Media, Culture and Politics

Mass Media
Research

Priyatno Harsasto
Fisip-Undip
 Normative Theories of the News Media
Definition: Teori normatif menggambarkan bagaimana masy "harus" berfungsi, bukan bagaimana
masyarakat menjalankan fungsinya secara nyata

1. Free Press and the Watch Dog Function

2. Public Sphere and Undistorted Communication (Jürgen Habermas)

 Public sphere (Marketplace of ideas): suatu sistem sosial untuk mengkomunikasikan informasi dan
ide, serta mentransformasikannya ke dalam opini publik.

 Undistorted communication: pemikiran tentang isu politik diperdebatkan secara rasional, dan opini
terbentuk, di luar kekuatan mereka yg terlibat dalam diskusi.

 Systematically Distorted Communication: pemikiran tentang isu politik dimanipulasi elit untuk
kepentingan mereka sendiri
 Wealth and Power  Public Opinion
News media as double-edged sword
Information: Media membawa
peristiwa dari sel dunia ke rumah
kita .

Manipulation: namun karena

kita tidak bisa melakukan
pengamatan sendiri pd peristiwa2
tsb, kita rentan menjadi korban
dimanipulasi.
 Types of Distorted Communication
1. Ideological Hegemony: Penggunaan bingkai
spesifik untuk mempengaruhi persepsi masy
tentang situasi tertentu.
2. Ignorance: Menggunakan pemberitaan selektif
(agenda-setting) untuk meningkatkan pentingnay topik
tsb dan mengaburkan topik lain. .
3. Misunderstanding. Menggunakan informasi yg
secara faktual tidak akuran untuk menyesatkan
masy pd topik2 tertentu.
 Structural Factor (I):
Global Media Monopoly

http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtml
http://www.thenation.com/special/2006_entertainment.pdf
 Structural Factor (II):
News Media Depend on Official
Sources of Information

Credible source Not a credible source

World View of Journalists
 Media and Politics Research
 1.The way the public sphere has been transformed as a
result of changes in the mass-media communications;
the way in which public communication itself has been
reshaped by the influence of the media.
 2.Concerning the relation between the media and
political reality, research has been undertaken to
understand the diverse patterns of the former in
constructing the latter. The media do not just mirror
political life, but generate a political “reality” that is
tailored to their own requirements.
 3.The impact of the media. It focused on the way their
characteristic constructions of reality have affected the
political orientations of their addressees.
 Cultural Studies

 Videomalaise:
Frequent TV consumption and political
alienation. News media have grown more negative
and more cynical and thereby produced growing
popular distrust of politicians and government
and even a general diengagement from civic life
(T.Patterson)
According to P.Norris in a more recent comparative
study the general videomalaise argument has
little empirical support.
 Cultural Studies cont.
 Knowledge gap
The spread of television consumption to more and
more people involving larger segments of their
time does not equalize the stock of politically
relevant knowledge among subgroups of society,
but instead widens such gaps between them.
Accordingly, the chances that equal rights to
democratic participation can be secured through
the spread and intensification of mass-media
communication have grown slimmer.
 The Effects of Media on
Individual Citizens
Citizens in any democracy require adequate
information to make informed decisions. There
are four theoretical models of media influence:
 1. The hypodermic model.
 2. Mass society model.
 3. Minimal effects, or resonance, model.
 4. Agenda setting model.
 The Hypodermic Model
 Early models of media effects on citizen
attitudes suggested that the media
‘injected’ their agenda into the public
mind and literally told the public what to
think.
 However, this model was too simplistic
and underestimated the public’s
intelligence.
 Mass Society Theory
 This theory argues that the emerging mass society brought
alienating effects, making people more susceptible to
manipulative media messages.
 The basic fear was that the rise of mass society and mass
media would contribute to rising totalitarianism.
These fears grew out of the German Nazi use of the
capitalist mass media to successfully promote their Nazi
agenda.
 Here the audience is seen as having few filters to withstand
the powerful influence of mass advertising and other media
propaganda.
 This model is still popular, but many argue that the public is less
susceptible to propaganda as this model suggests.
 Minimal Effects Model
 The belief in an all-powerful media did not hold
up under empirical research. Studies suggested
that the media’s effect on people is less direct
and more subtle.
 This model argues that media messages act to
reinforce existing beliefs rather than change
opinions in a directly manipulative manner.
This model gives more agency to people to select
and filter out material they are not interested in. It
was a popular model until the late 1960s.
 Agenda Setting Model
 This model emerged in the late 1960s. It argues that the
media, while not so successful in telling people exactly what
to think, are successful in telling people what to think about.
 The media set the agenda for discussion of public issues and
debates by directing people’s attention to some issues while
censoring other issues.
For example the commercial media’s coverage of crime
has been exaggerated, and this causes people to
overestimate the amount of real crime while thinking
about crime a lot every day.
 Rather than a minimal effect, this model emphasizes that
the media produces limited effects.
 Current Research on Media Effects
 1. Readers are very active in interpreting information and use
more than the media to understand reality.
 2. Media influence varies by the characteristics of the reader,
as well as exposure to the media.
For example, adolescents are more influenced by media
messages than adults.
 3. George Gerbner and others have found that years of
exposure to the mass media results in the development of
generalized attitudes which reflect media content.
Heavy immersion in mass media produces a
mainstreaming effect where audiences develop world
views that reflect dominant ideologies.
 Social Semiotic
 Umberto Eco
The effects of media messages depend on
the social semiotics of a given
communication situation:
-Factors as the pol.affiliation, age, ethnicity
and gender
-The type of message transmitted
 Decoding position
 Stuart Hall: One’s knowledge that a piece of communication is
partisan will to a large extent predetermine one’s reading of it.
1.Dominant decoding: the receiver share the world
view underlying the construction of the
messages, its interpretation of the facts behind
current pol and econ debates and its preffered
solutions
2.Negotiated decoding: floating voters
3.Oppositional decoding: ideologically different
groups
 The audience will be more open:
 The message is communicated through:
News reports
Chat show interview
Live debate
 General rule:
 The effect of political communications of whatever kind
are determined not by the content of the message alone,
or even primarily, but by the historical context in which
they appear, and especially the political environment
prevailing at any given times. The quality of a message,
the skill and sophistication of its construction, count for
nothing if the audience is not receptive.
 Dick Morris:”if the public won’t buy your basic premise, it
doesn’t matter how much you spend or how well your
ads are produced; they won’t work”
 How to assess the effect of pol.
communication on attitudes and behavior?
 1.Polling/survey
 2.Voting behavior
 3.Experiment
 Survey
 1.Public opinion polls are not only a measure of
political attitudes and intentions at a given point
in time. Many observers agree that they can
become a causal factor in voting behavior.
 2.Public opinion polls may generate a
demonstration effect, ‘cuing undecided voters on
which party the mayority is supporting, and thus
becoming self-fulfilling prophecies.
 3.Public opinion polls become part of the
political environment they are designed to
monitor; becomes part the data upon which
individuals calculates their future political moves.
 Voting Behavior
 To observe patterns in actual voting
behavior.
 -good campaign: image of party
leadership and corporate image of the
party
 -good policy: image of party policy
 Experimental Research
 To what extent public relation experts can
manipulate the public’s impression of a political
candidate?
-voters who watched television were the most
likely to be influenced by the candidate’s image
-certain camera angles, such as filming at eye
level, produced a more favorable audience
response to a politician than others
-image building made voters perceive the
candidate possess public office
qualities(competence, integrity and likableness).
 The Effect of Pol Advertising
 The effect of pol.advertising are heavily
conditioned by the existing political attitudes of
the audience.
 Few voters actually change votes due to
pol.advertising
 Once a candidate’s image has been developed,
new information is unlikely to generate any
appreciable change
 The politician can shape and work the message,
but has relatively control over the environment
into which it is inserted and the uses to which it
will be put.
 Conclusion
 The media influence what people think about, and to a
lesser extent what people think, depending on people’s
characteristics and level of media exposure.
 Media influence on perception is dependent on cumulative
exposure more than on specific television events.
The mass media set the agenda for what the public
tends to think and talk about every day.
 However, the influence is not blatant. The media is most
influential on long term heavy viewers.
 Finally, audiences bring their own filters with them when
they process media information.