Innis' Communication Bias: Time and Space

• Bias of communication is Innis' idea stating communication tech makes centralization of power inevitable.
• Space bias media is portable.
• Time biased media is durable.
• Changes in communication technology inevitably produce profound alterations in both culture and social order.
• Technology inevitably causes specific changes in how people think, how society is structured, and in the forms of culture created.
• Religious monopoly over knowledge occurred when religious people were the primary literate population, relying on clergy to interpret the bible.
• Communication systems are controlled by the elite class.
• Innis highlighted the link between communication media and the forms of social structure found in history.
• Early empires were based on the elite control of the written word.
• Earlier social orders were more dependent on the spoken word.
• Before discovery of written word by the elite, dialogue was the primary mode of public discourse and political authority was more widely distributed.
• Eventually, the written word became the main form of elite communication.
• Power was magnified by the invention of new writing materials, meaning a small group of elites could control and govern vast regions and new communication media made it possible to create empires.
• The expansion of written word empires was limited by communication technology.
• Expansion did not depend on skill of military, it depended on communication media used to disseminate orders.
• More advanced tech meant more effective control of a wider area and the development of media tech has gradually given centralized elites increased power over space and time.

Key Terms

• Freud's impact had a significant impact in the 20th century on our understanding of people.
• Understanding what makes people function and "tick," including the unconscious, is a key driver of decisions.
• Enlightenment thought posits that people are rational.
• During the romantic period, people are driven by or control their destiny shaped by emotion, imagination, and individual will rather than logic or societal rules.
• In the late 1800s, Freud viewed people as psychodynamic beings driven by unconscious motivations.
• Aspects of the psyche inform how humans process information.
• The preconscious holds thoughts and feelings that can easily be triggered or brought to consciousness, residing just below the surface.
• The conscious encompasses everything we are actively thinking, perceiving, and experiencing.
• The unconscious includes aspects of the psyche that influence behavior without awareness, often due to repressed trauma, pain, or socially unacceptable content.
• The id drives primal drives and impulses.
• The ego mediates between primal impulses, moral compass, and the environment, making judgment calls.
• The superego acts as a moral compass.
• The sex drive is an innate primal instinct.
• Semiotics/Symbolism is the study of sign systems.
• Repression defense mechanism is used to store thoughts and feelings in the unconscious, which may impact functioning.
• Psychoanalysis brings the unconcious to the surface.
• Dream analysis involves unpacking the unconscious through symbolism found in dreams.
• Advertising can symbolize this through dreams.

Early Communications Influence

• Edward Bernays is known for development of public relations, strategic communications, and propaganda.
• Bernays applied Freudian ideas to motivate or appeal to people based on unconscious drives, acknowledging that people aren't solely rational actors.
• Third party validation is a public relations technique involving confirmation or approval from an external/ influential source.
• Confirmation can include endorsement (ex: an influencer speaking on behalf of a product).
• Bernays worked with the U.S. government to galvanize public opinion to enter war.
• Bernays wrote a book promoting propaganda as a persuasive technique, originally geared towards spreading political ideas.
• Bernays theorized these ideas could be applied to industries to affect marketing and sales.
• Bernays also said the control of how info is presented and what info is received is not appealing to rationality.
• Engineering consent involves influencing public opinion/ behavior through persuasive or manipulative means, making people believe the decision is good for them.
• Social acceptance reflects a desire to belong, feel like one is contributing to the social whole, and being part of a beneficial community.
• Finding social acceptance aligns with Maslow's hierarchy of needs (love and belonging).
• Orchestrated media events/campaigns with young socialites combined marketing with social efforts.
• The "torches of freedom" campaign combined the feminist movement to sell cigarettes (linking smoking with women's liberation).
• Nazi Germany used Bernays' ideas to manufacture consent during the Holocaust.
• Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and Hitler's chief propagandist, rallied support for Nazi ideals using mass communication to spread hatred against Jews.

Models of Communication

• Models of communication help with understanding according to models, and how theories on audiences' or people doing the decoding develop.
• The cultural/ ritual model of communication is influenced by theorist John Durham Peters and is written about in Speaking into the Air, a history of the idea of communications.
• Communications are theorized by a wide range of thinkers, including Jesus, ancient greeks, mediums, and contemporary thinkers.
• Communications is something that is not thought of as a problem.
• Breakdown in communications mean not communicating successfully.
• Cannot seamlessly convey thoughts and feelings.
• The traditional (transmission) model of communication reflects a linear movement of communications, moving information from A (encoder) to B (decoder, audience), and there is an obstacle.
• Communications involves human connection and understanding and it is not just about transferring info.
• People have an interiority that cannot be fully expressed to others, so they try to imitate through a symbolic realm.
• A better comms system will not improve issues of understanding, but instead the problem is social not technical.
  • It's less about a matter of 'not understanding' because sometimes understand but disagree.
• Transmission Model: Information transfer from point A to point B through encode and decode is practical, linear, and conveying specific detail is very important.
• Cultural/Ritual Model: focuses on storytelling, where facts don't matter as much, forming an understanding, social norms make shared meanings possible, and make sense of the world through stories and interpretations.
• James Carey is a communications scholar with a ritual view of communications, that it's about creating and maintaining shared meanings.
• Peter highlighted the communications' problems which are that noise and misunderstanding get in the way of clear communication and/or that people are easily persuaded by media.
• People are easily persuaded by media because noise and misunderstandings get in the way of clear communication through cultural differences, emotion, biases, and language barriers.
• The media theory says the form of media impact is the communication process.
• The media theory transmission model can be used in alarmist ways. It is concerned with direct effects of media on a person (author intent → interpretation) (ex. propaganda can be encoded, has a profound influence on decoder).
• Communications deals with loneliness and alienation, brings people closer together, communion, authentic connection, and fear of its breakdown.
• Raymond Williams highlighted keywords in comms and looks at definitions in comms over time (reflective of ritual model of coms).
• Communication makes common understanding, imparts (give/ transmit), impart/share/make, and common/mutual process involves reciprocity/ exchange.

Central Concerns

• The power of media and coms on people are key concerns.
• Its potential to manipulate and how meaning changes by medium, affecting understanding.

Media Theory in History

• Peter's view on the story of Phaedrus (written by Plato about Socrates) predicts theories of McLuhan and the moral panic of the new medium (writing at the time), where orators deliver speeches (orality is a performance, different qualities from written form).
• Phaedrus shares speech from orator, telling Socrates how great and moving it was.
• Socrates critisizes writing, says writers can manipulate from afar, where orality is a more genuine exchange, reciprocal.
• Plato criticizes writing as a poor substitute for spoken dialogue.
• Ironically, it was b/c his work was written, it was preserved and studied later.
• Brings up convo around new media fears (are they tools for progress or a threat to comms?)
• Communication as meaningful exchange, not just A to B, the channel/ medium matters, and how it's delivered and what is the participation process.
• Hypodermic Needle Theory suggests that media 'inject' their effects directly into unsuspecting victims that powerful media adversely affect weak audiences.
• Those affected by the hypodermic needle theory are less aware.
• This transmission model of communications media is powerful; audience is powerless to the message (little agency in the process).
• People tend to be critical of this model because the audience lacks engagement.
• 'Direct effects theory does not consider critical thinking, personal interpretation, or resistance (ex. war of the worlds (Orson Wells)).
• Under direct effects the encoder is powerful and the audience is passive.
• During theatrical production about alien invasion broadcasted on radio people were convinced of this and went into panic
• Realistically only few listeners thought it was real, because they tuned and missed the disclaimer or predisposed to religious beliefs
• Minimal Effects argues mass media reinforces existing behaviors and attitudes rather than changing people.
• Limited effects model does not cause people to change attitudes and behaviors.
• Media influence individuals who do not already hold strong views on an issue. People generally engage in selective exposure and selective retention, that confirm values and attitudes they already hold.
• Uses and Gratifications theory claims people actively engage in media to satisfy various needs - emotional or intellectual.
• This also challenges the notion of passive reception.
• In Propaganda Theory the media is not neutral.
• Serve powerful interests, control perception, and shape ideology in order to inform the audience(s).
• The theory suggests it is a tool for persuasion and manipulation.
• Harold Laswell was a mass communications' pioneer.
• Laswell defines propaganda as ''the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols."
• Propaganda is rooted in things people are collectvely familiar with.
• Propaganda consists of symbols that bypass rational thought and trigger emotional reactions with different types.
• Sometimes used for nefarious reasons, but sometimes truth is used.
• Laswell's points on propaganda are media are a corrupting influence based on fears of totalitarian control, in times of crisis people are more likely to be influenced by persuasion under high emotion, and relies on 'master well-known symbols.
• The audience People must be conditioned to gradually accept ideas, that propaganda works over time.
• Some people also assume rapid, instant media injections of ideas.
• Radical ideas need to be introduced slowly before people accept them Totalitarian US: people believed citizens needed to be convinced to do things in support using propaganda during the Cold War.
• Walter Lippmann: theorist, believed people can manipulate others "for their own-good."
• Dewy: people have the right to be involved democratically.
• Wright: We are passive mass audience.

Laswell's Model of Communications

• Who says what to whom in which channel with what effect.
• This follows a linear transmission.

Shannon Weaver Model

• Sender, message, and receiver model.
• Linear Model.
• Considered sender and recievers!
• One way.
• Frankfurt school of thought is:
  • Max and Theodore and Adorno.
• The "culture machine" is how control is obtained in society.
• Mass media impacts people.
• People were led away by population culture in the past.
• Concerned with mass consumerism and the industrial revolution.
• Toronto school of thought is:
  • Marshall McLuhan.

Bias

• Comms has shifted due to controlled class.
• Religious monopolize knowledge.
• People could not interpret when people looked to the bible.
• Bias has different characteristics prone to different uses.
• Time is long and durable.
• Space is portable.
• Orate cuture
• Comumal character is collective and transferable.
• Written culture: shifts in nature of communication and is individualized.
• High detailed.
• Author is most important.
• Standardization of spelling.
• McLuhan feels that change in media is reflected it culture.
• Connection between senses and technology and social life.

Electronic Culture

• Automatically transfers short distances in short amount of time.
• People didnt have to be close, they reorganized the "conception" of time in places.

Week 4

• Czitroms research that empical media can be studied.
• Lazarsfeld connect market research to action.
• Used research to examine consumer behavior.