Two Means Of Mass Communication Media Essay

Two Means Of business deal Communication Media EssayIs scar either superior or modest to video? How would wizard decide much(prenominal) a matter? When superficially messvas two means of communication largely used nowadays, namely publish and video, one could venture stating that the latter is better just by looking at the audience rates for separately middling. However, the issue of deciding which type of sensitive is better is far much than complex, starting even from establishing what better means. Being in no position to offer a clear-cut answer to the essay question, in the following posts I volition draw virtually theoretical guiding lines and then outline and handle some of the important advantages and disadvantages of using release and video as heart and soul conveyers, guided by the idea that each medium has its characteristics and each person has to decide which one better suits him or her. The focus points in comparing the two media leave alone be rel ated to the audience rates for each medium and their possible causes, the characteristics of the two media and of the media product on offer and, lastly, to the jolt on the two types of media consumers.Marshall McLuhans famous phrase the medium is the content (1964 7) represents a suitable starting point in comparing bulls eye and video. It indicates that the medium through which a message is conveyed has high importance in the reception of the meanings of the text. Moreover, it implies that each medium shapes the messages it transmits to the audiences according to different factors which I de leave later present. In discussing these two media in this essay I will in the first run refer to passwordpapers as creation representative for the home run medium and to video for video. Moreover, the media products which will be addressed will be non-fictional, i.e. not movies or literature. However, it should be noted that write is actually referring in commonplace to the pen me ssages, no matter which is the medium through which we gain admission price to them (P. David Marshall, 2004). Each medium, nevertheless, inscribes different characteristics on the message it conveys, as I shall move to demonstrate in this essay.Firstly, I will cast my attention on the audience rates of the two media and on how these could be explained. As say in the introduction, one could fall into the trap of considering video better than print only because of the event of media consumers each medium has. Indeed, the reckon of audiences is relevant when examine a medium, especially the way outs it can pee on people, an side which could help one decide which medium is better. The data presented by McQueen indicates that British people spend an average of over 25 hours reflection telecasting a hebdomad, with, on a typical day, 80 per cent of the world tuning into video recording (Cultural Trends, 1997, quoted in Glastier, 1997) (1998 3). Barwise and Ehrenberg draw a mo re utter conclusion people in many countries spend in the midst of a third and a half of their free season with television, more time than we spend on anything else except sleep and work (1988 12). Moreover, the specific fashion model Bourdieu (1998) gives near French TV viewing being more public than all intelligencepapers is eloquent. Bourdieu also draws the attention on the possible dangers of the large number of audiences television poses no less of a threat to political invigorationspan and to democracy itself (1998 10). Not only does television manipulates through its nature (Hall, 1996), classically it also alienates its audiences, according to the data presented.Audience rates reflect the particularities of print and video consumers. The difference in audience rates is due mainly to the fact that television does not require the audiences to be literate in order to become television consumers television offers viewing audience a miscellanea of national matter, re quires minimal skills to comprehend it, and is largely aimed at emotional delight (Postman, 1987 88-9). Moreover, the two media earn different bespeak consumers. Newspaper show uping is akin to other intellectual activities it is habituated in the youth and then it becomes a usance (Putnam, 2000), the removeers choosing certain newspapers due to their clearly defined policy with which its readers can aim themselves because newspapers express the feelings and hopes, often unexpressed, of its millions of readers (Hornby, 1965 102). Even if television viewing creates dependence, TV viewers argon more flexible than newspaper readers, surfing the TV conduct in search for suitable programmes which will describe them, as rise up as new television viewers. Furthermore, print has always been addressed to older, educated people, to the literate (Putnam, 2000), whereas by its nature the video medium creates the illusion of truth (Hall, 1996) and thus appeals to all people, disreg arding their accessible status, sex, age or race. huge research shows that people consider watching TV mainly as a time-passing, relaxing activity, as Barwise and Ehrenberg note television is so normal because it provides large amounts of distraction and relaxation at a trivial be with minimum effort to the viewer (1988 19). By contrast with printed material, video media products have the advantage of being more entertaining. If newspapers have the aim of informing their readers more than other media (Monaco, 1978), TV producers have to create entertaining programmes that can attract audiences and keep them tuned in. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to have entre to multiple resources, including equipment, a setting, money, a team etc. In this respect, print is more cost-effective, less constrained than the video medium and more at the disposal of media consumers. Nevertheless, newspapers be not the only form of print, the contents of some magazines and tabloids being more similar to TV programmes than any other print medium, because they have the same role to entertain their public.If different in audience rates, the two media, print and video, are also dissimilar in what clientele the accessible effects they determine. Putnam (2000) argues that TV viewing alienates the media consumers in different respects, such as determining them to be still and encouraging less societal communication in all its forms written, oral, or electronic (2000 231). Whereas texts conveyed by print engage their audiences in a one-to-one process, video media facilitates social fundamental interactions indoors, in campaign of the TV, as McCullagh argues television may, for example, facilitate family communication and whistle, but the content of the talk and conversation often has little relationship to what is on the screen (2002 169). Nevertheless, McCullagh pursues his line of argument by stating that the increased time spent in front of television must reduce the time that is available for other forms of social activity, especially those outside the home (2002 172), while newspapers can be read everywhere, at any time.After having discussed a few important social issues regarding the two media which could balance the weight in favour of one of them when discernment which is better, I can now look at other characteristics of twain(prenominal) media. According to Postman, televisions conversations promote incoherence and triviality (1987 81), while print is seen by him as a serious, coherent place, capable of management by reason, and of avail by logical and relevant criticism (1987 63). His line of thought is unquestionable by Fiske and HartleyThe written word (and particularly the printed word) works through and so promotes consistency, narrative development from cause to effect, universality and abstraction, clarity, and a single eminence of voice. Television, on the other hand, is ephemeral, episodic, specific, concrete and dram atic in mode (Fiske and Hartley, 1978, cited in Abercrombie, 1996 9).Moreover, print texts offer the readers the possibility to have much more run across skipping, pausing, re- cultivation, and so on (Barwise and Ehrenberg 1988 129), unlike video which is an ephemeral medium. This does not imply, however, that television is inferior in all respects to print.One of the matters concerning each medium is related to the amount of time it takes to transmit information to the public and between the occurrence of an event and the moment when the public is informed. In what concerns the video medium, information is transmitted faster to the audience, even if it is usually presented more briefly. Due to the technical characteristics of broadcasting which provide transmitting live footage 24-hours a day, television can deal with todays news, or even news as it breaks, unlike close to daily papers which can report only yesterdays events (McQueen, 1998 100). Another feeling of transmitting news through the video medium compensates this advantage facts shift other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation (Postman, 1987 71). There is the risk of loosing the complexity of a news story because of being constraint by time, similar to the lack of office for newspaper news a television script (e.g. for the news) can be more succinct, using fewer adjectives and adverbs because the pictures convey much of the detail (Barwise and Ehrenberg 1988 128-9). However, the effect of this simplification of news is that we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness that is to say, news as pure entertainment (Postman, 1987 102). Postman further argues that the short length of TV news reports has the role not to let the viewers engage similarly much with a particular subject, because if they do, they can lose the entertaining sensation of the news programme.Spending approximately a day a week viewing TV, people happen to find out more on a particular topic without necessary having in plan to hence, watching video materials doesnt always involve a voluntary engagement with the subject of the broadcast. Therefore, TV audiences are more likely to be passive because of the long-term periods of time in contact with this means of communication, unlike the limited interaction with written texts, which is more likely to be a voluntary action, being more personal as well the mood of reading is quieter and more reflective (Hornby, 1965 32). Due to the limited number of pages and the one-to-one character of reading a written text, the reader is more of an bustling media consumer while a TV viewer could engage in other activities while the TV is on. Moreover, as Monaco argues, in order to read a text, one has to be willing, to invest a more intense intellectual effort because he has to supply his own images and so und (1978 6), whilst to hear or see something on television does not need such a mental effort. Hence, a written media text is more likely to be read in an active path than a TV broadcast. This does not imply, however, as McCullagh (2002) argues, that newspapers cannot be read in a distraught way.Related to the issue of active/passive audiences is also the creativity of the media consumer. Print texts encourage people to be fictive more than when viewing video materials, in which contingency the media consumer is a mere spectator, not the essential constitutive element of forming the mental image suggested by the text. News broadcasts comprise reading previously written news (news scripts), (motion) pictures, sounds and testimonies. By contrast with reading texts, where one has to imagine what he reads, the synchronisation voice-over with images makes it get on as if the images speak for themselves declare their own transparent meaning, without exterior interjection (Brunsdon and Morely, 1996 14-5). Ellis notes the characteristics of the video medium, which makes use of images as its main support it helps communication by providing more redundancy, and provides emphasis by doubling information in both sound and image (2000 97). Hence, the technologies the video medium is using can direct advantages over the print medium, making the former as popular as it is.The human resources for what is conveyed through a medium are an important part in offering a qualitative product. With regard to print, written texts have authors who express their opinions, their own views, and state their knowledge about different subjects in order to inform the readers. Hence, the articles are more personal than video media products which usually have a team to produce them. If an article is signed by its creator, the news are presented in an impersonal, but not necessarily objective, style this is the case of news broadcasts presented by anchors, not of broadcasters whose TV shows are associated with the style, manner and personality of their presenters (Hall, 1996 9). The video broadcasts are varied in the way they are presented, in the way information not witnessed by the audiences is mediated to the public. This conniption could also influence the viewers due to the complexity of the stimuli conveyed through video. asunder from the statistics on audience rates and the features of the two media there is a groovy concern with the effects of media on audiences, which mainly derive from the technological characteristics of the medium. mismated material presented on TV is more damaging than in the case of printed texts because, unlike print, video offers a more convincing image of reality. Thus, the carry on on audiences is higher over a short period, which, however, cannot challenge the place of the newspaper as the medium that daily records in some detail, life in all its aspects (Hornby, 1965 98). In print, words and a limited number of images cann ot present an involve picture of an event because all is filtered through the mastermind of the journalist thereby, the reader receives second-hand information. The video medium offers a more exact image of the world, due to the images, comments and interviews presented. However, both perceptions of the world are biased because they are presented by people.There could be said much more about print and video, two different types of media, which, I would agree with Putnam, are complements, not substitutes (2000 219). Therefore, it is hard to decide which one is better. Each media is good at responding to the expectations of its target audience and each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, some of which I have discussed in this essay. To conclude, I will emphasise once again the role of the two media print mainly informs, whilst the video media mainly entertains. It rests with each person to decide which one is more suitable for them and if they can cope with the negative as pects of the specific medium.bookman No 0831496Module Media SociologyWord count 2375Mark 65 (Mid focal ratio 2nd)Date of submission 28.04.2009