Parts of Mass communication Models
The Sender or source is the typical starting place for a message. In cyclical communication models such as Schramm’s Model 1954, the sender can also be the encoder, interpreter, or decoder just at different stages of the message’s life. After the message has been encoded or interpreted, the message can then be relayed or fed back to the original sender thus creating the possibility of the audience or receivers of the message to become senders.
The receiver of a message is the person who is interpreting or decoding the message. For good communication to take place the receiver ideally should be, interested in the message, interested in the source or sender and interested in interpreting the message to make it viable for their purpose. The key word is interested.
Encoding is the processing of the message from one form to another. When a sender encodes a message that message must be translated into a format the senders intended receiver or audience can understand and absorb. Encoding can take place before a message reaches a sender or can be done by the sender.
Decoding takes place by the receiver of a message in a straight line communication model, such as Berlo’s Model or the Shannon-Weaver model the decoding if often the end of the messages life cycle.
Channels are the way, means, or method that a message is actually sent. A physical phone line for example would be a channel. The television is another form of a channel and can have sub channels.
Noise is anything that interferes with the message in transit to the receiver. Noise can be internal, thinking of something else while receiving a message. Noise can be external such as actual noise, sights, smells, textures, or environmental factors. Noise can also be semantic. Something that abruptly distracts a receiver such as a rude comment or statement intended to incite the receiver.
Who does your news? – Jayson Blair and the NY Times
Intellectual property is in its most basic form entitle an individual or entity (business or organization) certain rights on an idea, or work. Intellectual property is used to protect individuals or entities from others using their ideas and work.
For more official details see. Citizen Media Law Project
On to Jayson Blair
Jayson Blair was a reporter for the New York Times. He started as a intern in 1998 and worked at the times either as an intern or reporter until his resignation in 2003. Blair was suspected of making up facts in his stories. Throughout his career at the NY Times there where questions of his integrity as a journalist and the stories he had written. The issue of Jayson Blair came to a head when the San Antonio news contacted the NY Times about an article Blair had written on a MIA soldier that bared a great resemblance to San Antonio’s own article on the case. (Antonio article here). Blair had plagiarized parts of many news stories as he made up details about places he had been and people he had interviewed. When conducting their own internal investigation the NY Times began to unravel many years of inconsistencies and issues with stories that Blair had written, including major front page news stories. Did Blair steal intellectual property? Yes is the easy answer. His intellectual property “crime” was plagiarism. There are many links and articles about Jayson Blair and the NY Times on the web including the NY Times own accounts found here.
Beyond Blair
Jayson Blair is really only a small part of this story. The real story here is the NY Times and journalism today. Over the time Blair spent working for the NY Times his articles where called into question a number of times yet nothing was ever seriously done about it. So Now we have to move on to true responsibility and this falls directly into the laps of the NY Times editors. They are the gatekeepers of information being passed on to the masses and basically did not care whether the news they were reporting on was factual or invented. Stories that capture attention is what they want. If they had cared about their integrity I mean really cared wouldn’t they have let Jayson go after, let’s say, incident number 10. There are all kinds of excuses from the times about a few editors, Blair had connections, was on a favored list, and some of these folks have resigned, but this story bring to question the integrity of any news organization. News companies are always pulling information from other organizations sometimes cited and sometimes not, clear violations of stealing intellectual property (OK). Can we as consumers truly believe any news story put out to us? Could we ever? I guess we can only believe what we actually see and hear in real life, Information and news delivered to us through the media has to all be questioned regardless of the perceived integrity of the channel. Even what you are reading now…
Disclaimer: This post is mostly opinion with some fact and I probably stole someones idea somewhere.
Links used in “researching” this post.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/media_ethics/casestudy_blair.php
http://www.jaysonblair.com/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair (I know it’s wikipedia)
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/19/opinion/truth-lies-and-subtext.html
Jason Blair today (Doing good and helping people)
http://www.bphope.com/Item.aspx?id=236
http://www.jayson-blair.com/
http://mediasearch.wnyc.org/m/25986514/life-lessons-from-jayson-blair.htm
http://bipolar.about.com/cs/crime/a/jaysonblair.htm
http://jaysonblair.blogspot.com/
INTERNET AND WIRELESS MEDIA SCAVENGER HUNT.
History of the internet
- 1957 – US DoD form ARPA in response to sputnik satellite being launced
- 1962 - The RAND corp. is hired by the US military to help maintain control/communications with missles and attack bombers after a nuclear attack. The result is a packet switching network.
- 1968 – ARPA begins the ARPANET project. Connection was between 4 node U of C LA, Stanford, and Santa Barbara In Utah the connection was to U of Utah
- 1973 – The TCP/IP protocol is developed. Vinto Cerf and Bob Kahn project leaders
- 1974 – The first time the term internet is used
- 1976 – Ethernet is developed
- 1979 USENET created.
- 1983 DNS Domain name system created.
- 1990 – Tim Berners-Lee and others implement a hyper text system. HTML which is the foundation of modern web pages
A fool and his world are soon departed
The movie 2012 is coming November 19th 2009. This brings up the old end of the world debate. I am sure the world is not going to end anytime soon. Humankind’s time on earth may end but the world will survive in some form or the other. Some believe the world will end in 2012, which is the “end” of the Mayan calendar. Others believe the world will end with the second coming of Christ. Some think the world will never end. They (and I) are all fools. The human race will not be on this planet forever. We may or may not survive on some other planet or in space on ships or…….?
But we are not going to discuss such hypothesis here. Here we are exploring the communication en mass of the feature film and its application to mass media. The advertising and subsequent media that is evolving is quite interesting. Lets go back to the beginning.
The Mayan calendar is a long count calendar beginning at the start of the Mayan era. The Mayans, being extraordinary astronomers knew the a year was slightly longer that 365 days. They also had kept 3 different main calendars at the same time. Besides the long count there is the Tzolkin (divine calendar) and the Haab(civil calendar). The Haab is the only one to have direct relationship to the length of the year.(http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/calendar-mayan.html). On a modern Julian calendar the calendar ends on December 21, 2012. There are many theories as to what the end of the calendar means. Some say end of the world, some say it will be a time of enlightenment. The original calendars written in stone and pictographs have been interpreted and spread throughout the world. The media started with stories and pictographs and spread mostly as stories through out the world.
Now with the year 2012 approaching we have new means of spreading this message. First off the movie is a mass media delivery system itself. What I really find amusing is how Sony pictures is marketing the film. If you go to official movie website, (http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/2012/) in addition to the usual trailers and synopsis there are links to other sites and even a book review all made to look like they are separate from the movie thus giving a sense of reality to the movies theme. The first form of media that caught my attention is a link to the official sounding Institute for Human Continuity. (http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/) The IHC proposes to be an official sounding site with its .org domain. Here you can see what possibilities exsist for the end of eath or mankind, vote for a future leader and meet the diplomats. Oh yes and initiatives and a survival lottery. This is a very slick site done with the flash application. Very convincing!
The next form of media is a link to a fictional book called Farewell Atlantis. http://www.farewellatlantis.com/ There is a excerpt of the first chapter and an authors biography of Jackson Curtis (with a picture of John Cusak). It certainly seems like a real book. HMMM
In addition to these there is a link to a seemingly amateur blog (http://www.thisistheend.com/) which has lots of links and comments as well as video comments to the above mentioned IHC site. This is an amusing little site to visit, starts with a recipe for pickles. Cause we are in a pickle (wink wink nudge nudge).
Sony also has twitter and face book sites. The one thing I have not seen much of is television ads. Yes there are some but not as many as a usual blockbuster film has so close to release. Sony is counting on the web and social networking to get the word out. The way they are doing it reminds slightly of the original “war of the Worlds” radio broadcast where it was made so real that people really believed we where being invaded by creatures from mars. Sony is not only advertising but creating a culture to promote this film. They are advertising without seeming to do so. Can you say BAAHHHH! (think Bo-Peep)
It looks great and I may go see it but probably wait for the dvd probably released in December of 2012.
“No matter where you live no matter what you believe one date will unite us all.”
At the time of this post my computer has survived Y2K. 
other sources
Harmonic Convergence. (2007). In Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained. Retrieved from http://168.156.198.98:2226/entry/chambun/harmonic_convergence
Time. (1998). In Critical Terms for Religious Studies. Retrieved from http://168.156.198.98:2226/entry/uchicagors/time
Maya. (2003). In The Macmillan Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://168.156.198.98:2226/entry/move/maya
http://www.adishakti.org/mayan_end_times_prophecy_12-21-2012.htm
Mass Media Meets Mass Communication
Mr. Median was a lonely man, living in his mansion that overlooked the city. He was an inventor of all types of things, Robot cat dusters, cookie crumblers, and self-wiping toilets, anti fog foggers among others. Hi favorite inventions where the ones that could interact with other inventions and people, these are the future he was always telling himself. He invented devices that could play music and show talkies all on the same device. He had inventions that also send the music and talkies to each other. A device could connect to many devices all at once. Phones without wires, small spaceships that his devices could use and would circle the earth once a day, recordavoiceamagigs, well you get the idea.
Mr. Median had one problem he cold not solve. He had all these inventions that could send things back and forth to each other but they had nothing to send. Mr. Median would spend hours trying to solve this. He filled chalkboards, took notes in his book, wrote on the tablecloth during dinner all to no avail. His solution would come in an unexpected way.
One fine Thursday afternoon, Mr. Median was in town picking up mail and shopping at the local hardware and grocery stores. While turning into the canned soup section, (another one of his inventions) he ran into the cart of another shopper. The shopper turned to see what or who had rammed her cart. When Mr. Median saw her, his legs turned immediately to Jell-O as he gazed upon the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She had long hair all pulled up in a tight bun, thick glasses, a round face that matched her roundish body and roundish ankles. She was a goddess. Stuttering, he apologized and began to move on. As he was heading down the isle, he heard a woman’s voice say
“Excuse me, aren’t you the inventor who lives in the mansion on the hill?”
Astonished that she was speaking to him he turned and replied (again stuttering from nervousness)
“Yes my name is Mr. Median and I have lived there my whole life. Why do you ask?”
“Well” she said. “I have always admired that house. I always imagined beautiful views and that if you shouted from way up there the whole world could hear you.”
“ The view certainly is nice when the weather permits. I have never shouted so I do not know who could hear.” Mr. Median replied. Then it just came out. “Would you like to come up to the house and shout?” he asked.
“Well we hardly know each other,” said the woman.
What is your name queried Mr. Median.
“I am Miss Comm, I have just moved here from a place that I can only describe as a dark black hole where there is no sound and no light. I was lonely, as everyone there is, and needed a change. By the way you are dressed I can see you are man of honor so I will accept your invitation.”
Mr. Medians legs where shaking bad now. He had never had anyone to his house and especially no one as strikingly beautiful as Miss Comm. The two of them climbed into his car and headed up the hill. Miss Comm was delighted with the views and began to shout. She shouted stories, she shouted pain, she shouted love, she just shouted everything on her mind. The shouting did not bother Mr. Median, he was happy that for once there was noise at the house other than his talkies or the wind.
Miss Comm began to explore the inside of the house. Seeing all of the inventions, she became very curious.
“What is this?” she asked.
That is a “recordiotalkie pod” he replied. “It can record your voice and image and the play it back to you. It can also transmit the recording to another recordiotalkie pod and my phone that uses no wires and my large computronerator.”
Well, that is just fantastic she thought. “You mean I can shout in one device and go into another room and hear my shouts.”
Yes that is the idea. I just have nothing to say or shout.
“I know thousands if not millions of people from that dark place that could use this. We all have lots to say and shout but no one can hear sound. These devices could fix that.”
One year passes…. Mr. Median and Ms. Comm fell in love got married and began refining and duplicating the inventions. When the house was filled with the inventions they shipped via blimp all of the gadgets to that dark place which had been Ms. Comm’s home.
Then every night Mr. and Mrs. Comm-Media would sit in front of their computonerators and hear all the news that came and went.
Though, deeply in love they never spoke to each other again.
Virtual Politics/Virtual Communities from Key Concepts in Political Communication
Virtual Politics/Virtual Communities from Key Concepts in Political Communication
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Mass Communications – stickies week one Team Tank
This post is still in early pre-draft edit stage
The category of my stickies is interpretative
- search lights
- theater
- protest
- fire
- cave paintings
- music
- smoke signals
- marching band
- didgeridoo
- tattoo
- sculptures
- fine art
- armor
- swords
- flags
- loud noises
- ceremonies
- language
- drums
- color
- drama
- dance
- sign language
Tattoo – Tattoos have been used as a mean of communication for thousands of years early as 200o BC and possibly 3200 BC. Tattoos have in the past symbolized ones stature within communities chief, warrior, merchant, sailor, prisoner as a few examples. Tattoos are also used to tell stories usually quite personal to the wearer. For communication tattoos would be a silent form of communication akin to graphic novels.
–The medium is the body the message is the story.
Dance – Dance has been used throughout history back to early man as a means of communicating a story to others. Dance is still used today as a means of communication. In the modern western world it is much more subject to the viewers interpretation. Tribal dances both ancient and modern are used to not only communicate to the tribe or others tribes but also as a means to communicate with gods.
cave paintings- Cave paintings as communication were created to let others now about hunting, life, property and boundaries. They were/are mostly symbolic. A few simple symbols could say a lot to a visitor who understood the meaning of the message.
ceremonies
Color – Color is used as a mass communication tool throught the worlds societies. Red comes to mind right away as a warning in most western and european modern cultures. It is often attache to stop signs and lights, warning signs such as do not enter and no tresspassing are usually done in red. The interesting thing about colors is different cultures attach diferent meanings to color. Some cultures see black as color of death while others see white with the same meaning.
Drums – Drums have been used throughout history as a communication tool both for distance and in local gatherings. Often in combination with dance (see dance above).
For our assignment we were asked to find a relation to our stickies and the essays from part 3 Medium and the Message from the book Digital Dialectic : New Essays on New Media. Jason calls it a stretch assignment but I disagree. In the essay entitled The medium is the memory by Florian Brody the author is taking a stance that books or printed word is disappearing and we are moving to a new medium in the digital world as text is transferred to digital devices. He states that
Users of hypertext systems build imaginary houses in their minds to understand where they are in the story.1
In ceramonies that use interpretative means to communicate such as dance or drums the story tellers are building imaginary houses to keep the knowledge of the story…..
1. Lunenfeld, Peter (Editor). Digital Dialectic : New Essays on New Media.
Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2000. p 165.
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/lwtclearningcommons/Doc?id=10225301&ppg=165
Copyright © 2000. MIT Press. All rights reserved.
Roll Em Roll Em Roll Em!
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