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Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media
Consistently praised for its engaging writing style, currency, and visual appeal, MEDIA/IMPACT introduces students to today's converged mass media-its industries and support industries, as well as the legal, ethical, social, global, and technological issues that accompany them. Emphasizing the impact of the media on individuals and society, Biagi grounds her discussion in the fact that the media are first and foremost in the business of making money, and provides concise histories of each industry before giving students an insider's look at what it's like to work in each industry. The new edition of this enduring bestseller offers several important new features, including a media literacy case study in each chapter; enhanced chapter review materials, including new Critical Questions; an extensive online media careers guide; and an entirely new collection of video clips with critical viewing questions.
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First published January 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 8, 2008
This was actually pretty decent as far as text books go.
February 6, 2017
Hey guys, so I know this is not a "normal" novel, but I wanted to share my thoughts about this media book that I've read over this semester. Media/Impact: An Introduction to Mass Media by Shirley Biagi truly opened my eyes to how mass media operates and what their true goal is, cause it aint to keep it's readers/views infomed. But, I think we all have grasped that concept by now, lol. Anyway, I enjoyed most of the chapters that depicted the rise and falls of the eight media industries; books, newspapers, magazines, radio, recordings, movies, tv, and internet. Though, because I like history, i was rather intrigued by some of its content, but I am sure others in my class were bored to death...Moving on, in addition to describing the mass media industries and their role in the United States, the book also included information regarding advertising, public relations, news and info, social and political issues, laws and regulations, and ethics. Those last two chapters, whoa... heavy stuff. But I loved it. I think the laws and regulation was probably my favorite chapter in the entire book. Though, people dont seem to hold the law to the standards it ought to be. It's the same with ethics, even though technically those are "voluntary". Which translates to,you wont get sued, but your rep will be damaged. All in all, I enjoyed this, and even though it was a school book, I might have read it without it being assigned on a syllabus.
September 18, 2017
p.5 – Communication Process – To communicate with each other, people rely on their five senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. This direct sharing of experience between two people is called interpersonal communication. Mass communication is from one person or group of persons through a transmitting device (a medium) to a large audiences or markets.
p.6 – A medium is a means by which a message reaches an audience. (The plural of the word medium is media; the term media refers to more than one medium.)
p.7 – The term mass media industries describes eight types of mass media businesses. The word industries, when used to describe the media business, emphasizes the primary goal of mass media in America – to generate money:
• Books
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Recordings
• Radio
• Movies
• Television
• Internet
Books, newspapers and magazines were America’s only mass media for 250 years after the first American books was published in 1640. The first half of the 20th century brought 4 new types of media – recordings, radio, movies, and TV – in fewer than 50 years. The late-20th-century addition to the media mix, of course, is the Internet.
p.9 – The mass media are key industries in our society. They affect our culture, our buying habits and our politics. They are affected in turn by changes in our beliefs, tastes, interests and behaviour.
1. Mass media are profit-centered businesses
2. Technological developments change the way mass media are delivered and consumed
3. Mass media both reflect and affect politics, society and culture
p.11 – Conglomerates – companies that own media companies as well as businesses that are unrelated to the media business
Vertical Integration – an attempt by one company to simultaneously control several related aspects of the media business
Convergence – the melding of the communications, computer and electronics industries. Also used to describe the economic alignment of the various media companies with each other to take advantage of technological advancements.
p.12 – Public ownership – most media companies today are publicly traded, which means their stock is sold in one of the nation’s stock exchanges. This makes acquisition relatively easy. A media company that wants to buy another publicly owned company can buy that company’s stock when the stock becomes available.
Deregulation – Government action that reduces government restrictions on the business operations of an industry. Beginning in the 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission gradually deregulated the broadcast media. The FCC withdrew many regulatory restrictions on broadcast media ownership. Before 1980, for example, the FCC allowed a broadcast company to own only five TV stations, five AM radio stations and five FM stations. Companies were also required to keep a station for three years before the owners could sell it.
Newspapers and broadcast stations are easier businesses to buy than to create. Because these businesses require huge investments in equipment and people, they are expensive to start up.
p.13 – In the 1990s, the introduction of new technologies, especially the Internet, changed the economies of all the media industries. Each industry had to adapt to the Internet quickly, and the fastest way to gain internet expertise was to buy a company or to invest in a company that already had created an Internet presence or a successful Internet product.
The economic downturn that began in 2007 hit the newspaper business especially hard. Heavily dependent on real estate advertising and classifieds and challenged by the dynamics of the Internet, many publicly owned newspaper companies began losing money at an unprecedented rate. This fall in profits drove their stock prices to new lows, which made them vulnerable to takeovers and buyouts as the companies struggled to survive. Several newspaper companies such as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times filed for bankruptcy protection, and in 2013 the investors who owned the Tribune Company put it up for sale.
Message Pluralism – the availability to an audience of a variety of information and entertainment sources.
p.14 – As societies grew more literate, the demand for manuscripts flourished, but a scribe could produce only one copy at a time. What has been called the second information communications revolution began in Germany in 1455, when Johannes Gutenberg printed a Bible on a press that used movable type. More than 200 years before Gutenberg, the Chinese had invented a printing press that used wood type, and the Chinese also are credited with perfecting a copper press in 1445. But Gutenberg’s innovation was to line up individual metal letters that he could ink and then press onto paper to produce copies. Unlike the wood or copper presses, the metal letters could be reused to produce new pages of text, which made the process much cheaper.
Gutenberg’s Bible, a duplicate of the Latin original, is considered the first book printed by movable type (47 copies survive today, 559 years later).
Phonetic Writing – use of symbols to represent sounds
p.15 – Today’s age of communication has been called the third information communication revolution because computers have become the electronic storehouses and transmitters of vast amounts of information that previously relied on the written word.
p.16 – Interactive – a message system that allows senders and receivers to communicate simultaneously
Digital Communication – data in a form that can be transmitted and received electronically
p.18 – The Internet – international web of computer networks. As an international web of electronic networks, it forms the backbone of this communications network, which is available to any consumer who has a screen and a cable, satellite, cellular or telephone connection to the system.
p.19 – Internet of Things – a computing concept that envisions a society where all electronic devices are interconnected through the Internet and, in turn, can process and share information and interact globally.
p.21 – Review: By definition, mass communication is information that is made available to a large audience quickly.
Mass Media are Profit-Centered Businesses:
• All US media are privately owned except the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, which survive on government support and private donations.
• Overall, American mass media ownership has been contracting rather than expanding with fewer companies owning more aspects of the media business. This trend is called concentration of ownership.
• Concentration of ownership take four forms: chains, broadcast networks, conglomerates and vertical integration
• The major goal of the American mass media is to make money. Except for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, all U.S. media operate primarily as profit-centered businesses.
Advertisers and Consumers Pay the Bills:
• Most of the income in mass media industries collect comes from advertising
• People who want to sell you products pay for most of the information and entertainment you receive through the American mass media
• Consumers support the media indirectly by buying the products that advertisers sell
p.22 – How Communications Networks Operate:
• The communications networks need content, two-way digital communication and digital storage
• Cable companies, satellite services, telephone companies and cellular companies deliver services on the new communications network
• Information and entertainment that already have been produced, stored, and digitized provide the first content for the communications network
Mass Media Reflect and Affect Politics, Society and Culture
• The media are political, social and cultural institutions that both reflect and affect the society in which they operate
• Multiplying sources of information and entertainment mean that, today, very few people share identical mass media environments
• The development of communications technology directly affects the speed with which a society and culture evolve
• It has taken 5,500 years to achieve the capability for instant communication that we have today
• Forecasters predict that eventually all electronic devices will be connected in an Internet of Things
p.49 – Alternative (Dissent) Press – Media that present alternative viewpoints that challenge the mainstream press
p.52 – Yellow Journalism – News that emphasizes crime, sex and violence; also called jazz journalism and tabloid journalism.
Tabloid – a small-format newspaper that features large photographs and illustrations along with sensational stories
p.54 – Alternative Press Revives Voices of Protest – The social movements of the 1960s briefly revived one portion of the early newspaper industry – the alternative press. Like their 1800s predecessors in the abolition and emancipation movements, people who revived the alternative press in the 1960s believed the mainstream press was avoiding important issues, such as the anti-Vietnam War movement, the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. In 1964, as a way to pass along news about the anti-war movement, the Los Angeles Free Press became the first underground paper to publish regularly.
p.55 – Syndicates – News agencies that sell articles for publication to several newspapers simultaneously.
p.58 – News Aggregators – Technology-based companies (such as BuzzFeed) that primarily gather and re-format viral news content borrowed from traditional news organizations and social networks, then post the content as news on their own sponsored sites.
p.60 – First Mass Medium to Deliver News – Between 1690 and 1920 newspapers were the only mass news medium. Newspapers are historically important in defining a society’s concept of the importance of an independent press.
• The abolition and women’s suffrage campaigns fostered the first alternative press movements.
• The penny press made newspapers available to the masses. The legacy of the penny press continues today in gossip columns and crime reporting.
• The introduction of television contributed to a decline in newspaper readership that began in the 1950s.
• The social causes of the 1960s briefly revived the alternative press. People who supported the alternative press believed the mainstream press was avoiding important issues such as the anti-Vietnam War movement, the civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement.
• Since the 1970s, the overall number of newspapers has declined. To try and match TV’s visual appeal, newspapers introduced advanced graphics and vivid color in the 1990s.
p.61 – Large corporations have bought up newspapers that once were family-owned.
• Newspapers primarily depend on advertising for support.
• More than 100 newspapers closed in the United States in the first six months of 2009.
p.339 – Print media was strictly controlled under Communism, with high-ranking party officials forming the core of media management. Because paper supplies were limited, newspapers rarely exceeded 12 pages. Revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, who said a newspaper should be a “collective propagandist,” a “collective agitator” and a “collective organizer,” founded Pravda, the Soviet Union’s oldest newspaper, in 1912. The Eastern European nations developed their press policies following the Soviet model.
In the 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev eased media controls as part of his policy of glasnost. In 1988, the first paid commercials (for Pepsi-Cola, Sony and Visa credit cards) appeared on Soviet TV, and in 1989, the Soviet daily newspaper Izvestia published its first Western ads.
In 1990, the Supreme Soviet, the legislative body, outlawed media censorship and gave every citizen the right to publish a newspaper. Within 5 month, more than 100 newspapers began publication. The, showing how quickly government positions can change, in early 1991, Gorbachev asked the Supreme Soviet to suspend these press freedoms, but it refused. Less than a year later, Gorbachev’s successor, President Boris Yeltsin, again began to relax government control of the press. In 1996, facing bankruptcy, Pravda ceased publication.
Today Russian officials, such as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, maintain a tight rein on the press, and several reporters who have written critically about the government have been brutally injured or killed, although the government disavows any connection to the attacks. Putin “thinks that democracy stands in his way,” former Soviet leader Gorbachev told The New York Times in an interview published in October 2010. “I am afraid that they have been saddled with this idea that this unmanageable country needs authoritarianism. They think they cannot do without it.”
p.6 – A medium is a means by which a message reaches an audience. (The plural of the word medium is media; the term media refers to more than one medium.)
p.7 – The term mass media industries describes eight types of mass media businesses. The word industries, when used to describe the media business, emphasizes the primary goal of mass media in America – to generate money:
• Books
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Recordings
• Radio
• Movies
• Television
• Internet
Books, newspapers and magazines were America’s only mass media for 250 years after the first American books was published in 1640. The first half of the 20th century brought 4 new types of media – recordings, radio, movies, and TV – in fewer than 50 years. The late-20th-century addition to the media mix, of course, is the Internet.
p.9 – The mass media are key industries in our society. They affect our culture, our buying habits and our politics. They are affected in turn by changes in our beliefs, tastes, interests and behaviour.
1. Mass media are profit-centered businesses
2. Technological developments change the way mass media are delivered and consumed
3. Mass media both reflect and affect politics, society and culture
p.11 – Conglomerates – companies that own media companies as well as businesses that are unrelated to the media business
Vertical Integration – an attempt by one company to simultaneously control several related aspects of the media business
Convergence – the melding of the communications, computer and electronics industries. Also used to describe the economic alignment of the various media companies with each other to take advantage of technological advancements.
p.12 – Public ownership – most media companies today are publicly traded, which means their stock is sold in one of the nation’s stock exchanges. This makes acquisition relatively easy. A media company that wants to buy another publicly owned company can buy that company’s stock when the stock becomes available.
Deregulation – Government action that reduces government restrictions on the business operations of an industry. Beginning in the 1980s, the Federal Communications Commission gradually deregulated the broadcast media. The FCC withdrew many regulatory restrictions on broadcast media ownership. Before 1980, for example, the FCC allowed a broadcast company to own only five TV stations, five AM radio stations and five FM stations. Companies were also required to keep a station for three years before the owners could sell it.
Newspapers and broadcast stations are easier businesses to buy than to create. Because these businesses require huge investments in equipment and people, they are expensive to start up.
p.13 – In the 1990s, the introduction of new technologies, especially the Internet, changed the economies of all the media industries. Each industry had to adapt to the Internet quickly, and the fastest way to gain internet expertise was to buy a company or to invest in a company that already had created an Internet presence or a successful Internet product.
The economic downturn that began in 2007 hit the newspaper business especially hard. Heavily dependent on real estate advertising and classifieds and challenged by the dynamics of the Internet, many publicly owned newspaper companies began losing money at an unprecedented rate. This fall in profits drove their stock prices to new lows, which made them vulnerable to takeovers and buyouts as the companies struggled to survive. Several newspaper companies such as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times filed for bankruptcy protection, and in 2013 the investors who owned the Tribune Company put it up for sale.
Message Pluralism – the availability to an audience of a variety of information and entertainment sources.
p.14 – As societies grew more literate, the demand for manuscripts flourished, but a scribe could produce only one copy at a time. What has been called the second information communications revolution began in Germany in 1455, when Johannes Gutenberg printed a Bible on a press that used movable type. More than 200 years before Gutenberg, the Chinese had invented a printing press that used wood type, and the Chinese also are credited with perfecting a copper press in 1445. But Gutenberg’s innovation was to line up individual metal letters that he could ink and then press onto paper to produce copies. Unlike the wood or copper presses, the metal letters could be reused to produce new pages of text, which made the process much cheaper.
Gutenberg’s Bible, a duplicate of the Latin original, is considered the first book printed by movable type (47 copies survive today, 559 years later).
Phonetic Writing – use of symbols to represent sounds
p.15 – Today’s age of communication has been called the third information communication revolution because computers have become the electronic storehouses and transmitters of vast amounts of information that previously relied on the written word.
p.16 – Interactive – a message system that allows senders and receivers to communicate simultaneously
Digital Communication – data in a form that can be transmitted and received electronically
p.18 – The Internet – international web of computer networks. As an international web of electronic networks, it forms the backbone of this communications network, which is available to any consumer who has a screen and a cable, satellite, cellular or telephone connection to the system.
p.19 – Internet of Things – a computing concept that envisions a society where all electronic devices are interconnected through the Internet and, in turn, can process and share information and interact globally.
p.21 – Review: By definition, mass communication is information that is made available to a large audience quickly.
Mass Media are Profit-Centered Businesses:
• All US media are privately owned except the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, which survive on government support and private donations.
• Overall, American mass media ownership has been contracting rather than expanding with fewer companies owning more aspects of the media business. This trend is called concentration of ownership.
• Concentration of ownership take four forms: chains, broadcast networks, conglomerates and vertical integration
• The major goal of the American mass media is to make money. Except for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, all U.S. media operate primarily as profit-centered businesses.
Advertisers and Consumers Pay the Bills:
• Most of the income in mass media industries collect comes from advertising
• People who want to sell you products pay for most of the information and entertainment you receive through the American mass media
• Consumers support the media indirectly by buying the products that advertisers sell
p.22 – How Communications Networks Operate:
• The communications networks need content, two-way digital communication and digital storage
• Cable companies, satellite services, telephone companies and cellular companies deliver services on the new communications network
• Information and entertainment that already have been produced, stored, and digitized provide the first content for the communications network
Mass Media Reflect and Affect Politics, Society and Culture
• The media are political, social and cultural institutions that both reflect and affect the society in which they operate
• Multiplying sources of information and entertainment mean that, today, very few people share identical mass media environments
• The development of communications technology directly affects the speed with which a society and culture evolve
• It has taken 5,500 years to achieve the capability for instant communication that we have today
• Forecasters predict that eventually all electronic devices will be connected in an Internet of Things
p.49 – Alternative (Dissent) Press – Media that present alternative viewpoints that challenge the mainstream press
p.52 – Yellow Journalism – News that emphasizes crime, sex and violence; also called jazz journalism and tabloid journalism.
Tabloid – a small-format newspaper that features large photographs and illustrations along with sensational stories
p.54 – Alternative Press Revives Voices of Protest – The social movements of the 1960s briefly revived one portion of the early newspaper industry – the alternative press. Like their 1800s predecessors in the abolition and emancipation movements, people who revived the alternative press in the 1960s believed the mainstream press was avoiding important issues, such as the anti-Vietnam War movement, the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement. In 1964, as a way to pass along news about the anti-war movement, the Los Angeles Free Press became the first underground paper to publish regularly.
p.55 – Syndicates – News agencies that sell articles for publication to several newspapers simultaneously.
p.58 – News Aggregators – Technology-based companies (such as BuzzFeed) that primarily gather and re-format viral news content borrowed from traditional news organizations and social networks, then post the content as news on their own sponsored sites.
p.60 – First Mass Medium to Deliver News – Between 1690 and 1920 newspapers were the only mass news medium. Newspapers are historically important in defining a society’s concept of the importance of an independent press.
• The abolition and women’s suffrage campaigns fostered the first alternative press movements.
• The penny press made newspapers available to the masses. The legacy of the penny press continues today in gossip columns and crime reporting.
• The introduction of television contributed to a decline in newspaper readership that began in the 1950s.
• The social causes of the 1960s briefly revived the alternative press. People who supported the alternative press believed the mainstream press was avoiding important issues such as the anti-Vietnam War movement, the civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement.
• Since the 1970s, the overall number of newspapers has declined. To try and match TV’s visual appeal, newspapers introduced advanced graphics and vivid color in the 1990s.
p.61 – Large corporations have bought up newspapers that once were family-owned.
• Newspapers primarily depend on advertising for support.
• More than 100 newspapers closed in the United States in the first six months of 2009.
p.339 – Print media was strictly controlled under Communism, with high-ranking party officials forming the core of media management. Because paper supplies were limited, newspapers rarely exceeded 12 pages. Revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, who said a newspaper should be a “collective propagandist,” a “collective agitator” and a “collective organizer,” founded Pravda, the Soviet Union’s oldest newspaper, in 1912. The Eastern European nations developed their press policies following the Soviet model.
In the 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev eased media controls as part of his policy of glasnost. In 1988, the first paid commercials (for Pepsi-Cola, Sony and Visa credit cards) appeared on Soviet TV, and in 1989, the Soviet daily newspaper Izvestia published its first Western ads.
In 1990, the Supreme Soviet, the legislative body, outlawed media censorship and gave every citizen the right to publish a newspaper. Within 5 month, more than 100 newspapers began publication. The, showing how quickly government positions can change, in early 1991, Gorbachev asked the Supreme Soviet to suspend these press freedoms, but it refused. Less than a year later, Gorbachev’s successor, President Boris Yeltsin, again began to relax government control of the press. In 1996, facing bankruptcy, Pravda ceased publication.
Today Russian officials, such as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, maintain a tight rein on the press, and several reporters who have written critically about the government have been brutally injured or killed, although the government disavows any connection to the attacks. Putin “thinks that democracy stands in his way,” former Soviet leader Gorbachev told The New York Times in an interview published in October 2010. “I am afraid that they have been saddled with this idea that this unmanageable country needs authoritarianism. They think they cannot do without it.”
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