Mcquail's Communications Theory

The media’s job is to entertain, inform, and educate society on what is going on around the world. The media entertains society by reporting stories that amuse people. The educational function of the media is about allowing society to know their legal rights. The informational aspect of the media does not need to be explained; it is self-explanatory. Within the last three decades, the media’s role has changed dramatically. The media went from using telegraphs, post offices, newspapers, magazines, radio, and television to using cell phones and tablets. In the modern era, which is also sometimes referred to as the information age, global networking and global communication have shaped modern societies. The majority of

Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky introduce the ideology of the propaganda model. The purpose of the mass media is to communicate messages to the general public through written or visual information. These messages then allow the public to create their own opinions, values and beliefs on the basis of this information. In their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, the two theorists introduce readers to the use of this new ideology. “A propaganda model focuses on the inequality of wealth and power” (Herman & Chomsky, 1988, p. 2) and the influence it has on public opinion. They then divide the model into five filters; ownership, advertising, media reliance on government information, flak, and anti-communism. However, not all critics agree nor apply this ideology to modern society, especially with the rise of the internet as discussed below.

Jenkins talks about how the consumption of media products is a collective process, in other words, the collective intelligence is seen as an alternative source of media power. He describes how within popular culture, the collective meaning making is shaping and changing the ways religion, education, laws, politics, advertising and how the military operate (4). Jenkins discusses a process called “convergence of modes”, he explains that media and communication are becoming interconnected like the telephone and television.

The mass media has become a big part of our society and its counterparts. In a time span of 50 years this medium has influenced society to an extent where it has created wonders. This immaculate tool can control almost every action we perform, from speaking to the actions that every human being performs in society. The mass media has brought upon a new era of idea's and changes in the world we live in. As we analysis media in depth we will find many aspects of media which overlap and some of the smallest factors and aspects of media, which create the biggest impact on society.

‘media’ through which thoughts, ideas, and feelings are represented in a culture” and argues that

The article “Fixing the Communication Failure” by Dan Kahan, explains cultural cognition, and its role in effecting the discussion of issues. Cultural cognition refers to the individuals to conform an idea and argument based on their culture and their surrounding environment. Therefore, people views new scientific data in a biased way because of their concluded mine. Kahan defines people point of views into four groups, individualism, hierarchism, egalitarianism, and communitarianism. People from these four groups has their ideas and values, which create a polarize situation between the public. Kahan explains that one way to open people’s mind is to presented information that maintain their culture’s values and there is someone in their culture

Propaganda’s main goal was to manipulate ideas of masses. Bernays states that propaganda “ideas can be instantaneously transmitted to any distance and to any number of people,” (chapter 1). New technologies, like telephones and radios, changed how far and how many people

Mcquail, D. & Windahl, S. (2013). Communication Models for the Study of Mass Communications (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis

In The Medium Is the Message by Marshall McLuhan, he explores new media in its most original, basic and pure way as an object, furthermore, he use the idea of the medium itself carries the message rather than the message, furthermore, to analyze how new media influence in the society. At the end, McLuhan explain the role of broadcast television (as a new medium) and how television itself become a “fixed charge” in people’s day-to-day living which we simply cannot live without it. (Marshall McLuhan 1962, p.209) Base on Mcluhan’s notion of how a medium formed in the past, if the idea still apply to the mass communication media nowaday as the media themselves shape the society regardless of the content it carries, or there is a new relation

It has been argued that the end of the Cold War and globalisation has made Western-style liberal press system as a universal model and no nation can free itself from the powerful influence of its universal value. Discuss this argument in the Asian context by applying relevant theoretical approaches discussed in this course. You may choose one Asian nation as a case study to address your ideas about the argument.

The media extend the natural limits of human communication, it substitutes social activities and institutions, the media amalgamate with various non-media activities and organisations of all sectors of society accommodate to the media logic (Schulz, 2004). Audiences

“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” – Joseph Goebbels, German Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. This is the exact words of Nazis most famous propagandist in using media as a mass weapon of propaganda and mind control. Could you imagine Germany in 1930s, without Television channel, without the Internet, without every mobile device in your palm, what channel of information will you get? Of course, newspapers, flies, images, celebrities were used as tools for propaganda purposes, designed to provoke a reaction, and ultimately, a form of control over their citizen. Nowadays, with all the advanced of technologies, information can reach everyone in every corner of the Earth, the message is delivered in the subtlest ways, without people’s conscious, has shaped everyone’s decision, or at least shape their behavior toward the decision that the orchestrator want the audience to perceive. With the booming of internet, information sharing seamlessly, we must ask ourselves, the role of media in conveying, shaping the society that we are living in. Let look at few examples of U.S propaganda machine, and later, the particular case of fish sauce in Viet Nam back in October 2016.

Marshall McLuhan believed that the medium through which a message is received played a vital role in its effect on society and individuals, and should be studied in hand with the content it is carrying. He was one of the first writers to bring forth attention to the presence of communication tools, “...their characteristics, and how they work, rather than just to the messages these technologies transmitted” (Tremblay, 2012). In his book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man he wrote that a medium is an extension of ourselves.

The question that we hope to solve through the means of using communications theories is “Is mass media creating a

4. What does the history of television demonstrate about the wider context of Singapore’s history in the post-1965 period?