.
(14)
One need only consider the advertisements that aired during
the first commercial break of the CBS Evening
News on June 14, 2001, to conclude that news is a genre
that increasingly appeals only to older Americans: Zantac 75 heartburn
relief medication, air freshener, Viagra, Caltrate (a calcium supplement
that “helps reduce colon polyps and osteoporosis”), Centrum vitamin
supplement for heart disease, and an ad for the Mitsubishi Gallant that
had as its theme a song with the lyrics, “I wish I knew what I know now
when I was young.”
(15)
All audience figures are from Nielson Media Research (n.d.).
(16)
As of August 2005, Yahoo (2005) indexed 19.2 billion
Web pages.
(17)
These networks span the political spectrum from Moveon.com on the left to the conservative
FreeRepublic.com on the
right.
(18)
Consider, for instance, that Google bought YouTube for
$1.65 billion. The deep pockets of Google have meant a
crackdown on the posting of copyrighted and/or libelous
videos.
الفصل الثاني: ملكية بيئة الإعلام الجديدة والسيطرة عليها
(1)
Somewhat ironically, Cass Sunstein in republic.com (2007) argues that new media, by allowing
us to specifically tailor our preferences on home pages and other
information outlets, leads to a potentially significant reduction in
this sort of serendipity. Yet, our example shows the potential for
increasing such encounters with unsought information at least in the
context of Internet searches. As Sunstein argues, however, the degree to
which new media technologies actually produce serendipitous outcomes
depends on the rules used by Web page creators and Internet search
engines.
(2)
This site is no longer active and simply links to a site
called “June 4”—the date of the 1989 massacre—which now provides
links to a set of unrelated sponsored websites, including tourism in
China and help in buying a car.
(3)
For instance, in October 2007, the leftist website
Truthout.org complained that a number of e-mail services, including
Microsoft, AOL, and Yahoo, refused to pass on its e-mail alerts to those
on its mailing list.
(4)
Twitter is “a social networking and micro-blogging service
that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (known as
tweets), which are text-based
posts of up to 140 characters in length.” See Wikipedia (n.d.-b).
(5)
Another example is provided by the invention of the
phonograph. Thomas Edison originally thought this device would be used
(primarily by businesspeople) to both record and play recordings, thus
leading to a dramatic decentralization of access to producing as well as
consuming recordings. That this was not the way things worked out was a
result of marketing decisions having little to do with any inherent
tendencies in the technology (Gitelman 2006).
(6)
This dynamic is not limited to media. In the debate over
health care, for example, many opponents of reform assumed (without much
consideration of alternative government-run systems, like in Canada or
the United Kingdom) that a privately owned and controlled for-profit
system was the best model.
(7)
Recent surveys of the British public reveal that 70
percent of BBC viewers say they trust it, in general, and 79 percent
say they trust its news broadcasts. About three-fifths say they
trust commercial news broadcasts. In contrast, recent Pew surveys
find that 32 percent of Americans surveyed trust CNN and 25 percent
trust Fox News. Newer research comparing a number of public service
systems with commercial systems (like the United States) suggests
that citizens in the former systems are more active seekers of news
and better informed than those in the latter (Curran et al.
2009).
(8)
The first network to use packets of information was
called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and was
funded by the US Department of Defense.
(9)
And, as we discuss below, almost all Americans are now
served by a single daily paper.
(10)
What this might mean for where Americans actually get
their information is less clear. The decline in readership of print
newspapers shows no sign of abating. Circulation of all American
newspapers fell by almost 5 percent between 2007 and 2008, bringing
the overall decline since 2001 to 13.5 percent for daily papers and
17.3 percent for Sunday papers. We note, however, that consistent
with Compaine’s argument about substitutability, while print
circulation was down, the number of visitors to newspaper websites
increased by 8.4 percent in 2009, making up for most of that year’s
decline in print circulation (Project for Excellence in Journalism
2009).
(11)
Even this understates concentration, as Time Warner has
revenues larger than Hearst and Advance combined.
(12)
Note the shift in independent movie production as major
studios create their own “boutique” production
companies.
(13)
In this context, it is worth noting that even the largest
media corporation, Time Warner, ranks “only” 51st in size amongst
global corporations (Walmart, Citigroup, and Forbes are the top
three); see Baker (2007: 18 n. 28).
(14)
It is quite difficult, perhaps impossible, to get an
accurate figure on the penetration of telephones (land lines and
mobile). Since the late 1990s, the claim has been repeated that one
half of the people in the world have never made or received a phone
call; the claim has been made by figures as diverse as Kofi Annan,
Al Gore, Michael Moore, Bill Gates, and Newt Gingrich. However,
given the rapid expansion of both land lines and cellular service,
especially in the developing world, more conservative estimates
place the figure at around one third (see Shirky
2002).
(15)
Such overly theorized arguments about the degree to which
we live in a media-saturated or even virtual world can be
interpreted as implying (“perversely” and “unseriously,” as Sontag
[2003] notes) that real suffering does not occur.
(16)
Gattuso goes even further, taking the approach of
Compaine and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),
which we discussed and rejected above, to deny that media
concentration is even occurring:
Critics, however, point out that the
existence of many outlets doesn’t necessarily mean
more owners. NBC, MSNBC, and msnbc.com are clearly
not independent from each other. Media firms today
tend to own many outlets – putting broadcast, cable,
print and even Internet outlets under the same roof.
But despite this expansion of media holdings,
ownership concentration has not increased. A study
released by the Federal Communications Commission
last fall found the number of separately owned media
outlets (including broadcast, cable and newspaper
outlets) skyrocketed in most cities between 1960 and
2000—growing more than 90 percent in New York, for
instance. (2003)
(17)
Classical economist Adam Smith’s “invisible hand theory”
states that:
if each consumer is allowed to choose freely
what to buy and each producer is allowed to choose freely
what to sell and how to produce it, the market will settle
on a product distribution and prices that are beneficial to
all the individual members of a community, and hence to the
community as a whole. (Wikipedia
n.d.-a)
(18)
By “market outcome,” we mean that media content will
actually be determined by the preferences of the audience, as would
be the case if there were a large number of independent providers of
content.
(19)
And, even though the Berlusconi case may be
extreme, Stille notes that “what Berlusconi has done … bears
a striking resemblance to the American right’s attack on
mainstream media: both undermine the idea of objective
facts” (2006).
(20)
A survey after the 2008 election by the Pew Foundation
found, “One-third (33%) of online news consumers say they typically
seek out online political information from sites that share their
political point of view, up from the 26% who said that at a similar
point in 2004” (Rainie and Smith 2008).
الفصل الثالث: وسائل الإعلام والديمقراطية
(1)
We shall return to this important impact of television news
coverage on public opinion, (i.e., the ability to set the agenda) later
in the chapter.
(2)
Howard Kurtz, the media critic for The Washington Post, attributed the intensified scrutiny
of the press to the SNL skit in his
appearance on The Colbert
Report.
(3)
For a wonderful treatment of Callender, see New York Times columnist William Safire’s
historical novel Scandalmonger (2000).
(4)
For an excellent overview of the assumptions of this approach
and their limited current application, see Schudson
(1998).
(5)
This section draws heavily from Williams
(2004).
(6)
Dewey actually worked, early in his career, on a
newspaper devoted to providing its readers with the most important
findings of academic social scientists (see Ryan
1997).
(7)
For example, compared with print media where one knows
how many issues of a newspaper or magazine are sold, it was
initially difficult to even conceptualize, let alone measure, the
radio audience. Once you send the signal over the air, how do you
figure out who is listening or why? In the early days of radio in
the 1920s, radio executives thought that the main reason folks
listened to one show rather than another was simply signal strength
and not interest in a particular type of programming. It was only
after much study of actual radio listeners that the industry
discovered that people searched for shows they were interested
in.
(8)
Interestingly enough, Patterson (1993) argues that what
leads to the dominance of the horse race frame is the long length of
campaigns and the boredom of journalists at covering the same stump
speech day after day. Given carefully limited and controlled access
to the candidate him or herself, journalists rely on campaign
advisors as sources, who not surprisingly also obsess about the
strategies of the campaigns. Given the seemingly endless 2008
campaign, what Patterson proposes is that the press might better
serve the public interest if campaigns were dramatically
shortened.
(9)
This is not to claim that media changes are the only explanation for this fragmentation.
For an explanation that emphasizes changes in the media in the context
of broader political, social, and cultural changes like the end of the
Cold War and the rise of multiculturalism, see Williams and Delli
Carpini (forthcoming)
(10)
Marshall himself was a little-known freelance
journalist.
(11)
These networks span the political spectrum from Moveon.com on
the left to FreeRepublic.com on the right.
الفصل الرابع: دراسة الثقافة الشائعة
(1)
On the issue of mothers in literature, see Walters (1992). On
mothers in film, see Kaplan (1992).
(2)
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the Internet and
the Press (2009) indicates that more Americans support legalized
abortion than oppose it.
(3)
See Daley (1991). Later, following the birth of her third
child, Vieira returned to broadcasting and resumed an extremely
successful career culminating in her current position as anchor of the
morning news program The Today Show.
However, for years she was plagued with comments questioning her
dedication to her work, sparked by her pregnancies. See Kurtz (2007) for
an in-depth discussion of decisions at ABC that led to Elizabeth Vargas
being let go after only a few months as evening news anchor, coincident
with her second pregnancy and the birth of her second
child.
(4)
See for example Morley’s discussion of media reception study,
and other discussions of the nature of media reception: Livingstone
(2003b) and Morley (1992).
(5)
See especially here Williams (1977) and Hall
(1980).
(6)
On third-wave feminism, see McRobbie (2004) and Hogeland
(2001).
(7)
See Gill and Herdieckerhoff (2006).
(8)
See, for example, Silverstone (1994), Ang (1996), Alasuutari
(1999), Lotz (2000), Bird (2003), Schroder (1999), and many
others.
الفصل الخامس: دراسة الفوارق الاجتماعية
(1)
See Barker (2008) for a good overview of the field of
cultural studies.
(2)
See Wikipedia (n.d.-a) for a fuller discussion of the
British New Wave cinema.
(3)
See Wikipedia (n.d.-c) for a good introduction to third-wave
feminism. The term “third-wave” is often traced to a 1992 essay written
by Rebecca Walker entitled “Becoming the Third Wave.” She coined this
term in the context of speaking about the multiple contradictions of the
Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas hearings for feminists in the 1990s. In
particular, she claimed that she was a “third-wave” feminist, rather
than a “postfeminist,” thereby asserting that there was still a need for
feminism, though a new version that transcended some of the issues
plaguing second-wave feminism, in particular the exclusion of women of
color and lesbians. The essay was reprinted in Ryan (1997). See also
Dicker and Piepmeier (2003); Howie, Gillis, and Munford (2004); Reger
(2005); and Walker (1995) for further discussions of third-wave
feminism.
(4)
There is debate in our literature about whether the
industry’s assumptions are accurate in this regard. Most scholars
believe this industry belief to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, in
that as more films are angled toward a young male audience, the
potential female audience is alienated and drops out of film
viewing.
(5)
See Jackson (2008). This work provides a history of the
relations between southerners and motion pictures from the silent era to
the World War II era, illustrating the parallels between the rise and
fall of the studio system and the rise and fall of racial segregation,
and their points of intersection and mutual
influence.
(6)
In addition to this, many primarily white films included
segments featuring African-American actors that were often omitted when
the films were shown in the southern states. Ziegfield Follies (1945) and Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) are examples of films
that featured two different versions, one for northern audiences, which
might include black viewers as well as white viewers, and one for
southern movie theaters, which would never include both audiences. (See
Everett 2001.)
(7)
I am extremely indebted to Donald Bogle (2001) for this
discussion of the films of Oscar Micheaux.
(8)
See Chong (2005, forthcoming).
(9)
By the end of the 1970s, the majority of black children in
the United States lived in families headed by single mothers. For
documentation, see Casper and Bryson (1998, n.d.) and Casper and Fields
(2000).
الفصل السادس: دراسة النصوص الإعلامية وتلقِّيها في بيئة الإعلام الجديدة
(1)
See, for example, Finer et al. (2005).
(2)
See HBO’s made-for-television movie If
These Walls Could Talk (1996) for an example of an attempt to
balance the increasing pro-life bias of network television during the
1990s.
(3)
This research was funded by a grant from the National
Science Foundation, DST IIS–0438803 in the Digital Societies and
Technologies Program (Press and Williams 2004).
(4)
This rate was higher than that of the national average
in the United States for the 2004 election (64 percent) but
approximated the rate in the Midwest, the region from which our
sample was derived, which was 76 percent. See the numbers at US
Census Bureau (2006).
(5)
National figures indicate that 65 percent of women
voted in the 2004 election, as compared to 62 percent of men, and
more women are registered to vote than men (US Census Bureau 2006:
1). This number does seem to be a bit high, as compared to the
national voting rate of 64 percent in 2004, according to US Census
Bureau numbers, and prompts the question, as we discuss, of whether
our sample was self-selecting for highly active, engaged
individuals. Again, however, the US Census Bureau reports that
people in the Midwest are more likely to vote than other Americans—76 percent versus
64 percent nationwide (2006: 8)—a pattern that
fits our study data.
(6)
This discussion of our NSF findings is indebted to several
earlier conference papers coauthored with Ellen Moore and Camille
Johnson-Yale; see Press, Williams, Moore, and Johnson-Yale (2005a,
2005b, 2006b).
الفصل السابع: خاتمة
(1)
Now the RateMyProfessor.com site is used by Forbes magazine to help establish the
rankings of various institutions, when they publish their
rankings.
