Strategically Communicating

Chapter six of Mediating the Message focuses on the organization level of the hierarchy of influence. What I find interesting is how quickly new media becomes a trusted source. I know that I read Buzzfeed more often than AP, and Buzzfeed was only launched in 2006. As the price of technology continues to fall, news outlets such as Buzzfed, Vox, and Vice News can compete with household names like The Washington Post and CBS News. Regarding Vice News, Just today, the editor of BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat told the Guardian that “They have definitely taught us something and the BBC across the board is learning from that.” She also says points out that you can upload a video to Youtube in five seconds but it takes five hours to upload video on the BBC platform. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/15/bbc-newsbeat-playing-catch-up-vice-news.

Long established media companies have to spend millions retooling their web presence and adding apps, while Ezra Klien can start Vox with far less investment. New companies can be more agile in making decisions and deciding what platforms to use, while established brands have name recognition. When anyone can be a citizen journalist, are established brands still relevant?

In their posts, alansylvestre and craigmetke discussed the recent uprising in Ferguson, based on the context of chapter four of Mediating the Message in the 21^st Century. I thought of a few other controversial issues – including Benghazi, the Malaysia Airlines crashes, and Russia and Ukraine. It is evident that the way these issues were mediated plays a significant role in the general populaces’ perceptions of them.

Alan asked: “Should the media take a more narrowly tailored approach when covering events?”

To answer that question, I think we must consider, “What is the journalist’s role?” The text offers two options: journalists can either be passive and neutral, or they can be active and advocate (p. 231).

From an ethics standpoint, we know that journalists are forbidden to work for a political candidate (p. 234). Yet, even without working for a certain person or party, is it possible to be non-partisan, objective, and neutral?

Although journalists must walk the tightrope between covering the news objectively and writing to suit their personal biases, they are also compelled to cover news their audiences want (p. 70). Often, the news in demand highlights conflict and controversy – that which deviates through a tendency toward inclusion of violence, among other things (p. 203).

As journalists, we have a powerful platform from which we can shape public opinion on issues like U.S. involvement in wars, gun control, legalization of marijuana, environmental issues, and funding for education.

What is our role?

During the aftermath of 9/11, reporting media that did not show enough empathy and patriotism were belittled and even fired (91). This varied from the traditional status quo, where journalists are established as “objective insiders” who anchor conventional wisdom in a format that can be easily applied across issues (93).

As we see content shift from local to more global platforms, and as those who do the reporting become more intimately inseparable from the digital sphere, will their portrayal of content also adapt?

In effort to gain momentum for social change, Freedom to Marry launched a timely social media campaign that employed the use of compelling photojournalism. Our news feeds were filled with revealing photos of families, working for marriage equality amongst intense political momentum. Journalists at local newspapers followed suit, standing watch at courthouses as the first marriage licenses were granted (check out this photo-deck by The Oregonian).

These examples, along with those from 9/11 (both deemed successful reporting via their social institutions), are intimate portrayals of emotion from both the subject and the journalist. So, can journalists effectively cover emotional events without abandoning total objectivity?

As the media space expands and traditional media becomes more precarious, will the success of “new media” be more closely tied to the social system from which the content is obtained? In the new digital world, can mainstream media maintain its role as an “objective insider” and true homogenous institutional actor?

We’re living in an age when traditional media and citizen reporting are melding together, when citizen bloggers are being hired by major news organizations and TMZ is breaking news.

In Chapter 5 of Mediating the Message, authors Shoemaker and Reese discuss a concept called ‘networked public sphere,’ which refers to this phenomenon.

As an avid reader of Gawker media blogs, like io9.com and Gizmodo.com I frequently see what some call ‘click bait’ headlines, calling attention with loud language to coverage about more mundane topics. When the headline is just outrageous enough, it is entertaining to read the comments from readers who feel they were sold a Yugo in Bentley branding.

Elsewhere on the ‘networked public sphere’, I’ve seen a more casual and increasingly sensational take on news in the traditional media. Traditional outlets now often skew their headlines to please the audience, rather than satisfy professional standards. Currently cnn.com is urging me, on the front page, to view ‘22 Selfies of the Week’. With extensive metrics, outlets today are just trying to give the masses what they want. Apparently viewing other people’s ‘selfies’ is part of what the masses want.

I think it is possible for readers to grow jaded to the cries of crazed headlines. I wonder if that means we can expect even louder, outrageous cries for attention. I worry that a barrage of ‘fluff’ from traditional media means that consumers will take news less seriously, or that it will detract from legitimate coverage.

While events in Ferguson, MO unfolded, many journalists highlighted what they saw as the militarization of the police force, predominately with regards to the equipment at their disposal. One could make the argument that the environment which cultivated subsequent events began to resemble a militarized zone as well, especially with regards to how the acting authority controlled where reporters could or could not go.

When journalists were deployed alongside armed forces when the USA invaded Iraq in 1990, “military personnel established what has become an increasingly extensive and rigid set of rules concerning where war reporters can go and what they can report, to ultimately control the flow of information and hence public opinion about war. By the time the USA invaded Iraq again in 2003, the military had perfected their control of the media (Luther & Miller, 2005).” Have these same policies trickled into civil government?

Ferguson doesn’t carry the same weight as a zone of crisis including armed deployment oversea’s, though there are parallels between the treatment of journalists in said areas of conflict. In Ferguson, reporters were physically removed from public and private businesses while others were arrested and held, only to be released with no charges filed, all in an attempt to control the flow of information and hence public opinion. In some instances, the police even fired gas canisters at journalists as they were reporting in the field.

When public opinion is already against one’s efforts in maintaining order, shouldn’t the acting authority encourage unhindered access for journalists?

There is much to be said about the influence of money at the organizational level of news media production. News corporations exist for economic reasons; revenue is always the end goal. But is news broadcasting the appropriate channel for revenue collection?

The clip below (The Newsroom, HBO 2012) shows the struggle of modern journalists to create meaningful content for audiences while still keeping that audience’s attention. Instead of covering topics important to the U.S. economy, the team is forced to open their show with coverage of the Casey Anthony trial, solely because it brings in more revenue for the network. Here, the desire to increase profits determines the stories the news team is allowed to broadcast, overriding the professional values of each member. This is what John H. McManus (1994) calls Market-Driven Journalism. According to Pew Research Center’s 2014 State of the News Media report, 69% of financial support for news comes from advertising. Losing audiences means losing sponsors, but keeping them could mean losing content and in some cases, journalistic integrity.

Thomas Jefferson famously claimed that “the cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate.” How though, can our democracy be sustained when the current entertainment news cycle only brings them stories born from capitalism? Where does the electorate go to become educated if they can no longer rely on the news?

When considering that Social Systems are the base of the hierarchy of influence of mass communication and that those social systems have subsystems to them, I pondered if those subsystems have a hierarchical order to them as well?

The Subsystems mentioned in the book, in no particular order it seems, are Ideological, Cultural, Political and Economic. The base of the subsystems has to be the ideology subsystem that has been developed, replaced, altered and redefined since mass communication has been researched from a sociological standpoint. It serves as the belief system that determines how an individual and/or institution decides what is a message they want to communicate and how they mold it..

What comes next is up for discussion, because different countries go about the supplementation of news in different ways, hence why the next most influential subsystem is the Political subsystem. The agenda setting behind an institution’s “betterment” can be read on the internet freely or filtered. 

Following what is next is the Cultural subsystem. It can be defined by the question “what do we want our audience to do with this information?” From entertainment film to brochure in a doctor’s office, every piece or mass produced information has the intention for the audience to the least feel something about what they have seen, heard or read.

And then lastly is the economic subsystem, which defines itself and might come as a shock especially when you consider how much CNN makes. Its an effect of news, not a cause.

Ruggiero’s paper, Uses and Gratifications Theory in the 21st Century, while written in the pre-9/11 media Dark Ages (2000), anticipates the advent of smartphones (already a term falling rapidly out of fashion) in its discussion of behavioral patterns in response to new technologies.

In fact, Ruggiero’s argument in favor of the revival of U&G theory was just a bit ahead of its time, because U&G provides an ideal means of studying the effects of the personally-curated media experience emblematic of the Device Age.

Through observation of my own behavior when it comes to media usage, I have come to see devices as paid message delivery systems, much as cigarettes are nicotine delivery systems for tobacco addicts. We scoff to read that North Korean citizens are required to have a government-controlled radio speaker in their homes, but just try prying the corporate-controlled Android from me.

The point is, as Shoemaker and Reese continually point out in Mediating the Message, the lines of influence in the Hierarchical Model are blurred and ill-defined. Institutions and individuals both have a role in shaping the media landscape, as one chases profit and the other chases gratification in a ceaseless transaction that appears either as a Möbius strip or a dog chasing its tail. But if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my next info fix.